I can’t remember when I first started paying attention to the idea of meditation– it’s been quite a long time. I can’t quite trace the original steps. I don’t really know who to give credit to. I read a book summary of Eckhart Tolle’s Power Of Now a long time ago, but I didn’t really think much of it. I found YouTube videos from this Sikh guy named Guruka Singh that I really liked. I especially liked a long video by Jon Kabat-Zinn called Coming To Our Senses. All of these are things I remember from the early 2010s, I’m not sure if I had encountered it before that. I’ve also watched and tried those 10 minute “get some headspace” videos, and I’ve always sort of appreciated the idea.
Yet until now I’ve never really fully adopted meditation as a practice. I’m not sure why I got into it in the first place, but I can talk about why I’ve never dived totally into it. People who get consumed entirely by something new always bother me somewhat– it feels like you should always be skeptical of anything new, and you should be cautious to avoid replacing your entire world-view all at once. I’m kinda generally-skeptical-but-cautiously-open to new things, and I try things bit by bit over time…
(all of this is narrativistic projection. It’s humbling to pay attention to myself trying to explain myself and feeling like all of it is fiction, like I’m just making stuff up that sounds good but I don’t actually know what drew me into these things… but I also don’t want to end up using really cheesy language like “oh, this is what the Universe wants for me, and it drew me to it, yadda yadda”.)
I’ve always been somewhat curious and yet somewhat skeptical of meditation, buddhism, buddha, swamis, holy men, temples, churches, monasteries, etc. When I was a kid, I thought temples and churches and stuff were really boring. I never understood why anybody would want to go into the mountain and sit there doing nothing. I read Robin Sharma’s The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari while I was in NS, and somebody had left the book lying around, and I enjoyed it.
I think over time life starts to wear you down– especially when you have responsibilities and obligations, social status games to play and keep up with, all the mssiness and chaos. I can appreciate now how a church has a really calming effect– just the architecture of it. So do beaches, so do waterfronts, and now the idea of going for a hike in a nature reserve strikes me as something that might be actually nice to do. (10 years ago, I’d have much prefered to play video games– and I think that’s completely rational. You do what makes sense to you at the time, given who you are in that given instance.)
So I’m trying to write about this journey I’ve had, though it’s not really very much of a journey, it’s not very deliberate, I haven’t really gotten anywhere, I don’t really know anything. What I do know is that over time I’ve gotten stressed, frazzled, frustrated, overwhelmed, and I don’t like it. I’ve never really wanted to buy into the whole power-and-status thing completely- I read about it and I try it on as a lens to view the world with, but I also try to take those lens off because they can have a limiting, corrupting effect. As all lenses do.
What’s happening I think is this– in the few moments that I do set aside time to meditate [1]– the end result is almost always a good thing. Almost always pleasant. It’s never been bad. At worst, I feel a little more restful, which is still good. At best, I feel a light calmness and I find it much easier to get along with my day. It’s like tuning your guitar before you start playing- it’s tuning your mind. I don’t think I’ve experienced the sort of exalted, satori moments that some people talk about having– there’s no deep enlightenment for me yet, and maybe never.
There are some parallels for me between meditation and running. I suck at running. I wheeze and cough and my legs and lungs hurt very quickly. I have bad form. But I kept at it because I know what the literature and the science said, and I was kinda desperate to feel better about myself and my life and my life-situation, so I went out there and pounded pavement– and it felt good after a while. And I now see it as a tool that I have access to for improving my state. Same for meditation. Same for writing, which I’m better at than the other two– and I definitely know what it’s like to have a really, really good writing session that I can lose myself into.
Again, I’m not sure if I’ve ever done the self-transcendent thing that some people claim to have been able to do– even with writing, sometimes everything just flows beautifully and perfectly– usually because I already knew exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I suppose there must be parallels in running and meditation.
This is really a longwinded way of me saying I think meditation is a good thing, I like it and I think I’m going to do it more. I didn’t do it when I was younger because it seemed like a waste of time– why are you just sitting there, why not do something instead? But I realize now that the alternative isn’t much better. Without a sense of calm, focus, without clarity of mind and deepness of breath and good posture (because most of the time I’m of muddled mind, slight shortness of breath, and bad posture), then whatever I do is usually awkward, compressed, half-hearted, sloppy, etc. I end up playing Candy Crush or getting into Facebook arguments, etc. I’m chasing cheap hits.
So don’t just do something, sit there! I’m way too early in this to know what is up, but I’m just writing this to affirm to myself that it’s something I want to do more of.
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[1] by which I mean simply sitting still, staring out of the window, focusing on my own breath and usually contemplating about the briefness of existence and the temporariness of all things, and how everything is connected.