I attended a #meditationretreat recently and I wanted to share my experience there with You all. I wrote about why I decided to go in this post: https://steemit.com/meditation/@peterveronika/the-hardest-part-of-my-retreat-and-it-hasnt-even-begun

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What the f*** am I doing here?! I thought for the umpteenth time while walking around in the backyard-sized forest of the retreat grounds. We only have like 30 (40 tops) years together and I voluntarily go and spend 10 full days of those without You, my husband and soulmate? The craziest idea I could have ever had.

It was Day 5 of the 10 day retreat but it already felt like 5 years and I didn’t really think I was getting out of there alive or sane.

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This was the most difficult day so far and I could hardly keep my tears back. You only have to meditate 12 hours a day and walk around during the two one hour breaks. That shouldn’t be so difficult, right? And that’s right, I agreed, if I take away the excruciating pain of missing You, then I would probably be ok and suffer through.

Fast forward to Day 0 (why even have Day 0, why not just start with Day 1, right?!), I got to Dziadowice, a small village in #Poland, with a volunteer who was going to help out at the course and another girl, who was going to be my co-student.

Registration was already going on in the dining hall so I called You for the last time to say I love You I love You before switching my phone off and surrendering it to the smiling lady sitting at a table. I felt sad to leave You but also excited about this new experience.

There were many other women in the room sitting at the long tables, all of them filling out paperwork. After I gave the lady my phone and wallet for safe keeping, she asked if I did a Vipassana retreat in the past. I said yes, because I did one in Thailand 4 years ago. ‘Oh, so You’re an old student.’ ‘Am I really?’ I asked, panicking. I didn’t want to get a different treatment than all the new people, because I did not feel like an ‘old student’. Those probably meditate 5 hours a day and are in Zen the rest of the time. But she assured me I was classed as an old student. She gave me a leaflet with the rules I’d already read 10 times and told me to move into room F13.

There were 6 long buildings, 3 on both sides of a yard, with 6 rooms from the front and 6 from the back. The women were to stay on the right side of the yard, men on the left.

Crossing from one to the other was not allowed, as one of the rules was no contact whatsoever between opposite sexes. The dining hall was divided into two big rooms with separate entrances, one for men and one for women. It was raining heavily outside and I got soaked while locating F13.

I was surprised to see how nice the room was when I entered. There was a small single bed, 3 shelves and a bathroom. All very clean and white. The strange thing was that the bed was already made, there was another backpack on the floor and an alarm clock on the shelf. Hmm…I thought, someone already lives in my room. So I went back to the dining hall, got soaked a bit more on the way, and told the lady my problem. She checked her papers again and said out loud: ‘Who has moved into F13?’ A girl stood up and said ‘me’. When the lady gestured for her to come closer, she squatted next to us and told the lady her name. ‘Oh, but Your room is F3.’, she said to the girl. ‘Really?’ she said, ‘I thought it was F13’. ‘That’s ok’ I said, ‘I don’t like number 13 anyway, I’ll move into Your room.’

That was how I got to know Laura, a girl who’d already done 3 retreats like this, one in Myanmar, one in Israel and in Malaysia. ‘Wow’, I looked at her in awe ‘Do You feel different after every retreat?’ She smiled and said ‘I have my ups and downs.’ She looked like a very calm and balanced person, she said she usually meditates 2x a day. We chatted a bit more, eating our last dinner for the next 10 days and then it was time to move into F3, so we said goodbye. Unfortunately that was the only time I talked to her, even though I saw her several times after that, we were in Noble Silence during the course, but she was the only one to always have a content smile on her face every time I saw her.

I put my backpack on the floor in the room which was going to be my home for the next 10 days, or so I thought, and started unpacking, putting the few things I had with me on the 3 shelves. I made the bed, dressing the pillow and the blanket in the covers I brought with me. I was in awe again at how clean and white everything was. When I was ready I sat down and read the rules again. We were to keep 7 precepts +1 for the old students, which were:

1. To abstain from killing any being,
2. To abstain from stealing,
3. To abstain from all sexual activity,
4. To abstain from telling lies,
5. To abstain from all intoxicants,
6. To abstain from eating after midday (only for old students, new ones were allowed to have a piece of fruit at 5pm)
7. To abstain from sensual entertainment and bodily decorations,
8. To abstain from using high or luxurious beds.

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We were to keep Noble Silence the whole length of the course, which meant no contact with anyone whatsoever, so no eye contact, gestures or talking of course. We were to adhere to the given schedule as much as possible: getting up at 4:00 for the 4:30 meditation session and being on time for every other session and the teaching in the evening. We were also to stay for the whole length of the course.

All this was nothing new for me, I did a retreat similar to this in Thailand 4 years ago. Or at least I thought this was going to be similar. Very soon I was going to find out that the retreat I attended in Thailand was a 5* All Inclusive holiday compared to what I was going to experience here. At that one we had walking meditation, chanting and daily chores and 7-8 hours of sitting meditation but it was a lot more varied than at this place. Here we were going to have to sit and meditate 12 hours a day, no other activities, which was much harder than I imagined. The silence was much louder having nothing to do all day.

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Soon it was time for orientation, which took place in the dining hall. There were about a 100 students, about the same number of men and women. We were divided into an English speaking and a Polish group, girls and guys mixing for now, me going with the English group. A skinny Polish guy explained the rules to us again. There was a female manager called Ania for the girls and a male manager for the guys, who were going to live in the student quarters and we were allowed to talk to them if we had any material problems. In case we needed guidance with our meditation practice, we were to talk to the teacher during interview hours, which were daily between noon and 1pm. Even this communication was to be kept to minimum though.

A gong signalled the beginning of our first meditation session in the meditation hall at 8:15pm that evening.

The meditation hall was in a separate building opposite the dining hall on the other side of the yard. We took off our shoes before entering the hall, where everyone was given an assigned cushion number, mine was 37. Inside there were cushions on the floor, about 50 of them on one side for the girls and 50 on the other side for the men. Facing the cushions in the front were two high seats. On the sides of these seats there were cushions placed for the servers, the people helping out during the course. Ania, the female manager was at the front, sitting with a straight back. She was a short, skinny lady. She looked about 25-30 years old, except for her hair which was grey. Later I found out she was 40.

I sat cross-legged on my cushion and waited. I kept looking at the other students. There was a huge variety of people, Young and old. Some people stood out straight away: two pregnant ladies, a hardcore Krishna guy, a white-collar style older man with a huge belly dressed in office attire and a girl who looked totally zoned out already. After everyone came in and got seated, 2 doors opened on the opposite sides of the room with a male and female teacher appearing, both dressed in white. They sat down on the two high seats, the male in front of the male students and the female teacher in front of the ladies. They didn’t introduce themselves or say anything, but I already knew from the sign in the dining hall that their names were Edit and Klaus and they were from Germany. ‘Are they enlightened?’, I was wondering. ‘Shouldn’t that be clear right away from the way they walk or act?’ They looked like ordinary people to me. I looked at Edit a few times during the session, and her head kept nodding off as if she was falling asleep.

A strange raspy sound coming out of the loudspeakers startled me. I realized it was S. N. #Goenka, the founder of these retreats, chanting. It made me smile because he didn’t have a good singing voice, but soon I got used to it and I found his chanting relaxing.

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It was 20:15, and I started meditating by imagining You. I knew You were doing the same, because we agreed to meditate and concentrate on each other every day at this time. I imagined Your face in front of me and I kissed You. After a while I concentrated on my breath until the hour was over. The Noble Silence had begun then and we were to retreat to our rooms for the night. I brushed my teeth and went straight to bed. I fell asleep thinking about You, feeling weird without You next to me. About 3 hours into the night I was woken up by my new neighbour’s arrival, who was going to stay in the room next to mine. I couldn’t get back to sleep for a few hours after that but luckily I didn’t feel tired the next day.

A bit of warning for what is to come: By reading this article you might get the impression that I must be obsessed with my husband but that isn’t the case. We just love each other a lot and we can’t stand being apart. When I got back from the retreat I found out that he also missed me incredibly and he was suffering without being able to talk to me. My feelings wouldn’t have been this strong and I wouldn’t have gone as crazy had I stayed in the real world while being away from my husband, among other talking people. But a meditation retreat like this creates an environment like no other. Your mind gets stripped of all impulses whatsoever, you can’t talk to or look at anyone, no TV, no internet, not much even to look at…it’s very difficult to imagine if you’ve not tried. You have nothing else to do but think and meditate. Thoughts you’d never had will enter your head, your deepest fears will come on the surface and you’ll be forced to deal with all those. Minutes will seem like days, days will be years in your mind. So please keep this in mind when you read the following parts of this story. This is Part 2:
https://steemit.com/meditation/@peterveronika/a-failed-attempt-at-a-10-day-meditation-retreat-part-2

Love You All

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Note: all the pictures of Dhamma Palawa in Dziadowice are from their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DhammaPallava/

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