37~ Vipassana Experience Part 6: Sensations, Obviations and Mandates.

Day 5.

Goenka had said not to try to visualize anything, just observe the sensations.It didn’t matter, I had had a supernatural experience, and at times I felt like I was in some kind of psychic paranormal training, like Jane in X-Men or 13 in Stranger Things, or better yet, like Batman in his ninja training in the Himalayas. A little as a joke, a little seriously, but it gave me the strength I needed to focus and give my best effort, because the situation demanded a lot from us. A lot of self-control and a lot of trust in ourselves.

You are a strong woman – I would tell myself before starting each meditation and even during the breaks. Breathe, don’t panic – I would repeat whenever my body started to become unbearable, but I still needed to hold on.

In the end, it was all about mental control and patience, and when things became more intolerable, having the wisdom to breathe even more and even slower. Just like in life.

If we trained ourselves to control our reactions, we could truly stop being slaves to them. I had always been a rather impulsive person, in my joys, in my emotions, in my excesses, so not letting myself be controlled by the constant desires for pleasure was at least something promising.

That afternoon, after lunch, I went for a walk in search of a little sunlight, as I did every afternoon after lunch. The thoughts descended like a yellow glow hitting my eyes. “Love forgives everything” – my mind said. Are you sure? – I replied.

“The mind can be a great sage or a great downfall.” The second part had been winning in recent months.I had never felt such a strong sensation of not being able to stop, of not being able to move away, of feeling how everything was going to hell and doing nothing but sit there, watching as everything spiraled into disaster. And after that, enduring the frustration and anger at myself for taking the secondary role of an observer in my own life. The image of that little dog with his cup of coffee, sitting calmly in the middle of a house on fire. That was the mental image I had of myself. How had I let it get to this?

You were in love – someone had said to me. -THAT’S NO EXCUSE, SWEETHEART. - My Capricorn moon snapped back. We were in a silent retreat, but in my head, all kinds of voices appeared, talking and answering each other.

How could I have abandoned myself so much while watching it all unfold? How could I have been so scared to act, to stand up, to reclaim my place? How did I get so terrified that I chained myself to that inert chair while everything burned around me?

No need to say that my personal challenge was to regain control over my mind, but with new techniques. Mind against mind was not canceling itself out.

“The seeds one plants in the field of the mind grow very quickly. So, it’s essential to choose wisely what to plant, and for that, one must be conscious of the act of sowing. First, decide what plants we want in the garden and, accordingly, the seeds we will choose. Second – perhaps the hardest part – not to become attached to the results of that.Once again, surrender – let go.”

If you plant lemons, you will harvest lemons. There is no chance you will harvest watermelons. It’s a natural law and an obvious truth. If you are looking for prosperous, pure, natural water, you will probably go to a mountain spring, not a swamp. That sounds obvious too, but in practice, we always choose the wrong paths.

How many swamps have we carried on our backs while trying to reach the mountain spring? Out of ignorance, fear, confusion, because it seems like a more fun plan, or simply because we let ourselves be carried away.

That phrase brought me peace. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for in India, but evidently, this was my spring water, and in some way, it felt right to keep searching, even when I didn’t quite know what it was. At least I was in the right environment and not in the damn swamp.

In Buddhism, it is said that one plants the seed with deep love, waters it with deep love, and then releases it with deep love as well, letting life do the rest. One does not sit there, waiting and cultivating expectations about the results. Quite the opposite. The idea is to find contentment in the practice itself, giving your best without attachment to the outcome.

If things turn out as you hoped – perfect, you’ll be very happy! If they don’t – it’s still fine, and you’ll still be happy. Perhaps, with love, you’ll try again, perhaps you’ll seek other ways – or perhaps not – but with ease and lightness, understanding that your happiness does not depend on that result. Rather, happiness is about the path you walk and how you choose to walk it.

“Don’t react, observe, and act diligently.”

I understand the impermanence in everything that makes me who I am, and from that awareness, I contemplate with wisdom.

Goenka's phrases clung to our minds to the point of exhaustion. It was fine – they were working.

Every day, every meditation, every moment began with the same phrase:

-Start again. Begin with a calm mind.

That was the key, for meditation and for life as well.

Whenever you get lost, whenever you move, whenever you get frustrated, whenever you fall... Start again. Begin once more, with a calm mind.Every day is a new day, every day a new opportunity to do things differently. Day by day. Step by step.

We were taking the time to observe ourselves, in the midst of life’s chaos and the frenzy of daily routines that sometimes move so fast we don’t even realize how exhausted we are from it. The autopilot is so strong that we often just follow the inertia, without asking ourselves where we’re going, or how, or why.

How are our waters today? How strong do I feel? How focused? How frustrated? How asleep? How tired?

And to perceive myself, to feel myself, to listen to myself without forcing anything, and to accept myself as I am today, with love and kindness – to act from there, with diligence. Because in moments when EVERYTHING PUSHES US TO EVERYTHING, stopping to reflect is the true act of courage.

Breaking the cycle of reaction, the automatic patterns begin to dissolve. We start questioning things we once took for granted, and little by little, the mind frees itself. It understands itself better simply because we allow it to be heard. And in this way, suffering gradually diminishes.

Sounds simple, right? Why do we make it so hard?

Too much dust clouding the glass. Too many words, too many mandates, too many thoughts, too many impositions, too much confusion. It was time to clean the glass...

What makes you happy?

What don’t you want to stop doing in your life today?

The questions I carried lingered in the air. I didn’t force them, nor did I find many more answers than just looking at the sun, admiring an ant, or feeling love when I saw my neighbor washing her clothes.

Was that something?

What if, in the end, I was only searching for the small things? Why was I so tangled up in trying to solve the huge ones?

Where do I want to live? WHERE DO I WANT TO LIVE!?

Where will I "build" my home? That longed-for house in my mind , the one with trees and mountains, the bench facing nature, the dog, the horse, and that companion who still hasn’t arrived...

Mandates, desires, fears, MANDATES, the need for answers, pressures, expectations, security, structure, plans, the future...All of that was the dust covering my glass, my essence, my mind.

Enough!I can’t take all of this anymore!

My mind was burned out. I couldn’t think even if I wanted to. And paradoxically, I wanted to... but I simply couldn’t anymore.

Today, I understand...How could I resolve it? I didn’t have the tools to solve it, not because I didn’t want to, but because part of that decision wasn’t mine to make. It involved another person, and myself, and the two of us together trying to make a decision that just wasn’t coming. And clearly, as much as I wanted it, that person hadn’t arrived yet. The man I wanted him to be, he simply wasn’t , and it seemed like he couldn’t be. His being wasn’t available for that.

Was mine? Why then, weren’t things flowing?

How could I be angry about that? (I had been! But once again... how could I be angry about that?!)

Was he really the person, or was it just my intense desire for my dreams to come true?

It seemed that one of the most crucial pieces of my entire plan was that: the other. Because the rest, more or less, was easy to resolve. At this point in my life, I had already built quite a bit of flexibility in my movements. But the other... oh, what a problem! There, I didn’t have as much control, as much patience, as much say.And I hadn’t realized that yet.

With the available information I had – and probably even with the information I have now – that equation had no logical resolution.

The puzzle was missing a piece, because my dream didn’t actually seem to be about a physical house somewhere in the world. In the end, I think what I was really looking for was a home, a shared project, a partner. And as things stood, the motivation to make that choice just wasn’t enough. Every place was just a place, but no place had yet tamed me.

When I finally separated, the question resurfaced. It had only been hidden for a while.

Do you really want to live in Copenhagen? Are you happy here?

-What if you move to Spain, where they speak your language? Or even better, Italy? Italy is beautiful. Or what about southern Argentina, like you always wanted – a little house in the mountain , in San Martín de los Andes...”

My mind had ideas, but my soul hadn’t been captured.

And even though I pushed myself, moved, insisted, searched, traveled, covered miles and miles around the world, that force didn’t show up.

There were thousands of places that objectively seemed beautiful to me, but none had truly touched my heart enough to push me towards the decision I was searching for.

I wanted to stop moving. I wanted to build something, to settle down, but I didn’t feel where, and the answer wasn’t coming.

What else could I do?

By then, my mind couldn’t accept it, couldn’t understand. My mind and my heart were tired, frustrated, angry, and all they wanted was for that DAMN ANSWER to appear, however it came, with the available information or without it – it didn’t matter. JUST GIVE ME THE ANSWER...

It would take more time to find that answer. It would turn out to have much more to do with realizing that the question itself was poorly formulated, rather than with the name of a country or a specific place.

I would cross many more countries – even more exotic ones than those I had already crossed – many more months, more time to see, and even more time to understand. More stories, more random people who would teach me much more than the limits of my own mind, much more than my own repetitive answers that always led in the same direction, like a broken record. And more places, more experiences, more knowledge. And I would cross paths with myself, too – with my old self, my old automatic answers, which I hadn’t questioned in ages. And that pristine longing, frozen in time like a ghost, keeping me from asking myself the real question:

Is that really what you want NOW? Is that where true happiness lies? Or was that what I wanted 10 years ago, or perhaps 15, or maybe even longer ago – perhaps it was the dream of the little girl we had forgotten in your childhood home.

How hard it is to ask ourselves that question. We’re so afraid of not having a satisfying answer that we fill the space with anything, just to forget or distract ourselves. Any plug that keeps us from confronting those questions that threaten us as individuals:

Who are we? What do we want? Where are we going?

How long had it been since I last asked myself if that dream was still alive? Had I idealized it, automated it, and fixed it in my mind like the Alaska poster Homer Simpson taped to his car windshield, just to avoid seeing the reality right in front of me? Had I adjusted it so perfectly into the gears of my mind that I preferred to cry over that painful failure rather than confront the real question? The one that, by the logic of the mind, probably had to be even heavier.

But I was crashing, because that dream-poster wouldn’t let me see anything beyond its drawing. It wouldn’t even let me step aside a bit, just to see that it was nothing more than a piece of colorful paper – promising, yes, but not the solution to my anguish.

I didn’t really know who I was. I didn’t really know what I wanted. I didn’t really know what made me happy. But I did know that I wanted to share my life with someone. And not because loneliness scared me, but because it was an old dream – probably the same dream many of us grow up with: to love and be loved.

Every relationship I had been in – and I was truly lucky in that regard – felt like pure magic: – Wow... can love actually work? Is this really happening?! – It felt incredible.

But soon enough, another question would creep in: – How long will this last?

Now I see it. Maybe because of my childhood experiences, relationships always felt somewhat surreal, complex. It was hard for me to believe that love could truly work. Not because I didn’t believe in love itself – that part always seemed beautiful. I think what I struggled to internalize was the idea that it could happen to me.

It felt like something that happened to other people. Maybe that’s why I idealized it even more?

Sometimes, all we humans really want is a little love, even if we have a hard time admitting it. Is it because love reveals just how little control we actually have?

Love exposes our true vulnerability and forces us to confront what we never want to see: that in the end, we are not as complete as we like to believe, not as invincible as we think. That, in the end, we are flesh and bone. Finite and social. And that, whether we like it or not, we often seek another to share this journey called life.

That can be seen as a weakness, or as a strength.

I had nothing against that – not at all – but my personal challenge lay in understanding that for it to work, I needed to stop placing so many internal expectations on it, as if it were the only thing that mattered, as if it were the Holy Grail of happiness, because it wasn’t.

And even if it were – that still wouldn’t be the way to go. I had placed too much attachment on it. My happiness couldn’t be found there.

Even if I loved the idea, and even if it was a beautiful dream, I was beginning to understand that it couldn’t rest solely there, in something external, finite, and impermanent – and, fundamentally, in something that didn’t belong to me.

It sounds obvious, but perhaps the most obvious things are the ones we forget most easily in our own loops of automated thinking, the ones we stopped questioning long ago because we had already taken them as unshakable truths.

Happiness had to be found within myself first – another overused phrase, another obvious truth, but how do we search for happiness within ourselves when what we deeply desire is in another? That was my challenge and probably the path for many.

How? By understanding.

By letting go of the bone once and for all.

By making space for yourself and falling so deeply in love with who you are that you become the first to protect yourself, to set healthy boundaries – which, if we followed our simple intuition, should have always been the case, right?

But once again, it seems we forget.

It’s about turning our gaze inward, but this time from the soul, not from the Ego.Starting to notice every wonder around us, every gift, every tiny but immense detail of the world. Because in the end, when we really learn to see, there is only magic all around us.

Why isn’t that enough?

That path of self-discovery sounded simple in theory, but it clearly wasn’t.Everything seems simple in theory, the problem is always in the practice.

It was a tough path – brutally tough – a confrontation with myself in a way I had never experienced before. I got to know myself again, with an open mind, the kind of patience you have with a child learning to walk, and the freedom of floating in time. That was part of what India was giving me.

– Hello, nice to meet you... It’s been so long... Who are you?

I started seeing myself differently. Maybe, objectively, there wasn’t much that had changed, but my perception of myself was transforming, and that was what was going to change my entire reality.

I began to see myself as more of a warrior than ever – terribly strong, terribly bold, and terribly brave, even though, deep down, I sometimes felt terrified.

That same “me” had to summon all that strength because I had hit a rock bottom that felt awful, and I had to climb out on my own, because this time, no one could carry me on their shoulders. No one really understood what I was going through – not even me.

My theory is that when you’re truly down in the shit, the only thing you can do – by natural law – is to rise. And in that ascent – which was a choice – I had no option but to tap into my full potential. And there, in that moment, lay one of the greatest personal lessons I had ever lived.

I was truly a mess.

To rise from that pit, I had to shed all the dust that had become such a heavy weight. I needed to broaden my perspective and start considering other possibilities. I basically needed to give myself permission to say fuck it ! – but really do it this time – and start from scratch, alone, without having to explain myself to anyone, not even to myself.

To allow myself to inhabit a space without form... What? What even is that for someone who always tried to control everything?

That was terrifying. I had to let go of so many things along the way, but I had to climb, even without knowing what was up there or where all that darkness was leading.I had to start trusting.

This time, I was in deeper than ever before. I had exhausted all the resources I once relied on, and they hadn’t worked. Now, I truly had no other option.There was no plan B – and maybe that’s why it worked.

– Goodbye, Ego. See you at Disneyland.

Slowly, cracks began to appear, paths opened up, and the right people showed up at just the right moments, bringing me the information I didn’t even know I needed. Yes, that’s how beautifully the universe works when you learn to really look.

New realities emerged, new possible worlds, and all I had left was to dare to face the unknown, because the unknown was strange and terrifying, but the known had become so tight it was suffocating me.

There probably wouldn’t be a way back, and that was the fear I faced before coming to India.Something in me knew that once the mind expands through a new experience, it can never shrink back to its original size. At least, not for the lucky ones.

And so, congratulations! You have evolved.