This is why I left HEADSPACE after 300+ hours in two years

NOTE: All of the below mentioned text can be deceptive, don’t start believing it unless you test it yourself and find enough evidence to support following the text.

We all distance our self from past experiences and try new experiences in search for something more content or meaningful. This never means that we hate what’s left behind it’s just us realizing that this is not what we were looking for.

I realized the mind body connection and role of breathing for practicing living in present moment, through one week (non-boarding) program back in 2013. Eventually in 2016 I ended up attending a 10 day residential course at Tushita Monastery located in Himalayan region of India, that too in monsoon. One of the British course participants suggested me to try HEADSPACE, I loved those 20 minute sessions and specially targeted packs covering a vast majority of emotions that we come across in our mundane life. I could see the change in my life and life around me. Time drifted and it was almost 1.5 years of a somewhat continual affair with it’s mobile application. Whenever I came across sessions involving huge volumes of imagination, I was having a hard time in imagining a ball of light above my head or inside my chest, when I heard the voice in the audio clip instructing me to imagine a envelope of bright light not just around my body rather covering the farthest ends of universe that i could imagine and then growing it even further, I was dumb struck as how am I supposed to imagine something that I have never experienced before.

I don’t mean to disrespect this technique nor I’m saying that no one can draw benefit from such self hallucinations, all I wish to convey (with folded hands) is it didn’t work for me. Just like any curious researcher I kept on pursuing the path of imaginative sessions without a judgemental or result oriented temperament and even revisited them for having a second, third and so on N-number of opinions. Something felt wrong, unlike previous post and pre session experiences where I felt a natural urge and reminder from body stating: Yay it’s HEADSPACE time. I started witnessing somewhat mental and physical shutoff similar to that of a non deep sleep, before, after and during the sessions. I was pursuing mindfulness for almost four years by then yet never experienced such retaliation from with in and it kept growing. It was very hard for me to digest this as I earn my living from bringing visualization and imagination to reality and it comes to me naturally. Anyone having a profession involving above mentioned skills will tell you quite bluntly that such ideas come naturally and can’t be forced out of someone. Even I waited there for my moment of inspiration yet felt as if its some retribution and started considering other approaches for proceeding on the path of knowing oneself.

Acting purely out of whim I decided to take a one hour unguided meditation session. And this is what made me quit HEADSPACE eventually.

Having no experience what so ever, didn’t even knew what unguided meditation means, leave alone the question what I’m supposed to do in it. All I knew was Andy Puddicombe saying:

I’m gonna leave it to you today, and you can do your own meditation in your own time, I will just come in towards the end to let you know when time is almost up.

Right from the first unguided session I developed a taste for it and switched completely to them with in a brief span of 6 months. It was so tempting and addictive, daily clock time went from 40 to 120 minutes and yet I was able to give time to all the things I wanted to do in rest 22 hours as sleep quality improved exponentially along with significant improvement in mindfulness while performing various activities throughout the day. In guided meditation Andy asked to revisit past acts of generosity, kindness, appreciation, acceptance, patience and various aspects of relationships or to imagine them (if you don’t remember any) and then taught a way to go beyond or look at it from a distance for developing an incite.

All such guided scenarios are somewhat simulated and miss out on edge case. If i ask you to revisit the memory of your recent event involving significant physical pain, though you may feel some vibrations at or around the spot of injury yet you won’t be able to recreate the exact sensations that occurred while you actually went through it. This is because such memories fade with time and our psychological mechanism keeps on filling (covering) the depth (details) of memories. This is essential as else we all may wake up every day felling a bleeding and swollen knee that we had because of some event in childhood and keep walking like a cripple in order to prevent the wound from getting hurt, though it may have healed decades ago. Hence when ever we try to visit them our protection mode gets activated and smooths it further as our subconscious doesn’t want to undergo that feeling again. So just like any caring mother would do, for appeasing his toddler who is adamant to play with a dog known to bite anyone who goes near it, she straps the jaws before letting it near the kid. Soon after the first meeting she realizes that event the nails can give scars, that may take quite a time to heal. On next meeting the infant see’s the dog with fancy cushions on front paws, and so on the trimming continues until it becomes completely harmless. This is what makes learning from guided sessions less substantial as facts get covered up and the experience becomes more generic and less realistic.

On prima facie unguided meditation may seem like total chaos as if one has entered a dense forest where everything seems unorganized but eventually with time the realization of law of nature solidifies. In our day to day life we all experience all set of emotions that too on a personalized basis as some of us may not have lust or anger or aversion etc. So there is no need to think you are feeling red, black or blue. As on one fine day just before the session you will be in one of these states naturally. All you got to do is observe yourself and investigate the reasons for such physical/mental state, so that the subconscious has enough facts to realize that both attachment and aversion are impermanent, eventually ceasing to associate or abstain with them. Even if you have driven a car previously and I ask you to sit and imagine that you are driving a car, and request you to think you are diving up hill or on unpaved bumpy road or that you just applied hand break real hard. Even the one who has a vivid imagination, won’t be anywhere near the actual experience. Now consider some one who has never been inside a car or doesn’t know what a car is, no matter how many videos you show them or make them play simulated car driving games, the imagination will still be way distant from reality.

Hence unguided sessions are more like being Sherlock Homes, who has the freedom to choose which crime scene he wants to investigate and that too before local police messes with the evidences completely. As it’s not an classroom event you can engage in it as long as you please and leave when ever you want. Sense of responsibility develops as soon as we start holding our self responsible and accountable, and marks inception of a journey leading to being your own teacher/master.

Andy always used instructed practitioners to imagine a source of light above their head which flows and engulfs entire body, I’m assuming he says this because he witnessed some physical phenomena and then used words to describe it. Some may feel a source of water above them and experience it flowing all over their skin. There is a strong possibility that all of them are experiencing the same phenomena but because they have a different set of experience and tastes, hence undergoing quite distinct experiences which eventually lead to use of different set of words to express it. Just similar to the famous Buddhist story of eight blind men who were asked to express what elephant is like.

I don’t mean any disrespect to Andy (HEADSPACE) nor I’m stating that he is deluding mediators by imagining a source of light above their heads, in fact he and his efforts helped me in finding peace with in myself.

You have to understand that it’s his truth not yours so don’t believe it or force yourself to accept it unless you find it. Till that point just say I don’t know as I haven’t experienced it yet, and keep looking for it. but without being adamant about the appearance of what you seek. As only a fool who is in pursuit to find something precious will throw away a diamond, just because he thinks that if it’s not glittery yellow and opaque then it’s not worth a dime.

The purpose of this article would be defeated if you develop a notion that guided meditation is not worth your time just by reading the above text. If you remember the time someone taught you riding a bicycle, helping you in finding the balance by providing guided support, while spending few hours with you. Eventually even they let you loose and shouted don’t look back, keep paddling, as they knew that it was time for you to learn on your own from that point on, and they have taught you all that was to be taught.

The only problem is, this time no one is there to tell to you when you should stop seeking guidance, so when you feel time is right let go of yourself if you really want to experience the inner you in a way you never did before.

Yes you will fall often in this journey, but only to rise even higher.

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