Glowing tea cup

It's Tuesday evening and I'm on my way to my first Vipassana meditation class. My TomTom navigator sends me to the highway for a street in the city center of Amersfoort. That's strange. But when I'm on that particular street, it gets even stranger when the woman's voice instructs me to take a left turn?! Anyway, finally I end up in that street again, but of course I have great trouble finding number 47. Luckily there's a woman on a bike who is very helpful.

After having parked my car in another street, I manage to find the entrance of the building where I should be. That was easy! (people who know me really well, know that I'm not good at finding entrances :-)). There are about 10 people sitting at a large table, mostly in their 50's and 60's. Some have the looks of people who in particular are into meditation, Buddhism, etc. We drink tea (of course there's no coffee, that doesn't match with meditating) out of bright orange and green cups. The group is quiet. I notice that a couple people seem to know each other. We are introduced to our teacher Paul and after that we must introduce ourselves and tell the group why we are here. This is a bit hilarious, as visions of help groups enter my mind. "My name is Caroline and I'm here because my husband suddenly left me...." HAHA But no, this is a different group. A lot seem to have a need for meditation to get more rest in their heads (and lives), just like me. Uf, what a relief to hear that I'm not the only one struggling.

After the introduction Paul explains that we are going to do an exercise in concentration. Wow, this will be a real challenge for me! We all have our bright orange and green cups in front of us on the large wooden table. Now we must only concentrate on this cup for a couple of minutes. The exercise starts and after a while (trying hard to push all other thoughts that are trying to enter my mind, away), the cup begins to glow. There's light all around it, and everything else seems to fade into the background. At one point I suppress the feeling that I want to laugh out loud. What am I doing here? It gets even better. Next exercise is walking and concentrating on setting your feet on the floor. This is hard, as I only hear the sweeping sound of my trousers and those of others and at one point I am thinking "why don't they hurry in front of me, get out of my way!" (we all walk in a circle). This is typically me, so I know that this course is going to confront me with a couple of my 'nasty' habits :-)

Finally we do an exercise sitting on the floor and concentrating on our breathing. I try a typical meditation bench and this sits really well. When I'm sitting there I'm thinking of buying one in a little Buddha store in the city, oeps, I need to concentrate on my breathing again....This will be my homework, concentrating for only 10 minutes a day. But gee, that's hard to do!! Last night, I was sitting here in my room doing the exercise and constantly wondering whether the 10 minutes already have passed....

I have 5 more lessons to learn the in's and out's of Vipassana meditation. Hopefully it will get better in the end!