Wednesday 9th May 2012 - leaving Nilambe Meditation Centre to go to Kandy

So after my last entry, things just went to pot! No more revelations or professions, in fact I am talking pure and utter deterioration! I couldn't even focus on my breathing anymore for longer than ten minutes. I managed to finish the book which I still say was amazing but there comes a point in Vipassana meditation where you are supposed to actually face your thoughts - mainly your problems. I don't feel the book went into enough detail on how to do so because it is for beginners, and as a beginner you are only supposed to focus on your breath. Me being me though wanted to progress from breathing because there is only so much time that you can spend concentrating on just your breath. According to the book, and probably most meditators, that means I am doing something wrong! Well anyway, Nilambe was not really a place for guidance, it is more for experienced people - I didnt really know the different until a conversation I had with Veronica (yoga teacher). I decided to approach her about how to deal with issues and how to "face them head on" (as you are supposed to) when meditating. In my opinion this is when things went downhill. She told me that as a beginner I shouldn't try to do that yet - I should go back to breathing. Well, from there on breathing and I were no longer friends! I am not experienced in the slightest to know whether I should still be concentrating on breathing by like day 6 but all I know is that it didn't focus my mind anymore. Within minutes I would move positions, fall asleep or have to get up. The thing that Veronica did help me with though, was telling me that as a beginner I should try guided meditation. She basically confirmed something a dutch lady had told me the day before. The dutch lady was really lovely. I had seen her everyday since I arrived and she always looked after me - so on my first day she whispered to me that there was another place to wash my dishes, then during chanting on my first night I got lost on where they were in the book so she kindly reached over and turned the page for me and pointed out where I should be. Just little things but things that really made me warm to her. We hardly spoke seeing as we are not allowed to but one day during lunch she sat next to me and told me that she was leaving that day. Her story was that her and her husband, who was also at the centre, had quit their jobs to come travelling and had been doing so for a year. Her reason, which touched me deep in my heart, was that she now knows the impermanence of life since recovering from cancer so now she just makes sure she lives her life. She had been meditating for 15-years and praised me for getting into it and trying to follow this path at such a young age. She told me something that I related to so much - that she had chosen the majority of this year travelling to different meditation centres because "unless you fix your mind, you can see all the different beautiful sights that a country has to offer but there is still going to be something missing inside" - exactly how I had been feeling before Nilambe. One of the things that Vipassana stresses and tries to get meditators to recognise is "the impermanence and unsatisfactoriness of everything". It is true.  Jantine, that was her name, told me that because I wanted to do meditating more and wanted more guidance, which she advised me to do given that I am a novice, then there was a very good place in Headington in England. Also she told me that if I ever headed to Australia then I should visit this famous English monk who teaches amazingly. She couldn't remember his name but said it was something like Brahma. I thanked her for looking out for me and she replied: " you are like my daughter. I have daughters around your age and I look at you and you are like them. I see you are so young and I just thought "Ah I have to look out for her". She said that if I was her daughter she would tell me how proud she was of me for following this path.  She was so warm and lovely and filled with such content that I was trying to find more from life. I took her email address so I could get the different recommendations in writing so I wouldn't forget. Veronica also recommended some places and found it so sweet when she found out I was a novice to both meditation and yoga. She said "you are like a child, so sweet!" So although I loved Nilambe so much much because of the beautiful surroundings and people, it is more for advanced meditators so I decided to leave.  Another highlight of the rest of my stay was that I made friends with me in eight years time. This girl is called Natalie but with a H, so Nathalie. She is 33-years old but does not look it in the slightest. She is from Holland, her birthday is one day after mine making her a pisces like me, and she moved into the room next to mine. We were like naughty little school girls whispering and giggling all the time when we are supposed to be in silence. We annoyed the girl in the next Kuti because we kept talking so we tried to keep hush hush. On my last day she didn't go to the meditation classes because she was tired (she was struggling with meditation like me!) but everyone was gone so we just spoke openly and loudly without a care in the world.  She was giving me all these recommendations on places to go in Sri Lanka and ended up just giving me her lonely planet guidebook seeing as she was going home - the book had all her notes on places to stay and visit. She also gave me contact details for drivers as well as a pair of her amazing harem pants to take to a tailor to get a pair made for myself - she trusted me to send them back to Holland when I get back home (of course I am going to but I just want to emphasise the kind of relationship we built so quickly!). So apart from being amazingly generous, like me she had also had a boyfriend at around 20 that she still calls the love of her life. They still wanted to be together but the timing was always off (when she was single he had a girlfriend and vice versa) but then he got his girlfriend pregnant :-( She was absolutely devastated. My heart went out to her completely because all I had to do was picture how I would feel if Hugh had a baby or got married to someone other than me.  At the age of 32 she only just found another guy which she is in love with (obviously not in the same way) so we joked about how I am now going to be single for 7years seeing as me and her are so similar. Anyway we switched numbers and plan to meet when we're both back home. She has been travelling for a year, mainly in India, and is heading back home in the next couple of weeks.  So anyway, I left Nilambe on the 10th day. When I arrived Upul said he thought I would only last a couple of days so 9 full days is quite an achievement.  My stop after Nilambe is Kandy. I got a tuk tuk all the way from the centre, I refused to do that awful bus ride again! Upul recommended for me to stay at the Burmese Rest guesthouse. It is a monastery and guesthouse at the same time.  The ride down from Nilambe was totally beautiful. The driver was so lovely and smiled constantly and stopped for me to take photos whenever he saw that I was interested in something. Once out of the mountains we went through Peradeniya where there is a massive modern-looking university. We then hit Kandy. The contrast was just crazy - loud horns everywhere, a train accident, mad drivers, and just pure hecticness! I kid you not, I got a headache immediately after hitting the city - I hadn't had a headache at all at the centre. Ok so one thing I forgot to mention was that whilst I was at Nilambe meditation centre I was getting text messages from Shana, the guy who had been so lovely to me & was looking after my backpack while I was at the meditation centre. The text messages were not the kind of messages I would expect from him given the trust I had put into him and the fact that I saw him more like a Dad! He was telling me he misses me blah blah blah and calling me constantly. I didn't reply given that I was at a meditation centre trying to escape the outside world, and also I am not supposed to be using my phone. Anyway, there was eventually a message saying that if he didn't hear from me by the 15th he was coming to find me because he was worried - I am sorry if this sounds rude but it is not his responsibility to be checking up on me or worrying about me - not even my parents are doing that so why should I need to check in with him. Anyway, I replied to him saying I was fine and that I was leaving the centre the next day and that I would call him once I left. Well anyway then my phone died, kind of expected given that I hadn't charged it for like 10days! I had decided to head to Kandy for a few days seeing as I was near there and to save me coming back. Anyway when I arrived at the guesthouse there were no plug sockets in my room and the one power socket that was outside the room was a communal socket that everyone used to charge their phones - it was in use. I decided not to wait but instead I wanted to look around. I saw an Internet cafe and that was my first stop. I spent two hours catching up on my emails and Facebook and was absolutely freaked out when I looked on my wall and saw firstly, that Shana had posted a photo of me from my facebook photos on my wall, and then upon further investigation, had posted loads others on his wall calling me his miracle, and also saved one of my photos as his cover photo. This was too weird. I was seriously freaked out. All my stuff is at his house and this guy seems like he's in bloody love with me. I literally just want to go and pick up my stuff and leave but I hate to be rude. I know he wouldnt cross any lines but still, this is not a good predicament and I dont know what to do :-(