Meditating with The Duke Spirit

In December 2010 I drove the two hours from my mum’s house, through thick snow and winding lanes, to a Meditation Centre that teaches a style called Vipassana, in Herefordshire. I went just before New Year’s Eve, which was enticing, relaxing and an excuse not to engage in the ritual of deciding what the most thrilling way to party-booze-dance-headache-injure-oneself would be. I was free! Christmas was done and now I was to turn my back on the indignities (my personal list is long and embarrassing) of New Year partying, and MEDITATE.

When I say meditate, not only do I mean hours of focused attention, closed-eyes, sitting with legs crossed, but I mean SILENCE. The Vipassana course which I was about to begin requires ten full days of total silence, in meditation and in general. No chats with other people on the course, no banter. No asking where the hotel bar is situated. No talking at all except in emergencies.

The rules of application and general guidelines state that one conducts oneself as if one is alone. There will be instructions, guidance, some spoken teaching but you will attend in complete silence, including mealtimes, down time and up time. Literally, you could cello tape over your mouth for ten days. Some almost have to. For me, having toured haphazardly and relentlessly for 7 years at this point, I was overjoyed, salivating, chomping at the bit, to keep my gob shut and being quiet for a while. Dream Come True!

I was introduced to this organisation and this technique by Gem from The Pogues, which sounds kinda weird I suppose. I sometimes forget that, and so now feel it’s a moment to thank him publicly. Thanks Gem. I don’t know him - just had the pleasure of a chance meeting with him once, and we talked about meditation.

At that time, I had practiced my own form of meditation on and off for years, since I was about 19. It was (and sometimes still is) a kind of ‘visualisation’ session. I go off on tangents and come back round again. I am so glad I got into trying it when I was younger, but this next step of Vipassana would teach me a method, a stage-by-stage technique and demand discipline. I have never and will never be very disciplined it seems, but I did get with this programme as I was on a mission to learn something new and do it properly, which was a rare commitment from me. I am lazy and only ever do stuff at the last minute... I always seem to bunk-off learning anything to it’s bitter end; Jack-of-all, Master-of-none kinda gal. Unfortunately.

So, Dhamma Dipa is one residential centre for Vipassana (‘clear-seeing’ in Sanskrit) of a small handful in the UK, part of the Vipassana Trust that has centres like this all around the world. These centres are organised to receive hundreds of people throughout the year, completely free of charge. You are taught, fed, housed and watered for no fee whatsoever. The Trust organisation works on the premise that once accepted on the course (no qualifications required, just that you are sound of mind, not ill), you come to learn for free and if you feel happy and fulfilled at the end of the session, then you are asked to leave a donation of any amount, so that someone else could enjoy the same opportunity. So democratic, so incorruptible, and a model I admire ardently.

Nobody profits other than the attendee, and nobody can ever change the format or content of the message of the course; it is all to be taught via audio and video sessions, recorded by the Burmese teacher, Satya Goenka, who himself learned from a non-sectarian teacher before him. With that, you understand nobody will be encouraged to tamper with the technique to make it more 'marketable' or to 'up' the sales of tickets. The integrity is somewhat protected by the mechanism itself. It's all free, baby.

Initially there is talking whilst you file in, get signed up and a room allocated. A quick orientation of the large hall, the shower block and accommodation section. Most things are sign-posted and a board lists what-happens-when. Then after some tea and biscuits, its Game On. Someone rings a bell, lets you know that talking is off-limits and that it is time to follow the programme, precisely:

There are to be no mobile phones. We sequester them in lockers for the duration. There are to be no notebooks, writing or reading of books. There will be no opportunity to send the mind off on little jaunts into fiction or creative writing. No shopping lists or doodles. You and your mind are about to come face to face with as few distractions as possible other than day dreaming and staring at some trees in the gardens that surround the centre.

The work to be done here rests completely with you, how you think and watch the mind, and the last thing you need is a magazine to stare at to consider a new haircut or a book of short stories. Whats App wasn't even invented and I hadn't yet heard of Instagram or even updated to an iPhone. All amusement and fancy was stripped back to some serious basics - which was totally liberating.

There might have been some fear that all this thinking would be claustrophobic, but I had a sense that the point of this entire trip was to become at-ease with myself. I knew nothing would improve or change or reveal itself if I had distractions so why not dive in and live in my head and on a square metre of blue cushion for a few days. Hell, it was already nicer than some hotels I'd rolled into over the last few years.

If I try to carefully impart the various degrees of change and sensation that I experienced on this trip, I would be writing for weeks and nobody will keep reading for much further than where I'm at now. So I will now try to get to the nub of it all and cram together only the essential details of why this experience was so inspiring, and turned into such a guiding force...it galvanised me for the years after the course.

For hours and hours, days and days you simply “watch the breath”. You try to “feel the touch of the breath on the nose”. You do this for f*cking hours. I mean, you wouldn't believe it, nor would you sign-up if you were told in advance! Hours are spent switching your legs around, twitching, itching your face, scratching your head, thinking about lunch, fantasising, forgetting what they told you to do and generally fidgeting the f*ck around. But! The thing is, you finally start to become still and eventually, so rested, that you feel magnificent.

I began to feel that the square of fabric I sat on was my home. It was secure, it was enough. This seeped into everything by day 3 and I realised, 'I' was enough, not the material around me. I'd projected enough safe-haven vibes that I felt really cosy in my spot. If I could do that there, why not everywhere? Wherever I lay my hat and all...?

Thoughts catapulted around the hall. Boomeranged back in through my ears, hair follicles. Occasionally I felt shame – momentarily thinking that what I had thought had loudly announced itself to the room of 80 other people – that's how noisy my head was. Thinking was all part of this, not the cliched 'try to stop thinking'. No way. We were encouraged to think. Think and look at what it was we were thinking, watch those thoughts but then always 'come back'. Come back to the space just before the next thing arose.

Thoughts lapped at my cranium and rung in my ears: The next album; how I hate my hair; the insecurities about songs I wish we hadn't recorded; the expense of the studio; how I definitely cannot shift this spare tyre of flab because I drink too much wine; what time is it; my bum hurts sat here; what day is it now then; I would like to buy a vibraphone but I haven't got anywhere to put it; how is it that people born deaf often have an accent when they speak such as Evelyn Glennie...

On and on the thoughts would rise and fall away, but catching yourself just before your mind generates another load of utter bullshit, well! That is a wonderful moment in time. When you watch, for that split-second, you are witnessing the thought, you are not in the thought itself.

Time and again you 'bring yourself back' to get a glimpse of that shard of light, that not-anything. Bingo! Not anything, nothing, just space. You witness yourself on the cusp of thought but not actually in the narrative of thought. And therein lies a lush, peaceful feeling. The more energy I gave to this kind of 'witness' time, the less potent were the thoughts, or perhaps they faded out, the volume turned down in my head.

We were taught to resist an urge or desire to itch your nose for example. We were asked to simply try to be patient and observe the urge. The urge faded. Equanimity reigned supreme, but not without lots of arguments with between one aspect of your mind with the other. "Just observe, just observe". Yeh F*CK OFF, is how it ended sometimes, and I'd scratch that little bastard itch. Two or three goes later, I'd mellowed. I watched, I waited. Nothing was ever really that urgent. I don't need for much. All is well.

And so it was with patience that I discovered that somewhere under layers and layers of irritation and self-loathing and amplified mind-swearing...I was, like, totally relaxed and pretty awesome.

It was said by someone, somewhere that the goal of meditation isn't to control thoughts. It's to stop letting them control you. True Dat. However, somehow taking a step to be silent (which, I promise you, is one of the loudest experiences I've had in my head!) and take time to notice that I myself am a witness of thought (therefore I am not my thoughts) is the most fundamentally liberating and steadying realisation to have.Control, power, ambition, anxiety is no longer potent, it tends to fade away and lose its grip.The witness becomes the stronger ally. Its calm promotes more calm, thoughts are less and don't come with fear based luggage. In-fact, one is a mere tote-bag away from feeling easy, light, at peace with things.

The best moments of this whole effort were the penultimate and final mornings as I woke up, and I'm not sure I can do them justice with my attempts to describe them...I felt like I melted awake. No jolts, no low-level anxiety, no “that was then, this is now, c'mon wake up and do things right”. It was such a good feeling. I was aware of being more alert than I was sleeping, but the two states weren't separated by a guillotine chop. Instead my waking seconds were brought to my awareness by something like the soft rolling foam at the edge of a wave.

I felt deliriously happy but also still kinda the same. No cosmic visions (unfortunately) and no unicorns. I was engulfed in a smooth unfettered feeling. But that said, I was still up for getting home and cracking open some vino, laughing as I wondered what the be-jeezus might happen to me once allowed out to talk and drink wine, maybe I would explode?

Nah. It was just a distillation process I had gone through, was all. I had found the good, easy, relaxed part of me and purified it down. Evaporated away were the shit-stirring, mean and fearful little stinkers that call themselves 'really important concerns'.

And so it was. A very good thing and I know it resides there still, even if...you've guessed it...I don't do it as often as I said I would when I walked out of that place. Always the same! But...I know where it is, and I have that sort of rough-hewn, rudimentary knowledge rattling around still and it does help me A LOT. It stops me in my tracks, and takes my pen across the page in a way that would not have happened had I not shut my mouth and just observed.

The Duke Spirit's long awaited album KIN is out now.