“How did you stumble upon meditation?”
“I was going through a bit of a difficult time, and I just saw something online about meditation. ‘Oh that’s interesting, let’s take a look at that and see what I can understand from this.’ And it was a school called Vipassana and they had a 9-day retreat. So you go there, and 7 days are in complete silence. It’s very intense. There are actually quite a few of these schools around the world. It was also weird because the teacher, who is a dead person on videotape—”
“Wait, for real?”
“YEP. I didn’t know that was going to happen. Like, ‘wow, I feel like I’ve walked into something that is not really what I want,’ but it was actually quite useful, and the techniques I found to be quite good. They emphasize forward momentum, forward movement. But 7 days of silence, and you don’t even look at other people in the eye, because you try to remain as in yourself as possible. When I came back [from Merritt], very shortly afterward, I stopped because I was sitting down in my living room and I was meditating, and then I had a vision or hallucination, or whatever you want to call it, essentially. The room was all dark, but I saw three tables set up and people all around these tables; some of these people were from the retreat. And they were all talking, and I couldn’t understand any words, but there was just this noise that became louder and louder and louder. It became overwhelming, and as soon as I thought that this is too much, and I want that noise to stop, everyone in that room just turned and looked at me, and it frightened me. But as soon as that happened, I kind of just opened my eyes, and thought, uh, what just happened? Honestly, I felt at that moment it was me being face-to-face with a deep fear of mine.”