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| People sitting... We don't have a picture of Marten though :). |
"I thought
it would be more or less like a vacation with a bit of meditation. I
thought it would be very chilled out, relaxed. Of course, I had checked
the website and had seen that the programme was full of meditation, but
somehow, I thought that meditation was not hard work. At least that was
what I thought back then. I really
underestimated it.
The 5
first days were really difficult. It was physically painful. After 1 or 2
days your back and your legs get really sore. But after 5 days the pain
disappears, and it doesn’t impact your meditation. Then all kind of
emotions come pouring in like a waterfall or a tsunami. It’s just one
big thing coming at you.
You begin
in the morning at 7:00, you finish in the evening at 9:00 and have
different appointments throughout the day. I am very strict on myself so
I didn’t want to miss one second of it. I wanted to perform well at
every session and wanted every session to be better than the previous
one, so I put a lot of pressure on myself
during the first days. It felt like a 14 hour working day! I ended up
being more stressed in the evenings than in the mornings. I thought I
would just keep up with it, but after 5 days I just collapsed physically
and emotionally. I couldn’t take it anymore, it was too much pressure.
I then
realized: I am never gentle to myself. At first, this realization made
me feel really sad, really bad and I thought to myself “what else is
going to come up?” I wanted to run away from this, I was so close to
going home. But if there is a place to learn how to be gentle with
yourself, this is it: you have the
programme, you have the meditation, you have the people, who are not
judging you, the beautiful landscape. This is the right place to learn! I
decided to stay and take things session after sessions. I also spoke to
my meditation instructor and took time to read and walk.
I
initially thought I would leave the Dathün as a better person, but that
would mean that I was previously a bad person, which is not true. The
Dathün actually enables you to know yourself much better and to accept
your different emotions. It was a life changing experience. I am not
longer afraid of fear. I know that I have to
accept that I can’t always be happy and that I can be gentle to myself."
