Finding A Sense of Belonging through Finding Myself on the Playa

I have been writing various versions of this piece off and on for months - some of them stopped at a paragraph or two, and some were pages long. I haven’t posted any writing publicly in almost a year, despite many people encouraging me to do so. I think I wanted it to be the perfect story, even though Brene Brown taught me that perfection doesn’t exist and imperfection is a gift. So...here it is...my story of self-discovery and learning to love myself through a lot of inner work culminating with joining the burner community for the first time out on the playa this past summer. (Info about burning man here.)

Feelings of Isolation

Social distancing these past few weeks due to COVID-19 makes me aware of how many communities I typically interact with. I am very grateful for all of these communities and do not often step back and reflect on their positive impact on my day-to-day life. Being isolated at home also reminds me about the isolation I have felt at times while actively participating in groups, a feeling I have spent a lot of time the past few years trying to unpack in therapy and conversations with friends and family.
Anyone who knows me at all likely thinks of me as a social planner/organizer. Despite being involved in many groups and activities, I have spent a lot of time feeling like I didn’t belong. It wasn’t until the past few years that I experienced instances of feeling a true sense of belonging, and they were always relatively short-lived. I have been seeking the feeling of a deep sense of belonging for years. As an inclusion program manager at Intel, the term “sense of belonging” is frequently used as a stated goal for how we want employees to feel, but what does it actually mean? What does it actually feel like? I’m hoping I can shed some light on that here.

Sabbatical and Going Back to Work

About a month ago, I returned to work at Intel after taking a one-month paid sabbatical, a wonderful benefit that Intel offers its US employees. I am married to my partner of 12 years, and we typically travel together. He was in the process of applying for jobs after spending two years intensely working on his mental health, and I was on a journey of rediscovering my independence since attending my virgin burn in September, so I chose to spend most of my sabbatical traveling on my own, reconnecting with myself. I removed all social media apps from my phone before I left the country and did not reinstall them until after I returned to work. My sabbatical started with two weeks in Australia wandering around Sydney for a day, diving the Great Barrier Reef, and connecting with a close friend in Perth. I spent a week in Sunriver, Oregon skiing on Mt. Bachelor, doing yoga, and soaking in the McCredie Hot Springs, and I relaxed at home for my last week, ending my sabbatical with a day out on the pacific coast complete with a beautiful sunset.

I cannot possibly express how grateful I am for the timing of these adventures - I debated between February and March for some time, and had I scheduled this for only a month later, it would have all been cancelled. In fact, when I was departing Australia on February 13th, I snapped a picture of the airport board showing all flights to/from China as “cancelled.” Here are a few highlight pictures from my adventures:

Diving the Great Barrier Reef off the Coast of Cairns, Australia

Quokka on Rottnest Island off the Coast of Perth, Australia

View from the Top of Mt. Bachelor, Oregon, USA

Sunset at Hug Point in Arch Cape, Oregon, USA

My first week and a half back at work was much more difficult than I expected - I was in the middle of processing my thoughts from my time alone, and I struggled to focus on my work managing the inclusive leaders program at Intel. I was easily distracted by talking to colleagues about my adventures and wishing I was spending additional time sitting with myself - meditating, journaling, reflecting. Each day, I did the tasks that were urgent, read and responded to some emails, and left the office around 4 or 5pm feeling guilty for not putting in more hours and for not caring enough. I was disconnected from the actual impact of the work on individuals, simply seeing it as a list of tasks to complete. In that second week, a participant in inclusive leaders reached out with some negative feedback about their experience in the program. I immediately felt tense and then reminded myself what a gift it is to receive critical feedback, something I could actually use to improve the program, to make a greater positive impact on people’s lives. This person was so grateful for my kind response and willingness to take time to listen. I felt that spark again - the desire to pour energy into my work. March 10th was my first day back that I was able to get lost in the work, just before my colleagues and I started shifting to working remotely.

Digging Into My Depression

I first connected with my depression as an undergrad at Brown in Providence, RI. Everything was great on paper - I was attending college, doing well in my classes, enjoying what I was studying, playing Ultimate, participating in Jewish community through Hillel, and spending lots of time socializing. My partner (now spouse) spent a year and a half convincing me to go see a therapist. In March of 2010, a month into seeing my therapist in Providence, my parents separated. My therapy sessions between then and this past fall (2019), largely focused on processing the impacts of external events and people on my life: my parents’ divorce (2010-2011), my close friend Paige being killed while leading a cross-country cycling trip (2010), my dad’s illness and death (2015), and my partner’s depression/anxiety and unemployment (2016-2019). It wasn’t until this past fall after returning from the burn that I refocused my therapy sessions on my internal conflict and struggle. Within the past month since my sabbatical, I finally reconnected with that sense of depression that I had never really dove into back in college - a depression driven by deep shame about who I am.

Back in 2015, after taking a 10-week meditation and mindfulness course at Intel, I connected that feeling of depression in college with a lack of sense of belonging, but I did not take it a step further to realize that what was underneath it all was a lack of acceptance and love for myself, for who I am inside. I have always spent a lot of time seeking validation from other people, needing them to accept me first. The perspective of a single person has at times totally crushed me. This need for validation has hugely limited me from achieving my true potential, from being able to give back to the world in the ways I would like to. Time and energy that I spend seeking validation and feeling shameful about not being or knowing enough is time and energy taken away from caring for myself and putting my skills and ideas to work to make a positive impact on society.

The Playa and Feelings of Belonging

I can think of a number of specific moments when I felt a sense of belonging. The first one that always comes to mind is the day that my dad passed away, July 27th, 2015. One of my closest friends in Portland showed up at my house with a bag full of black clothing, knowing that I did not own any. I have a very colorful fashion sense, and sorting through the bag of black clothes I felt known and understood. My friend proceeded to allow me to keep the black dress that I wore to my dad’s funeral a week later, knowing that seeing it in my closet and wearing it from time to time would be a pleasant reminder of the imprint my father left on the world as a friend, father, leader, amateur musician, and physician.

A very different experience was this past summer on the first day of my first burn, August 25th, 2019, my 31st birthday. I biked around the playa in a pink and orange spandex onesie and had over 100 people I had never met sing me happy birthday in various different tunes throughout the day. I felt so celebrated and loved by this brand new community, and all I did was share that it was my birthday and my first time on the playa. I went to sleep that night at 5am with the thought: “these are my people!”

Celebrating my Birthday on the Playa

My first example is one specific person who knows me really well, but my second example is a large group of people who literally didn’t know me at all. This second experience made me reflect a lot on other groups throughout my life.

I’ve always been a member of a lot of groups/sports teams, but in most of them, I never truly felt like I belonged. I spent a lot of time blaming this on the other group members, not understanding why they didn’t like me, assuming that there must be something wrong with me. I had this idea that if I organized things for people and took on the role of being “the responsible one” then people would like me. In college, I served as a Vice President on the Hillel board, and I was close with my fellow board members, but I never felt connected to most of the other community members. There were people I looked up to who I always wished I could be- people who got lost in the spirituality of prayer and sang and danced like nobody was watching. What was stopping me from doing that myself? I now understand that I was missing a key component of connection - I was unable to be true to who I am and fully love all of me. I was too busy feeling not enough, trying to be the person I thought other people wanted me to be, waiting for them to validate me.

Loving myself for who I am and feeling like I belong are interconnected. I had been slowly learning parts of this lesson for years, but it fully crystallized by attending the burn this past year. I bought myself a ticket, and through reddit found an awesome camp of people who knew nothing about me and my organizational skills or my tendency to take care of everyone in order to be accepted. Typically, I spend time at group events ensuring everyone else is taken care of and largely ignoring my own experience. I showed up and was able to be free, to just be me, and to put my own needs and desires first. Over the course of my week on the playa, a week of many ups and downs, I learned that there were parts of myself I had been hiding from, afraid to face, afraid to even bring up to my therapist who I had been seeing at least once a week for almost five years. I was afraid to face my inner conflict, my inner uncertainty, my inner fears. Being in a space that simultaneously emphasizes radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, and radical inclusion showed me that it was okay to embrace all of those parts of me, to love myself fully as the person that I am without needing others to validate me.

Through my years long journey and the intense experience of being welcomed home into the burner community, I’ve learned that a deep sense of belonging comes from a combination of being fully accepted by others and fully accepting yourself; it’s impossible to disconnect the two, but finding one can help you find the other. Finding people and places where my true self is fully loved and accepted enabled me to fully love all of me. Loving and accepting myself enables me to feel that same sense of belonging in many other spaces because I am no longer waiting for others to validate me first.

Moving Forward

I post this now at this crazy time in the world and share that I am very much still a work in progress, as we all are. I am still working through my inner struggles, and I am still figuring out exactly what it is I want to do with the rest of my life, how I want to continue to give back to the world. I know that one of those ways is by writing, by sharing my story and what I have learned from my experiences. I know that another way is by continuously learning about others and their experiences and about my own privilege so that I can help build communities where others experience a sense of belonging.

I believe it’s important here to acknowledge many aspects of my societal and financial privilege. I am a white, cisgender women who identifies as queer and pansexual, but presents as heterosexual to most people. I have the means to access the therapists and experiences that led me to learn these things about myself. I am privileged that my insurance pays for and my job allows me to take time away from work for therapy sessions, and that I had both the time and financial means to attend burning man this year. I believe that therapy should be accessible to everyone, and I truly hope that one day it will be. I know there are a lot of efforts to make burning man accessible to all, and I hope to contribute to these efforts in the future.

Gratitude

Thank you to everyone who has accepted me fully and encouraged my personal growth. A particular thank you to the specific friends and family who held space for me and truly listened without judgement or trying to solve my problems for me - you know who you are! Thank you to all of the wonderful people who I know personally and who I feel I know personally, despite having never met you, who role-model true vulnerability and true acceptance of all of your imperfections - you show me time and time again that it is possible to accept all of myself and to feel that deep sense of belonging.

Thank you to the wonderful dusty bunnies of the Orphan Asylum camp who welcomed me to your community with love, support, and connection. You answered all of my pre-burn questions, literally helped me to set up my camp, challenged me, and created a space for me to learn so much about myself and my way of being in the world. I had never before felt so immediately accepted by a group of humans.

Rainbow Unicorn Onesie at Pink Heart Camp on the Playa

Stiff Knees are a Small Price to Pay for Self-purification: My first 10-day Silent Vipassana Meditation Course

Setting the Stage:

Awake@Intel Mindfulness Course & My Dad’s Death

My meditation practice began 2 months after my dad passed away in the fall of 2015 when I took a course at Intel entitled “Awake@Intel.” I had signed up for the course prior to my dad passing- he had himself experimented with various types of meditation off and on since his initial cancer diagnosis in spring of 2007 as had my mother and sister. The Awake course has a very scientific approach to meditation and mindfulness, apt for a company full of engineers, which made it very approachable for me. I learned incredibly functional tools to manage my emotions, and these enabled me to both deeply experience the feelings of my grief and separate them from the feelings of stagnation in my job role at Intel—I proceeded to move from a Quality and Reliability role in the Client Computing Group (PCs) to a Technical Program Manager role in the Data Center Group (servers). I had a revelation on the last day of the course based on a comment a classmate made that the depression that I had struggled with in college was connected to not having a feeling of belonging in many of the groups I actively participated in. Fast forward 2.5 years, and just one month prior to this retreat, I started my new role as an Inclusion Program Manager in Intel’s Global Diversity and Inclusion office.

Meditation Practice & Signing Up

Prior to this course, I had continued meditating between 10 and 30 minutes a day on most weekdays for almost three years as well as other ad-hoc practice like a short meditation at my desk or a walking meditation around the campus. I experimented with different apps and meditation timers and also attended a weekend Sudarshan Kriya class that taught “a simple yet powerful rhythmic breathing technique that de-stresses, and cleanses at the cellular level, and effectively draws you into a deep state of meditation.” I kept to this technique for about a month and then went back to experimenting with the apps - mostly just spending time with a timer focused on my breath, noticing thoughts, and re-focusing on my breath in a continuous cycle. Some days were clearer than others, and sometimes I went a few days or a week without meditating and noticed a very clear correlation with an increased amount of reactivity to things that happened around me. This is what kept me practicing regularly, and I determined after conversations with a number of other meditators that the logical next step was attending a silent retreat- one of at least 5 days in length, to get to a deeper state of meditation. It was described to me best in an analogy of brushing your teeth with daily meditation to cleanse the mind and going to the dentist for a deep cleaning being the silent retreat for a deep mind cleanse. I have a few friends whom had excellent experiences attending a local 10-day silent retreat only two hours north of me. The course was also offered for free - in fact you could not even donate money to the organization until the end of your 10-day course.

Vipassana is explained as “a way of self-transformation through self-observation,” which sounded like just what I was looking for, so I made it my #1 self-care goal for 2018 and committed half of my vacation time to sign up for a course in June. Little did I know that this would fall just one month after a huge career transition. Leading up to the course, I was mostly just excited to truly disconnect from society and the flurry of thoughts in my head for 10 days - you were not allowed to use cell phones, read books, or even write in journals- ten days of pure self-reflection and a calm, relaxed mind, or so I thought…

Arriving:

Upon arriving at the Northwest Vipassana Center on the afternoon of June 13^th, I was asked to write down a summary of my life story for the teachers, assigned a room with a roommate (with whom I wouldn’t be able to speak for most of the course), and given the daily timetable of the course, which starts with a 4am wake-up bell and ends with 9:30pm lights out. Bells/gongs are used throughout the course to indicate transitions between meditation and food/rest periods. Each day officially consists of 10 hours and 45 minutes of meditation- 7 of which are listed as either in the meditation hall or in your room. There would also be breakfast at 6:30am and lunch at 11am, but only a tea break in the evening at 5pm with fruit. Returning participants (referred to as “old students”) were not allowed to eat at all after 12pm. Each day after lunch was an opportunity for a brief interview with the assistant teacher of your gender, and at 7pm each night was a discourse, also called a dhamma talk. We also had to sign a contract that we would in fact commit to stay for all 10 days of the course, which I did without hesitating.

I had arrived on the early side of the 2-hr window, and I knew nobody there, so I proceeded to bring my luggage to my room - 18B, an auspicious sign as 18, “chai,” means “life” in Hebrew. In Jewish communities, donations are often made in increments of 18. In the room, each person’s bed and shelving is closed in with a curtain, so it’s mostly just the bathroom you are sharing. I unpacked my stuff and then walked around the gorgeous property of the center, which is full of walking paths and wildlife - more on this later. The men and women are segregated for the entire course, but I was unknowingly able to walk around on the men’s side before the course had officially started.

Just before the 6pm dinner, I sat with some of the other women and had some conversations about what brought them there. Some had done it before and spoke highly of the benefits and how calm and joyous they always feel at the end. Others were also new and had been wanting to come for many years, but 10 days can be quite a time commitment.

After dinner, a tape recording was played introducing the course by S.N. Goenka, principal Vipassana instructor. The entire course was taught by a series of audio and video recordings of him from a course recorded in 1991 - he passed away in 2013. In this recording, he emphasized the necessity to stay for all 10 days and that you should leave now if you were not committed to that self-determination.

Noble Silence, which involves no communication at all with other students, not even eye contact or gestures, began when we were each assigned our meditation mat in the Dhamma meditation hall at 8pm. My roommate only arrived shortly before this, so she and I just barely got to know each other before we navigated living together for 10 days without communicating.

There is a course manager for each gender who is only to be spoken to about any material needs throughout the course and is also responsible for silently ensuring all students are present at the group sittings and discourses and managing the teacher interviews - ours was named Alexa, and I would find out at the end of the course that she had only done one of these courses prior to serving in this capacity.

Days 1-3:

Day one was not so bad, but certainly sitting for 10+ hours of meditation was not something my body was used to. I am most commonly seen standing at my desk both at work and home. I spent a lot of time adjusting my position during meditation periods and stretching in between. My discomfort was enhanced by my knee surgery one year prior and my sprained ankle one month prior to the course.

The focus of the first three days is to “develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one's attention on the natural reality of the ever changing flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.” The technique is called “Anapana,” and I found myself fully understanding it and mostly struggling with just sitting for that many hours and staying focused. This was essentially how I had been meditating for years but with an intense focus on FEELING the flow of the breath.

In the first night’s discourse, Mr. Goenka spoke about getting to a place of liberation and happiness by rooting out the three causes of all unhappiness - craving, aversion, and ignorance. On day two, I was feeling a lot of sadness missing my father and thinking how interesting it would have been to attend a course like this with him. I scheduled an interview on day two to ask the female assistant teacher, Jane, about sadness - it seemed to me like there is a place for it as in the case of losing a loved one. In fact, I had spent the past three years using meditation to embrace feeling the sadness I was experiencing. For those who have seen it, I was picturing the sadness character in the animated movie “Inside Out.” Interviews are only meant to last 5 minutes, and Alexa rang a bell every minute after that to remind you to end your interview - this happened 3 times in my first interview. Jane asked if we really need more sadness in the world, to which I sheepishly responded “no…I guess not,” and she suggested that I could be joyous about him being there with me since he is a part of me. She emphasized the “joy of impermanence” and told me to just keep following the instructions, and I walked out saying “I guess I’ll think about that…” I proceeded to go for a long walk along the paths and repeat the phrase “joy of impermanence” over and over in my head.

Between not really connecting with that concept and struggling with both the physical pain and focus required to sit for that many hours meditating, I started to question this 10 days to which I had committed. I took a nap each day between breakfast and the group sitting at 8am, and on each of these occasions I had an extremely vivid dream involving some friends or family being at the meditation center talking to me. I was telling them to be quiet and stop bothering me and my roommate: “I’M TRYING TO WORK ON MYSELF!” I exclaimed with exasperation. During the sittings, I tried my hardest to get through them and focus, and during the rest periods I enjoyed wandering the trails and watching all of the wildlife or lying in the grass watching the clouds. All of this was fascinating to watch once my mind was in a calm, attentive state. I particularly enjoyed watching some of the deer who wander the property eating, staring at the ants feverishly working to increase the size of their already massive ant hill, watching bees pollinate flowers, and closely inspecting all the intricacies of the different flowers. This was the state of calm that I was looking for on a “retreat,” but as early as day 2, it became clear to me from the rigor and the discourses that these 10 days would be much harder work than the “retreat” I’d been picturing.

On day 3, I once again met with Jane to ask a minor clarifying point about the discourse the previous night. I had seen a number of people getting these “back jack” supports over the previous few days, so I brought this up with her since I was also experiencing pain in my back. I used the term “overwhelmingly distracting” to describe the pain, and she said that we want to pay attention to those feelings and that I had to tell her if it was merely distracting or actually painful. I had a realization in that moment that this entire process is about me knowing what’s going on with my body, and nobody else can tell me that. She invited me to come back after I had thought more about it in my sittings.

At points on both days 2 and 3, I cried thinking about how many more days I had ahead of me of this intense meditation schedule, but I signed a contract that I wouldn’t leave, so I kept pushing along trying to approach each day as a new day.

On a more positive note, by the end of day 3, I discovered that a bunch of the anger I was carrying around with me directed towards other people was really just internal - I was making myself miserable, not them. This was a big shift in perspective for me, and I felt just a little bit lighter.

I committed to trust that my hard work would bring the positive results the teachers were promoting despite my exhaustion.

Days 4-7

Day 4 was Vipassana day - we would finally learn this technique that had been talked up in the discourses the past few days. The theory is that “by the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself: observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them.” The general idea is that observing these sensations with equanimity releases the old habits of reaction or impurities called “sankharas” from your mind, creating a more balanced response to the vicissitudes of life that are bound to come. He used many analogies to explain this in his talks. The one that connected with me most was the idea of a rope that you keep twisting and twisting - every day in our lives we are adding to the tension in the rope with our cravings and aversions we are developing, and practicing Vipassana is essentially letting go of the rope, which naturally takes out some of the tension.

When the technique was taught that afternoon, it made sense to me, but it didn’t coming to me easily and I was still sitting with a lot of knee and some back pain. I simultaneously struggled with constant thoughts alternating between wishing to go home and telling myself that I just need to focus and get through it. Since I wasn’t interacting with the other students, and they all looked so stoic, I made up stories in my head that I was the only one having these struggles.

On the morning of day 5, a sign was posted on the meditation hall explaining that the three group sits a day would be sittings of “Adhitthaña” or sittings of strong determination. The goal of these sittings is to sit an entire hour without changing positions at all. The sign was very clear to say that this is not intended as torture, and if you do need to adjust, you should try to adjust fewer times in the next Adhitthaña sitting. This made me feel even worse about how uncomfortable I was - it really seemed like it shouldn’t be this painful.

I’ve always identified myself as someone who could “get through” anything I try - you know, just “tough it out.” My husband had even used the term “relentless” to describe me in his wedding vows. I have an extremely high tolerance for pain, so I kept forcing myself through the meditations in lots of pain. My pretty extreme obliger/rule-follower tendency made me determined to actually sit through the entirety of each meditation period as it was scheduled.

On these days, I started to notice that sometimes people were walking around towards the end of the individual sessions, so I started giving myself some leniency and walking around myself or even napping sometimes. This helped me realize how much stock I put in the experience of others to dictate what my experience is: they didn’t look like they were struggling, so I shouldn’t be struggling; they were not sitting the entire 2-hour meditation period, so it’s okay for me to not sit the entire time.

On day 7, I was laying in the grass after lunch really dreading the upcoming afternoon of more meditation sessions, and I suddenly decided that I should just go talk to Jane about all of this struggle. I asked Alexa to add me to the end of the interview line and sat the in the lobby waiting while wiping off tears running down my face for about 20 minutes- I was thinking about what exactly to say to Jane. The discourse the previous night had warned about doubt about the technique and its ability to bring about mental purification, so I decided that was what I was experiencing and brought it to her with that lens. I teared up telling her that I just want to go home, and she asked if this was a common habit of mine - getting places and then wanting to run away. I said “no, quite the opposite - I always just push through things,” to which she responded “Ah-ha! THAT is the habit pattern of the mind we are trying to change!” She told me to just relax, notice that those thoughts are there, and continue to focus on the sensations through them. It sounded so simple, so I went into the following individual sitting time with a lot of self-determination. I sat in a kneeling position for an hour and ten minutes straight focusing hard on my practice without feeling compelled to get up. Once the pain got unbearable, I did get up and walk a bit with very stiff knees. In the following Adhitthaña sitting, I adjusted about 6 or 7 times, and when it finally ended, I couldn’t straighten my left leg for about 5 minutes. That night, I did start to feel some amount of joy coming over me, but I couldn’t quite place it.

As I walked that evening around many other stoic women, I marveled at being in the presence of all these women putting so much time and effort into self-purification.

Day 8

I went into day 8 with continued determination to focus really hard. After all, I only had a few days left to reap the benefits of the practice. The whole time I had been concocting this story in my mind about how I would come out of this and say “that was the most difficult and most rewarding thing I have ever done,” but I hadn’t yet realized this supposed reward of liberation from my misery.

By lunch time, my knees were absolutely killing me again, and after some pondering, I once again joined the end of the interview line to finally ask about my knee pain for the first time. Jane said that knee pain is natural and students are not expected to sit for the entire self-meditation periods without getting up. This was enlightening to me, my inner obliger thinking “but the schedule says to mediate 9 to 11- you’re allowed to take breaks?! Why didn’t you say so?!” She suggested I sit as long as I could, and then get up and walk around 5-10 mins and glance at the clock to see how long it was; next time, try to expand that time by 5 mins, and never to more than an hour. This was a HUGE revelation to me, and I immediately wished I had brought this up to her on day 3, 4, or 5.

Through that afternoon’s focused meditations I was actually able to reach a point where my knee pain went away during the meditation at times, which is after all the entire point of Vipassana - to notice everything as impermanent, arising and passing away, regardless of the sensation. I got up when I needed to walk and focused on sensation while walking (this was an added instruction for days 8 and 9). I reached the afternoon of day 8 and suddenly felt liberated from all of my sadness around my dad passing away- like a dark, heavy cloud had been lifted off of me. I used my sadness thinking about him as a check-in point throughout the week, latching on to what Jane had said on day one about just continuing to follow the instructions. Until this point, I really couldn’t connect with this concept that intensely focusing on sensations on your body with awareness and equanimity could somehow naturally release you from your misery. When I thought about my dad, I smiled and thought positively about how much he would have loved this scientific experience of meditation, and I just couldn’t get this beaming grin off my face. I spent the last three years carrying around this intense sadness with me: every time people talked about their fathers, I was sad mine wasn’t around; every time I thought about my own father and sharing what was going on in my life, a wave of sadness came over me; father’s day was always really hard. I had connected to this concept that I would just carry this sadness with me forever. As it turned out, father’s day fell on day 4 of this course, Vipassana day.

That evening before the final group sitting, despite being told not to journal while we were there, I rebelliously pulled out a journal and pen from my purse to write some notes down about the timeline of my experience. I realized that all of these things that I’ve viewed as positive aspects of who I am were actually holding me back from releasing my misery: pushing through things, a high pain tolerance, and being a rule-follower. This compilation of traits led me to spend days sitting in misery alone rather than being open with the teacher about my struggle.

I went for a walk later that night and cried tears of joy - it was incredible. This WAS the most rewarding thing I had ever done.

Days 9-10

The 9^th day I spent focused on self-care. I was so elated by my sadness lifting away that I really didn’t care so much to focus on the meditation any more. I knew if I had made it this far as miserable as I was for so many days, that the rest would be much easier being happy and seeing the benefit of the technique I had learned. I committed myself to focus in the group sittings, and in the individual sittings, I spent a lot of time out walking around feeling sensations that way. At times, I was the only one out walking around- what a rebel! I also essentially built up a chair for myself with cushions on my mediation mat so that my knees wouldn’t be bent so much, and I didn’t judge myself for adjusting them as much as I needed. As the breaking of noble silence approached, I started seeing some emotions again in others’ faces- mostly those of joy and peace.

On the morning of day 10, noble silence broke at 10am. Just before the breaking of noble silence, we learned the final component of the Vipassana practice, “the meditation of loving kindness or goodwill towards all, in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.” In this meditation, you are asked to find whatever position you can that is comfortable - I laughed at this in my head as pretty much any position on the cushions hurt at this point. During this meditation, I literally felt love and kindness radiating out of me towards others - I was so grateful to be freed of so much misery in my life that I couldn’t help but wish that same liberation on all other beings in the world.

Once noble silence broke, I really didn’t know what to do at first. I still barely knew anyone here, but this huge thing had happened that I wanted to share. I had many conversations over the following 4.5 hours we had free to socialize that informed me of the extent to which others struggled similarly to me. I learned that many of the other meditators spent their individual meditation hours napping in their rooms; one lady who had taken the course twice before had spelled out “SOS” in the grass at one point in hopes an airplane would see it; and people shared many, many other struggles. It was incredible to see all of these faces that had been so stoic for so many days suddenly animated with smiles and laughter. It appeared that everyone achieved some positive results from the practice, though there were a handful of people who did leave mid-course, and naturally we all speculated on what happened to them. I am extremely grateful that the course included signing a contract that emphasized the need to stay. If there was a clearer, gracious option to leave, I potentially would have taken it early on and never realized the immense benefit I received from my hard work.

The biggest take away from it all: only I can experience what’s going on with me, and I need to just be in touch with that and listen to it rather than making my experience so dependent on external factors.

I intend to take a few days off from meditation to give my knees some recovery time, but I certainly plan to incorporate Vipassana in my daily practice now, and I suspect I will be back for more courses in the future.

Stiff knees are a small price to pay for self-purification.

Bhavatu sabba maṅgalam- May all beings be happy!

A Short Adventure to Macau

This past Friday evening (12/14), we were informed that we had Saturday and Sunday off.  A weekend off?!  I didn't even know where to start...

(Okay, I'll admit that I started writing this post on December 18th but quickly got caught up in work and prepping for my upcoming vacation and didn't get back to it until now.)


Two co-workers and I decided to head to Macau for a night, departing Saturday morning.  Macau is a special administrative district of China just like Hong Kong.  It started as a Portuguese colony in the 1550s, and it wasn't turned over to China until 1999, at which point a deal was made to give the area to China as long as it retained autonomy until 2049 (50 years after the transfer).

Some interesting facts about Macau:

• The 2nd highest life expectancy in the world
• Ranked highly in the human development index (very rare among Asian countries)
• The literacy rate is above 99% for people aged 15-29 (93.5% overall)

Sunset out my Hotel Window

 It was a rather long adventure to get there involving lots of traffic and lots of standing around.  We took a taxi to the ferry terminal, and when we arrived, there was only 1 ticket left for the next boat (11:30am), so we had to buy tickets for the one after that (12:15pm).  Immediately after purchasing the tickets, we realized we would be arriving at the wrong ferry terminal, but the next ferry to the correct terminal wasn't until 1:30pm, so we didn't bother changing.

Christmas Tree Lighting at the Casa Real

After waiting in line for a while, we went through immigration and moved to waiting outside for another long while.  The ferry didn't show up until about 1pm and departed around 1:15pm, so we probably should have just taken the later one.  We had first class tickets for the ferry since they were only a few dollars more than the regular class.  The first class cabin was upstairs, we had comfier seats, and we were served tea/coffee.  Unfortunately, first class also somehow means "smoking allowed."

When we arrived in Macau, we went through immigration and then waited for a taxi for about 20 minutes despite there being only 4 people in line in front of us.  Our taxi driver didn't quite know where our hotel was, so we drove in circles for a bit, he pulled over and asked someone, and we eventually arrived.

House of Dancing Water "Stage"

Decorations at the Sands

After consulting with the concierge, we decided to go see a popular show called "The House of Dancing Water" that night.  We wandered around the casinos for a bit both before and after the show, which brings me to my conclusion about Macau: it's like Vegas but for MUCH wealthier people.  The lowest minimum bet we saw at any of the card tables was 300 HKD (~$40 US), and most of the tables were more like 500, 1000, or 2000, not to mention the "high stakes" sections.  People would sit down at a table and just throw out 10,000 HKD (~$1280 US).  Needless to say, we did not do much gambling.

Reminds me of the Legends of the Hidden Temple dude

The next morning, one co-worker left really early to fly back to the US, and my other co-worker and I wandered around the fisherman's wharf area and the reservoir for a couple hours before heading back to Shenzhen.  The fisherman's wharf area is full of Portuguese architecture and some replicas of things from the old colony, like the coliseum below.

Contrast of New and Old Macau

There was a moat around a castle replica filled with koi, and they were amazingly trained to humans feeding them.  Anywhere you stood near the water, all of the koi would swim over and circle.

Pedestrian walkways- these are everywhere!

I really enjoyed the blow up decorations around the reservoir:

View of Macau from across the reservoir

Things you can't do in the park around the reservoir

 It was certainly cool to experience a new place, but I am sad I didn't go see the pandas (I wasn't really aware that I should do that until after the fact).

Ferry back to China

Stay tuned for my next post about Christmas in Thailand!

Sheraton Dameisha Holiday Decorations

Upon my return to the Sheraton down here on the south China coast, it was cold and rainy (pretty much like the weather I left behind in Oregon); however, the hotel was fully decked out for the holidays.  It's almost like the best of both worlds since I get to see the decorations but don't have to hear the Christmas music playing everywhere I go (not that I really go anywhere besides the factory and the hotel).  I thought I'd share some pictures with all of you.

Christmas Tree with Hanukkah Lights

Santa(s) Climbing the Wall

Santa with his Reindeer

Massive Gingerbread House

It's ACTUALLY Gingerbread!

I leave you all with a gorgeous picture of the sunrise from my balcony this morning.

My Time in the States

I’ve been back in the states twice now since I first got to China in August, and it recently occurred to me that there is no real reason why I can only talk about traveling in Asia on this blog, so here goes…

Trip 1: 10/17-28

When I was back in October, I spent five days on each coast, first in Providence/New York, then in Portland.  The trip to the east coast was an unexpected treat as a thank-you from work for staying in China an extra few weeks.  Luckily, my time there coincided with a gorgeous fall weekend, and Ethan and I took the scenic route back from New York to Providence.  Here are a few pictures of the gorgeous fall leaves of New England along  the Merrit Parkway:

Back in Portland, my friends and I tried to cram as much hangout time as possible in five days.  It was a ton of fun, but definitely exhausting as well.  My most recent recipe for these long flights back to Portland is to stay up the entire night before I fly, so I can sleep on the plane.  I had been joking with my friends about staying up all night Saturday with me, but I never actually expected them to do it!  We weren’t all entirely successful, but it really meant a lot to me to have such an awesome group of friends to even try.

Friends Who Attempted to Stay Up with me: Note Francis is Actually Awake

On my flight back, I captured some pictures of the pollution in Beijing from the air.  Pretty nasty if you ask me…

Trip 2: 11/21-12/3

For my second trip back, I got to spend Thanksgiving with my entire family.  This was the first time that we were all in one place since my sister’s wedding in July 2011, and it was really nice to see everyone together.

From left to right, top to bottom: Grandma Judy, Hal (her boyfriend), Dad (Jeff), Stacie (Dad's fiance), Erin (sister), Jay (brother-in-law), Ethan, Mom (Marsha), Manny (brother), Sue (aunt), me, Heike (Sue's friend from Germany), and Pat (uncle/Sue's husband) 

Following my 5 days in New York, I spent a week in Portland, though I was unsure when I’d be leaving when I arrived.  During this time, some friends and I found a potential group house for when I return, and Caitlin* hosted a Christmas tree decorating party as my sendoff.  Again, all of my friends tried to stay up the night with me to keep me awake.  Unfortunately, this plan was foiled by United screwing me over the next day…more on that later.  It was really awesome to decorate a tree, as I hadn’t done so since I was a kid.  Thanks to Caitlin for making that happen!

Using a Makeshift Plumb Line to get the Tree Straight

Step One: Lights!

Tree Complete with Beer and Port Underneath

*Caitlin deserves a huge shout out as she is serving as my residence right now.  Not only does she collect and deal with my mail and packages, but she hosts me when I’m in town, cooks me food, plans gatherings, and is an all-around awesome friend!

On Sunday morning, after intentionally staying up all night, I went to the airport for my last round trip to China of my 6-month assignment.  I was supposed to be flying PortlandàSan FranciscoàHong Kong.  When I checked in, I was told the flight to SF was delayed and to keep an eye out to make sure I wouldn’t miss my connection.  Then it would be my decision to risk it, go to SF, and potentially have to spend the night or rebook the entire trip for the next day.

At the gate, when the flight delay changed from about half hour to over an hour, I got in line to talk to the agents (my layover was only 1.5 hours).  I was exhausted and ready to sleep, so standing in line itself took some effort.  When I got to the front, the agent said she could re-book on an itinerary that went PortlandàSeattleàTokyoàHong Kong and would only get me in two hours later than planned, so I went with it.

It wasn’t until I was on the flight to Seattle that I realized my new itinerary had a 20-minute layover in Seattle to get to the Tokyo flight.  We landed a few minutes early in Seattle, I was the first one off the plane, the gate to the Tokyo flight was right next-door, and I STILL didn’t get there in time.  They had closed the gate only a few minutes before I got there, the plane was still there, and I was livid.  The agents at the desk said that they are supposed to leave at least a 35-minute layover, and that United Express had to pay for me to stay overnight to fly out the next day…

After much discussion with the United Express agent, I decided to be flown back to Portland and then resume the entire route the next day (I am currently on a plane to Tokyo writing this).  Unfortunately, I was told my bag had taken the San Francisco route, so I didn’t have my clothes with me.  As it turns out, my bag WAS actually in Seattle, so I probably could have gotten it and taken it back with me if I’d been given proper information.

I guess one should expect at least one issue with flights when I’m doing this much travelling…

On the plus side, this re-booking means that I am awake and not sleeping on this flight (I couldn’t stay up two nights in a row), so you all get a bunch of blog updates.

On to my last 6 weeks in China before my glorious return to Portland…