Pt 4 - Time for squirrels (& what my watch had to do with it)

I told you all about the pain in the last one. 

But two more things happened that day and they seemed completely and utterly unrelated but as I am typing this I am starting to think, maybe they weren’t so unrelated. 

Let me back up. 

You know how I told you that we were not allowed to speak? Well, there was one exception. 

If we felt that we really needed to clarify something or had a nagging question, we could go put our name on a list and have a few minutes to talk to the head teacher. A woman for the women and a man for the men. 

What I didn’t know is that you could also be called to speak with them. 

On day 4 the assistant teacher came up to me right after breakfast and asked me to go see the head teacher after lunch. 

My immediate reaction: OMG what did I do? Am I going to get kicked out? Did they find out that I’ve been skipping the first 2h of meditation every morning? 

I was nervous. 

But then again, this rebellious voice showed up that said… you know what, go ahead, kick me out. You’d be doing me a favor anyway. What am I even still doing here… 

(Yeah, I’m telling you, when you spend so much time with just yourself, all these different sides show up… though I found myself to be quite entertaining most of the time, it’s quite chipper up there in my head, what a relief). 

Lunchtime rolled around and I was there on time (hint, hint), waiting in front of the small meditation hall, where she apparently held her audiences. 

When I was let in, I sat down on a pillow on the floor (shocker, I know) in front of her, bursting at the seams with curiosity. 

She started with a casual, “how are you?”, to which it was quite literally impossible to find an appropriate answer so I said: “good, how are you?” (I don’t think I was supposed to ask her that back, I clearly should have been briefed better on the formalities of the intermittent breaking of silence). 

Clearly uninterested in letting me know how she’s doing she moved on to digging for more information. 

“I’ve noticed you are like this sometimes in the meditation hall, is everything ok?” She gestured how I leaned my head into my hands while resting my elbows as pillars on my pulled-in knees. I did do that sometimes. Usually during the last 30 minutes (so yes for half of a whole sitting, I’m aware) when I reached the point where I was just kind of, uhmm…over it. 

What I wanted to say to “is everything ok?” was: 

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF OK, WOMAN? I STARTED MY PERIOD THE SAME DAY AS I LET MYSELF BE LOCKED IN HERE, SO EVER SINCE, I HAVE NOT JUST BEEN IN PAIN BECAUSE, TURNS OUT, SITTING FOR HOURS AT A TIME IS PAINFUL BUT ALSO, MY UTERUS HAS BEEN SCREAMING AT ME. ALL I WANT TO DO IS SLEEP AND YOU PLAY THESE CHANTS THAT SOUND LIKE SOMEONE IS HIGH WHILE CLAIMING NO SUBSTANCES ARE ALLOWED AND THEN YOU WAKE US UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT, SO IDK IF THAT QUALIFIES AS OK BUT I DON’T THINK SO….. 

I replied with: “Yeah, I just started my period and am really tired.” 

She goes: “No other symptoms?”

OTHER THAN BLEEDING??? 

* my period brain is fun * 

I say: “No, I know you mentioned something about my anxiety symptoms coming back, but nothing so far.”

(Ok so, I need to catch you up on that: if you know my origin story (that you can also read here), you know I used to struggle with anxiety in my late teens and well into my 20s. When I applied for this course I had to fill out a long form and one of the questions was about mental health history. So I declared that. That then led to the head teacher letting me know before the course that similar physical symptoms might reappear during the practice.

From what I read and heard about other people’s Vipassana experiences, that did not shock me. In fact, I was fully prepared for a minor (or major) mental breakdown. Call me nuts but I was almost a little excited to go dig up whatever therapy didn’t uncover in the depths of my psyche. 

What I did not quite think through was that…well, the one thing that actually got me out of my anxiety disorder was, well, meditation. Why did I think that my anxiety would come back if, all I did was…meditate?

(I’m no psychiatrist but I can report that me meditating so much did not bring my anxiety back. Like at all…) 

“Good, good”, she goes on, “and one more thing. Do you need your watch?” 

Do I need my watch?, the lady wanted to know…phh

Wait, oh no… are they actually taking my watch now? 

No, no, no…they can’t. Can they? 

What kind of question is that, “do I need my watch”, well yeah, it tells me what time it is…  

I could hear myself pronounce a very informative: “Uhmmm…”

So she continued, “try taking it off for the meditations at least.” 

“Ok, I’ll try...”, I stuttered, partially lying. 

That was it. After that I walked out, in slight shock over what to do with my watch. 

The next meditation came around and I took it off (out of fear that she would send a spy to check) but then something very interesting happened. 

After that 1pm meditation without a watch on my wrist - I never put it back on. For the whole remaining 6 days. 

And you know what? She was right (I hate to say it, but she was).

My watch was just a distraction. There was always some person with a gong somewhere, letting us know it was time to go, well, meditate or eat, or be in our rooms. What could really happen? That I would be late? 

(I’m always late, even with a watch, so who was I kidding?)

Let me tell you, I would have never thought so but it was so freeing to lose all concept of time. Being forced even more to be present and cultivating this ability to be living in the moment was SUCH a gift.

After those 10 days I didn’t even want to put it back on.  (Like what?? I know...)

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, "time is just a construct", and WHO KNEW? IT IS!!

It’s something we make up so that society’s cogwheels can keep going click click click… but when you give yourself permission to live outside of this concept for once...I mean, it’s hard to describe but imagine a moment where the only thing that matters is your heartbeat, your breath, the little piece of earth your feet stand on…nothing else.

No time. Nothing else. 

You know what else happened? And this is major!

Honestly, it felt revolutionary though it’s actually just the most normal thing and it’s insane how much we forgot about it…

Without access to knowing what time it is, I opened up this channel to listen to my body.  

Before, I would go for my little walk in the field behind the house and then decide to go find my little spot where I would lie down and enjoy the sun (Mont Soeil…ya know ;) and I would try to maximize my time “resting in the sun”, 30 minutes, even better if it was 40 minutes.

I made sure I’d make the “most” of it but by not having my watch anymore, all of a sudden I felt the urge to go move some more, or sit on a bench somewhere else, or walk and then go lie down again… and for some reason, it always felt like I had enough time. 

It was weird. 

But magical somehow, and really, really freeing!! 

Who knew? 

And so I would lie there, completely lost in time but more relaxed and present than ever and somehow also, really, really….happy. 

Which brings me to the second thing that happened that day I promised to tell you about. 

I was walking towards the little patch of forest when I realized maybe I don't need a watch and maybe I can make it through the whole 10 days, maybe there is something here for me. 

All of a sudden I hear some noise on the ground among the trees. I look and see this brown, fury thing.

A SQUIRREL!! 

You know how rare it is to see squirrels on the ground in the forest? Or idk maybe I just think it’s rare but this cute little thing was really close to me and I tried to stand as still as possible to just look at it. Eventually it ran up a tree and I had no idea but… that’s when it got so much better. 

There as ANOTHER squirrel and they started chasing each other up and down the tree. 

They were playing!! 

I SAW SQUIRRELS PLAYING WITH EACH OTHER. 

And you might think I am exaggerating now but you have no idea of the pure JOY I felt witnessing that moment. 

No freaking blockbuster would have taken my attention off this miraculous play of nature (and no, I am not high as I am typing this, in fact - fun fact - I have never been high in my life but I imagine it’s something like this happy, giddy feeling I got seeing squirrels chasing each other up and down a pine tree. Right??). 

I’ll leave you with this question that I am also still asking myself: 

What in the world are we doing here that makes us forget that things like watching squirrels (while having lost all sense of time), isn’t the whole fucking point of being here?? 

The thing I carved into my yoga block that day was:

"4 I SAW A SQUIRREL ♥️ BEST DAY OF MY LIFE + WATCH" (and thens some stuff I can't read anymore..)

And as I said, day 5 was downhill… stay tuned. 

Love,

Mel  💌