My Experience on a Vipassanā Meditation Retreat (4/4)

A whisper of fear in the pit of my belly, rumbling up and in, like the tremble of a distant tsunami.

As instructed, I redirected my attention from Goenka’s 7th Dhamma talk to the tightness and contraction that was now shooting up to my chest.

Often, the act of observing can break up the density of the fear but in this case, it was about as effective as tossing a stick into the path of a tsunami.

The fear rose and swelled my throat and panic started to prickle up and down my spine. My body was tingling all over and my face was on fire. I wanted to run…but where to and from what?

As each wave of fear crested up to the top of my head, another stronger one started up from somewhere deeper, more distant, further back in time. I tried again to observe the tightening, the prickling, the heat but there was too much going on. I was roiled by terror and was beginning to lose control.

Had the intensity of the meditation broken something fundamental inside me? Had anybody in the sala noticed? I looked around the room, at Goenka’s mouth droning on.

I felt nauseous. My thoughts…I can’t…think…function…Losing it…Broken now.

Irreparably.

Sometime later, I lay down in bed.

Frightened to close my eyes.

My body was shaking and then began to pop, leaping and twitching on the bed. I couldn’t control it.

Out in the darkness, I saw hallucinatory lights flaring and spitting and prickling. Or were the lights inside my mind? I tried to comfort myself with words, with the eternal truth of annica – everything passes – that we’d learned on the course. But I couldn’t form thoughts or ideas. They would just be burnt off by the terror before reaching completion.

As I look back now, some part of me is amazed that I didn’t reach out for help. Not on the course, not when I returned home.

It wasn’t until 3 days after the course had finished that I called the Vipassana centre and confessed to what I was still going through.

“It seems as though you have some issues with fear…” the apparatchik answered.

“Keep observing the sensations”

Mo-Ther-Fuck-Er

Yet, another part of me knows exactly why I didn’t reach out. Why I still don’t.

It’s the shame. The shame of being the crazy guy. The freak who lost it on the Vipassana course.

The shame of mental illness.

And the fear of being broken beyond repair.