Many people would rather watch paint dry than meditate. And who is to say that they are wrong, it can be difficult, uncomfortable, tedious, and boring. But, counterintuitively, it is the very experience of these challenges that we gain insight into the rebellious nature of the human mind, like a horse that fights the reins.
What we believe
Why on earth would we meditate?
Why sit on a cushion for ten or twenty minutes and do absolutely nothing? What does that achieve?
Just the idea of meditation puts most people off straight away and instantly raises objections like; I haven’t got time, I’ve too much to do. I’d rather watch paint dry. Nope, not for me!
And when we do meditate it often confirms our misgivings!
The experience of meditating can trigger restlessness, boredom, or we simply get lost in our thoughts. Muscle pain can make sitting uncomfortable, or on the other hand we might just nod off!
All these experiences confirm what we already know, meditation, it’s not for me!
No doubt meditation can bring real benefits, but that takes a lot of time and commitment. Few of us are able to spend weeks or months on retreat and learn meditation from the monks & masters of the great Eastern traditions.
However, if we try meditation and confirm our doubts, if we stop and think about it we have learned something profound.
What we learn
Without doubt, one of our first observations after meditating is that we are incessant thinkers. Our thoughts are like soap bubbles, they emerge from some invisible source, hold our attention for a few seconds, and then burst to be replaced immediately by others.
If we observe each of these thoughts a little closer we notice that each comes with an emotional charge; pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.
If a thought comes into our head about someone who made an unpleasant comment about us, then we experience anger, or hurt. That’s the purpose of emotions, they move us to act. “Well, if he’s going to be unpleasant to me, then next time I’ll be unpleasant back.”
Emotions are like a rainbow, not only are there so many different colours, but each has different shades of intensity. Intense emotions can immediately trigger a reaction.
Spend a little more time observing your thoughts, emotions, and actions, and you start to get a deeper insight into human nature. You begin to see how our behaviour is often driven by our inborn and basic human needs for; safety, shelter, sustenance, support, sex, and status.
Meditation can be difficult, boring, and uncomfortable, but when we detach ourselves from our experience and take a closer look at what we are observing, namely ourselves, we begin to get some interesting insights.
Why bother?
Only about 5% of people in the West have a regular meditation practice, so why should we?
When you begin to observe your own thoughts and emotions in meditation, and reflect on your own actions, you begin to see patterns of behaviour. We are creatures of habit, and our behaviour is habitual, whether it serves us well or poorly.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
If we don’t meditate regularly, we are far less likely to objectively observe our thoughts and emotions, and far more likely to live reactively at their whim.
We allow the tail to wag the dog.
We now live in a world in which the most precious commodity is not gold, but our attention. We can no longer remain ignorant of the billions spent on developing algorithms with the purpose of capturing and conditioning our attention. We live in a world in which addiction is the most profitable of all business models.
The problem is not the amount of screen time we are consuming, but the amount of us that is being consumed by the screen.
At the core of the problem is the fact that we are more than human beings with human needs, we are also spiritual beings with spiritual needs. When we ignore our spiritual needs, or when our actions conflict with them, we suffer.
Increasingly, as our attention spans are being eroded, we are being starved of spiritual nutrition; connection & belonging, time in Nature, health & exercise, solitude & reflection, and life’s simple pleasures like reading, music & conversation.
When we are being conditioned by our screens to seek pleasure in; alcohol, betting, streaming tv, gaming, sex, shopping, news, and social media, we are being isolated from our spiritual needs. This is increasingly leading to dissonance & disharmony, when the pursuit of pleasure conflicts with our deeper aspirations and core values.
This is the cause of our suffering, and we all suffer.
What can we do?
We can decide to mediate regularly, perhaps ten or twenty minutes a day.
It’s unlikely that we will experience enlightenment or nirvana, but every time we sit we will be reminded of the wild, untrained, nature of our mind.
We will see ourselves for what we are, thinking machines, and how our thoughts relentlessly capture our attention and drag it down some rabbit hole.
We can learn to smile when we ‘wake-up’ to the fact that our attention has been ambushed yet again, and we can congratulate ourselves on rescuing our attention.
We can start to observe our thoughts, emotions, and actions, and gain insights into the beliefs, and conditioning that lie behind them.
With practice and concentration we can begin to increase our attention span and become more emotionally resilient.
There will be times when our minds are restless and refuse to quieten, when we feel bored, uncomfortable, and frustrated. However, there will also be times of stillness, quiet, and joy.
Most importantly we will begin to straighten out the tangled knots of our consciousness, and we will be less vulnerable to the snares & traps that the digital world sets for us.
What can we achieve?
With intention, effort, and consistency we can build a meditation practice that will lead to sustainable change, we will become a better version of ourselves.
In prioritising and giving time to our spiritual needs, we can enjoy the gifts of meditation.
Freedom from the strong forces of habitual, compulsive, and addictive behaviour. Peace of mind from living our lives in closer alignment with our spiritual needs.
Happiness that suffuses our mind, body, and soul.
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I really like your emphasis on meditation not as achieving a special state, but as learning to notice what normally carries us along unnoticed - thoughts, emotions, habits, reactions.
It made me think that dreamwork can sometimes be a form of meditation too. At least from a Processwork perspective, working with a dream means slowing down and staying with an image, feeling, or movement long enough for something outside our usual awareness to become more visible.
Different doorway, perhaps, but a surprisingly similar practice of attention.