I’m going fully off the grid for the next 10 days as I immerse myself in my first Vipassana meditation and silence camp.

The rules include silence, no phone, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, only vegetarian food and complete sexual abstinence.

Effectively the opposite of how I live my life. I’m super excited about this fascinating experiment. I’ve been waiting a long time for it. I tried to go for this last summer as a means of furthering my spiritual journey but then I went down with physical fatigue due to mono and sleep apnea, hip injury and ACL in quick succession and had to postpone it.

I think this timing is great though because I had not built a daily meditation practice back then and there was progress to do on my own without external help. Lately I feel like I’ve hit some kind of plateau with respect to meditation so this would be a good push forward.

I have lived a life instinctively running away from emotions either by squashing them subconsciously (pre-2016) or just immersing myself in activities to leave very little time for being with myself (post-2016). This will be a good outlet for connecting with my subconscious and understanding myself better. Which is the key to self-improvement. You improve quicker if you know the baseline better.

I’m most excited to see what a phone/Internet free life would look like. I broke up with the TV 2 years ago mostly because I’d fall asleep so easily (sleep apnea) that I could never follow any plot line and partly because I get bored very easily. I’m very happy about that serendipitous change because not having Huflix subscriptions has saved me money (~time) and time that I can invest in other pursuits.

I am what some would call a social media spammer. And I’d vehemently disagree with those who wouldn’t. I think social media has great benefits (spoiler alert- I work at a social media giant). But I find that push notifications are designed to distract you from whatever you are focussed on. It’s like having an extremely needy puppy. Like 60 of them. Always seeking your attention. And not nearly as cute. So I wonder if this event would trigger my breakup with my phone. I think that’d be a sick result.

I’m also psyched to see how 10 days of simple, vegetarian diet suits me. I checked in at 170.4 lb today morning. 10lb down plus I’ve noticed slivers of relaxed state ab definition in the 8 weeks since I’ve participated in a lifestyle challenge that a bud of mine kicked off. I feel like I’ve pushed myself in a corner diet wise in terms of what I include in my daily intake — no red meat, no high FODMAP veggies, no sugar, no wheat, rice, starch. And I’ll probably have to re-evaluate for operational efficiency.

As is clear from the length of this post, this is something I’ve been mulling over for a while. I had not accounted for the no reading/writing rule though. I had made grand plans about writing and making comics and reading a tonne. But like they say, life happens while you’re busy making plans. So this is gonna be an added challenge.

The final aspect is that of complete sexual abstinence. Horny people make poor choices. I’ve heard rumors about advanced meditators gaining control of their sexual desires. That doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy sex. It just means that the desire doesn’t occur randomly and drive their decisions as much as it does for the average person. It’s akin to gaining power over your emotions. You don’t stop having emotions. You are just no longer a slave to them.

The gist is that there’s lots to look forward to and dive into. And I am super psyched about this experience!