My personality has always been really full of stress. Ever since I was a kid, I've experienced bouts of anxiety and depression. Lots of people experience these kinds of emotions from time to time, but I seem to have been burdened with them more than most. I've never got used to it, but I've at least learned that it's part of my psychological make-up. And I've at least come to accept it.
Way back in the late '90s and early 2000s my best friend spent a lot of time talking to me about my stressful way of living. For years he tried to get me to come with him to a 10-day silent meditation retreat because he though it might help me deal with my anxiety. And for years I kept telling him that I just couldn't find the time.
But in early 2002, I found myself without a job for the first time in my adult life. And believe me, that did absolutely nothing to help my anxiety problems. Once again, my friend suggested the meditation retreat, and at the time there was absolutely nothing keeping me from going. So we went.
The meditation center was (is, I suppose) nestled in the foothills near Mount Saint Helens in western Washington state. It's a beautiful part of the world and very quiet. It was certainly nothing fancy — a large house with a big meditation room, kitchen, bathrooms and dorms for men and women. Outside there was a circular gravel path through the trees where you could walk when you weren't in a meditation session.
The center in Washington is part of a worldwide network of these places around the world. There's at least one in Thailand. The network specialises in Vipassana meditation, a silent discipline in which you spend a lot of time concentrating on your breathing.
I won't belabour the point or bore you with the details — mainly because you really have to experience it to even begin to understand it. But trust me when I say that it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. We spent hours and hours from before sunrise till after sunset meditating in silence. It doesn’t sound that difficult, but try it once and you'll understand.
While it was a very challenging experience, it was also very rewarding. It taught me something about mindfulness; about impermanence; about not being attached to sensation — good or bad. It taught me a lot of other things, too, which can't really be explained. They need to be experienced.
I can tell you that the experience changed my life in some very fundamental ways. I still experience anxiety and get sad sometimes, but at least I know how to better deal with it than I once did. For me that's a pretty big change.
I also know now that life is full of ups and downs. You can't have one or the other all the time, and you wouldn't know the difference between the two if you did.
Most importantly, I finally realised that nothing lasts forever. Not even anxiety.
Sean Vale
Editor
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