The Mindset Mentor - My 10 Day Silent Meditation

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

Episode 453 -  Want to know what it is like to meditate for 10+ hours a day for 10 days straight? Listen to this episode as I break down my 10 day silent meditation retreat called Vipassana. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top-rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to-the-point, no-BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome. Today I'm going to be talking about my 10-day silent meditation retreat called Vipassana. So you might be listening to that and think, what the hell is that all about? 10 days of complete silence and meditation. What exactly

is this thing called Vipassana? So Vipassana is, according to the Buddha, the only form of meditation that he ever taught 2,600 years ago. And it's 10 days of silence with at least 10 hours a day of meditation into it. And to give you an idea, during this silent meditation, there's no phone, there's no computer, there's no talking, there's no reading, there's no journaling, there's no looking other people in the eyes. It is supposed to be a complete inward journey. Now, I know some of you are listening and you're like, screw that. Why would I ever want to do something like that? You have to realize we are so inundated with stimuli all day long,

every single day. We have phones going off. We have things happening. We have cars driving by. So people calling us, people talking to us. We have stimuli that's coming into our brain all of the time. In your entire life, have you ever just sat quietly for an entire day, not bothered by anybody else, not looking anybody else in the eye, not talking to yourself, nothing? And I would assume most people's answer is no. Think about how beneficial that could be for you to just completely reset and go back to the way, because our brains are not designed to keep up with all of the technology that we have. Our brains are advanced enough to make the technology,

but they're not as advanced as they need to be in order to keep up with all of the technology that we have. Constantly being inundated with phone calls and text messages and emails and bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, notifications, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of these things were just constantly inundated, right? And so people ask, well, why would you not talk to anybody? Well, the reason why you don't talk to anybody is because it's a complete inward journey. Talking to somebody and having a conversation could make you think about that conversation later on and go through that conversation in your head in a meditation.

No phone, no computer, none of that stimulus. No reading because then you could think about that later on. If you have a really crazy breakthrough, you might think to yourself, I can't wait to go and journal this when I get back to my room. Well, that's why you can't journal as well. And the reason why you can't look people in the eyes is because looking, we can actually have communication through eye movements, through gestures. There's none of those things allowed as well. And so it's definitely different than anything else that I've ever done before, but it is one of the most beneficial things I've ever done. I promise you that. Now, I have been meditating for a few years now. I usually meditate for about

30 minutes to an hour every single day. So I have been doing it for some time, but there were people there who had never meditated before in their entire lives and boom, just jumped straight into it. And they said it was hard. It was tough for them, but they got through it. For me, I didn't feel like it was too tough. The first two days felt like a week, but then from day three to 10, it just kind of breezed by. I got used to the schedule. And the thing about it is there's only a couple of things you could do. You could be meditating and you could be either be meditating in your room, except for there's, you know, three group meditations in the meditation hall every single day. So you could be either be meditating. You could go for a walk in the forest and the

forest was only maybe a five minute walk. So really can't spend a whole lot of time doing that unless you just want to keep doing laps. Or the third thing you could be doing is you could be laying in your room and the room has nothing. There's nothing on the walls. It's just blank walls. And it's a very interesting experience because you find your brain wanting, because it's so addicted to stimulus, it wants to do something. It wants to read. It wants to talk to somebody. It wants to look at a magazine. It wants to journal. It wants to be stimulated in some sort of way. But there is absolutely no stimulation at this place for your brain. And so it takes a couple days for your brain to kind of

calm down. And they teach meditation techniques throughout this entire time. So day one through three, they teach you just to focus on the breath going in and out of your nostrils, just the feeling of the breath, right? And what they're doing is they're sharpened. They're teaching you to sharpen your brain. Like it's like a knife. You're sharpening it before you go deeper into a meditation. So you're starting to feel this sensation. You're starting to get your brain to stop thinking about other things. And what you notice is we're so, our brains are so untrained that it's hard. You can even try it. Like if you close your eyes and just close your eyes and take two, three, four deep breaths in through your nose, fully in, fully out, do it a few times. And what you'll notice is that by breath two, maybe if you're lucky by breath three, your brain's already somewhere else, right? Our brains are so untrained that you can't even go

for three breaths without it going somewhere else. And so the way I like to think of our brain and the way I explain it easiest for people to understand is it's kind of like a puppy, right? You don't get pissed off at yourself when your brain starts going anywhere else. So you focus on the breath and when it goes somewhere else and you start to notice it's going somewhere else and you finally catch yourself as you go up, come back to the breath. And then it goes somewhere else. You say, oh, come back to breath. And it goes somewhere else. You say, oh, come back to the breath. And you just keep bringing your brain back to your breath and it starts to learn, oh, I don't need to think about all of these things. I can just focus on just this one thing. The exact same thing if you have a puppy. If it pees on the floor,

you take it, you put it outside. Pees on the floor, you take, you put outside, take, you put outside, over and over and over again. And eventually, the puppy goes, oh, I'm supposed to pee outside, not inside. And your brain is the exact same way. It goes, oh, I'm supposed to focus, not think about everything that I possibly could around me. Right. And so it's, it's an interesting thing. The first three days, you just focus your breath, focus just on your brain, on your breath. And then what happens is day four through eight, they teach you how to go deeper into meditation. What happens is they teach you how to go from, you know, your, your, your scalp. You think about your scalp first. You feel all of the sensations that you possibly can in

your scalp. And then you scan your entire body, You scan down your face, you scan down the front of your neck, the back of your neck. And then you go down your front, front of, you know, where your chest is, you go down your back and you feel every little sensation. And the point of it is not to react. You go down your left arm, you go down your right arm, go down your right leg, your left leg, and you just do it over and over and over again. You notice your brain start to wander, you bring it back to where you just were. And what you're taught is people always ask, do you stay in the exact same position for the entire meditation? And the answer is yes. And you try not to move at all for the entire meditation. Nothing. When you're meditating, you don't move at all, no matter how much pain

you're in, because pain is temporary, right? And so this is the deeper lesson of the meditation, right? They talk about two things in the meditation. Number one, they talk about the fact that, they call it anicca. Everything is temporary in this world, right? Everything is temporary in this world. No matter what it is, it's temporary. You're temporary. I'm temporary. The buildings around us are temporary. Everyone that we know and love is temporary. Everything that we see is temporary, right?

The trees outside are temporary. In a million years, nothing that you see will exist anymore in the same form that it is now. Everything is temporary. And we need to understand that. We need to get that into our heads and realize that everything's temporary. And you need to know that the pain that you feel in your body is also temporary because pain is the most animalist. Reacting to pain is the most animalistic part of our brain. is the most animalist, reacting to pain is the most animalistic part of our brain. And if we can feel pain and go, you know what? No worries. I'm going to feel equanimity is what they call it. Equanimity is the other part. So they teach Anicca and equanimity. Equanimity

means I'm not going to hate this and wish that I didn't have this pain and get pissed off that I have this pain and all mad about it because that's not going to solve anything. But then also when you feel something good or you, you felt, oh man, that was a, that was a great sensation. I felt really nice with, you know, the air conditioning came on your face and then you don't feel it and it starts getting hot. Well, you don't want to crave that air conditioning anymore, right? So you don't want to crave anything and you don't want to try to push something away that you don't want. So if you feel this pain, you don't react to it. And on day four, I had this huge, crazy pain and I was, I never get mad. I was so enraged that I was sitting in this fricking, I was sitting in this room, not moving and so much pain.

And I was like, I'm about to leave this room and just go for a walk. And I was so pissed, but I didn't, I stayed, I fought through it. And then I went to lunch after that. They have lunch there. They give you all the food, everything. And I was so pissed off at lunch. And I was literally in my head, cussing everybody out. It was like completely opposite of the way that I normally am. And I was like, God, this is so stupid. I'm in so much pain. I'm just like so pissed off. And then I go back to meditation after lunch and I feel the pain again. And I go, you know what? Just let it happen. It's temporary. Everything is temporary. And it was, it was like the pain just disappeared. It was just, I didn't feel the pain anymore. And I was like, oh my God, this is a mini breakthrough for me.

Like I just, I'm not reacting to the pain. And if you can take that most animalistic part of your brain, the part that reacts to pain and just be calm and not react to something. If you feel an itch, not react to it. And you can train your brain not to react to that. You can train your brain not to react to someone who cuts you off in the road or someone who says something to you or someone who cuts you off or, you know, says something bad to you or talks down to you. If you can train the animalistic part of your brain, well, you're automatically training the other part of your brain that normally reacts to the smaller things. And it was a huge breakthrough for me, right? It was a huge breakthrough. And normally I'm super calm just in general. I remember my mom,

when I was talking to her on the way up there, she's like, you're doing a 10 day meditation. That's crazy. What are you trying to get out of it? I was like, I'm trying to become calmer. And my mom's exact words were, if you're any more calm, you're just going to fall asleep. So I'm already a pretty calm person. And then I came back and my girlfriend was like, wow, there's another level of calm to you. And it was just a difference. She noticed a difference when I came back. So they teach Anitia, everything, everything, it's going to die. Everything's going to be gone. Death is the part of life, just as breathing is a part of life, just as being born is a part of life. And you have to accept that. Everything that you know and love will eventually

be gone. And that's okay. That's okay. So day four through eight, they teach you how to scan, scan your body up, down, everything. Don't crave, but don't also hate and want something to go away. Don't crave the pleasurable sensation. Don't, you know, also at the same time, you know, want to push away all of the painful sensations. And if you could train your brain, not think about it, you could train your brain, not think about anything. And then day nine and 10, they teach you how to scan into your body. So basically how to go from the front of your face to the back, from the back to the front, from your right ear to your left ear, your left ear to your right ear, scan down, scan through your chest to your back, your back to your chest, all of this. And what I started to notice was I was, I was getting sensations and visually

seeing things that I had never seen in like a pain that I normally feel in my shoulder. I was able to visually see the pain and visually start to get rid of the pain. It was really a super interesting thing. And it became very, very easy to meditate. I'm talking about like deep meditation within like 15 minutes. right? And I was meditating for the longest I ever had in my entire life. I was meditating consistently for two and a half hours straight. And the only reason why I got up was because I had to go to the bathroom and that was it. Otherwise I had the feeling, it was the first time I ever felt the feeling in my entire life of I could be here forever and still be the happiest I've ever been. It was just this joyous feeling

that I think that they talk about monks feel. And you know, it's, it's, it's the point of meditation, like the ultimate point, hopefully a meditation is just peace. Like just, you don't need anything. I didn't need any, anybody. I didn't need anything. Just simply existing was just an amazing feat. And I was just so happy to be sitting there with my eyes closed in a dark room. I was like, this is insane. I don't need anything. Society tells me I'm supposed to be spending money and buying cars and succeeding and getting all these things. And I don't need them. I don't need any of them. Right. And it was a huge, huge breakthrough for me. And two and a half hours was just easy. And what's crazy is when, when the 10 days are over, you can talk, you can hang out with everybody.

They give you your phone backs, the phones back. And within five minutes of having my phone and looking at it, I got a headache. I was like, oh my God, that shows that there's something that I'm, that's just overstimulating. It's might be the light. It might be that there's too much going on, whatever it was. I drove from Dallas. It was just outside of Dallas back to Austin. I stopped in Waco and got a burger at a place. I got a veggie burger at a place and it was on the side of the road. It was like a bar slash restaurant. And I walk in this place and within five minutes of being in this place, I'm like, holy crap, I have a headache again. Why do I have this headache? This isn't, this is insane. And

there was just so much stimuli in the bar that I just had never noticed before. It was the TVs. It was the music. It was the people talking. It was the bartenders, the clinking around. It was the, you know, the order, the neon sign that said order here and pick up here. And there was just so much. I literally felt like I was some like person from the 1600s being dropped in 2018. And I was like, what the hell is going on right now? I was like, I don't belong here. I've never seen this before. That's how I felt. And it was insane. Cause I was like, man, I actually feel like something's changed. And then I started to notice the addiction of wanting to be on my phone starting to come back, and I was like, no, this is evil. This is an evil thing. I don't want this feeling anymore, and it was that addiction of like the pull of there's probably another notification.

What if you're getting a text message? Hey, you can listen to a new podcast. You can watch a YouTube video. This, this, this. There's just so many different things, and so if you're interested in really deepening your practice, learning a lot more about Buddhist techniques, but also learning more about meditation, learning more about yourself, completely decompressing and just becoming a different person. I had a coaching client that I recommended to this. She got completely, she was a semi alcoholic and completely addicted to cigarettes. She quit drinking completely, she was a semi-alcoholic and completely addicted to cigarettes. She quit drinking completely, still has quit drinking, still isn't drinking, and completely stopped smoking

cigarettes. She did this about two years ago. She hasn't smoked. She also hasn't picked up any alcohol since then. So it is life-changing for a lot of people. It is not easy to do, but it is 100% worth it. If you want to do it, I'm not promoting them in a sort of way. I don't get paid to do this because it's actually free. It doesn't cost anything. It's called Vipassana, V-I-P-A, V-I-P-A-S-S-A-N-A, Vipassana. And if you Google Vipassana, whatever state that you're in or whatever country you're in, you'll be able to find a center around you. It is free. It is donation based. You donate whatever you want. There is no, and people keep asking me, what do they recommend that you donate? They don't. They just say, whatever you feel like

you want to give from your heart, give to your heart. The reason why you're here, because they cook all of the meals, they give you all the meals, everything. You have a place to sleep, all of those things. The reason why you're able to do that is because someone else before you donated. So there's no amount that you have to donate. Whatever you feel in your heart is right. And there's over 150 centers across the world. So there's probably something around you as well. If it's something that you're considering, I would 100% do it. It will change your life. It changed my life and I will do it every single year, hopefully until the day I die. So that's it for today's episode. If you liked this episode, please share it with someone that you know and love. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your

mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWFmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWF motivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality. Outro Music