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Snake Encounter Of The Penultimate Kind

6th December 2017 by Support Leave a Comment

Mount Cooroora, Pomona, QLD

As I entered the 9th day, the penultimate day Vipassana Meditation…in actual fact it was the penultimate to the end of the offical course but as the 10th day of the course ends late in the evening we have another day before we leave…I was feeling very balanced and I now truly understood what was meant by being centred. What encounters were left for me to experience?

All through the course we had been sitting in our own designated spot in the same position for 10hrs a day. I had watched many people over the days add another meditation cushion to their place mat, trying to get comfortable and ‘cushion’ the pain. No matter how many cushions you sit on, it still feels like you are sitting on concrete or a piece of very hard wood.

Meditation Tool

Decision made that morning was I’m going to go without my small cushion on my meditation stool, that I had sat on all the previous days, in hope that it would ease my pain. It didn’t really matter whether it was there or not, my arse was in pain. The other reason was, that I was not in as much pain as I had been and I reckoned that the stool would be just as uncomfortable without the cushion.

I was right; the cushion made no difference but I was starting to feel way more comfortable sitting on it for an hour at a time. That’s what happens when you keep diligently working though your sankhara’s.

On one of the morning sessions I came out of the hall on my own. I was heading to my room to do some Vipassana practice. I put my feet into my shoes and as I turned to take a step onto the path I abruptly stopped and took one step back. There in front of my path

was a Green Tree snake sliding majestically across the tarmac right in front of me, minding it’s own business. All I could do was watch in awe! I have been living in Australia for over nine years and I’ve only ever seen four other snakes, one about 500 metres way, one about 100 metres away, two others on the road, all of them from either inside a building or a car.

I’ve never been this close up to a wild snake before and it was beautiful. Knowing that Green Tree Snakes are not dangerous, and too be honest I don’t fear snakes, I just stood there memorised by this beautiful creature and the significance of its symbolism hadn’t eluded me either. Snakes symbolise transformation and new beginnings as they shed their full skin and transform many times in their life span. For me this gorgeous reptile was reminding me of my own transformation and the continual changes going on in my own human body…arising and passing. Anicca (imperminance)!

I mentioned to the manager that there had been a snake spotted that morning, just to be alert. As I went about the daily routine and practice. Later we all came out of the meditation hall for our few minutes break. Some people headed to their rooms, others for a walk, me I always do a few stretches, had some water and took some time to just ‘BE’ with nature. As I stood at the same spot I had seen the snake that morning I took in the view and the trees.

At that moment on the trunk of tree nearest me, there he/she was…the Green Tree Snake once more. About twenty five people had walked right past this tree, that was positioned just to the left and right outside of the meditation hall, and not one had noticed this beautiful creature pinned to the bark.

It was about one and half metres long and just sitting pretty. I went down the path to the manager and told her the snake was on the tree. We both headed back to the tree and just watched as the snake lifted it’s head up and look straight at us, moved it’s head froward slightly and flicked it’s tongue to smell and feel the air in front of it. It was at a very safe few mertres away from us. We were both mesmerised as it then decided to come down off the trunk and make it’s way into the long grass.

We followed it for a bit and then a few others realised we were watching something and guessed it was a snake as they asked the manager. About 8/9 people got to see that beautiful reptile make it’s way over ground to a safe haven. They witnessed their own symbol of transformation that day too.

The deep appreciation for this technique was growing for me day, by day!

Next Blog: Don’t Miss The Last Day Of Vipassana Meditation

Note:

Vipassana (insight – seeing things as they really are) is a different experience for every individual, as we are all so unique and interpret the world around us and within us so differently. We have also had our own experiences in life that are unique to us. So this article is all about Mags Bell’s experience and self discovery through Vipassana.

Daily Routine and Excruciating Pain

13th October 2017 by Support Leave a Comment

By day six, I was well into the routine of our 10hr meditation day, observing excruciating pain and other sensations, rest periods and dining. I made a point of getting up as soon as the 4am deep sounding bell went…feeling very grateful to the old student who got up earlier to go

The Bell

around ringing that bell (old Student is someone who has already completed a 10 day course)…having a shower, dressing and heading to the meditation hall for the 4:30am two hour meditation. You could meditate in your room, but I knew if I stayed there I would be tempted to sleep longer and not put the work in I had promised myself. I actually loved being in the hall at this time because it was dark and there were only ever a few of us there doing our bit for ourselves.

What’s The Pain: What’s A Sankhara?

It was in one of the morning sessions after breakfast that I was sitting observing what S.N. Geonka called Sankharas (formations). Sankharas are; the mental formation, the mental conditioning, the mental reactions that we create, in most cases unwittingly and in ignorance. Our past reactions become our reference, by which we interpret new situations. We judge and categorise our past Sankharas, then unsuspectingly slot these new sankharas into whatever category we deem fit.

So I was observing what I’d put into my body through old impurities that had lay dormant and were now arising for me, from my non-conscious to the surface and manifesting themselves into a physical sensation. Most people think that consciousness and non-consciousness are only in our heads, only because when talked about most speak of them as part of the head brain. Our consciousness and non-consciousness are everywhere: in our bodies and around our bodies. So I was observing what my non-consciousness had been holding onto.

When we observe these Sankahras (these physical sensations) from a place of equanimity (balance), no aversion for them to go and no craving for them to stay, just being in awareness and observing the changes, we do not create new Sankharas and allow the old ones to eradicate. We are now equanimous (neutral/balanced) unlike when we were producing these Sankharas.

We are meant to work up and down the body looking for sensations and not missing any area. Only stopping for short periods on more intense areas. Some sensations were solid and others were light.

Distracted By The Pain

As I sat there working away on my body sensations, I was being pulled more to the extreme solid pain sensations, which were attracting my attention more than the more subtle sensations.

For everyone in the room, we all had different areas that our aversions and cravings are stored in our body, pains and pressure as well as tingle and itching etc. So for me my back and shoulders were painful and my butt/bottom/bum/arse, whatever you want to call it, was in severe pain. However for all of us, I have no doubt that we were all feeling immense pain in our posterior as we were all seated upright.

No-one was allowed to lay down, there were special floor seats for those with back issues and some could use the back wall as a support but everyone was on their bum.

My theory on why they have you in this seated position, although I have not checked with them, is that we carry most of our pain from past life and childhood up to the age of 7, in our base chakra and as we are sitting on the base then there is plenty aversion and craving sankharas stored there, to come out.

Pain In The Butt!

I watched people using three to four cushions to try and alleviate the pain but no matter how many pillows you put under that butt, it feels like you’re sitting for hours on a very hard piece of wood or concrete.

I worked away on observing my butt sankharas, while sweeping my shoulders and back sankharas…you can sweep sankharas that are similar in feel and symmetrical. Sweeping is about sweeping your attention/observation/awareness over an area of your body. When you observe you become so aware of just how much the body is changing. The sankharas come and go, rise and pass, in constant change. This is what is so amazing to perceive.

As I observed my very painful butt sankharas, I noticed, some were very sharp and very deep, some were very quick to come up to the surface, others seem to take forever and of course those were always the most painful.

I wondered what events or moments had created these sankharas, that I had thought or acted very badly towards others or myself in thought or deed. On observing some of these physical manifestations of my impure thoughts and deeds, I realised that some of the really dense, heavy, long and particularly painful sankharas were not just one long pain as I had first observed.

I became aware by studying these sankhara that they were very intense, fairly small sankhara that would intensify in pain then as they are about to pass a new dense really painful sankhara arose right behind it to create what felt like a continuous pain. It was like a train shunting into a new carriage to make one long continuous carriage.

The Lesson Through Laughter

There was a new noise in the meditation hall this day, again from the men’s section…not sure if was the same guy who was heavily breathing that I mentioned in my last blog?

This time as we sat in silence and stillness, all of a sudden there was what sounded like a snoring noise. I thought I had been mistaken when the same noise happened again and this time you knew it was a snore. This happened four times and I broke into an enormous smile.

It’s one coping mechanism for the ego to go into protection mode and stop the body pain. Then came the noise that we all knew and made me laugh inside. That noise when you have drifted off and unbeknown to you you’re snoring, followed by the snort that awakens you with a startle…it was loud and clear, he had woken himself and that stopped his snoring for now. 😁

This was my lesson to stay equanimous through awareness and observation and not allow my ego to run away with me.

What Happens To The Pain When You Just Observe?

There was one Sankhara that I was observing; it was about 10cm in diameter and felt like a red hot poker being driven down into my body…the weird thing was how it felt like it was being pushed into my core which is up, but this was a feeling of downward motion. So I’m not sure where it was driving down to!

I was obsessively observing this red hot poker; how long it was, it’s thickness, the heat intensity, the type of pain it was causing, the length of the pain.

At no time did I link my emotion or mind to it. It wasn’t ‘MY pain’ or the ‘pain I was in’ or even the ‘pain that they had put ME in,’ because this is allowing the mind to control the emotions to become involved. You then become a victim when you own it. No, I stayed in equanimity/balance, neither craving the end of the pain nor trying to move away from the pain.

As I was concentrating so fiercely, the pain became so intense and seemed to be lasting forever. At that point I got a thought that maybe I was being too obsessive and that I may even be harming myself, so I pulled myself away from the deep close observation to an umbrella viewing and puff…it came up to meet me and just disintegrated into nothing!!!

Wowwwwww!!!! Now that was an experience. I went back to observing other Sankharas when all of a sudden I could feel various areas in my butt popping. It was like the sankharas were popcorn kernels all hard, but then would pop into soft and fluffy. It was a very weird and wonderful sensation and they were doing it of their own accord. I was trying to view them as they popped.

Cushion to Enjoy

Then just at that moment it was as if I was sitting on a lovely fluffy cloud, so soft and comfortable.

At this moment I was still observing and as I realised how nice this was to be free from pain I felt a small painful sankhara rise, then another, then another. At this point I reacted and went into battle.

Do you remember those games you used to get at funfairs? They were either moles or gophers (the mole ones were called whack-a-mole) where you would wait for the mole to pop it’s head out of the hole and you would hit it with a mallet. Well that’s what I started to do with the these new painful sankharas. I would follow them all over my arse saying sankhara, sankhara, sankhara as I pretended to hit them on the head. I got carried away and before I knew it they were multiplying at a much faster rate than I could keep up with.

Again I pulled myself away from reacting and stopped to think what was happening. Yes you guessed it! I had moved from equanimity into craving for the new lovely, fluffy sensation and then tried to avoid the pain by trying to ‘kill’ it off. Allowing my mind to take control I had started reacting to my emotions…I was so out of balance.

Worst point was I had multiplied these new painful sankhara so much that my arse was back to burning up and many, many painful sankharas now rising and falling, arising and falling. I had to laugh at myself for following old patterns of aversion and craving ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha!

I am truly grateful for the tools I have; ‘The 4R’s Release Model®,‘ ‘The 3 Keys to Eliminate Your Shite™’ and ‘Decision Making Made Easy™’. Over the years these tools have helped many of my clients, audiences, family and friends to live happier and lighter lives. I also use my own tools and to be honest, I dread to think what my Vipassana experience would have been like without eliminating so much of my own shite before I went into this 10 day experience!

Mind Control, Pain, & Misery

Mind Control and Misery

I was truly stunned at how easy it was for me to fall into old patterns. The patterns of avoidance and clinging. Our mind controls us and holds us in ignorance every day and we don’t even realise it. Our mind keeps us in misery and suffering. We think we are in control but it is just an illusion.

We spend our days reacting, reacting, reacting, based on old experiences. Our days are spent building up new sankharas, new painful sensations that settle in our body.

Now, I have a way, a method to allow these sankharas to surface and eradicate without replacing them or multiplying them…the meditation called Vipassana. I now have a way to liberation…what we all seek!

As I left that meditation session I was in awe of the learning, growth and teaching of my experience, which I pondered over lunch. Wow…what an experience I’ve just been through!

Next Blog: See What Truly Amazing Experiences Lie In Wait, After Lunch! 😲

Note:

The Power In Detaching Our Emotion From Our Mind.

27th September 2017 by Support 4 Comments

Admin & Dining Area – Vipassana Centre Qld, Australia

As I had expected; the silent part was the easy part of this 10 day silent Vipassana meditation course…even for someone who speaks for a living! As everyone had taken the vow of Noble Silence, there is a respect for self and others, you are also asked not to signal, make eye contact or touch others.

I made a deal with myself that I would get up every day at 4am, shower and get ready so I could be in the meditation hall for 4:30am every morning. As a night person and not a morning person, this was turning my world upside down. However I knew if I stayed in my room I would become sloppy and sleep, rather than be disciplined and do the work that I was here to do.

The first 3 days were all about Anapana (focused breathing – focusing on the triangular nasal area alone). This is in preparation for the teaching of Vipassana. You maybe wondering why you need to practice Anapana for 3 days. Whether you are doing 3 days, 10 days, 30 days or 60 days of the Vippassana courses a third of the time is practicing Annapana. This is to sharpen your focus and awareness on a very small area. You are asked to breathe normally and not deep or shallow breath. The only time you take a sharp and deep breath is to help you refocus if your mind goes off onto other things.

Emotional Detachment

As you are sitting for long periods of up to 1hr at a time, your body gets sore and painful in various parts. It’s different for everyone. For me it was my shoulders, back and bum. The pain gets intense at times.

On the second day I was sitting with a few others in the meditation hall, on one of the afternoon sessions, when my body started to dissipate. It’s difficult to describe but, your body is there, however you can’t really feel it. If you have never experienced it; it’s a bit like your whole body going numb but more pleasant than that. This has happened to me many times, when I have been doing a meditation called Satsang. All of a sudden I thought; “Should I be doing this?” So I sought out the teacher and asked for some of her time. I explained what had just happened and she advised me to go back to the Anapana, as I was going too far ahead.

Now at this stage I have a decision to make. Stay on this path and do what is asked of me, remaining in deep physical pain at times or ignoring this advice and allowing my body to dissolve and take the immense physical pain away. I didn’t come here for an easy ride, after all I put that pain there in the first place the only way to rid myself of it, was to follow the instructions given. So back to agony and Anapana! Not that Anapana itself is agony, it was sitting still that was the agony.

Also on the second day I realised in those reflective moments at rest, two things; the first was that this wasn’t just a 10 day course for me, this was a way of life. Secondly; I had so much awareness going on that I was already doing some of the things that were to come. I had detached my emotion from the actual physical pain.

Looking back at my well travelled path

It was the way I had learned over 25yrs of coaching. I also realised just what that 25yrs+ and over 60,000 hours of coaching had done for me. Coaching is all about awareness of self and others…mindfulness. Up until now those numbers were just facts and figures and I was coming to realise the enormity of these many years of coaching experience and how it was helping me with these 10 days of learning.

You see I’m not just a coach, or a teacher of coaching…I’m a student first and foremost!

It’s the pain that you notice first. When I talk about detaching emotion from the physical, I am referring to not associating the pain as ‘my pain’ or ‘the pain I’m in’ or ‘the pain they’ve put me in’ or ‘the torture I’m in’. All of these are victim phrases as if I own or someone is doing to me…blame and victim. I don’t play those games anymore and just as well or I would have the emotional and mental pain to go with the physical, as many people did. It was just PAIN as I observed it! Neutral pain; not positive, not negative, just pain. It’s the emotional mind that attaches to clinging or the avoidance. I was neither in crave or aversion…just awareness of pain.

I Need Humour In My Life!

Anyone who knows me knows that humour plays a big part of my life. There is not a day goes by without Paul (my partner) and I laughing about something. Within the first few days I realised I needed that humour and had started to making up funny stories as if I was crafting a T.V. comedy sketch show. The funny stories were always taking the piss out of me and I’m sure they weren’t that funny but they amused me and that was the main thing. To keep things light in the rest periods keeps the balance and I’m all about the balance!

I also made up names for people.

There were a few people on the course that I had met on day one, so knew their names. Those of my fellow course goers I didn’t know, were named after people I knew on the outside that they looked similar to. There was a Debs because she was bouncy and small like the Debs I know. There was Arty, who was so colourfully dressed and her space in the hall was filled with cushions and blankets in various shapes and sizes. Then there was Fran & Anna, who started out not knowing each other and sitting at separate tables, graduating to being on the same tables at each dining sitting. They were both medium height, very slim built and wore similar type clothing. I think they probably had a lot in common. In a later blog, I’ll describe a sketch I made up in my head that involved Fran and Anna. 😁

I think it was day two. I was walking down through the beautiful gardens, heading for the dining area, when from the bushes over to my left, this milk chocolate coloured beautiful faced, slim woman, with long jet black hair that went all the way down her back appeared. She was dressed all in light grey; grey top which came over her long grey skirt that went right down to her feet. You couldn’t see her feet. It looked like she was gliding out of the bush…wow, stunning! It was at that very moment she became ‘Pocahontas’ to me. I found out a few days later she was also my neighbour as she emerged from the room next door.

I’ll let you know what she said when I told her what I had named her in a later blog…so stay tuned.

Next blog: find out what the teaching of Vipassana really is and the snoring in the hall