4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2019
⏱️ 45 minutes
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I signed up for my first 12-day meditation retreat in 2001, and then I dropped out two weeks before the start date. I never drop out of anything. Eighteen months later, I signed up again. This time, I was ready.
It was exactly as you might suspect: a room full of people sitting on cushions—not speaking, not moving—for days at a time. There were no chanting nor prayers, no incense nor gurus. It wasn’t that kind of place. The instructional aspect of the course could easily be summarized in three words: sit, observe, accept.
Within 15 minutes of my arrival, I realized I’d entered a special kind of hell also known as my own head. I sat, and sat, and sat, and sat some more.
On the fourth day, someone sneezed in the meditation hall, and I nearly had a heart attack. By the seventh day, I was convinced I could see through my eyelids. The room remained unchanged for the past week, so for all intents and purposes, I really could see through my eyelids. Open or closed, everything was the same.
The guy next to me stank of mold and armpits. The person in front of me would groan and convulse in discomfort every 15 minutes. At least, I thought, he was suffering more than me. By the end of day eight, I’d re-lived every single unfinished conversation of my life, from the big ones to the most mundane encounters you could imagine. My own mental archives embarrassed me. They were (and are) so petty. On day 12, when we could finally speak again, I had nothing to say. I was hungry and horny; exhausted and thoughtful.
This was my introduction to meditation, and while I wish I could say it was smooth sailing since then, I find it more and more challenging every year; and oddly, the more I struggle, the more benefits I experience. There seems to be an inverse relationship between struggle in meditation and my happiness.
My guest on this week’s show is a meditator, teacher, author, and speaker. I’m a novice, he’s a pro. I think you’ll learn a lot from our discussion.
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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Stephen Fulder, Ph.D., is a spiritual teacher, author, and founder of the Israel Insight Society (Tovana). He has been teaching Buddhist teachings and meditation practice to thousands of people over the last 20 years. He has 40 years of Vipassana/Mindfulness meditation and dharma practice and Buddhist studies.
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0:30.2 | Welcome to the Lucas Rockwood Show. I'm a yoga trainer. I'm an entrepreneur, a |
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0:50.0 | Our guest on this week's show is a long time meditator and a teacher and an author. |
0:55.0 | You know, I first signed up for my first meditation retreat way back in 2001 and I dropped out. |
1:00.0 | I didn't show up and I never drop out of anything. I was just really scared and rightfully so. You know 18 months later I signed up and that time I went and I really was I was right to be scared. It was really a big deal. It was a room full of people sitting |
1:14.9 | on cushions. Nobody spoke, nobody moved and we did that for 12 days. I mean it was really a long time. |
1:19.5 | There was no chanting or prayers. It wasn't Incense or gurus kind of place. It was really, really simple. |
1:26.1 | A bunch of people sitting in a room quiet for a couple of weeks. The instruction aspect |
1:30.4 | was so, so simple. I could really summarize it for you right here if you want to give |
1:33.9 | it a try, sit, observe, accept, and within 15 minutes after I arrived I realized that I was in |
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