11/18/19
“Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting. They begin to subside the instant they arise, only to be replaced by fresh desires or feelings of discomfort. You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert. The pleasure of dessert lasts a few seconds, and then the lingering taste in your mouth must be banished by a drink of water. The warmth of the sun feels wonderful on your skin, but soon it becomes too much of a good thing. A move to the shade brings immediate relief, but after a minute or two, the breeze is just a little too cold. Do you have a sweater in the car? Let’s take a look. Yes, there it is. You’re warm now, but you notice that your sweater has seen better days. Does it make you look carefree or disheveled? Perhaps it is time to go shopping for something new. And so it goes. We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus, the question naturally arises: Is there more to life than this? Might it be possible to feel much better (in every sense of better) than one tends to feel? Is it possible to find lasting fulfillment despite the inevitability of change?” - Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
I think this quote by Sam Harris is awesome. It really makes you realize one of the central problems with the way we think. We allow our spontaneous feelings to drag us through our lives, most of the time without second thought.
Before I lose you with sounding like a hippie, let me bring it back and discuss some of the benefits I have personally experienced from practicing meditation. After all, I was a skeptic of meditation before I was open to trying it and through my first few sessions. Why do I meditate? I do it to increase mindfulness. To separate the ego from me and my actions. Along the way, I've found myself more observant, grateful, less stressed, making better decisions, and generally happier. That makes for a better version of me, and that's why I've invested time into it. Let's dive deeper and try to discover why meditation is worthwhile.
Whether you realize it or not, most of your daily life is acting on instinct. When someone bumps into you, seemingly on purpose, in the middle of the sidewalk, your subconscious mind takes over and immediately fills with rage. When an ambulance wakes you up in the middle of the night you quickly become frustrated and irritated with the situation. There are countless examples like these, many involving other people, but the common thread is this: your thoughts are on a continuous roller-coaster, pulling you along with them and transforming your behavior accordingly. Many times, it would be immensely helpful to separate from this nature and take the reigns for what comes next. With meditation, you can watch the rise and fall of the anger or judgement. In doing this, more often than not you will notice the inherent temporariness of such feelings. The arrival of them does not entail automatic rash behavior or mental worsening of the situation. Instead, by noticing them it is possible to dissociate them from your thinking and move on more quickly. Life is funny in the way that everything comes and goes. This can be upsetting or empowering, but both the positive and negative are fleeting. It's possible to use this knowledge in a way that is instrumental to improving mental strength. What follows is an improvement in many facets of your character.
The value of meditation is not only derived from controlling negative situations, though. The practice opens up the mind to being more present. From being present, it's possible to notice that you're already deriving pleasure from daily happenings. My dad always says, "all you have is now." It's such a simple but profound thought that emphasizes the power of living in the moment. When you're zipping up your coat on a cold day, for example, do you notice the raw sound that is produced by the plastic? Do you observe the brisk wind hitting your face on the way out the front door? Probably not, most of the time, but by paying attention, you can see that there is pleasure in these seemingly unimportant happenings. Being happy is not about being there, then. It's not about the past or present. It's right now, right in front of you. Of course it's good to be able to look forward to events and notice your shortcomings in a productive way. That's human. I'm not trying to put off the idea that there's a place for that. I'm merely suggesting that we rarely do enough to be here, and meditation can help us be better.
My dad is a big time stoic. He reads the teachings of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca daily. Being stoic is synonymous with being levelheaded, and a lot of stoicism is interwoven tightly with the benefits of meditation. With meditation, it's possible to feel better about pain, for example. What is so scary about pain in the moments after breaking a bone or getting a cut? It can't be the physical sensation itself, because in the present you're already enduring it. So, it must be the thought of more pain coming in the future. The mind is deceitful in this way. It is constantly dipping into the past and previewing the future in ways that aren't always helpful. Exploring this tendency and noticing the arrival of our thoughts can help to pull us back to what matters.
These discoveries, if considered more often and used in the right way, translate to understated benefits in the mind. As I said in the beginning, stress relief, happiness, decision making, and gratefulness are ideas that we all value. All too often, the mind gets in its own way. It inhibits our ability to achieve greater success in these areas, but we can practice this just like any other ability. Even small improvements can make all the difference.
At the end of the day, meditation is meant to help. If you find yourself becoming frustrated or uncomfortable in practice, you're probably trying too hard. Even if you fall short of being as focused as you would like, you're certainly progressing anyways. Even if you sit there and just observe your mind running circles around you, it's a step in the right direction. In that case, you're exploring avenues of thought that haven't been explored before, and you're gaining knowledge and experience. There's no such thing as a bad session. Even if you're engaged for 30 seconds, you're engaged. Don't let an unsatisfying session discourage you or dissuade you from trying again.
With that said, I have recorded a 14 minute session that I hope can help introduce you to meditation in a productive way. If you are interested, I encourage you to give it a shot, even if only for a minute or two. It'll be linked at the bottom of this entry. If you can't stand the sound of my voice or are unimpressed, there are plenty of high quality apps that I have implemented in my practice. Give Sam Harris' "Waking Up" a try. He's an expert on this topic and does a very good job guiding sessions. Other good products include "Headspace," which is free on any app store, or "Calm," which is a paid app that has hundreds if not thousands of available sessions to explore. I hope you'll go at it with an open mind. Enjoy!
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