Vipassana Meditation Retreat & Seeking Silence
Silence, being still, and learning from the Universe are tasks if you take the practice seriously. For me, seeking these sources came from desperation; I found myself repeating cycles that brought pain to others, and I was having a hard time finding a way to break out of the process I was currently in.
At the time, I was compartmentalizing my emotions, pouring myself into projects, building status, and overworking myself. I was a department head at the university specializing in community outreach, community development, peaceful protest, and conflict and resolution practices. After finishing college, I made a career shift away from professional athletics to academics; we’ll talk about that later.
During college, I had a life-altering experience traveling abroad and working on multiple service-learning projects in South Africa. This led to me coming to the university with the idea of transforming communities through meaningful work, relationships, and impactful conversations. Inspired to build intellectual work and community projects rooted in work like Pablo Freire and Cornel West, but that was short-lived.
After some time building and developing community relationships and project models, I felt isolated at work and uncomfortable with my increase in power and position within the university but without real support for the projects our team developed. That was a big red flag for me; over time, you learn basic work principles that merit success and sustainability. My method was rooted in individual accountability, community partnership, and institutional support. Missing one of those three makes the job difficult to implement and sustain. This is one reason for my leaving the university setting; the other was an affair with a colleague. A leader in the community merits power, position, and privileges, and individuals in those assets, if not self-checked, can manifest conflicts distracting from the work needed.
Going back to what I mentioned earlier regarding women, I never had to try hard to get women’s attention. Now with me in a position of power, I was faced with how I would use that power. Now add to the plate my preferring women to work with, this wasn’t a misogynistic practice, but women in this line of work did better. At this point in my life, I was once divorced and in a new relationship. I hadn’t appropriately closed the baggage from that previous relationship, so my behavior returned to its practice. I was overwhelmed with work projects, I had a hard time articulating my love language to my new partners, and I took advantage of the female attention I had access to; it didn’t take much effort, whereas the home conversation did; I wanted the convenience of affection without the responsibility of having to face my inner conflicts. The ground was set for an affair with time, ego, arrogance, and imagination. And I knew this, but we all find ways to persuade ourselves to do stupid shit, and here was my moment.
Of course, I felt like shit when the truth came out; I now had an affair, community project responsibility, and a home life. Struggling to pull things together, I reached a breaking point, quit my job, and looked at what I was doing. The hurt I brought to the women involved was a constant story of mine starting in high school, and I struggled with hitting the women I was with. Regarding the modeling, there was no reference for me in this situation, both parents were divorced, and my parent model was not always consistent in their practice. I didn’t have any true mentors to speak to about my situation; feeling isolated, the emotional build-up started affecting me, and the lying and covering up took its toll. Working in the community and speaking about “doing the right thang,” respect, and honor, I couldn’t keep building work on these principles and lying to myself. At this moment I was faced with a difficult decision – to continue down the same path and perpetuate the cycle of pain and dysfunction or to take responsibility for my actions and make a change. It was clear that the latter option was the only way forward, but I had no idea where to start. That’s when my partner stepped in and introduced me to the Vipassana Meditation retreat.
I signed up for an 11-day silent retreat to begin learning how to take accountability for the chaos I’ve created in my life. All veggie diet, no working out of any kind, only walking, no looking at anyone, no writing, and all transitions are signaled by a bell. I’ve attended a total of three and have only completed two. In this experience, I learned the value of Breathing and observation. It was amazing how much memory and emotion came to me by sitting and breathing. My big takeaway was understanding the depth of emotional sensations and how they contributed to our life’s narrative. Observing these sensations through breathing, proper diet, and silence enables other senses to arise and inform you about these sources of emotional distress. This was very difficult because I was forced to go down a road of all those I’ve hurt, impacted, learned from, and whatever else I was hiding all came up like an emotional cleansing. Very passionate for me to think of the pain I cause others, re-living other memories I closed off; the experience was a massive step for me in attempting to take individual accountability for my actions in all I do.
Vipassana taught me essential tools to help me better manage my emotional response to the world. Through this practice, I’ve found better ways to control my emotions and relationships, this work significantly contributes to my self-care practices, and I continue to build on this practice today. While the journey is far from over, I am grateful for the tools I have acquired to navigate the ups and downs of life. And as I continue to learn and grow, I am committed to using my experiences to help others struggling with similar issues.
