Danielle’s 10 day to Enlightenment by Danielle Bussone 

A few years back, my sister-in-law gave me a t-shirt as a gag gift. On it was a drawing of a ghost with a caption in large letters that read, “I’ve had a difficult past few lives.” She didn’t know the half of it.

In the last year, my stress level has been off the charts. I’ve been running back and forth across the country doing cooking demonstrations, teaching classes on how to prepare delicious plant-based whole foods, speaking at festivals, wellness groups, and senior centers, doing radio and television interviews, and making instructional YouTube videos. All the while I’ve been creating recipes for and writing my second book, interviewing athletes and health experts and writing restaurant reviews for my blog as well as maintaining a social media presence. It has been worthwhile, great fun and terribly rewarding. But, it has also been stressful. Even good stress is stress, and it erodes our health and chips away at our immune systems.

After breaking three molars this year from incessant tooth-grinding in my sleep, I decided something had to give. For some time, I have been looking around for a good meditation class; something credible, not just some weird, wild-eyed, drug-induced hippy bullshit. I didn’t want to know about my past lives or have an out-of-body experience. I just wanted techniques that would help me sleep peacefully while keeping up a hectic multi-tasking schedule.

One day it fell right into my lap. A local woman who had bought my book called me out of the blue. She said she had had an epiphany and decided she wanted to become a vegan. She wanted to know if I would be interested in sharing some bulk food orders with her. “Sure!” I said, and promptly invited her over to learn how to make vegan calzones. While we were devouring the results of our labours, she told my husband and me about a meditation “boot camp” (called Vipassana) she had recently completed in Georgia. It was ten days of monastic living; no speaking, no eye contact, a gruelling ten hours of meditation each day, beginning at 4 am and ending at 9:30 pm. She claimed it changed her life. 

Vipassana means ‘to see things as they really are.’ It is a meditation practice that was developed in India over 2500 years ago as an ‘art of living,’ a means of training ourselves to enjoy selfless, happy, peaceful, and compassionate lives. The program is completely free of charge. Your room and board are paid for by the generosity of others who have completed the course before you, a kind of pay-it-forward system. You are not allowed to contribute a nickel until you have completed a ten-day program and then, only if you have true volition to do so, according to your means. The courses are run purely by donations, and the teachers, assistants, groundskeepers, cooks and staff of all kinds volunteer their time so that you can devote your time to learning this technique of meditation. It is seen as an act of loving service. There are 168 centres across the globe where there are often long waiting lists to get in.

So, Rich and I signed up. I was determined I would learn to relax if it killed me. Rich was essentially going along to support me, even though the men and women would be housed in separate quarters and would have no contact. He’s that kind of guy. We wished each other luck and separated for the duration. I was introduced to my room-mate with whom I exchanged a few words about our living situation, and our group shared a light meal before silence was invoked. It was a racially and culturally diverse mix of men and women from around the world who met in the meditation hall or Dhamma Center for our first instructions. There was an aisle dividing the sexes and a short wall making it impossible for me even to get a glimpse of Rich. Once we entered the dimly lit hall, a shroud of silence descended upon us.

To follow the path of Dhamma—the natural order of the universe—we learn Vipassana, a technique of purifying the mind by observing the sensations that occur within our bodies and their connection to the mind. By observing these sensations, we discover how our judgements, thoughts, and feelings are experienced by the body. We learn that to attain mastery over our minds is to attain mastery over our lives.

What followed were ten gruelling days of physical agony as we pushed our pampered bodies into unaccustomed and uncomfortable positions and our minds into intense focus, fighting off sleep and an onslaught of random thoughts that refused to be mastered. Emotional revelations bubbled to the surface of our psyches from places so deep we hadn’t realized they existed, leaving many of us writhing in pain and whimpering in our sleep.

Pain, according to this teaching, both physical and mental, can be the result of accumulated karma through multiple lifetimes. If this is the case, I must have once been a real ass-hole in former reincarnations because the karmic payback was a bitch. In the end, we learn how to release our torments and marvel in awe as they dissolve into the ether leaving purified spirits in their wake.

From the first evening, we learned techniques to deepen our awareness and our focus, and we were provided wonderfully kind and insightful teachers to whom we could turn if we had trouble understanding what was expected of us. (Yes, we could speak to them.) We were fed delicious plant-based meals, and there were wooded trails to provide respite to our aching limbs and joints.

On the final day, we were permitted to speak again. I had an opportunity to get to know women that I had only observed through the body language and facial expressions of concentrated introspection. Some, I learned, had suffered insurmountable loss. My room-mate’s son had committed suicide; another woman’s husband had been murdered. There are stories of abuse, loss, and struggle. One young woman left the program early, unable to handle the isolation pressed upon us. I wish I could have told her that we were all in this together, that we were all sending her our support and well wishes, that we all had her very best interests at heart. But we weren’t allowed to speak or touch; we weren’t allowed to give her solace. One must walk the path to Dhamma alone.

As Rich and I departed, I looked fondly upon my ‘Sisters of Silence.’ Many had arrived broken. While I can’t say with certainty that all the pieces of their shattered lives had been restored, I can say without hesitation that we all left feeling a bit more whole. We had been given tools for our own redemption, a technique that helps one retain peace in the midst of chaos. We need only practice to keep it alive within us.

Indeed, I may very well have had a difficult past few lives, but with Vipassana, things are looking up.

by Danielle Bussone

AUTHOR OF TIME FOR CHANGE series

facebook.com/danielle.bussone

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Humans made the problems in the world so we as humans must fix it.

BELIEVE, ACT, COMMIT, FOR THAT IS THE KEY TO YOUR SUCCESS

There is not anything happening in the world today that we have not created, global warming, wars, fear, hate, bad health, money/poverty, religions, we created them, so we must fix the problem that it has in-turn created.

It all starts with us, each and every one of us, we cannot point fingers for we are a part of the mess so we need to be a part of the solution. When we change our thoughts, our words, our actions, our intent, our feelings, we begin to change the tide and start seeding positive vibrations and possibilities that will heal our world.

When we feed the possibilities, the attitude of gratitude, the respect for differences, the kindness and love of each other the negatives start to crumble, the energy shifts and we start to see what really can be, what should be and what we can make it be together.

Let us be part of the solution first in our own lives, then in each other.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOU?

We can’t believe in anything until we are willing to believe in our selves. To make those life changes, we must have some faith in what is seen as the impossible, the improbable and what is felt as unattainable, for only then do we understand why we need to believe and how to water that belief into growth.

We are the change we seek.

If you make changes in your belief’s, your thoughts and actions, by taking charge and deciding to put your energy behind someone or something, you then become part of the equation to make it happen.  Positive Thinking = Positive Living.

Nay slayer’s, doubters, unmovable people create the problem by feeding the negativity, relishing in it and if they had their way, they would kill your belief in an instant, do not let them.

We have no idea what can be achieved until we are willing to believe. Come join me each week on Self Discovery Radio as I speak to the power of belief and how it can transform lives. 

We each of us have an important role to play in collaboration of uniting the world 

We speak words spoken in excitement, but in the end, it is in action that speaks louder.

We live in a world where we are either too busy or don’t care to commit to our words.

We have a conversation with someone, a spark ignites and we say that we would love to work together, but in the end, they’re just words.

We say it is so good to meet someone with the same interests, let’s keep it going, but forget to call.

We are looking for someone to work with, share with, grow a dream with, and when we think we have found them, we let them go.

Why are we so fickle, why be in the moment, all “gong ho” only to fall flat?

We need each other, we are not designed to do it alone, do we forget that?

I have met so many people I would love to build with, to collaborated to expand each others work, to unite to introduce to connect to, but it never follows through, why?

Now I am not going to put this on me, no why me, but ask why people say one thing and do another?

Have we become so short-sighted that we can only see what is in front of us in the moment and not retain a longer thought?

Have we become to Instagramide that we only live for that moment then go seek the next frill?

Are we so what’s in it for me $$$$$$$ that we miss the real worth?

Have we become to wrapped in EGO we have forgotten our message?

Are we just seeking fame, glory, self-importance and lost our way?

What happened to nurturing a relationship and seeing where the possibilities go?

What happened to exploring an opportunity and feeding its growth?

Life is not a quick fix. Life is not instant gratification. Life is not a drug, but a slow methodical vibrant flowing energy that needs to grow needs to move, needs to be fed.

I would love to work with many of the people I have interviewed, I would love to build them up, connect them and celebrate their work in unified collaboration. I am doing that now, but it is very one sided except for a few.

I can name a dozen people right now that I see a synergy with, I see a connective growing collaboration building a matrix of divine healers, leaders, builders, and inspirer’s, that if we built a unified umbrella to house us all in, would give the world a place to come to that would have the answers, tools, wisdom, health and love they need.

I am building such a place, the Self Discovery MEDIA network houses many of them right now, I am building my Mentors directory check here  and a Self Discovery Community that is in service to all we can help find their own footing in life. 

My Invitation is to those I have interviewed to join me, to build a place to call home, figuratively and virtually and eventually in a solid platform.

Please if you say you are going to call, connect, want to do something together, follow through, like who they are, follow through, let us stay in touch, THEN DO IT.

I INVITE ANYONE WHO WISHES TO COLLABORATE TO CONNECT WITH ME, LET’S BUILD TOGETHER A PLACE THAT FEEDS THE PEOPLE WITH A SAFE SOLID KNOWLEDGEABLE ARENA THEY NEED IN ORDER TO EMPOWER THEIR OWN LIVES.

Sara Troy 

Self Discovery Media.

https://selfdiscoverywisdom.com

www.orchardofwisdom.org

www.hubofdiscovery.com

www.saratroy.com

info@selfdiscoverymedia.com

There are 3 shows on these topics, to see and hear them go to

 Collaborate.   Belief.   Solution.