On Meditation
An excerpt from a 2021 personal blog.
This Friday will mark my 100th consecutive day meditating. Though I will say, I probably talked about wanting to start meditating for almost two years before actually committing. My hesitancy stemmed from a few roadblocks, which I explore here.
Roadblock 1:
Meditation carries a fatal misconception, that the goal of meditation is to stop thinking. Here's the thing, our brains do two things: keep our bodies running and regulated, and they think. They are built to think. It would be absurd to fight against that. Instead, the point of meditation, is to practice a continual coming back to the present moment. Neural pathways tend to act in the paths of least resistant, also read the paths most often used. It's like tire tracks in snow, once the first car has established a particular trajectory, it's hard to reroute the subsequent tracks without noted effort. If we practice every day, coming back to the present moment, it would follow that coming back to the present would eventually become the default route for those neural pathways, and strengthened over time with repetition.
Which leads us to Roadblock 2:
When you're knee deep in negative thought patterns or stuck in busy mode, imagining a calm, present brain and body can feel nearly out of reach. It can feel like it's meant for other people, that you're somehow incapable or not ready. But that's just the mind telling more stories. Everyone exists in this present moment, which means we all have the opportunity to bring our attention here.
The kicker? You have to be willing to give up the familiar story, and attached identity around planning for the future by reflecting on the past. Being busy-busy-, planning ahead, over-thinking, and worrying about the future was my default, my most-used neural pathways. At the time, I worried that without my hyper-planning Type A personality, I didn’t bring anything worthwhile to the table. In my defense, it was part of me that I relied on for income and motivation, which felt like the only real markers of success. Spoiler alert: turns out that wasn't true. What I gave up was the burden of being "on" all the time, the burden of my chattering brain, the burden of upholding some kind of constructed identity. I see now that motivation can stem from curiosity, from excitement, from seeking joy and ease. I also see that my value is the perspective I bring to life, not how many hours straight I can work without eating. Now that I've been meditating, I am practicing coming back into the present moment, and it's, gratefully, spilling into the rest of my life.
cover photo via Kori Elise Creative