Your Awakening Story

Late January this year I went to a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat at the Alberta Vipassana Center (https://www.karuna.dhamma.org/) . I had gone to my first 30 years ago. I had remembered it being incredibly difficult and insanely frustrating and even painful to try to focus on breath awareness and then body awareness for hours upon hours every day, and to go without speech or any entertainment at all. but I remembered it having been worth it just the same. On the very last day of that retreat, we did a special meditation where we shared our positive energy, and it gave me the direct experience of how we are all truly connected, all the same thing. I had also come out super focused and made some big life changes soon after. From being stoned all day and sleeping on my mom's couch in a Northern Alberta trailer park to teaching English 12 hours a day in a big city in South Korea.

Now, 30 years later, I felt like I needed to get that clarity and focus I had felt then back. But this time was very different. While still hard, it wasnt as bad as it had been those many years before. I noticed more, I got much deeper. I could feel the energy flows through my body, and I could feel these interruptions, like tensed up, painful little lumps- at the base of my spine, in my heart, in my throat, in my heart. I began to work on them, being aware and relaxing, letting them slowly dissipate.

I was alone in my room on Day 6 when I felt the one in my heart suddenly give away, then I was flooded with the living memories of some awful childhood experiences where I had felt intense feelings of shame and worthlessness, but then flooding through came what I can only describe as a direct apprehension of God's infinite empathy and compassion for all suffering. It overwhelmed me. I sought guidance from our meditation instructor but he told me that strong emotions during meditation were common .

Two days later, near the end of a one hour sitting of stong determination -where we were not supposed to shift our posture or position nor open our eyes, it happened. All my pain and discomfort suddenly disappeared and I felt like this infinite energy coming up through my spine and blasting out through the top of my head. My hands felt as though healing energy was flowing out through them. Although my eyes were still closed I "looked" around at the room and saw these white flames and the hazy outlines of the human forms they sprung from. I moved my consciousness down below me and as I did I experienced the void. Eventually I felt I had to come down and so I opened my eyes. I had been sitting for two and a half hours at least without moving. But I felt no stiffness, no pain at all. Instead even after I got up I felt waves of energy coursing through my body, it felt like I could feel the energies of the people around me and what they felt, the palms of my hands tingling and pulsating with power.

Things havent really been the same since. I was afraid I had a psychotic break or something. There is just no way I convey the intensity of what I experienced and I what I continued to experience. Anyway, I will have to live this here for the moment at least. I am glad I got at least some of it out finally, even if it has to be awkward.