On this blog, I’ve posted a host of meditations, and basically not a single one of them is strictly a mindfulness meditation. This is despite the fact that I am a longtime practitioner of mindfulness meditation. I like my thinky little gee-whiz meditations, and I hope you do too. They make me feel connected and wonderstruck and, in their way, more mindful and aware. But these are not the meditations I do every morning, and haven’t been for a long time.
For several months, mostly during COVID shutdown, I was doing a lot of these meditations on nature and aspects of life, and I had some truly transcendent experiences. I had huge, expansive moments that brought tears to my eyes. But after a while, I started to struggle. I realized I was trying to have a certain type of experience when I sat down to meditate. It made an ordinary meditation…disappointing, I think is the right word.
So I returned to mindfulness meditation, and was struck again with how difficult it is. I was bringing myself back to a simpler process, only to rediscover how unlikely it is to stay focused simply on the breath in a chaos of swirling thoughts – simple, but not easy, as they say. Feeling that I had not “mastered” mindfulness, it seemed to me that mindfulness is what I need to practice. Of course, you can’t “master” thoughts any more than you can “master” air – the mind has a mind of its own, and the most you can hope is to increase your awareness of how your thoughts behave and how to get a break sometimes.
So why am I pushing a meditation that I don’t even use? I do truly feel that the insights of my previous practice brought me a sense of wholeness with the earth and living things and humanity. That is worth sharing. There is room for a whole huge range of goals in the big tent of meditation, and that includes being entranced by nature and the world.
My meditation was trying to do too much for day in/day out practice. For the last several months, I’ve been keeping it simple – and you know, sometimes I find that disappointing. Not every meditation session brings enlightenment, or even new insight. Reading this, it sounds to me like I’m still trying to have a certain kind of experience.
But examining that dissatisfaction brings its own kind of mindfulness. I am a neophyte meditator still learning what to look for, and what shouldn’t be looked for to begin with. On a good day – heck, in a good moment – I find the breath, and it is whole and perfect and needs nothing else. I experience small, simple moments that bring tears to my eyes. And I can revisit previous insights by sharing them with you. All the meditations bring me something, in all their variety, and maybe they bring something to you too.
This one really speaks to me because I feel the same way about “meditation.” It seems like every advocate for meditation has a different interpretation of the word and different goals for it. Some people seek intense focus while others seek deep relaxation. Some people seek to eliminate the self while others seek self actualization. The way I’ve made sense of this range of meanings is to view meditation as something like “paying attention to the things I usually overlook.” Your definition and goals for meditation sit very well alongside my definition.
For what it’s worth, I do get a lot out of your style of meditations. I find that guided meditations like the ones here help me to have new feelings or experiences, and those new experiences indirectly reveal what was limiting or missing from old ways of thinking. When it works, it is an “ecstatic” experience in the old sense of ecstasy: ec- meaning “outside of” and -stasis meaning like “the stable place I was stuck in.”
So thanks for this and for all the meditations you’ve given me here.
Oh thank you! As you always say, meditation is like exercise – people can do it for all kinds of reasons that fit into their goals for themselves, and it just doesn’t have to be a one-size reason. I love the explication of “ecstatic.” I do find meditation to be an ecstatic experience on a good day, and find I often get outside of the stable place I was stuck in. Thank you for this thoughtful comment.
I’m such a novice at meditation that having some guide is so helpful. My monkey mind distracts me too much and too often. I think you started this blog with the confession that it was hard for you to start too. I’m still too goal oriented to just…. concentrate on the breath.
What’s been amazing to learn along the way is how truly interesting the breath is if you pay enough attention to it. There are physical sensations everywhere, and there are intriguing things you can witness in the mind – it’s a varied landscape. Sharon Salzberg is a great teacher for just keeping your focus on the breath, which I really appreciate. Sam Harris is great for teaching about dialing in to many aspects of present moment experience, including but not limited to the breath. I won’t even say you get better with practice (although I did, a little), but get better at being okay with wandering off the more you practice. Silly monkey mind!