Ideas on Meditation, Part 2

In the last blog, I shared some ideas which helped me realise I'd misunderstood meditation my whole life.  Essentially, my 'why to' start doing it.  In this one, I'm going to share more of an introductory 'how to' guide (experienced meditators may want to skip this post).

These ideas are an amalgamation of those gleaned from the books listed at the bottom of this blog. I'm not claiming any of it as original, although I can't remember what I got from which source.

So we sit to meditate, and we're meant to 'calm' our thoughts. But what the heck does that mean, and how do we do it? 

The idea that first helped me was to reconsider the role thinking plays in our lives. Most of us consider our thoughts as our real 'selves', and our five senses as the subordinate antennae of that thinking self. If only as a game, let's juggle this up. Consider our thinking self to be just one of our six senses. So we'd have thinking, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching and hearing as our senses. Consider each as equally important. Each has its own unique connection to the universe, and reflects reality in a different way. Meditation, this idea goes, is our daily opportunity to experience the world differently by allowing another sense to dominate our focus. We just focus on what that sense is revealing, without using the mind to interpret whatever it is the sense reveals (which is the hard part).

Many meditation techniques focus on the sense of touch because its the easiest to disassociate from our mental interpretations. For instance. If we meditate and focus on our hearing, that's fine. We try to listen to the sound without naming the sound, or what the sound means to us. If we hear a police siren, for instance, we listen to the pitch and tone of it, without speculating anything else about the police, or remembering previous adventures with police or speculating about current ones. As I live in a city full of sirens, and have had a few adventures with police, this one is off the table for me.

So let's say we're focusing on the sense of touch. This focus may be on our breath, the inhale and exhale within our lungs, or the feel of our skin, and its contact with the air, our clothes or the ground. For this blog, let's focus on the breath example. This is reportedly what the Dalai Lama does every morning, and is universally regarded in mindfulness and meditation circles as base camp. 

So just to be super clear, the foundational technique of meditation involves just sitting still, and focusing on the sensation of one's breath. That's it. 

When we really try this, pretty soon, two things are going to happen. First of all, we're going to think WTF?  I'm supposed to sleep better, have better relationships, find peace and harmony, and reach spiritual enlightenment; all by focusing on my breath?!?  The second thing, is that we're going to realise we're not focusing on our breath any longer, and that we only managed to stay focused on our breath for about 10 seconds before worrying we were being bamboozled in some sort of massive cultural prank, and that any moment random people might jump out of a corner, laughing at us for falling for this meditation malarkey.

When this happens, as it will, the instruction here is simple. With a smile, we laugh at ourselves for not lasting longer than 10 seconds at such a simple task, say silently the word 'thinking' to ourselves, and re-focus on the breath. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. For the next few minutes (or hours) of meditation we will then wonder how we lasted 10 whole seconds, as we continually get distracted by thought after thought after thought, often in less than 10 seconds of focus on the breath. 

It feels like an exercise in futility.

But this is good news. It's working. Two things are happening. First, we've realised how little control we have over our own minds. This is key. We tend to think of our thoughts as less random and moody than they are. Becoming more deeply aware of this is different for anyone, but revealing for everyone. This helps us start to expand the perception of, and relationship to, our thoughts. More on this later.

Second, we've just spent all that time teaching our brain that our thoughts are not sacrosanct. Each time we halt our mental flow, we are noticing how our minds work. The idea goes that if we want to create peaceful harmony in our lives, we have to learn to stop the mental train of anxiety, judgement or resentment, etc, BEFORE they build up steam. We need to interrupt ourselves. Those imposters, triumph and disaster, are truly all in our minds. We must teach ourselves, coach ourselves, that all our trails of thoughts are not inviolate treasures to be trusted. They are sometimes helpful, sure, but before we do or say things we wish we hadn't, we have to think them. 

We know this. We've all thought things which have been crazy or stupid or angry when not appropriate. Later, we think to ourselves, how could I think that!? But in the moment, when we're having those thoughts, it's hard to stop having them. In the moment, they feel like the right thoughts to have.

Each time our thoughts run away from a focus on the breath, we're doing what happens every day all the time. And each time we smile, silently whisper 'thinking' to ourselves, and come back to the breath, we're teaching ourselves its ok to derail ourselves, to observe our thoughts, to build a little awareness of a part of ourselves that is not always very reliable.

The fact our thinking is so capricious isn't a bad thing. It just is. Let's return to the randomness of our thoughts, and the mental exercise of our six senses. We don’t blame our nose when there is a bad smell, we don’t blame our tastebuds when there’s a bad taste, and we can learn not to blame ourselves when we have moaning or hurtful or selfish thoughts. They happen. But we do tend to judge ourselves for our thoughts. Instead, we can learn to contextualise their surface nature, laugh at their absurdity, accept they happen, to everyone, accept that all they reveal is that we're human, not some hidden meaning that Freud would have us explore endlessly, and move on to the next moment.

Meditation shows us just how inconsistent our thinking is. When we observe ourselves, we find ourselves having diametrically opposed views quite often, sometimes within the same minute! This is the ugly underbelly of thinking that we worry is unique to us individually, but isn't.

This helps us to start appreciating some of the deeper benefits of meditation. If we can have certain sorts of thoughts, and not worry that such thoughts are 'proof' of anything, it's a big step to having compassion for ourselves. And when we can develop this compassion for ourselves, seeing that our thoughts are not who we really are, it becomes easier to have compassion for others, because their thoughts aren't who they really are, either. They're just thoughts. Which are as impermanent as everything else.

In the last blog, I talked about consciousness. The idea was that meditation is meant to help us connect to our deeper consciousness, our deeper connection to each other, and the universe. This focus on the breath, after a while, seems to lull the thinking brain into a bit of a coma or something, like the magical lyre Mercury used to bewitch Apollo. The space created allows the consciousness to expand. It's not something we can force. It's only something we can create the right conditions to allow to unfold. 

Because it's not something you do, but allow the space for, it's a paradox we have trouble embracing. "I'm going to meditate now for... er... no purpose whatsoever..."  It just doesn't roll off the tongue. 

The analogy used is that our consciousness is the sky, and our thoughts are the weather. Regardless of what we do, we will have good and bad weather, but the sky will always be there. When we meditate, we find that the sky reveals itself whenever the weather clears. It also teaches us that when the weather won't clear, observing our thoughts without judgement, and coaching ourselves to be willing to abandon our own lines of thinking, keeps our thinking from leading us down the garden paths of triumph and disaster. It keeps us from clinging to or avoiding the weather.  The weather just is.

So are we.

Just focusing on the breath can feel like a silly exercise. And in this blog, I haven't shared any of the experience one encounters when one is actually able to remain focused on it for more than 10 seconds. That's the point. Even when we think nothing is happening, there's some really cool ground work being laid that helps us experience other things later on. 

In fact, the constant distraction our thinking throws at us, and the continual instruction to say 'thinking' with a smile, and come back to the breath, this continual struggle is what is meant by being a 'Spiritual Warrior'. It often feels like a battle. But this is the battle to fight, moment by moment, so say the experts, to find our way to happiness, joy and contentment. 

A fascinating part of this is how science is now, several thousand years after the invention of meditation, starting to catch up. In the next blog, I'm going to share some insights being developed by one of the newest branches of science: Neuroplasticity. It seems the reason everyone from the US Army to Goldman Sachs now has mindfulness* training as part of their regiment is that science is proving not just that it works, but how. 

Books that influenced this blog.

• Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
• Elkhart Tolle, The Power of Now
• Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart (so amazing, I read it 3x last year..)
• A Path With Heart, Jack Kornfield
• The Headspace meditation app.
• My yoga practice with Sangye Yoga

*for the record, meditation and mindfulness are the same thing, just that some people associate some baggage with the word meditation, and its Buddhist heritage. They needn't. It is just a brain exercise.  Unless their religion is against breathing.

Ideas on Meditation, Part 1

A little over a year ago, I read a book which, I can now say, changed my life.  It was called The Antidote, by Oliver Burkeman, to which he cheerfully added the tagline, 'Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking'.  

It is a funny, thoughtful, and irreverent look at various ways people have tried to be happy through the centuries.  He shares amusing observations on everyone from the stoics in Roman times to the Mexican celebration of the 'Day of the Dead' in our own.  Although it wasn't a book on meditation, what I found captivating, and changed my life, was his description of meditation.

I had tried meditation and couldn't get it. I was too busy. Or, as I’d heard things like washing dishes could be meditative, perhaps I was already doing it. Mr Burkeman helped me to realise I had just fundamentally misunderstood it.

Since reading his book, I've meditated for about 250 hours in the last year and recently completed a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Whilst no expert, I understand it more than I did and, most saliently, I understand it very differently than I did.  In this post, I’m going to share some of the ideas I enjoyed in The Antidote a year ago, which helped me begin this journey.

Firstly, Mr Burkeman invites us to consider that we might have two types of mental energy. There’s a ‘thinking’ layer, used to solve problems, formulate sentences, remember the past and project into the future, and then a deeper layer or what he calls our ‘conscious' layer.  

The thinking layer is usually dominant - it's the voice we hear in our heads - and its constantly trying to ‘fix’ things.  That's its job.  Clearly, this is often good, as many things need fixing, but not everything.  In fact, most things can't be fixed, but that doesn't stop the voice from trying.  Often, it directs us to try to control outcomes, for instance, when none of us can, or makes us into the hero or victim of our past, when neither are true. So this voice, while useful, has limitations. And it's biggest limitation is that because it is an evolutionary problem-solving mechanism, it has to focus on problems. 

This was a massive a-ha moment for me. The very nature of our minds, what makes us homo sapiens, is this problem-solving ability.  It's what's allowed us to rise from apes.  Thinking is problem-solving. The jammy bit is how 'thinking' talks to us.  Our thinking voice presents its solutions as the 'big fix' to our lives.  'As soon as 'x' happens, all will be well', I've heard my mind say this countless times.  By its core purpose, the thinking mind will find problems, invent problems, when none are available - creating drama and sabotaging the harmony already there. So its the constant striving or "clinging to a particular version of a happy life, while fighting to eliminate all possibility of an unhappy one", that is the cause of unhappiness, not its solution.  

The other layer Mr Burkeman calls our 'consciousness' - the wellspring of our being.  It's the part of ourselves that would be the same even if we'd been raised by apes in the jungle, like Tarzan.  It lacks any of the artifice of our particular culture, language or environment. Its the life force inside of us, beyond our ego, our personalities, and the particular events of our lives. It's hard to define, because it can be a part of any moment of any of our lives, but there are a few times we are more likely to experience it: when we happen along a majestic sunset, when we're running and feel that effortless second wind, or just about any time life surprises us so much we stop thinking about our connection to it and just experience it. This layer is the source of contentment, joy and peaceful harmony with life. 

In short, he explains, if we're going to be happy, we have to work out how to fix stuff AND how to harmonise with life. Both layers are important.  The problem is one can't access the conscious layer by thinking.  In fact, one has to let go of the compulsion to fix stuff to access it.  This make consciousness both paradoxical and non-linear.  Its just different. If you think you've thought about it well enough to understand conciousness intellectually, you haven't got it.  It has to be felt.

The purpose of meditation is to create a gateway for convening with this conscious layer, to introduce us to an intelligence that is more in our bodies than our minds.

The challenge of meditation is that the thinking layer is like a spoilt child. It doesn't want to play along. So when we sit to meditate we soon get frustrated that we can't quiet our thinking. The thinking layer yells, stop this!

A relief is to learn that we are experiencing what every single person who has ever learned to meditate has experienced. And as we'll see in Part 2, the struggle is endemic. For this post, let's just note that finding access to that conscious layer is not a thinking process. Being conscious requires a different approach, which starts with realising that 'thinking' is part of our being, not our being.  We have to get over this hurdle (only, in this case, getting over the hurdle requires us to let go of a need to hurdle).  If we are going to develop the awareness that will bring the joy and harmony to our lives that we crave, we must persist (only, in this case, persisting means stopping our craving to fix our lives and its perceived / manufactured problems).

Yes, it all gets paradoxical, like some sort of ancient riddle, which is why so many people bail at this stage.  But don't stop; we're getting to the good stuff.

Before we do, just two observations by Mr Burkeman on why so many of us actively avoid meditation - these hit the nail on the head for me. 

The first is that we're afraid that if we get good at accepting our world, we won't be able to change (i.e., improve) our world. This doesn't follow, says Mr Burkeman. In fact, the opposite. The more we are connected to both layers, the more we realise which things can not be changed, the less energy we waste attempting to change things we can't. So the energy we spend changing our world is more effective. Even better, as we're not trying to fix as many things, we start to genuinely enjoy things that previously bugged us, because we accept them. More happiness in our lives? Check. Able to change more by trying to change less? Check. By being more conscious, we help the thinking layer do its job better. 

Here we get to add a dash of irony in all of this. Most of us get this argument at an intellectual level, i.e., at the thinking layer. However, as the ego is just problem-solving when considering this dilemma, it can both accept it intellectually, and in the VERY NEXT THOUGHT, observe something it can't fix, come up with a strategy to fix it, and convince us we'll be happy when this is done. We know one thing but do another. The ego is just crap at letting go. It's like asking a pack of hungry lions to choose meat not to eat. This is why the intellect can't solve the 'happy' question.  Fundamentally, its job is to problem solve, and its hard to be happy when we're focused on a problem.

The other concern people have about meditation is this talk of ‘getting rid of their ego’. We fundamentally like who we are, mostly, we like what we like, mostly, and we don't want to become some bland version of ourselves. This is a misunderstanding. Nobody is suggesting this, and for good reason - we can't get rid of the thinking layer of the brain. Its impossible. What we can do, he says, is to become aware of it, to hear its voice, to know when its speaking, and to observe its influence.

Meditation is the practice of listening to the ego, not erasing it, by giving waking dominance to the conscious layer.  Its method is to use a variety of techniques which strengthen certain parts of our mind, so that when we’re not meditating, we don’t react.  We learn to respond.

Finally, we come to the most fascinating part of all this (at least to me). Because while reading this you have to use the thinking part of your brain, neither this blog nor anything else written can ever truly explain meditation. It's a Catch-22. You have to learn enough about it to get motivated to do it, but that knowledge is useless once you start doing it.  Consciousness has to be experienced, like a sunset. It has to be wrangled out of our senses, our experience of the world.  One might say that meditation is the process of training our mind to find a beautiful sunset in the most mundane moments of our lives, and it's that training which keeps us at peace in the volatile, difficult moments of our lives.  

But that's not quite it, either, because being conscious is not always peaceful!

See what I mean?  This is why meditation is so fascinating - it’s impossible to sum up in a sound bite.  And why there’s all these cloud and sky, or pond and ripple analogies. To be conscious, it’s something each person has to experience for themselves. 

Fortunately, there are a few ideas I've learned that are helping me, that I will share in the next post.

For now, let me just share this. I'm sleeping well. I hadn't slept really well in about 15 years. Most people I know would love to sleep better.  For no other reason than this, I wish I'd learned about this stuff sooner.