Something Is Always on Fire

by Measha Brueggergosman

  Don’t overthink it. Go do it.

  Because something is always on fire, I had a series of career highs starting in 2010 while also suffering devastating tragedy in my personal life. On the one hand, I sang the “Olympic Hymn” at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and released my second Deutsche Grammophon album, Night and Dreams, with Justus Zeyen on piano and compositions by Brahms, Liszt, Duparc, Debussy, Strauss, Schubert and Mozart, among others. My Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra, would also be released over the next couple of years on the yellow label. On the other (much heavier) hand, Markus and I had reconciled our marriage after a rocky year or two. Shortly after getting back together, we got pregnant and then lost both our twins, one at ten weeks and one at twenty-one-and-a-half weeks. To this day, the grief of that loss chokes me, but at the time, I honestly had no sense of where my life was going or if I was even going to get there.

  Still on the mend, and two years after I sang in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I flew back to Vancouver and made my way to Merritt, British Columbia, in search of healing at a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation course. By then, through displacement, heartache and busyness, I had accumulated so much calcification in my emotional joints that I was ready to try something radical. I was also in my first trimester with our first son, but Markus and I were not ready to go public.

  Vipassana is a silent practice of meditation. The first course—the sole method with which you can initiate yourself into the practice—is a full ten days. Ten days of total silence. From the minute I’d heard it described to me, it sounded like paradise. My Bikram yoga practice had been leading me toward this type of meditation—justifiably described as extreme. But . . . nothing ventured nothing gained. I had done a cross-Canada audition tour as a judge on Canada’s Got Talent from the fall of 2011 into 2012, and we finished taping right before I took the Vipassana plunge. The show was exciting and glossy and cacophonous and relentless, in a good way. It was a huge, ridiculous party and I loved every minute of it.

  My husband and I had started trying to get pregnant straight away after we lost our second twin, August David, in August 2011. By December 2011 we were expecting, but after our double loss, I was pretty gun-shy about letting the cat out of the bag. I also wasn’t sure I’d have the willpower to go my whole pregnancy without drinking. My wine-loving, alcohol-appreciating pregnant ladies and mothers out there know what I’m talking about. (You’re just pregnant. You’re not suddenly a different person.) So, when we finished the audition tour for CGT, to illustrate the disparate personalities of the judges, Martin Short went to record voice-overs for a Doritos ad campaign, Stephan Moccio went to Turks and Caicos with his family and I went to be completely silent for ten straight days. Just me and the baby in my belly.

  Something was definitely on fire and it was me. The entire ten-day journey felt like I was being dipped repeatedly in a detoxifying inferno: painful and beneficial, uncomfortable and empowering. Some targets for detox were old lovers, my emergency open-heart surgery, the remorse of my marriage almost ending (the first time), losing babies. All of it had to be revisited, seen for the power it was having over my life and future, then put in its rightful place: either in the past for good, or tucked into a place where it could rest, remain a part of me but not do any damage. I had to mine deeply because I’d been pushing all that stuff down for a long time, pretending it wasn’t there or underestimating how sad and powerless it was gradually making me. This was my time of being good to myself while also facing my darkest moments again. I had to find my way back to who I was and what I wanted.

  Vipassana is a difficult process even when you don’t have all that stuff to exorcise. It was the first trimester of my second pregnancy, so I spent pretty much every waking minute of the first few days trying not to fall asleep. Unsuccessfully. When I would come up for air, my energies were spent pushing distractions out of my own mind, and bringing the guidelines for the practice in, and trying to ultimately create space for everything—but never being able to be truly still. Try meditating when you’re gassy and hungry all the time. It’s pretty difficult to achieve a state of Zen if all your concentration is being used to stifle a fart.

  Though I knew that Vipassana, like hot yoga, was an extreme Eastern discipline, I didn’t really understand what I was embarking on when I boarded the bus for the three-hour journey from Vancouver into Merritt to the Vipassana centre. Located on fifty-six acres in a pine forest, it consisted of a four-winged, two-storey building with sexually segregated accommodations for about sixty people, a meditation hall, a dining hall, and bathing and administration facilities.

  Vipassana means “to see things as they really are.” Based on techniques taught by the Buddha 2,500 years ago, it defines suffering as the result of craving, aversion and ignorance. Theoretically, eliminating these sankaras through mental purification leads to balanced living and, ultimately, Enlightenment.

  Because Buddha himself taught orally, his meditative techniques were thought to have been lost. However, an upsurge of twentieth-century interest led to the discovery that they had been preserved by the monks of Burma. In 1955, S. N. Goenka, a Burma-born industrialist, may he rest in peace, used these techniques for mind purification, incidentally curing himself of severe migraines. In gratitude, he founded the Vipassana International Academy, outside Bombay. That was in 1971. Now Vipassana is taught and practised all over the world.

  As a new student, I was committed to completing the course by complying exactly with my teachers’ instructions without addition or subtraction. Specifically, I was to refrain from the killing of any being, from stealing, from sexual activity, from lying, from indulging in intoxicants. This extended to all drugs, cigarettes, tranquillizers, sleeping pills and other sedatives. Even my blood pressure medications had to be reported to my teachers.

  Because Vipassana claims to be non-religious, all forms of prayer, worship or ceremony were banned for the duration, including fasting, burning incense, counting beads, reciting mantras, singing, dancing and yoga. Any student who had brought any religious items, including rosaries, crystals, talismans, crosses, was to deposit them with management. Musical instruments, radios, recording devices, cameras, reading and writing materials were also banned.

  From the first day of Vipassana until the morning of the last full day, I was to observe Noble Silence, which meant refraining from all forms of communication with other students: speech, touching, eye contact, gestures, sign language, notes. I was allowed no outside communication except in an emergency, which meant no letters, phone calls or visitors. Cell phones, pagers and all other electronic devices had to be deposited with management.

  The only sanctioned exercise was walking during designated times in designated areas. Clothing should be modest and comfortable. Simple vegetarian food would be served.

  The strictness of the environment reflected the discipline of the practice.

  The cost of Vipassana, including all meals and accommodation, was zero, with a voluntary donation, according to one’s means, only after completing the course. To preserve Vipassana’s purity, the global program receives no institutional or government grants, and the teachers and organizers are unpaid. As it was explained to me, this is so that we “householders” (essentially, anyone who owns anything) can temporarily take the Buddhist vow of poverty and temporarily live off the generosity of others.

  According to the schedule, I was to rise at 4:30 each morning and retire, with lights out, at 9:30 p.m. I would receive a breakfast break, a lunch break and a tea break (in place of dinner). I would meditate for a total of nine hours and forty-five minutes every day, sometimes in my room, sometimes in the group hall. The cardinal rule was to meditate as if alone—with mind turned inward—while taking care not to disturb anyone else and ignoring any distractions caused by others. I could ask questions of our teachers during designated periods—which was the
only time I could speak. Each evening I would hear a forty-five-minute teacher’s discourse.

  Because of the timing of Canada’s Got Talent, I arrived at the centre the day the silence began. I was relieved that I didn’t have to make pleasantries with strangers and could just merge into the process undetected.

  Once in the meditation hall, I was assigned a permanent place where I was to sit on cushions in a comfortable upright position. Though crossed legs were preferred, stretching them out was also allowed, and because I was pregnant, I could lean against a wall for support.

  We received our instructions for meditation via video and audio recordings by S. N. Goenka. We were told to concentrate our minds by observing our breath, which is the link between our conscious and our unconscious. Specifically, we were to focus on the tiny space between the tip of the nose and the top of the upper lip. I thought, Okay, I can do that. Oh sure. Though seemingly a simple task, it’s nearly impossible for prolonged periods, given the uncontrolled mind’s desire to wander. How could I fill ten days with silence? I struggled to stay awake. Silence is so unusual in our noisy lives that it cued my mind to sleep. Conversely, the snoring and restlessness of the students with whom I was sharing a room caused me strong nightly annoyance, even though I knew overcoming these distractions was part of the process. I was grateful when, after three days, I was offered a single room. Being pregnant has its privileges.

  I discovered that I liked the regimented schedule and the comfort of always knowing where I had to be. The meals were adequate for survival, but the absence of my beloved coffee seemed harsh.

  As the days passed, Goenka gave us further video instructions for perfecting our meditations, allowing me to gain deeper insight into my behaviour. In the language of the practice: I typically suffered from the sankara of boredom, which meant that I was always looking to the promise of the future instead of being satisfied with what the present offered. To increase emotion, I created drama, leading to unnecessary hardship.

  The first six days I wanted to crawl out of my own skin . . . when I wasn’t dozing off. But, somehow, these occasional five-second stretches (usually less) emerge, and you find yourself suspended in a golden stillness. In this space, no matter how small, you renew yourself. Something rebuilds from the inside out. You get a glimpse at what a clean house might look like. It’s a satisfied exhale, a glass of wine on a comfy couch after a long day; it’s a date with yourself where everyone gets lucky. And then it’s gone. It’s fleeting, but it’s everything and nothing simultaneously. I don’t mean to make it sound like magic, because it’s the presence of nothing that gave my mind and brain the relief it was so desperately seeking. Eventually—and with the requisite frustration and sense of failure that comes with it—you string those few seconds together into a longer succession. And then it’s time to get thrust back into the noisy outside world. Where, praise God, there’s meat.

  Buddhism teaches that the suffering of the world and those who inhabit it is created by a desire to make the good last forever and to end suffering as soon as possible. Since everything always changes, equanimity is attained by freeing the Self from both an aversion to the negative (suffering) and an attachment to the positive (pleasure). The understanding that both are temporary allows you to enjoy the good and to accept the bad. This does not mean detaching the Self from life in an apathetic way, but freeing the Self from false desires and projections in order to engage more deeply.

  Because my singing career is built on the breath, Vipassana’s emphasis on breathing was very helpful. My yogic practice had already taught me that strong emotion, either good or bad, changed my breath. With fear, we typically hold on to it, stopping its free flow. When singing, how I take a breath is directly related to the phrase that will follow and its length—how full of tension or devoid of tension my musical choices will be—because of the quality of the breath I have to work with. Vipassana also taught that the further I was from consciousness of my breath, the further I was from awareness of myself and the acknowledgment of how I felt. This was one of the big lessons that I took from the course, and that I still carry with me.

  During my interviews with one of our two mentors, I found it difficult to articulate the confusion caused by everything swirling in my head. When I did formulate a request, it was along the lines of, What should my process be when I leave here? Where is all this leading?

  Typically, I was wanting to know the future rather than being content with the present. Once again, this was my sankara of boredom, manifesting itself in goal-oriented ambition. At times during Vipassana I did experience the true breadth of stillness, which gave me insight into its antithesis, which is my norm: the desire to always be moving. This helped me to understand that my feelings of breathlessness were not related to my blood pressure but to a spiritual condition requiring me to take a deeper spiritual beat and relax already. I needed to expand my spiritual lungs, which would also strengthen my physiological lungs, creating the oxygen for a full breath. The cleansing path to stillness is narrow, allowing room for only one person, and I found it hard to get to that solitude with its prescribed singularity. At least I now knew that the channel existed and that to be a fully formed human I must make that effort.

  I hit a bump on day six. I could not believe I had four more days to go, locked inside my head, talking to myself. It helped to walk outside, doing the meditative shuffle, though what I really wanted was to throw myself into a snowbank and roll around—so I did that a few times. This was motivated not by joy but by my desire for a release through contrast. At the same time, I knew I had to let this impatience wash over me and trust in the process to do its work in me.

  Vipassana was challenging in so many ways but ultimately highly powerful. Its ripple effects have changed the way I warm up for singing, as well as how I live my life. It has instilled in me a sense of control, so that now I experience both joy and adversity more objectively, as if viewing them from a greater distance. Since my volatile schedule doesn’t allow me to practise every day, I have brushed up with a few one-day Vipassana courses.

  Half a decade later, I understand the unfolding layers of that experience more and more. My triggers, my pitfalls, my deficiencies are held in a context of me never wanting to be bored—the illness of restlessness. If I’m not careful, my need to be entertained will force me to jump from sparkly thing to sparkly thing. Which is a problem for me, since now I have kids. Falling prey to an inability to live in the moment means I could miss a lot of moments if I’m not careful. To be motivated by an aversion to boredom means that I have avoided being still for any reason and by any means necessary. By not allowing the natural cycle and rhythm of life to deepen my experience, wisdom and humanity, I risk banishing myself from the engagement of being a parent.

  To be fair and balanced with myself, I also see this sankara as a hunger for life. It’s the insatiable nature of my ambition that gets me home on fumes of sleep so that I can see my sons for as long as possible. But sinking deeper into the consistencies and commitments of the day in, day out realities of my children’s needs is a challenge for me. I’m not naturally wired for it. And I’m supposed to feel guilty about it because my ambitions were meant to suddenly morph and align with those of my children’s as soon as I gave birth? Screw that. Yes, the stakes are higher because I now have two sons I plan to raise into men. But, Shepherd and Sterling, if you’re old enough to be reading this, Mama was a card-carrying member of society before you got here, and now you’ll fall into step behind her until you can light your own torch (when you’re old enough to play with fire). At that point, you’ll light your way and mine. Because eventually, my offspring, our relationship will be reciprocal. You’ll be raising your own babies by then, but yeah, eventually we’ll be friends. If I like you.

  (At this point in their lives, my sons are fully entitled to the entire scope of all the love I have to give. No questions asked.)

  Being a full-time opera singer, performer, artist, narcissist and mom
means strengthening the important connection between my restless desire to be everywhere at the same time and my deeply rooted dissatisfaction, because as strong as my hunger is for success, I’d like to think my hunger for healthy spiritual growth is much deeper. The older I get (the thirty-nine-year-old stifles a chuckle), the less apologizing I do for my attraction to sparkly things. Do I still feel guilty and ashamed and like I’ve missed important moments? Absolutely. But if I don’t live long enough for cloning to become a reality, I have to make my peace with (and find the joy in) being where I am and who I am.

  My Vipassana experience solidified the value I place in isolation: carving out your own place in the world and taking up the space you need in order to recharge. The goal of meditation is to accomplish this within the Self, but practically, my fix for satisfying my inner isolationist was to move to the country as soon as I could after the birth of my first son. Beyond the logistics of being close to my parents, my primary goal in life was to not have neighbours or be able to see any public road from my house. I wanted an oasis of space in the hope that my busy mind might take the cue and relax.

  My environment has so much influence over my state of mind. I have incredibly thin skin for someone who makes her living being looked at and listened to. And, as I’d established, the teensiest sparkly thing could veer me off course. There are already enough cooks in the kitchen of my head that I really needed a place for them to all spread out. Without this expanse, I become tense and insecure. My breathing becomes shallow and I don’t laugh as easily. It’s not that my problems don’t follow me home (because they do), but there’s something about having more than one room to walk into, or a kitchen to cook in, or a fireplace to build a fire in, or a proper place for everything, or my own wine to drink, that gives me at least the illusion of control. It’s not even about sleeping in my own bed or wearing my own clothes. I rarely unpack, actually. It’s more about the buffer that exists between me, my sons and the rest of the world.