I started off writing this blog wanting to simply list my key takeaways and elaborate on each of them. I was meant to release this blog weeks ago, but the perfectionist in me wanted to create an award-winning blog. The other reason is as much work as I have done, I still fall victim from time to time to the fears of what people may think. During the retreat I felt ready to start a conversation which is very to me. After leaving the retreat I kept talking myself out of it, Will I trigger people? Do I want people in my business? Nevertheless, the throat chakra healing must be working, because the words started to pour out on the page. As some read curiosity about specific details will arise, but that was not the purpose of this particular piece of work.
When the time is right, I will go into more details, but it will come with my plan to contribute to ending the cycle of sexual abuse that happens every day especially to young girls. There are a lot of adult women silently hurting not just because of what happened but also for the fact that it was never addressed. If it was address somehow you became the bad person instead of the abuser or it was just dismissed as if it was just a part of the experience of being a woman. In the meantime, I will continue to use my business as a vehicle to spread the message of solidarity, understanding, encouragement, healing, authenticity and of course love and light.
Here it goes… as condensed as I could get it.
For a very long time I have dreamed to take a break away from the normal hustle and bustle to attend a silent retreat. 2020 reminded me that leaving things until a more “ideal” time is not the best idea, because that may never come. It was kind of wild to just go away months after I launched my business and in December at that. Although it was advised to go into the retreat with no expectations only making the commitment to be open minded and determined to stay the entire time, I couldn’t help it. I was craving for a life-changing revelation, or the secret recipe for my business success, or at least that I would ascend space and time.
Well let me just be raw, it sucked! First of all, it was not this blissful and relaxing time that I had imagined it would be. I have been calling it a silent RETREAT. In reality it was something which is called a Vipassana course. A course based on the teachings of Buddha, which introduces one to a way of life. On the first day I experienced so much pain and during the discourse the instructor mentioned that if you were feeling pain that meant you were doing it right. First of all, I came here to get away from the stress of being a one-man team in a startup while working for a multinational corporation in the startup division, the pressure of constant personal development, healing generational curses, maintaining a summer body, and navigating one of the most challenging years of dating to name a few.
Honestly, I was so angry and agitated most of the time to the point that my teacher kept calling me to meet with her because she was concerned. Umm yes, I am mad, I came here for peace and instead I got flashbacks of past experiences, I heard all of the self-limiting beliefs that had been shaping my life, and a lot of other nonsense. And if I am being really honest, I missed the comforts like being able to eat what I want, sleeping on my nice comfy bed, burning my candles/sage, my morning apple cider vinegar drink, being able to write in my journal, and most surprisingly Google.
Yes, it was a borderline just too much for me, but I was determined to stay because I am stubborn like that and a part of me believed that I’d gain something out of it. Every day the teacher would smile at me and say, “if you are feeling pain you are doing it right”, but on this particular day when she called me in, she looked at me with a very concerned face and asked a question. “What happened to you?” I told her about my life and how out of all the traumas there was particular incident which happened to me as a teenager. For 16 years, I’ve not really dealt with it except for attempting to give it over to God and a therapy session or two.
I soon realized the impact that this event had on my life for the fact that I never just sat with the “negative “emotions that I experienced that day. Furthermore, I realized that a lot of myself worth had been stripped that day. For all these years I have been working on self-worth, but it was just like putting a band aid on a snake bite and not removing the venom. Due to those previous 5 days of 10.5 hours of learning this technique of sitting with everything even pain and observing objectively, I was able for the first time to replay that day and experience all of the pain, the disappointment, the loneliness, the anger. All of those negative emotions that I usually cover up with affirmations, spiritual texts, motivational material. I still believe that it is better to be positive, but sometimes life is bound to have these other not so pleasant emotions.
When these emotions come up, I learned to treat them in a similar fashion as the pleasant ones because as Buddha preached everything is impermanent. The reason why we experience so much misery is because we try to avoid the perceived bad stuff and the things the we perceive as good we crave more and more. Due to this when we lose the good things… sadness, and we experience the bad things… sadness. Once we understand that nothing is permanent, we practice detachment and we can be happy no matter what.
For two almost two decades I never made peace with what happened because just thinking about it made me sick to my stomach. The more we ignore something it begins to grow. In terms of the mind and body we feel physical pain/ or we feel stuck/or we keep making the same mistakes and wondering why. As a result of understanding this natural law of life known as impermanence, I was able to tell my mind that the pain I would experience by reliving this event was only temporary but necessary for me to heal.
After a night of numbness, and what felt like shooting electric currents in my body there was relief. Only to realized that I was angry at a lot of other things. Some say that anger usually is attach to something deeper such as hurt. At times I really don’t know, all I can be sure of is I felt fire in my body. I literally felt like someone was holding a blow torch to my lower body. By day 7 honestly, I was over it and I just felt like I had been beat down. Despite that I did realize that I still want to focus on further healing and uncovering these subconscious beliefs which have been driving my car for all of these years.