I didn’t have the time to finish this before I got back to Switzerland again, so part of it is a reflection on the 48 hours rather than an immediate response.
After hearing Mary Adams talk about her 48 hour challenge for the first time, I told her that I would join her in the meditation ultra-marathon, if it were to happen. I remember saying that with a conviction that surprised me, and I seriously began to doubt my statement in the week leading up to the retreat, seeing that Mary’s goal to raise $48’000 would probably be met.
Most of all, I was worried that I had set my goals too high and would crash and burn most painfully, losing the last bit of conviction that I had. The more I talked to people about the subject and announced the challenge, the more I began to realize that I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. I had never meditated more than 8 hours straight in a non-retreat context. At times I felt like a phony for suggesting something that was apparently so out there that only one of EnlightenNext’s most experienced artists of stillness was intending to do it.
In the night before Sunday, I was experiencing deep existential fear. I could barely sleep, and was seriously doubting that I could stay up for the 48 hours on less then 6 hours of sleep. At the same time I had a sense of conviction that it is actually possible. After a strange night, I got up and went to the Manor house to get ready for meditation. That includes the everyday Smoothie routine, which I’ll talk about more in a later post.
There was something very powerful sitting down with everyone and diving into immediate stillness. Seeing the confidence of every single person expressed in their dignified posture made the gravitational pull of this “event” even more palpable.
The first few hours of meditation were accompanied by a lightness and an ease, which made it easy to sit still and kind of not relate to your experience. After lunch, it became more challenging. With my body digesting the meal, I was already having trouble to stay awake and to pay attention. It was becoming what Andrew had pointed out to be “surviving the marathon” and hanging in there, without actually wanting to be free. Luckily the Foxhollow kitchen staff had prepared a variety of juices and other refreshers to keep all of us going.
After dinner, the hours until midnight were ups and downs — making an effort to sit still. Then around the beginning of the next day, I suddenly wanted to run for the door as fast as I could. The ego expressing it’s “something is terribly, terribly wrong” attitude almost made me call the whole thing off. And when sleepiness started to set in, I had already decided: 24 hours is enough, that’s quite a feat, no need to go on anymore.
And still, beyond that experience, part of me was intuiting that after the first 24 hours were over, a new sense of ease would arise.
At 6am, when the official marathon was over, every fiber of my being was revolting against continuing. I was on the verge of giving up, when I remembered the advice Emily Guez gave me on Saturday evening: “Make the decision to stick with the 48 hours NOW, otherwise you will just decide after 24 hours that you really don’t want to meditate anymore.”
Then Mary walked down the hallway, giving me the thumbs up gesture and a questioning look. Before even thinking about it, my thumbs were raised and the decision was made: I’m going to sit for the full ultra-marathon.
Deciding on doing it set up a reference point for the rest of the marathon, despite the experience being very challenging and tiring on many levels. There were many times where my emotions, thoughts or physical pain pointed to a single conclusion: Stop meditating!
At some point I just couldn’t take it anymore and a part of me suddenly let go. Realizing that I wasn’t doing this for personal reasons anymore, and having other people accompany us throughout the entire two days, the internal experience was simply not that important anymore.
I fell asleep for a few short spurts, and I had to untangle my legs in a few sessions, yet these things didn’t seem very detrimental to staying alert. The ego went really crazy as the second night approached, thus I decided to open my eyes for two sessions so I wouldn’t get lost. After the midnight break, I made the biggest mistake in the whole marathon: I sat on a chair and leaned against the backrest — I almost instantly fell asleep. Because Igal Moria, who had joined us at that hour (together with Elizabeth Debold), came over after the session and added some padding to my chair so it wouldn’t rattle if I napped again, I knew I had to get back to the floor even if it was painful.
As the hours went by and things in consciousness appeared and left again, I was just physically hanging in there — also thanks to the snacks and an incredible midnight smoothie provided by Emily Guez and Reid Higginson! For the last hour they and most of the global and core students joined us. Reid, Emily and others had been sitting with us for quite a few hours prior to this last hour, making this last hour of support even more incredible. The last 20 or 30 minutes were incredibly painful, so I decided to pop my legs up and sit in a post-meditation position for the rest of the hour.
The strangest thing “happened” after the meditation marathon was over: It didn’t seem like it was over. My body was dead tired, but part of me wasn’t relating to the world. And despite not having fully relaxed on a physical level, my internal experience wasn’t my reference point anymore, which was a first. At the same time I knew that I had just done it. I had meditated for 48 hours.
It was necessary for me to see that it’s not only humanly possible, but that I could actually do it. Accomplishing this feat was accompanied by a profound sense of victory and conviction. When I walked out of the Hall of Being, lots of the other meditators were greeting Mary and me. Seeing their enthusiasm and joy made it even clearer that we hadn’t completed this ultra-marathon for ourselves but for everyone, for the sake of the whole.
