Meditation is hard, folks. I’m just going to put that right out there. Everywhere we look, someone is telling us to meditate. I’m surprised we don’t see commercials yet - “Have wrinkles? Try meditating!” Actually, kidding, I am SURE that I’ve seen that. The entire medical field seems to be in agreement, now, finally adding their belated scientific go-ahead to practices that indigenous wisdom has been guiding communities through for thousands of years. Meditation helps our physical, mental, and emotional health. It allows us to be present in more moments of this precious life.
It’s also really super difficult. That’s the secret that you may not hear about in brief articles, but which most good teachers will readily admit. Our human brains are very busy, and the modern world is very, very distracting. Technology is an addiction, and we have become accustomed to our inner states being influenced by constant, external forces. Think about that for a second - Constant External Forces. Intrusions by social media, advertising, consumerism, planes, trains, automobiles, our culture of origin, and the culture we live in now. I was at the beach the other day, enjoying the magnificence of nature, just trying to look out at the ocean, and suddenly a plane flew by with a banner advertising boozy low-calorie seltzer. And it flew by again, and again, and again. We have to work very, very hard to remove ourselves from environments where our sense of reality is constantly intruded-upon. And the more privilege we have in society - financially, and in terms of job security and flexibility, the easier it becomes to make space. That is unfair: all people should have equal access to communion with nature. And the people with those really high-paying jobs that give them six weeks or more of vacation per year are probably so stressed about those high paying jobs, seeking external accomplishment and approval, that they don’t know how to slow down anymore. It’s all actually very annoying, when you think about it.
And it’s true that if you were to hop in a time machine and pop back five hundred years, the shepherds would not say that they were never distracted by thoughts. I’m sure they would have been thinking about their new baby at home, or fretting about the sore front left hoof of their oldest sheep. They would have thought about the meals to come, and if winter would be long. They would have been occupied, not pre-occupied, by the details of living a human life. But they would not have checked Facebook seventeen times in an hour. They wouldn’t know what was happening to celebrities 3,000 miles away, and they wouldn’t care. Our natural human compassion draws us out of our own lives, in this state of constant connection, and it is important to re-collect ourselves. To draw our energy and our attention, and everything that makes us us - for this life, anyway - back inside, so we can see inside and outside of ourselves and perceive things clearly. So we can know what is True, and what is societal pressure, judgement, and outside influence.
Essentially, meditation is returning to our natural state. Returning to a time before constant distractions, city living, advertising, and societal expectations about our appearances that just never seem to quit bugging us. And in essence, our lives have evolved this way as a problem-solving technique for feeling disconnected from nature, and nature-based lives. Feel empty? Buy more things. Have normal looking human skin, which is apparently bad? Try this sugar scrub. Feel sad for no reason? Donuts forever.* I ate five cookies in three minutes yesterday, because I couldn’t decide how to finalize the layout on my business cards. Being human is, in its essence, highly uncomfortable. We live and we die, and unlike any other animal just going about their business, we are aware of our mortality. And we have been taught to fear it. That’s spooky. We are given this precious gift of a life, and all of the emotions we need to process this incredible world, and then the icing on the cake: a great big brain and fear. And love. And fear about our loved ones and their inevitable deaths. And this leads us to distract ourselves, to seek entertainment in every quiet moment, to reach out for more learning, even if we are just learning what a celebrity eats for dinner.
It’s all understandable. And it all gently, slowly, mindlessly, has the capacity to suck the Joy out of our day to day lives. Not happiness, which of course is fleeting, but joy. The sense of being fully present with every wonderful, horrible, sad, funny, messy, real aspect of our human existence here together. Meditation, even just for a few minutes, is reclaiming that joy for yourself. And you can be joyful and happy. Joyful and calm. Joyful… and completely miserable. Just wretched and awful sometimes. And that’s ok. To sit down and be present with your reality for six minutes, or thirty, or ninety, is a gift that you can give yourself if you make space. And there are a million different ways, and practices, and thousands of different schools of thought. I look forward to sharing some of my favorite methods with you here in future posts, and even downloadable audio. But even if you just sit and look at the leaf on a tree, or the small motions of your cats tail, with clarity, and free from Intrusive External Forces, you are entering a state of Just Being. You are prioritizing your right to exist. And sometimes just a few minutes of just being is enough to muffle the unnecessary noise of the world, to make some space so you can see your path. Sometimes just being, just sitting and feeling good or awful, or even both… Sometimes just making space is all you need to make your way through it.
*(Disclaimer: I officially recommend the healthy and mindful practice of eating delicious things - I’ve got nothing against donuts.)