Late in 2006, after too many years of addiction and mental turmoil, as I was preparing to soon leave my job of seven years and venture into the unknown, I signed up to take a five-day meditation course being offered in central Portland. The cost was $450 for the whole thing, and though I wasn’t sure that the five-day course was the best course for me, it was the only course I knew of that was being offered, so I signed up out to take part in the “only game in town.”
Within perhaps a day of signing up, before confirming my attendance by making a payment, a very trustworthy friend suddenly showed up from an extended absence. Tom, who for years was the full-time elevator repairman at Portland’s World Trade Center, where I supervised the on-site security staff, appeared on a brief work break from other regional work he was doing. Tom called me down to the local coffee shop, and as I arrived, he informed me of a ten-day meditation course he had taken years earlier– a rigorous course conducted by experienced volunteers, at sites that only subsist from voluntary donations from students.
Though I’d known Tom for years, and didn’t even know that he’d ever learned to meditate, immediately I knew that the course Tom was guiding me to was the perfect course for me. I followed Tom’s guidance to Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka online, researched the website extensively, and felt very enthusiastic about signing up for my first ten-day course, held in January of 2007.
“The ten-day course was the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, but it was also the most useful,” Tom explained to me.
Upon completing that first 2007 course, I would say the same.
Since my first course, I finally gained the upper hand on my boomerang addiction pattern, and haven’t smoked since. I’ve returned as a student six more times, and as a volunteer assistant a dozen times as well–giving me a grand total of over six months spent at meditation centers in since that first 2007 course.
I can’t even begin to explain just how extremely valuable a tool meditation has been in my daily life– EVERYTHING I do is beautifully enhanced so long as I continue my meditation practice daily (which, admittedly, has been a challenge on many occasions). Every major life decision I’ve made in recent years has been made while or after meditating. More than physical exercise, meditation was my preparation for walking across America– in addition to my best “medicine” across the miles. I meditate whenever unsure about which is the best road to take, literally and metaphorically. Should I begin teaching in 2014, I will meditate deeply in preparation to enter the classroom, as well as meditate daily throughout the school years.
I actually spent the first half of this month in a Goenka-taught meditation course, in southern Georgia– the first such course I’d taken in two years (I was long overdue). The course was great preparation for the challenges I face across the rest of 2013.
As I was preparing to leap into a whole new lifestyle in 2006, amid years of mental turmoil and addiction, I found the most important piece of the puzzle was to simply prepare to move forward–move ahead with the best tools and knowledge I had available to me. The intention brought my well-trusted friend Tom to me with angelic precision, arriving to guide my intention to the best of options for me at that moment in life. (Amen!)
I plan to meditate and volunteer with fellow students–many of whom have become dear friends of mine–plenty more in the years ahead.
S.N. Goenka, even though you and your assistant teachers prefer not to be thanked by your students, I’d like to thank you for the simple act of seeking your calling, finding it, and living it–for you’ve had a truly fantastic impact on the world around you.
May we all seek our unique calling, find it, and LIVE OUR PART as well…
Infinite Love,
GT
S.N. Goenka, 1924-2013