Meditating into Equanimity
- msmolnikava
- Feb 19
- 4 min read
My Experience with Vipassana Meditation (ten day course)
I Finally Sat Vipassana
Vipassana first entered my life in 2010.
I had just returned from six months in India — living in ashrams, studying yoga, immersing myself in spiritual teachings. I was consuming practices the way a starving person consumes food. I came from a place where diversity of culture and spirituality was limited, and suddenly the world felt infinite.
I signed up for a 10-day Vipassana course.
And I never went.
The timing wasn’t right.But more truthfully — I wasn’t ready.
The Stages of the Spiritual Path No One Talks About
Looking back, I can see that I was in what I now call the Bliss Stage.
This is the phase where everything feels magical.
I saw synchronicities everywhere.I feelt guided and protected.Manifestation seemed effortless.I felt connected to all that is.
There’s a subtle intoxication in this stage — a spiritual high. It feels expansive, alive, extraordinary.
And quietly, ego weaves itself in.
I was collecting spiritual experiences. I wanted depth. I wanted intensity. I was addicted to intensity. I wanted stories. I wanted to stand out.
Then comes the next stage.
Disillusionment.
The magic fades.Manifestation stops working.Life stops feeling enchanted.
I questioned everything. I felt abandoned. I lose trust in my inner guidance.
The very practices that once made me feel elevated, made me feel empty.
This was the dark night of the soul.
I descended into the underground parts of myself. I met my grief, my fear, my shadow. I reclaimed pieces of my power that were fragmented. And I returned — not glowing — but humbled.
Softer.
More human.
More empathetic.
And eventually, when stay with it long enough, something else emerges.
Acceptance.
Nothing to manifest.
Nowhere to get.
Nothing to prove.
Just what is.
Fifteen Years Later
I found myself sitting in a Vipassana meditation hall in North Fork, California for a ten days silent course.
And something struck me immediately.
No one will congratulate me for sitting two hours without moving.
No one will be impressed by my yoga training, my trauma work background, my knowledge of Chinese medicine.
There is no identity to perform.
There is only sensation in the body.
Vipassana is rooted in the observation of anicca — impermanence.
Everything changes.
Every sensation arises and passes.
Pleasant.
Unpleasant.
Neutral.
All of it.
The Romantic Idea of Meditation
I once believed meditation would transform human nature into permanent bliss.
That if I practiced deeply enough, I could transcend discomfort.
Vipassana dismantled that illusion.
It is not about becoming blissful.
It is about becoming equanimous.
It may be the deepest trauma work I have ever experienced.
In the Buddhist framework, there is the word sankhara — mental-emotional imprints that remain in the body when experiences are not fully processed.
It’s not what happened - it’s what stayed.
Most of us don’t even know what is lingering inside because we never sit with ourselves long enough to listen.
The body is intelligent. It speaks in sensation.
From the lens of Chinese medicine, these sankharas resemble stagnation — blockages in the flow of Qi. When energy doesn’t move, tension accumulates.
When tension accumulates, biochemistry shifts. Emotions intensify.
Anger.
Irritability.
Fear.
Craving.
Aversion.
Not because we are broken — but because we are holding.
Vipassana is not about suppressing emotion. It is about feeling sensation without reacting. Without craving the pleasant. Without resisting the unpleasant.
This is purification at the level of the nervous system.
Breathing slows.
Thoughts soften.
Sometimes there is a subtle internal rhythm — like a universal pulse moving through the body.
And then the next moment: severe pain in the neck.
Nausea.
Bloating.
Restlessness.
Rage.
Self-pity.
For ten days, I sat in silence for nearly 13 hours a day.
I experienced:
Ecstasy
Deep peace
Fear
Physical agony
Irritation at people moving in the hall
The urge to scream
The urge to run
The desire for it to never end
And one profound realization:
My suffering did not come from outside.
It came from my judgment of sensation.
From craving joy.
From rejecting discomfort.
Heaven and hell are states of the mind.
Mind creates tension.
Tension influences the mind.
No one is coming to save me.
And strangely, that realization feels liberating.
Equanimity Is the Real Miracle
Vipassana strips spirituality of performance.
It removes the audience.
It removes the narrative.
It confronted me with the raw mechanics of my own mind.
Over time, something begins to shift.
Greater awareness.
Higher threshold for emotional reactivity.
More gratitude for simple moments.
Less identification with passing states.
Not because life becomes easier.
But because I stopped arguing with what is.
Staying neutral in the midst of sensation creates presence. Presence creates potency. Potency creates freedom.
The miracle is not in manifesting extraordinary experiences.
The miracle is in staying present with ordinary reality.
This moment will never repeat itself.
The art of living is accepting that death is inevitable — and choosing to be fully here anyway.
Without craving.
Without aversion.
Without judgment.
Just awareness.
Fifteen years ago, I wasn’t ready.
Today, I understand that Vipassana was never about becoming special.
It was about becoming honest.
And discovering that everything I was searching for outside has always been inside — waiting patiently for me to sit still long enough to listen.
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