Dan

reede, 10. aprill 2020

Are the animals happy? Who knows.

Am I happy with this post? God damn it, no. It took a whole day to finally write my thoughts down about this situation. I reviewed a bunch of articles that I saved for myself over the past weeks, and read a bunch of them that I had not read before. The aim was to brilliantly combine all of this information and compile a comprehensive summary which I could look back to once this situation is over. Maybe it could even serve as an eye opener for a few of the readers? Who knows.

But nope, there’s just too much information and (mis)information out there, and I’m far from being the best person to clarify everything. So fuck it, I’ll keep it simple: instead of listing articles and commenting on them, I just wrote down my feelings and hyperlinked some articles to those feelings afterwards. Let’s go!

I felt that this virus won’t really affect me much.

I felt a bit more concerned when I heard that experts estimate 40-70% of the world to get it.

I still felt fairly unmoved, even if I could intellectually realize that millions of people could die based on those estimates. (28 million to be more precise, if we take a 0.9% death rate and expect 40% out of 7.8 billion people to get infected.)

I felt my old friend meaninglessness arise in me again when this situation seemed to illustrate the absurdity of life.

I felt that it’s not the worst virus if mainly old people are in danger (especially old men who are already sick), and yes, especially because older people tend to deny climate change more.

I felt struck by clarity when I read the first article by Tomas Pueyo: Act today or people will die.

I felt it brilliantly illustrated how deaths will accumulate if we let our health systems get overwhelmed.

I felt we need to act now to save as many people as we can.

I felt it’s the society’s responsibility to protect the more vulnerable ones among us, and yes, even the old people who deny climate change.

I felt I should send the article to my instructor of a mandatory class I had to attend that day – the day before the universities were shut down in the Netherlands by the way – and tell her I’m not coming, because I don’t want to contribute to spreading the virus.

I felt I need to spread the information to my friends, colleagues, and family, and to the media.

I felt worried for my family in Estonia.

I felt happy that they listened to me.

I felt proud when my grandma called me to say thank you for letting our relatives know that they should bring food to her, so she wouldn’t have to risk her health by leaving the house.

I felt I should get some food myself.

I felt frustrated because I thought the response of the Dutch government is not strong enough.

I felt that the Netherlands should’ve acted faster.

I felt doubt because people kept reminding me that the economy also has a strong impact on people’s lives.

I felt that the Dutch government put economy in front of people.

I felt even more so after I read Pueyo’s second article: The hammer and the dance.

I felt confirmed that stricter measures would enable us to save more lives, and that flattening the curve will also be beneficial to the economy.

I felt disappointed when I had disagreements about the topic with my girlfriend.

I felt joy after we managed to settle our disagreements.

I felt confused when people reacted with “Let’s not panic” instead of “Let’s act”.

I felt there are cultural reasons for this.

I felt that I can also learn how different types of people react to a crisis.

I felt that it’s nice to live in a country that doesn’t intervene much with the lives of it’s citizens during peace time.

I felt that the same approach doesn’t work very well during a crisis.

I felt like I should really do something to spread the message that more should be done.

I felt helpless.

I felt I should message and call more with friends and family.

I felt happy that I did.

I felt I should get some work done.

I felt little pressure do be productive.

I felt I just want to read some fiction.

I felt satisfaction from reading fiction.

I felt the whole world is in a mess anyway, so I can take it easy.

I felt sorry for my friends who were living in a caravan in Spain, but when the situation got serious had to get on the last flight to Vilnius and drive from there to Tallinn with a police escort.

I felt sad about Italy having to leave it’s people die in hallways, and about families there not being able to get their loved ones buried, because too many people are dying.

I felt angry at the Dutch scientist who called Italians dumb for locking their country down.

I felt even angrier when I saw an interview (english subtitles available) in which you could see gym douchebags (who obviously can’t go to the gym anymore) work out in groups at urban workout spots.

I felt smug when I could read from Pueyo’s third article that US cities which reacted more strictly to the 1918 Spanish flu were economically better off than the cities with less severe measures.

I felt surprised by how relaxed Sweden is.

I felt like shrugging my shoulders when I checked how many people die around the world each year (~60 million).

I felt uncertainty about how to express that I think this is just the first of a few global crises that are to come.

I felt we have to find solutions to our advancing climate crisis.

I felt it’s important that people notice how CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically during the corona crisis.

I felt we have to look out for our privacy to avoid losing our power to people that want to use the corona crisis to set up authoritarian surveillance states.

I felt uneasy when Hungary took a step towards authoritarianism.

I felt we have to make sure we redesign our economy in a way that turns around the 50 year trend of increasing wealth and income inequality.

I felt scared about Europe falling apart.

I felt that that war is upon us.

I felt more wars will come.

I felt uncertain about my future.

I felt that after this is over then China will have the rest of the world as its little bitch.

I felt like a little bitch when I had to do an a make-up assignment for the mandatory class I didn’t go to, whereas my friend who didn’t have to go a class from the same course a day later didn’t have to do anything.

I felt I should use the moment to buy some stocks (maybe Chinese ones?).

I felt I still want to continue studying, to learn Dutch, and to become a clinical psychologist in the Netherlands.

I felt inflexible during yoga.

I felt happy for trying it again after a few years.

I felt like eating bread and hummus.

I felt like I’ve had it with all of this shit when I stumbled on some conspiracy theories about the situation (this might also be useful Google), some of which led people to burning cellphone masts and abusing engineers.

I felt I could still appreciate the fact that thanks to this reality I have experienced emotions and thoughts which I’ve never experienced before.

I felt I should write these down on my blog.

And I did.

But you know what’s funny? Despite all these new experiences, the most eye-opening thing that happened to me within the last month is The Tiger King. If you think you have a good feeling for what kind of people exist in this world, and you haven’t watched The Tiger King yet, then you most certainly don’t.

“Are the animals happy? Who knows.”

esmaspäev, 25. veebruar 2019

Anicca II

Sleep less, stay separated and shut up

04:00 am Morning wake-up bell
04:30-06:30 am Meditate in the hall or in your room
06:30-08:00 am Breakfast break
08:00-09:00 am Group meditation in the hall
09:00-11:00 am Meditate in the hall or in your room according to instructions
11:00-12:00 pm Lunch break
12:00-01:00 pm Rest and interviews with the teacher
01:00-02:30 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room
02:30-03:30 pm Group meditation in the hall
03:30-05:00 pm Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to instructions
05:00-06:00 pm Tea break
06:00-07:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
07:00-08:15 pm Teacher's Discourse in the hall
08:15-09:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
09:00-09:30 pm Question time in the hall
9:30 pm Retire to your own room – Lights out

As you can see, the schedule for the retreat gives a pretty straight-forward message – meditate. A total of around ten hours a day is separated for meditation. Notice also that around six hours are separated for sleep per night and big meals are given just twice a day. What can’t be seen from the schedule is that the one hundred participants per retreat are separated according to gender. Men have the left side of the facilities for eating, sleeping and walking outside, and women have the right side. All the participants meditate in the same meditation hall, but, again, men are on the left side of the room and women on the right. Everyone sleeps in a room with two bunk beds and a bathroom shared by four people.

Last but not least out of all the rules, on Day 0 (you arrive on day 0 and leave on day 11), everyone makes a promise to adhere to the Noble Silence. This means you are not to communicate with the other participants during the ten days by any means – no words, no glances, no gestures. Glances and gestures still happen when you are in line for food or the bathroom, you can talk to staff members if you have practical questions, and you can talk to the local meditation teacher when you have questions about the meditation practice, but, generally, no communication.

All the measures mentioned above are designed based on the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of students who have participated in these courses worldwide, and with one goal in mind – to enable each individual to pay attention to their own mind and body as well as possible.

Not where I did it, but it gives an idea

Be very friendly to yourself

The first day was still new and exciting, but already from the second day it got tense. The first three days are for laying the foundation. The students engage in anapana meditation, which simply means observing your natural breath. First you observe the air moving in and out from your nostrils, then you observe the sensations the air creates inside your nose, and after that you observe the sensations on your nose and on the area above your upper lip. In theory, these are the most simple things to do in the world. However, different difficulties arise when you have to do those things for ten hours a day.

For most people, including me, the biggest challenge is pain. The inner parts of my thighs don’t bend well at all, so they started causing me pain while sitting in the lotus position. When I tried to stay with the pain it moved on to my knees. When I changed to other positions, I would mainly have back pain, because it’s hard to sit up straight in positions other than the lotus position, or sitting on your knees (but those were already hurting anyway, right).

Normally I could sit in the same position for around 30-40 minutes until the pain started to literally get on my nerves. During the first three days I tried to observe the pain and realize that it is also impermanent like everything else in this world, but normally I would have to change my position after around 35-45 minutes (according to my intuitive sense of time) of meditating.

I really wanted to do better. One of my hopes for the meditation retreat was that I will learn to sit comfortably in the lotus position. I would have probably beaten myself down for not being good enough with this during the first days, but on my way to the retreat I had gotten an invaluable message that helped me with my self-esteem.

I had to travel to the small city of Leer in Germany to get on the train to Meppen. In Leer I saw my friend Annika, whom I know from my psychology studies and who has done several retreats in her life. After happy greeting hugs, she asked me where I’m headed:

"Hey, Dan! Where are you going?"

"I’m going meditating!"

"Oh, it’s your first time, right?"

"Right."

"Good, good. Remember to be friendly to yourself. Ve-e-ery friendly."

That’s what I did. When pain arose and I felt like I’m weak because I couldn’t take it any longer, Annika’s comforting words rang in my ears and I felt alright with changing my position. I mean, it made sense as well, right? I had to observe my breath and sensations, not suffer in pain.

The friendly, laughing Buddha

Shaking towards balance

Well, yes, but only until the promise of Strong Determination. On the fourth day, all students had to give a promise to themselves that they would sit in the same position for the one hour “Group meditation in the hall” that takes place three times a day. "Fuck me" was all I could think when I heard about this.

There it was, the mid-day groupsitting on the fourth day of the retreat – the first time everyone had to sit in the same position for an hour. I don’t know if I was projecting my own fear onto others, but it it seemed like we’re all entering a battlefield, not a meditation hall.

On the fourth day, we also moved from observing the nose to observing the whole body. Everyone had to use their attention to hover over their body part by part and notice any sensations on every part of the body. Itching, tingling, cold, warmth, sweat, pain, numbness, vibration, air or whatever else you could feel. Once you felt a sensation, you had to stay with it until it passed away in it’s impermanent nature.

I was already familiar with the routine of my body and my mind. Around 30 minutes goes by just fine until the stretching tension in my thighs grows into pain. After around 35 minutes it starts pulling the knees as well and the pain occupies the mind. This also means that the simple sensations become like the hidden treasures Indiana Jones was always trying to find. I would be observing my forehead and thinking „just give me an itch you little shit“. And when the little shit did give me an itch – or any other sensation – it was something to pay attention to for a couple of seconds instead of the pain. At around 40 minutes I started shaking. You know the plank exercise people use to train the core? It’s the same type of shaking that comes when you get tired during the plank exercise. At first it’s just a little bit of shaking, almost innocent. Five minutes later I’m already trembling like a construction worker holding one of those concrete breakers. All of my body feels like the uncomfortable sensation you have in your knee when the doctor hits it with their small hammer to test your reflexes.

From what I could hear in the room, the atmosphere was tense. In earlier sessions I could hear people changing their positions, but now it was complete silence. All I could really hear was the A/C slowly fanning in the background, and my own trembling breath. The pain, the tension and the silence kept growing, which means I started thinking about changing the position. “C’mon Dan, you can do this…” I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

Until suddenly, somewhere in the room, someone blasts a short yet powerful thunder of a fart. A wave of giggles swept the room and for the first and last time throughout the course I witnessed the teacher say something during the session itself to calm the people down.

"Farting person," I thought to myself, "thank you so much for being the beautiful human being you are. May you become as liberated as that fart."

I remembered Annika’s wise words again: "Be friendly to yourself. Ve-e-ery friendly." I changed my position and didn’t even begin to feel bad about it.

Everything went the same way during the evening session on the same day, but without any farts to loosen the tension in the room, and inside the meditators. The routine started all over again: pain again, shaking again, trembling again. "Don’t give into it," I told myself, but then I also had to tell myself: "Wait, stop talking to yourself, you’re just supposed to observe." I kept observing my trembling body until I realised where I’ve seen this sort of trembling before – my grandma. My dad’s mom, who passed away in the summer of 2015, had Parkinson’s disease and would sometimes tremble or have a limb tremble in the same way. "Holy shit, I’m going to break into my Parkinson’s disease right here." I know Parkinson’s doesn’t work like that, and rationally I even knew at that moment what a stupid thought it was, but the fear was real for me at that moment. "Fuck that." I changed my position again.

Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam

I had a boost of hope though. Most of the teachings and the chanting during the course are played from the recordings by the original teacher, mr. Goenka, who started with these courses in the first place. Around five minutes before the end of a one hour sitting, his chanting would start from the speakers. During that evening session on the fourth day, I had changed my position just a couple of minutes before his singing voice spread across the room.

In the evenings you can ask questions from the local teacher. I went up to him with a question:

“I shake. Any guidance?“

“Stop it willingly.“

Stop it willingly? Okay, thanks. The next morning I was in the meditation hall again. Forty minutes passed and the regular process starts again. First pain, then shaking. Alright, let’s try this: I stop the shaking. After that I could observe sensations on my body for two seconds and then the shaking would start again until I stopped it again. Yet again I could only observe my sensations for two seconds until I started shaking again. This is what I had to work with. At a later session these two seconds of not shaking and being able to observe my body became three seconds of not shaking and being able to observe my sensations. In the morning groupsitting on day five I didn’t manage to sit in the same position for the full hour, but I came closer again.

***

We’re now at the mid-day groupsitting of day five. I had just had a good nap after lunch and I felt calm. You know what happens next, right? Thirty minutes of the sitting pass by just fine. Then, as always, the tension in my legs grows into pain. At around 40-minutes I start shaking, but I’m already more used to it than during the previous days. I start again with the rounds of shaking, stopping the shaking, and observing the body for a couple of seconds. The shaking increases and becomes trembling again. The core of my body trembles and makes the rest of the body tremble as well. I try to observe it as any other sensation on my body. I can feel I’m getting closer. Every time I stop the shaking I can just barely observe the sensations on the part of the body that I’m trying to pay attention to. My body feels warm from the shaking and from my own mental pressure to stay in the same position. I start sweating and I can’t stop myself from thinking: „Please start chanting already“. The trembling and sweating has taken over my body. I can’t even stop the shaking for a couple of seconds anymore.

Until, boom, I can hear mr. Goenka’s voice from the speakers: “Anicca-a-a-a“. The teacher’s chanting meant I only had a maximum of five minutes until the end of the session. I kept on trembling at my spot, but I didn’t really care about that anymore, because the chanting had grasped my attention. I was going to make it.

At this point you should know that the chanting ends with the teacher repeating the words “bhavatu sabba mangalam“ for three times. This translates into “may all beings to be happy“. To this, the students reply three times with “sadhu“, which means “wise words, we agree.“ At one of the earlier evening discourses, the teacher said that saying “sadhu“ is by no means a religious chant or a rite of passage. “You should only say it when you really feel that you wish all beings to be happy.“ So far I had been in so much pain myself, that there was no room left inside me to wish all beings to be happy.

Now I had almost made through a full hour without changing my position. “Bhavatu, sabba, mangelam,“ I hear the teacher slowly chant for the first time. „Bhavatu, sab-ba, manga-a-alam,“ he goes, even slower. I’m thinking: „Come on, man, you’re killing me here!“ The teacher has one more time to sing it and now he goes as slow as he can: „Bhavatu-u-u, sa-a-ab-ba-a-a, man-n-nga-a-alam-m-m...“

Tears of relief arise into my eyes. I’m here. I made it! And I wished all beings could feel this sort of relief from their sufferings. I wished all beings to be happy. I could hear myself whispering to the teacher’s singing: „sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.“

My legs were dead after this. Have you seen Wolf of Wall Street? The scene where they eat too many of those old ludes and can't stand on their feet anymore? That’s what I remembered when I was trying to stand up after that session. I would just fall over once I tried to put any weight on either of my legs. I seemed so extremely stupid to myself right there that I had to laugh at myself. I stayed on the mat, giggling, and waiting for my legs to recover. I felt humbled by my own limits as a human being. It was a nice moment.

This was me, but with a smile on my face

After that I managed to sit through all of the groupsittings during the retreat. The next ones were still really hard, but always a tiny bit better than the previous one. By the seventh day I even felt fairly comfortable with sitting through an entire hour of meditation.

My focus became narrower and narrower while observing the sensations on my body. When we started with observing our bodies part by part, I was happy to feel an itch while observing my entire forehead all at once. After that I could hover over my forehead from the top to the bottom of it with my attention ranging from one edge of the forehead to the other. The next level was moving over my forehead with my attention being as thick as a painter’s brush; I could move over the surface of the forehead stripe by stripe. This is how narrow my focus mostly remained until the end of the retreat. However, on the eighth day I did have a moment where I was going over my neck, stripe by stripe, when I suddenly realized that I could narrow my focus down by at least five times. The stripe that was as thick as a painter’s brush became as narrow as a one millimeter laser going over my skin. I really felt as if I was burning the skin of my body with a hot laser. It felt as it I could observe my sankharas with a burning glance and let them fade away.

This was the most focused I managed to get during the retreat. During the evening discourse after that sitting I felt like on some sort of drug. I was as stimulated as one would be after drinking five cups of coffee, but without having any of the sideeffects.

Just... why, man?

Why? Why do all of this? I could have spent these ten days working ten hours a day on learning a new language, learning a new skill, spending time with the people close to me, watching a whole series, etc. Why sit in silence and shake in pain for ten full days?

As I said in the beginning of this post, this was the hardest, and most intense, but also the most liberating thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I got a closer look at my own mind than I ever have before. As my focus became sharper and sharper with each day, the awareness wing of my Vipassana bird became stronger and stronger. At the same time, I saw how my mind reacts to the physical pain in my body. Day by day, I could train my mind to react less and less to the physical pain with its own mental pain. The more I was able to just observe the pain, the less I felt the pain mentally, and the equanimity wing of my Vipassana bird became stronger and stronger.

The pain became an analogy of staying with whatever task in everyday life. We often get stuck in our daily work tasks, and it’s so easy to pick up your phone, or get a snack, or even go to the toilet, when you would just need to stay with your task for a few more minutes to figure it out. Both the aversion towards the pain of doing the task, and the pleasantness of doing something else are impermanent, thus, they will pass. The task itself will pass too of course.

“A ten day course is just one step on a path towards liberation, which is 10,000 miles long,” says Goenka. By observing these cravings and aversions in our mind during a ten day Vipassana course, we become only slightly better in being able to guide our mind instead of letting it guide us. To guide it a tiny bit more towards love and compassion for others.

This is why I decided that the first thing I’m going to do when I get home is to call my dad. Without being afraid of the emotions that came up in me, I was able to tell him about things and emotions connected to him, both positive and negative, in a way I had never done before. I’ve said many of the things I said to him during that call before in my life as well, but now they came from the depths of my heart where they had never come from before – I had developed my wisdom of experience. The words „I love you, dad“ had developed a new, deeper meaning.

The hardest, most intense, and most liberating thing I’ve done in my life. For anyone looking to improve their mental health, or for someone, who is just curious to learn more about their own mind – a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat is what I would recommend first.

PS! Please keep in mind that while this was an amazing experience for me, and – because of that – I write about it very expressively, this does not mean I want to say that a ten day course works like magic for eveyone. People with particular backgrounds and certain traumas can have a very traumatic experience at a retreat, which needs some more attention than just observing the pain as it is. Nor does it mean that I think a ten day Vipassana course is the only thing that brings these benefits to you, and through your liberation, to others. There are other ways both inside and outside of the meditation world, to achieve these goals, and I wish to hear more about and explore these ways as well.

pühapäev, 24. veebruar 2019

Anicca

The impermanent ten day Vipassana silent meditation retreat

Doing a ten day silent meditation retreat and then sharing a post about the personal experience publicly on Facebook doesn’t seem like quite the “enlightened” thing to do. Yet I don’t think any other experience has been as beneficial for my self-development as this one. It was the hardest and most intense thing I’ve ever done, but also the most liberating one. Having been to a psychologist myself, having studied psychology in the university, having had personal experiences with psychedelics – all these things with great value to me – a ten day meditation retreat is what I would now first recommend to almost anyone who is just looking to learn more about themselves or even would like to improve their mental well-being. In other words to take a step closer to freedom, happiness and love.

Impermanent wisdom of impermanence

Through Vipassana meditation we try to learn to see things as they really are. To see things as they really are, we have to develop awareness and equanimity. They are described like the two wings of the bird of Vipassana – both are required for it to able to fly. The first one implies being able to notice things or pay attention to things; the other one means that we don’t react to these things we notice, but observe them just as they are.

Let’s take chocolate as an example. I’ve really enjoyed chocolate throughout my life. The way a delicious chocolate sweetly, softly and creamily can melt when I eat it, giving rise to the sensations on my tastebuds is just amazing. Obviously, that has made me crave for chocolate like crazy and sometimes eat a (shit-)ton of chocolate at once. This isn’t very healthy neither in the short-term (feeling sick physically, feeling weak mentally) nor in the long-term (obesity, diabetes etc.). Not to mention that it’s damn addictive so I’ll probably do it again in the future and probably feel miserable again after doing it.

Now, with awareness, when the craving for chocolate arises, I can be aware of the craving; with equanimity I’ve learned not to react to it in any way. I’m not going to buy chocolate, nor am I going to tell myself that I’m a hopeless sweet tooth who can’t handle their chocolate craving. I will just observe the craving, just as it is, and most likely, the craving will pass after a while.

Just imagine this silky substance covering your tastebuds one by one with divine pleasure

This brings us to anicca. This is a word you will hear a lot during the teachings at the retreat. In English it means “impermanence”. A fundamental claim of the practice is that everything is impermanent, everything changes all the time. New things appear, old things fade away. Everything that exists and has ever existed will at some point stop existing.

During the evening discourses, the teacher, mr. S. N. Goenka, even referred to how scientists in the Western world went deeper and deeper into looking at what matter is made of and discovered that the atom is just a pulsating particle made of wavelengths, doing nothing else than appearing and dissappearing. The teacher said that the scientist(s) who discovered this won a Nobel prize for their work, so I imagine he meant Louis de Broglie who “proposed that just as light has both wave-like and particle-like properties, electrons also have wave-like properties”, and George Paget Thomson as well as the pair of Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer who in separate experiments confirmed de Broglie’s hypothesis. Well, if I know my craving for chocolate will probably dissappear after some time because of its impermanence, then it isn’t very wise to react to it, now is it?

Louis de Broglie

Seems reasonable, but just integrating this information intellectually into your personal wisdom is not enough. According to the teachings at the retreat, true wisdom comprises of three parts.

First, there is intellectual wisdom. This is wisdom you can get from reading whatever type of source of knowledge, or listening to someone share their knowledge.

Second, there is the wisdom of critical thinking. Here you have to put in your own effort to figure out whether what you understood at the level of intellectual wisdom makes sense or not. For example, when you’ve read that by doing a 10-day Vipassana retreat you will become more aware of your sensations without reacting to them, and that this will help you become more happy/liberated/loving, you should also check whether this has been true for other people so far (it has, for thousands, but please be aware that this doesn’t mean everyone), or whether science in some other way confirms the benefits of meditation (it does, but you should check the specifics out yourself).

Finally, we get to the third part of wisdom. While this is the most important part, it should be emphasized here that all three parts of wisdom are required for wisdom to be a whole; if one is missing than the others lose their power too.

The last type of wisdom is experiential wisdom. As the name says, if you really want to be wise about something, you have to experience it yourself. While they were able to confirm that matter works as a wavelength in their labs, De Broglie, Thompson, Davisson and Germer still probably had to deal with their cravings for chocolate (or money, alcohol, sex, cigarettes, power etc.) within themselves. Wisdom does not become whole until you experience it yourself, and the same goes for whatever one can learn from a ten day Vipassana silent meditation retreat.

A reasonable question at this point is: well, but exactly how does just observing sensations make me happier or more free or filled with more love? This requires an understanding of the universal law of life (bullshit detector triggered!) as Goenka referred to it.

Imagine a piece of string (or rope). You grab the string between your fingers so that your left hand is holding it from the left end and the right hand is holding it from the right end. Now let’s move from our pleasant example of craving for chocolate to a more unpleasant example of having aversion (i.e. having a strong disliking) towards getting up from bed early in the morning.

First, you give in to this aversion by staying in bed longer, which equals to twisting the string by one turn with your left hand. Then you get to work later, which is another twist of the string in the opposite direction with your right hand. You have increased stress, because your boss is angry, and you’re also not sure you’re able to finish all your tasks of the day on time, which means more twists to your string. The more unpleasant things happen, the more you twist your string until it’s so tight that you can’t twist it anymore. Nothing too bad happens with one day of being late to work, but if this happens over and over again – with stress for work growing and growing – you may become so tense that you end up having a burnout, or depression, or anxiety.

All of these tensions, which may be both from cravings and aversions, are called sankharas. However, they’re only made when you keep twisting the string. What happens when you let the twisted rope go and just observe it? It releases all of its tension, unravels, and returns to its original form. When we learn observe our tensions just as they are, then we become able to let go of these sankharas.

Twisting and twisting and twisting...

Finally, and maybe most importantly, we get to what happens when we are able to let go of our own tensions. It’s quite simple – we love. According to the teachings, when we are able to let go of our cravings and aversions, the things that make us so focused on our own selves, we become more able to direct our attention towards what makes us really happy: love and compassion towards the other beings in this world. As the story was told at the retreat, since the moment Buddha became enlightened at the age of 35, he dedicated every day of the rest of his life to lessening the suffering of others. He kept on spreading love and compassion until his last breath at the age of 80. You won't become a Buddha with ten days, but you will take the first steps on the path of becoming liberated.

Sounds like bullshit? Well, I can only ask you to find more information about it, think critically about it, and then go experience it yourself.

Path to meditation

The fist time I started meditating was when I was 17. I had gotten to a point in life where it only consisted of school, football practice, and studying and sleeping at home. This was six days a week. I did not socialize a lot and within that routine I lost my interest for the things I had to do. I got stuck, displeased and occasionally quite sad. I did go to a psychologist to talk about it, but the real turning point for me was reading the book “Mindset: a mental guide for sport” by Jackie Reardon. The author used to a be a talented tennis player who struggled a lot with her emotions on the court and started looking for ways to deal with them. A Vipassana retreat was the turning point in her life that helped her take charge of her own mind.

Based on what she learned through Vipassana, but also from science done with athletes regarding their performance, and from the personal experiences of athletes, “Mindset” gives a framework of values for an athlete, and practical tips about how to train that mindset. One of the many practical exercises in the book is to meditate by observing your breath for ten minutes a day. I began doing that every day for one and a half years until the practice started fading away when I started studying in the university.

I stopped meditating, because I felt like I can keep a meditative mindset without keeping up the practice. Studying in a foreign country, my new studies, and a lot of international people kept up my curiosity for life. Of course, there were periods where I was absolutely non-curious towards things in life, and sadness (e.g from being homesick) would creep in, but overall I lived a decently happy and satisfying life without meditating until about one and a half years ago. It was the spring of 2017 when some restlessness started creeping in and by the December of 2017 I was at a point in my life again, where I just felt miserable.

Thanks to a beautiful week of celebrating the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 with a group of (meditative) friends from my studies, I decided to start meditating again from the third of January, 2018. I increased the time of meditation to an average of 20 minutes a day. I listened to some podcasts about it and got new ideas about how to approach the practice. I felt more clear, focused and peaceful. Thus, with some small exceptions, I’ve kept on meditating daily since. As many of my friends have done a meditation retreat, I decided it’s finally time for me to do one too.

“If 20 minutes of meditation a day is so helpful for me,” I thought, “then what would happen with 10 full days of meditation?”

To be continued...

kolmapäev, 14. märts 2018

Mushrooms, Ecstacy and LSD: Save the Young Souls!

"The solution to the problem of drugs doesn't lie in punishing youth by shaming them, but in the effective cooperation of members of the society," finds Dan Tõnus.

I'm writing this article because of two reasons. The first one is a phone call I recently received from a friend of mine:

"Dan! I need your help. The school has started a witch-hunt for people who have used drugs. People are pulled straight out of class and are taken to do drug tests - this is not okay! There must be a better way. It can't be that the school or parents are not able to pay attention to people at the right time and when things get out of hand then people who have used drugs will be shamed to scare others and have their lives ruined. This doesn't lead to results, this will make the youth only rebel more. You have been in touch with this topic. How to prevent all of this? How to reach young people earlier? How to talk about different substances reasonably without having the youngsters rushing to try them out?”

The second reason for writing this is Toivo Tänavsuu's interview with dr. Irja Ivarinen, the lead doctor of the youth psychiatric department in The North Estonia Medical Centre. For me, this was a highly valuable reading, because of a few reasons. The reader gets a feeling about the frighteningly high rate of depression among young people. From dr. Ivarinen's answers, you can tell that the people working with depressive youth are doing their best within the limits of the resources they can use. In my opinion, a warm attitude and understanding are extremely important regarding this subject. According to dr. Ivarinen, many young people use drugs like amphetamine, ecstacy, and LSD to treat themselves. They decline mainstream medicine, because some of them believe doctors to be "slaves of big pharma", whose goal is just to make money from selling mainstream drugs.

While the answers from dr. Ivarinen make me feel safe about our doctors at least being on the right path in terms of treating depression, I'm not so sure about the way drug problems are being dealt with. There are examples of solutions from around the world, which help reduce the use of drugs among young people without the latter being shamed or having the rebel. We should work for the same goal in Estonia - to find ways that satisfy all sides.

I don't know how much parents have read about drugs. How psilocybin, which exists in the so-called magic mushrooms, may help in treating depression. And how MDMA (the main ingredient in ecstacy pills) has been found in some studies to be twice as effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder than other methods. As a non-medical example - how the rapper A$AP Rocky, Apple founder Steve Jobs as well as Francis Crick who discovered the DNA helix have all publicly disclosed that their experiences with LSD have helped them to be more creative or to think of unexpectable solutions.

Steve

No wonder young people want to try. Even more so: from my peers I’ve heard that young people have mostly had positive experiences with these substances. These positive experiences include dancing to techno music like never before while under the influence of an ecstasy pill and feeling endless love towards their friends. Or feeling as they have become one with the world and its essence on LSD, while experiencing what their mind can do to a whole new extent through the myriad of colours and patterns they see in front of their eyes.

In the light of these experiences, all the scare stories they hear from teachers and parents seem like fraud. The same goes for doctors. In the beginning the thought of doctors being slaves of big pharma seemed like jargon of conspiracy theorists, but it's no joke that there are problems with research regarding the effectiveness of antidepressants.

As with a big proportion of science, the research on antidepressants has to deal with the reality in which significantly more articles are published about experiments where the results match the hypothesis. At the same time, most of the experiments where the hypotheses are not supported by the results - for example, the results don't reveal any effect for antidepressants - have a much lower chance of getting published or won't be formed into a scientific article. In addition, a good proportion of these studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies producing the drugs, something that creates bias in the researchers evaluating the effectiveness of a drug. Finally, most antidepressants have sedative effects, which in itself doesn't equal to reducing depression.

Having heard how easily antidepressants are prescribed, I also find myself wondering if doctors are on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies. Once a friend of mine visited their GP to get a blood test, because of having a sudden fear of death once every month, on average. Nothing was found from my friend's blood, however, antidepressants were prescribed (which my friend threw away). As it is revealed by dr. Ivarinen's answers there is a big shortage of staff to deal with the situation. Obviously it seems easier to prescribe antidepressants rather than get to the core of the problem each individual has.

Of course, antidepressants help thousands of people suffering from major depression to avoid suicide. 60% of biomedical research conducted in the USA is funded by the private sector. Without this money we would probably be doing much worse when it comes to all sorts of prescription drugs.

And indeed, the aforementioned recreational drugs are not without risks - a strong link is believed to exist between the use of psilocybin, MDMA or LSD and hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD). Especially with MDMA long-term use has shown negative effects on a person's memory, anxiety and depression.

But parents, healthcare professionals, and policy makers have to ask themselves: Do young people even care about it if these substances are demonized? Or do we we dare to talk to youngsters about the different effects of drugs and let them choose for themselves? I believe it would be better in any way than prohibition and having a witch-hunt for users.

In June 2015, Johann Hari held a speech at TED Global London called "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong". He has also written a book about this topic and answered criticism regarding his main viewpoints.

Hari gives a detailed description of an experiment conducted in the 70's called the "Rat Park".

In an earlier experiment about addiction, researchers had put rats inside small cages supplied with opium water and regular water. Rats became addicted to the opium and drank the water until they died. Conclusion: opium creates a deadly addiction.

In the "Rat Park" experiment, in addition to opium water, researchers supplied the rats' cages with wheels, delicious food and - probably most importantly - other rats to play and mate with. The result: "Rat Park" rats didn't become addicted to opium water. Moreover, when rats from isolated cages were moved to cages in "Rat Park" then they stopped consuming opium water. Hari's poetical conclusion: "Addiction is the adaptation to your environment. It's not you - it's the cage you live in."

Hari brings parallels to the human society and explains that instead of discarding addicts and labeling them we should try to understand them, and to direct the money spent on the war on drugs to help people who have used drugs back on the right path. On a path, where they have a social network and a goals to exist in life, which is not connected to the drug at hand. This might be seen as utopia if it weren't for Portugal, where they're already doing something like this.

Johann Hari (TEDxLondon): 'Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong' (CLICK TO WATCH)

13 years ago, Portugal decriminalized (a word that scares many) the use of drugs. The government started treating drug use as a social problem, not as a criminal problem. The use of drugs is still illegal, but the user is confronted with different consequences than before. The people who have not behaved according to the law will be invited in front of a committee, where they are talked about the background of the situation and the effects of the drugs used.

The committee has the right to sentence the person to a fine (similar weight as with a traffic offence), community service, treatment at a treatment service, or to issue a form that affects how well the person will get a job later in life. Importantly, none of these things have to be done if the person is ready to change themselves. One of the representatives of these committees has said that it often seems to other countries that drug users are let off the hook easier after the decriminalization. But actually, the opposite is true. Before decriminalization, the attention went only towards dealers while now every single person caught with substance use has to go in front of one of these committees.

The results? Drug-related HIV infections have gone down 90% compared to 2011. Drug-related deaths are almost the lowest in Europe. Only three people out of a million die annually because of overdosing. The average number in the European Union is 17.3 people out of a million. In 1998, 23 500 people received treatment for their addiction while the number has now risen to 35 000 - the availability of beds, medical facilities and medical support has increased. An estimated 400 million euros has been taken out of Portugal's illegal drug market because of this.

While Portugal can serve as a role model for how to approach drug policies in general, the small but powerful Iceland has recently come into spotlight for showing a way to deal with addiction among young people. Their prevention-focused approach is based on three pillars: evidence-based practice, community-based solutions and a dialogue between science, politics and practice.

How Iceland Saved Its Teenagers - BBC News (CLICK TO WATCH)

This means that every year, all children in Iceland fill in a survey about different risk factors in their life: self-esteem, alcohol and/or drug use, family circumstances, neighborhood situation and support, attitudes towards school, recreational activities, religiosity, the quality of parental support, love and guidance, support from peers, anxiety, depression, suicidality etc. Based on the results of the survey, communities create better opportunities for spending free time, families work with creating stronger bonds, youngsters are being taught independence as well as how to relate to their peers. There's a person within each municipality to whom researchers explain results and who organizes meetings between parents, teachers, coaches and instructors to discuss the current situation and how to make it better. Portugal and Iceland show that there are ways to mindfully address issues like the ones that (young) Estonians face.

I invite our people to make an effort for our youth and to end the scaring and labeling. Instead, let's direct our energy towards understanding each other and towards a scientific approach - use surveys to gather feedback from all youngsters in Estonia, and then pay attention to the aspects which most need it. Let's bring together the people who can start creating a healthy environment for the youth - young people themselves, their parents, teachers, coaches, and maybe even law enforcement.

Probably then, love will follow.
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