Pardon the oxymoron, but I have been meditating like a maniac of late. Back in 1996, I went to Texas to take a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, where we meditated 10 hours a day (not in a row) for ten days (yes, in a row). It was a silent retreat, and–now that I reflect upon it–it was the not talking that probably challenged me the most. I actually broke that rule on Day Seven with this very pretty woman named–believe it or not–Angel. She was pregnant, around my age, and we were walking back, in single file, from the meditation hall to the bathroom when I just lost it: “Psssst. Angel“, I whispered. She turned around, her belly determining the speed, alarmed at words coming out of me. “Yeah?” she whispered, realizing she was breaking the rules too. “I have to talk to someone” I pleaded, with the desperation I saw in certain 5-year olds last week just NEEDING another piece of their Hallowe’en loot. I can’t remember what we discussed in the bathroom that day, but it was like my birthday and an orgasm all at once, just getting some words out.

Anyhoo, I learned a very particular meditation technique during that time and Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat (I’m so jealous) Pray (Let’s do another printing!) Love (not quite J.K. Rowling, but only Jesus comes close to that)” talks about it in the India part of her story. She describes this type of meditation as really hardcore and not for sissies. That made me feel better about my little tete a tete with Angel that day. Frankly, the retreat was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but not hard in an “Omigod-my-legs-are-burning-and-sweat-is-pouring-through-my -80s-leotard-and-I-think-I’m-gonna-pass-out” aerobics class sort of way. Nor was it “my-mother-has-cancer” hard… It was a “If-I-have-to-scan-my-left-foot-with-my-molasses-slow-mind-one-more -time-I’m-pretty-sure-I-am-going-to-evaporate” kind of hard. You know it? There is a dive into the unnameable, personality-less, dark and wide chasm of the Infinite Universe that takes place after a few days of sitting, when all the buzz of the mind has settled down, and you are faced with hours and hours of meditation to come–and yet, there is really only this moment, and then this moment, and then this one, and the whole thing is totally MERCILESS. Hence, my desperate call to Angel, to reinforce that I did, in fact, inhabit a self . . .with a mouth . . . that could say things.

At the same time, this selflessness is totally liberating. I like to think that we are all actually the great Nothingness which is also the great Everythingness. Can you smell what I’m steppin’ in?

After all that meditating, it was recommended that we toddle off back into our lives and sit in meditation for, oh, just… 2 HOURS every day. Yeah right! I was already cooking about that much, going to self-help meetings and writing in my journal every night. My beloved Dr. Phil hadn’t started yet, so I couldn’t add that to my bag of “things I must do for ME every day” yet, but let’s just say, the bag was getting kinda heavy. 2 hours of meditation just wasn’t gonna happen. And yes, I know that Dr. Phil is cheesy, but I just love him–for no good reason, except that he comes on at 5 o’clock and seems a really neat combination of yin and yang. Love is blind.

I settled for one half hour of meditation, on a quasi-regular basis. And it’s been very helpful. I truly think that my Vipassana retreat and subsequent practice basically put the final touches on the curing of my eating disorder; I have not binged once since the retreat. That doesn’t mean I don’t put things in my mouth sometimes that I wish weren’t there, but I never passionately, violently pack my face with food like I used to. Meditation has helped me as an actress, a hypnotherapist and teacher–it’s a great and practical tool for life. Half an hour a day seemed just fine, thank you very much, Mr. Buddha Man!!

But this week, I bloodied my head against a particular wall just enough so that I sat down to meditate for a full hour, for the first time in ten years. I needed to go deep, to get my mind to molasses-speed, to pull all of myself to my center so that I stopped banging my blood-encrusted noggin so hard. And it feels wonderful. I feel like I have choice back. I have the “I don’t need to call that person back just because he called me” which is every Hip Chick’s trump card, and a precious one at that. If it takes an hour a day to earn back that freedom, inch-inch, I’m game. It feels like a homecoming to that lovely nothingness, where all the power lies. I wish I could tell Angel.

How do you bring yourself back to center?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.