It was May 2002. I was engaged to a man I did indeed love, but could never marry. Something in me knew this, even if I hadn’t yet admitted it to myself. Oh how I was suffering. We sold everything and moved to Hawaii. I had the sense that I was strapped into a rollercoaster and it was going downhill, quickly. I was depressed. I was anxious. I had become a stranger to the happy, energetic soul I had been most of my life. 

Just before we moved we took a last trip to the desert, to Moab, Utah. We stayed with a friend of my ex-fiance’s. I spoke with his wife at length that evening. Under a starry desert sky the conversation turned to meditation. I shared with her the very little bit I knew, something I learned from a therapist in Boulder. I had been going to therapy to try and figure out why I was so unhappy. DUHHHH.

She then told me about her practice.  Vipassana. She told me that the courses were nonsectarian, ten days in length, were conducted in silence, and were free. FREE?????  Yes, free. They’ll house you and feed you for ten days, and not charge you anything. 

Something in me knew, immediately, that I was going to do a course. My ex and I proceeded to move to Hawaii, and my anxiety and depression moved with me, thick and deep. I had a sense that if I could just get to one of the meditation courses, I’d be okay. I knew this.

Five months later I flew to the Vipassana Center in Washington State to sit my first course. Me, my anxiety, and my depression were welcome guests. Incidentally, just before I left Hawaii for the course in Washington, I found that a ten day meditation course was being held on the island where I was living. They were charging $360.00 for the ten days. Out of principle, out of wanting to support the purity of a practice that was charging not a dime, I chose to fly to Washington. (I always cover my cost with my donation, but the fact that it is my choice to do so is big to me. No one asks you for it.) Paying for a spiritual practice doesn’t resonate with me.

At any rate, I went through ten days of blissful hell  (the hell wasn’t really blissful…it was more the break-you kind of hell) as I waded through the quagmire that my emotions, my feelings, my confusion had become. The silence was beyond golden. Without that silence it’s impossible to slow down enough to begin to see what is actually going on in there. At the end of the ten days I was happy. I was blissed out. And this practice has become a way of life for me. I need it like a diabetic needs insulin. 

Of course it took a few years and a life-altering illness to get to the point where I actually do practice the suggested number of hours daily. But the space and richness that arises out of it is worth those hours, that discipline. 

Here in Colorado we are searching for land for a center, and in the meantime, we are holding four courses a year.

There are also centers in Massachusetts, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, and California (and a second California center on its way).

Don’t take my word for it. Here is what others have to say.

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