the atoms we cannot keep

my vipassana experience

I watch a delicate black leg flailing between the pincers of an ant.
Its kicks trace arcs in the air, a desperate ballet of survival.

What becomes of an ant when it loses a limb? Does it adapt to five legs, or does it become prey to larger creatures who spot its newfound weakness?

I’d never thought to consider such things. Yet now these questions consume my days, as if the ant’s struggle holds some secret I’ve been blind to all my life.

With knees buried in gravel and my nose inches from the ground, I am both witness and intruder in this microscopic colosseum. Through these countless hours of observation, I’m discovering the universal language of desperation. Every creature fights the same way when cornered – the trapped mouse, the snared rabbit, the panicked human. 

We all perform this ancient choreography:
Struggling just enough to break free, but not so fiercely as to tear ourselves apart.

In our panic, we become indistinguishable from one another.

But what of those moments when we voluntarily place ourselves in the pincers?
When we deliberately offer a limb to the jaws of imprisonment?

The worker ant had no choice but to abandon its methodical pursuit of crumbs for this life-or-death struggle. 
Yet here I am, seeking my own dismemberment.

Perhaps this is its own kind of insanity—this willingness to be broken apart in hopes of being reassembled into something new.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

Twenty-seven women and I have gathered at a meditation centre outside Udon Thani, a Thai city brushing against the Laos border.

For ten days, I am to remain here. The days will start before the birds have had a chance to sing. And when they do sing, I will remain in perfect silence.

I will exist in six states:
Sleeping.
Eating.
Showering.
Walking in circles.
Staring at the ceiling.
Meditating.

Stripped of books, pens, and screens, my mind will cling to its old stories like a drowning person to driftwood—until even those splinter away. 

This place will become both prison and mirror, reflecting back all the pain I’ve been too busy to feel.

The centre seems designed to starve the senses. Concrete buildings connected by concrete paths, each structure as utilitarian as a prison cell. The meditation hall, living quarters, and canteen form a triangle of austere purpose. Even nature feels constrained—unremarkable trees stand sentinel over patches of struggling grass.

My room, labelled E1, overlooks a courtyard where the path circles back on itself like a thought trapped in an endless loop.
Inside, a metal-framed bed dominates the space, topped with an unyielding mattress. 
Spider webs map the ceiling.
Lizard droppings chart territories below.

Crossing the threshold for the first time, I feel the walls close in with an unnerving finality. A peculiar numbness spreads through me, as if my body and mind are staging a quiet mutiny. Soon they will have enough and abandon me, leaving me to stare at the spiders for eternity.

Why did I come here?

I came seeking proof. 
Proof that I could stand apart from material comforts and still know who I am.
I came to reacquaint myself with boredom, to let time stretch out like soft clay.
But most of all, I came hunting for something lost—not in the world, but in my mind.

I came to remember who I am when everything else falls away.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

The 4 a.m. wakeups are the real killer.

During meditation, I sway like a drunk sailor, head nodding forward only to snap back with cruel consciousness.
What’s more maddening than trying to focus on your breath for ten hours a day?
Falling asleep a dozen times each hour, each awakening a violent extraction from almost-dreams.

On the second day, during my morning break, I become transfixed by an ant dragging the carcass of its larger companion. The dead ant is locked in those familiar pincers, but its dance is finished, its surrender complete.

This ritual has a name—necrophoresis.
The colony must protect itself from decay, so the dead are carried far from the living.

I wonder: can my own decay—this rotting of certainty, this decomposition of self—be just as efficiently carried away?

My defense against this internal decay becomes obsessive thought. Positioned before my room's fan, watching a spider's web vibrate in the artificial wind, I begin excavating my life.

Memories surface, not as crisp snapshots but as pools of feeling:
The hot sting of childhood jealousy.
The sharp sweetness of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
The misery of realising I was a girl in a man’s world.
Painted lips. Miniskirts. A vodka-tinted first kiss. 
My parent's divorce.
Running home on a tab of acid at 17.
Finding myself in another woman's laughter.
The gradual archaeology of self-love.
The exhilarating free-fall of leaving my job to travel.
The trembling courage to call myself a writer.
Mountains that humbled me. 
Beaches that healed me.

Then, like a pebble dropping to the seabed, emptiness settles in my gut.
I’ve run out of thoughts.

They are finite after all, like leaves on a tree – each one counted and accounted for. They fall away naturally, but new growth requires the turning of seasons.

Without fresh experience to nourish it, originality withers. 
There are no new thoughts in captivity.
This is what must drive prisoners to madness.
Perhaps this realisation too is just another leaf, waiting to fall.

Meditation reveals itself not as an assignment but a necessity. A doorway out of the suffocating maze of recycled thoughts.

So I step through it.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

A tickle starts on my nose. Like a tiny bug is walking along its ridge. Up and down, up and down, a microscopic pilgrimage across skin.

As days unfold, vibrations colonise my body.

Dormant regions flicker to life—heartbeats thunder in my thighs, my gut churns, saliva pools. New aches and itches vie for my attention.

Every cell pulses with relief, as if to say: finally, you see me.

That night, I can’t sleep. The Vipassana technique preaches equanimity toward all sensations—radical acceptance of pain and pleasure alike.
But something in me rebels.

I want – no, I need – to feel life's full spectrum of emotions. All artists do. 
Our truths are mined from the deepest canyons of bliss and anguish.
Would emotional equilibrium not sterilise creative expression?
Should we really aspire to rise above our own humanity?

The next morning, my body offers its own answer. I lay naked on my bed, a frangipani flower resting in my belly button. Its golden heart pulses with each breath, its light folding into me.

This is life in its simplest form: the breath, the pulse, the vibration of each atom.

And yet, these atoms are no more mine than the frangipani's petals or the air against my skin. Every atom that exists or will exist is simultaneously me and not-me. 

Each vibration I’m sensing is an energy that will never die. 
I inhale deeply. 

Pain and pleasure are not possessions but passing visitors. They are sensations we witness rather than own. 

Vipassana isn't asking for emotional amputation. It's inviting us to feel life more completely than ever before, while remembering we are larger than any single experience. This isn't a barrier to artistic expression but a gateway to its deepest source.

I can be fully present with every sensation while knowing I am more than my art, my body, my thoughts. 
Feel everything, but remember: you are safe. 
Your existence pervades everything that ever was and will be. 

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

Tears flow freely in the meditation hall as a vision unfolds—a tapestry of all the faces I’ve ever known, placed cheek to cheek, smiling.

Vibrations cascade through me as though I lay hollowed out in the mouth of a waterfall. Each current comes stronger than the last until I can no longer contain myself. I explode outward, expanding into the infinite space around me.

And then I see it: the mother of all emotions. 
Love. 
Not the fragile, conditional love of daily life, but something eternal and unconditional.

It feels strangely familiar but that’s because it is. 
This is where I came from before I was born and where I will go after I die. It has always been with me, I just didn’t know where to look. 

Our bodies store so much.
Resentment in tight shoulders.
Shame in hunched spines. 
Anxiety in shallow breaths. 
Trauma in clenched jaws. 

Like the ant carrying away its dead companion, we too must learn to release what no longer serves us. It’s in this clearing of space where the hidden love lies.

Where I once saw dismemberment, I now recognise transformation.

I focus on the throbbing in my lower back, searching for its the epicentre. I can’t locate it. Where are you coming from? Show yourself. 

There is no fixed point, only motion – waves of sensation washing through space. 
If there is no centre, then pain itself is not solid but transitory. 
Just waves upon waves upon waves. 
And then, the final wave hits the shore and the tide rolls out, leaving me whole in my brokenness.

Like an ant learning to dance on five legs.

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

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