10 Day Vipassana Retreat Report

[Chumbimba]

I recently came back from a 10 day Vipassana retreat and would like to share my experience and insights.

If you have not done a ten day Vipassana retreat, I suggest you do so because it is very beneficial. The food was amazing ,andit really allowed me to do deep introspection and consciousness work for 10 days. 

Insights 

1. Time is an illusion- I did not have a clock in my room so most of the retreat I did not know what time it was. This made me realize that there really is no such thing as time. There is only this moment right now. 

2. Everything you do is a distraction from death- Literally everything including talking and thinking. Every second of your life, you are dying and your mind is working overtime to distract you from that fact. 

3. Death is right here right now- You’re going to die in this moment because this is the only moment there is. Past and future are concepts I your mind. Another trick your mind plays to distract you.

4. Life is a dream. I got a small peak of this not a full blown insight, but after I woke up during a rest period, I realized there was really no difference between the dream I had and my experience right now. I want that insight to become more palpable. 

5. Life has no meaning- meaning is another game your mind plays to get you into action and waste time. Success chasing is really pointless. There were very successful and rich people at this retreat and they were still very unhappy which was the reason they were doing Vipassana. 

6. The pain body- This was a concept in the power of now that Eckhart Tolle talked about. Your various traumas and negative emotions are stored in your body. Repressed anger, shame, guilt and all that shit is in your body without you even knowing it. This is why people feel and behave in really terrible ways. 

One word of advice: This forum will not get you to enlightenment. Leo’s videos will not get you there either. His videos are very helpful about explaining the concept thoroughly so you can understand, but they won’t liberate you. Neither will asking questions on this forum. The answers people give aren’t truth. They are just words on a screen. YOU HAVE TO DO THE WORK. I’m saying this because I fell into this trap and I just got out of it after this retreat. All the answers are within you. You just have to look. 

[Forestluv]

Nice retreat and report. It looks like a lot of embodiment occurred. Exploration, observation and direct experience is so important. ❤️ ? 

[OctagonOctopus]

Great insights! This makes me excited for my summer plans of doing meditation retreats and mushroom trips in the woods 

[SoonHei]

@Chumbimba great stuff!

[ValiantSalvatore]

@Chumbimba

3 hours ago, Chumbimba said:

The pain body- This was a concept in the power of now that Eckhart Tolle talked about. Your various traumas and negative emotions are stored in your body. Repressed anger, shame, guilt and all that shit is in your body without you even knowing it. This is why people feel and behave in really terrible ways. 

Did any release occur of old pain, shame guilt etc. at the retreat there from any of the partitioners? I just learned that these releases are called kriyas and that they can occur at more intense retreats, like Vipassana retreats. I applied once for one from Goenka, yet they were already full.

Also, that is important to stop practice for some time if it gets too intense, for instance, kriya experiences happening out of the blue, in mundane life. IIRC!!

Which technique did you use and if possible could you describe the vipassana technique that you used for the retreat? I saw a couple of videos about it and saw that they labeled, for instance, each step with the label step or walking smth similar. Since I am practicing a different vipassana technique I am very curious how the process of meditation in "original" vipassana looks like, could you describe the technique used at the retreat?

Thank you for the report! 

Edited May 16, 2019 by ValiantSalvatore

[Leo Gura]

@Chumbimba Great work! You're getting it.

But also stick around for more advanced theory. You still have much advanced stuff to learn. Vipassana lone will not be enough. There are many important things Vipassana will not teach you. This not a critique of Vipassana. It's just one tool within a much larger framework. All tools have their limits.

[Chumbimba]

@ValiantSalvatore

Yes I released a lot. I was having Kriyas before the retreat, but now I don't have them anymore. A lot of childhood trauma came up like bullying, family problems, past rejections etc.  I noticed a huge knot like sensation in my throat. That's where most of my pain is held. 

The first 3 days we focused on the breath. Then for the rest of the retreat we were taught to put our awareness on different parts of our body and scan from head to feet. It's a powerful technique but I like other forms of meditation a lot more.

[JohnnyBravo]

@Chumbimba

Thankyou for sharing, happy to hear your retreat helped. Well done for doing a Vipassana retreat, a very concentrative style of meditation(s) in my judgement.

I am reminded of the ageless Peter Ralston in terms of 'this forum will NOT help you with enlightenment.' Leo's videos will not help, Ralston's videos will not help.

The videos can introduce the subject, but in terms of genuine enlightenment, no way.

I believe this is the correct video of the sensibility of throwing away all your data sensibilities on the enlightenment subject. Less is more. Big time, less is more in our information culture. Why was it that Zen practitioners 400 years ago could successfully attain enlightenment an THEY didn't have a prepaid smartphone nor access to the video "Being a Zen Devil."?

*Please note, Leo, I admire your work and videos. I have not uploaded one single video on YouTube on enlightenment so I cannot bargain with yourself. Thankyou for all your efforts, time of study, attention and intent to share what you have learned. Thankyou for this forum also. Stay strong.
 

Here Mr Skeleton Polo Ralph Lauren reveals that the trick is 'less is more' when it comes to information on Enlightenment. Info on enlightenment and the pursuit of enlightenment are NOT the SAME THING.

Looks like he has a hot cup of Thyme tea? No?

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, JohnnyBravo said:

Why was it that Zen practitioners 400 years ago could successfully attain enlightenment an THEY didn't have a prepaid smartphone nor access to the video "Being a Zen Devil."?

You ignore that many of them did not. In fact most Zen practitioners never fully awaken. The failure rate is very high.

And you ignore that many of them, even after they awoke, were still devils who abused, molested, raped, and even killed. Zen monasteries waged entire wars against each other, slaughtering monks by the hundreds.

Having a satori is just the start. It is not mastery by any means. And without good teachings devilry is pretty much guaranteed.

Yes, teachings about enlightenment are not enlightenment. But they can still be very useful for keeping you on the right track. By saying little about enlightenment the teacher leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and falling into traps. While enlightenment cannot be described well with words, the traps can be.

[ValiantSalvatore]

@Chumbimba Wow, thank you a ton! These were the instructions I received yesterday in case I receive a kriya "attack/cleanse" again sweeping through the motion of the experience meaning using a body-sweeping technique. + a different approach to zoom out and cover the whole body and as far as I understood it cover the whole experience through that ~ zoom out ~ awareness. 

I have these around my solar plexus, it feels like it is almost gone, yet the pain after the two kriyas "attacks" reduced significantly. 

38 minutes ago, Chumbimba said:

Yes I released a lot. I was having Kriyas before the retreat, but now I don't have them anymore. A lot of childhood trauma came up like bullying, family problems, past rejections etc.  I noticed a huge knot like sensation in my throat. That's where most of my pain is held. 

The first 3 days we focused on the breath. Then for the rest of the retreat we were taught to put our awareness on different parts of our body and scan from head to feet. It's a powerful technique but I like other forms of meditation a lot more.

I never imagined that something like this is so profound, I had only one friend telling me that he has two similar feelings, at different spots "charkas" or whatever terminology/lingo. 

Shinzen called it psycho-spiritual purification. Also, that in extreme cases people make grimaces and make animal sounds. 

IIRC - for me, it has a lot to do with feelings of crippled mastery(I went to music school... when I was 2 years old), being made fun of, over-competitive freaks who made fun of me, exploitation and feeling powerless, denied curiosity, denied questioning which now almost feels like zero. It has gone down from pain level 9000 to 90 spiking up to 3000..... for a retardedly "true" scale. 

Thank you again! Also for your report!
 

Edited May 16, 2019 by ValiantSalvatore

[JohnnyBravo]

@Leo Gura

Thanks man.

I would rather have access to your enlightenment topics and have more information (at least available and accessible) opposed to not being able to access anything.

Good bigger picture points. I shall ponder over the next few weeks.

My respects.