Due to the explicit nature of this post, I have changed names to protect the persons involved. At the time of his death Finn had a best friend, they were together nearly all the time when it was possible. He and I are forever bound by the nature of our relationship with Finn, and forever changed.
By Day 7, I started to feel less sick. I had been able to get a decent night's sleep which makes a big difference. I was also able to make it through all of the Adhitthana meditations without moving since that breakthrough on Day 4. Adhitthana means "strong determination" — the practice of sitting with an absolute resolve not to move for the duration of the meditation. No moving your arms, legs, or opening your eyes for the entire hour. We were told that the most important meditations of the retreat were these three group Adhitthana sessions.
Of course, I ignored the recommendation to be mindful of my physical limits and forced myself to tough it out without moving since I knew that was the end goal of the entire retreat.
I found Adhitthana especially powerful when it came to dealing with both the girdle of liquid fire and the worst and strongest memories of Finn's death. Sitting without moving, not reacting to any sensation whether pleasant or unpleasant, observing everything with equanimity. It was the same principle applied to the body that the One Who Observes had been applying to my thoughts.
At lunchtime, I was lucky enough to catch sight of Kirsten doing laps around the women's compound. We had been separated since the start of the retreat, and it was a real relief to see that she had made it this far in the program. We were both dealing with the same things, the long meditations and the need for some type of physical exercise. I felt a huge glow of pride seeing her walking around in the women's camp, knowing that she had been able to endure the torture that we were both going through. I decided to follow her example and started walking briskly in circles around the small paths of the Ashram.
On Day 8, I saw Kirsten again at lunch, and she also saw me. And waved. She had a big smile on her face, perhaps just happy to see me for some distraction. I felt at peace knowing that she was doing well and that she even had a smile on her face. I hadn't seen a smile that radiant since Finn's death. Perhaps she was also having the same type of experience where she was coming out of the dark night of the soul. Perhaps I had imagined that it was a radiant smile, but it still was a smile and it was nice to see.
During one of the meditation sessions towards the end of the day, there was another experience that I vividly recall. My mind drifted towards a recounting that Christian had told of Finn's death.
There was a moment when Christian knew that Finn would die.
He was standing on the side of the soon to be death scene. He knew and couldn't bear to watch so he looked away. I had learned of this many months after Finn's death, as it was likely too difficult for Christian to talk about just after the event. But in Christian's own words, he had seen that Finn had walked off the train platform because the station was very dark. It was around 1am, the station had no lights and it was easy to have a misstep. Finn fell into the tracks and quickly stood over to the side to let a passing train go by. Christian knew that there was not enough room and that his best friend was about to die. During this death scene visions that would play through my mind as a continuously looping nightmare, he knew this, and had to look away, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Finn trying to suck in his chest and hopefully make it out unscathed.
This thought brought severe panic to me. I felt dizzy, fear, sadness, anger at the injustice of it all, and I could see this all as an onlooker. I knew that it was again the One Who Observes. Just as this deep black wave of panic was about to crush in on my heart, my eyes were starting to tear, my lip tremble, and a huge pit in my stomach as the acid churned. Then I could feel the One Who Observes drawing in this energy and sucking it all into a bubble. Just as strongly as the black wave of panic had set in when I thought of this horrific event, I felt calmness as the bubble encased this evil thought. He was placing it into an indifferent consolidated bubble that was thinly shielded by a film just barely bound together by surface tension that was so delicate only he could control whether it would be released or not. I felt immediate relief, the panic eased, and I felt Christian's eyes look away at this moment as the train passed and killed his best friend. I passed my calmness on to him, and this sense that we were both feeling relief in this moment of dread and panic became surprisingly vivid. Christian felt the same calmness I felt, and I knew what the source was because he was becoming a trusted adviser. The One Who Observes.
The death of a child is one of, and extremely likely the single, worst experience a human can go through. Since I haven't gone through all of the worst human experiences, I can only speak as a grieving parent.
The One Who Observes helped me through this for the second time.
After that the day passed much the same as the others except by now I was easily able to sit through the Adhitthana meditations, and even ended with a level 6 or 7 in the worst areas of the girdle of liquid fire.