Surfing the Storm of Our Self

January 20, 2014

I received this question from an audio course user, and it reminded me of a very important point to be made, so here goes:

“Hi Roger … been using your audio course and what you say makes so much sense, and in the first couple of weeks I really felt like I was getting somewhere, and even though my mind was not calm, I could feel my body responding to the meditation, and it was beautiful. But then for some reason meditation seemed to get harder. I don’t know why. I found it harder and harder to sit, until one day I stopped. Ever since then I’ve been trying to resume my meditation but I just can’t seem to make the time. It’s not that I don’t have time. I do. But somehow it just gets filled with so many other things. Old habits I suppose, as you said. So I’m wondering if there is some magical hint you can give me to help me slot meditation more firmly into my life as a new habit.”

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We live in an atmosphere of chatter – texts, mobile conversations, transmitted noise of every kind – where traffic, radio, television and advertising scream at us from almost every direction, endless and utterly distracting. With our attention beset from every direction we use stimulants to keep pace – coffee, tea, whatever it takes, with our hormonal system passing variously through waves of anger, elation, boredom and panic as we sprint through an average day.

Then, with our mind and body still jangling from the day, we come home and sit down to meditate – ad we expect the noise to suddenly stop. We expect to instantly find the profound calm that we’ve heard about – the calm and tranquil bliss we yearn for, which meditation is purported to create.

But it doesn’t happen.

Instead, we find our body is a tangle of aches and tension, the mind chattering and babbling in endless circles and we feel so distracted that even sitting still is an anxious experience.

So we think we’re not meditating the right way. And we blame ourselves. Or we swap methods, thinking a new method or teacher will give us what we want – but that only leads to confusion. Or we pour more energy into our concentration, but that only makes us tense and eventually we fall asleep.

So after struggling for a while, we give up. And so dies a meditation practice.

Because in all the self-blame, expectations and panic, we never considered how ridiculous it is to expect instant tranquillity and calm, when almost every one of our mad life habits are about activity, emotional volatility and mental distraction.

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Essentially, we’re made of habits. In fact, one could say that habits is all we are.

We are who we are because we learnt to be that way. We learnt to like some things and not like other things. We learnt various abilities and skills. Even our genetically inherited talents and predispositions are habits developed during the lives of our ancestors, and handed down to us. And most of those habits are to do with action, competitiveness, emotional volatility and aggression.

Think about it – when in your life have you ever been encouraged to stop everything and be still?

For most of us, including me, that would be ‘never’. So how ridiculous is it to expect our mind and body, both creatures of habit, to suddenly stop and be calmly, peacefully happy as we meditate

This is why I tell people, if you want to experience calm and bliss in meditation, then become a monk or a nun. Because that’s the only place where you will be able to unravel the tight tangles of hyperactive habits you’ve developed in this life, and experience the tranquil bliss that most meditation books so misleadingly rave about.

Otherwise, let go of your expectations of bliss. Let go of calm and peace. If you meditate with these expectations, you’ll only tie yourself in knots trying to force them to happen – which is as futile as trying to stop a river by thrashing at the water with your hands.

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So that’s the bad news – which begs the question, ‘If calm and bliss and tranquillity are off the table, why the hell am I bothering to meditate?’

Well, here we find the magnificent paradox of meditation – that being, the more we accept everything that is wrong, painful stressful and disturbing during meditation, the more likely it is, that stillness will appear, along with the peace, calm and tranquillity it’s made from.

Acceptance is everything.

When we meditate, we must stop running from the storm of ourselves and what we’ve become, and do the opposite. We have to turn around and walk back into the storm – and accept it. And be with it.

That’s when stillness will appear. Because stillness is not predicated on silence or lack of activity, nor does it need a snug, silent, dimmed room to occur. And it does not need a peaceful mind or lack of thoughts or nice feelings. With acceptance, you should be able to meditate just as efficiently in the middle of a teeming freeway as in your bedroom.

Stillness arises from attitude. If you are unconditionally aware, and accept whatever is happening, stillness will appear.

When the mind develops the ability to experience what’s happening without reacting with either desire or dislike, we experience detachment – that is, the ability to know-but-not-be-affected. We become like a big oak tree in a high wind – still and stable within the storm.

This is mindfulness. And mindfulness is the skill we are developing with meditation.

So it’s extremely important that as you meditate, you let go of all your expectations of what should be happening, and accept what is happening – as it happens. Accept the mental noise, ticks and twinges and aches and pain. See them for what they are – patterns of sensations left over from the kind of life we lead. And the storm of thinking they create is like smoke from their fires. Nothing more.

These things are not distractions; nor are they impediments to meditation. They are opportunities. The mind and body presents these things to you, saying: ‘This is what you are right now – deal with it!’ And if you accept whatever is happening, return your attention back to the breath and allow things to briefly dance in your awareness, they’ll pass away quite quickly and you will be released.

An that’s what the meditation methods are for. They’re designed to help you ride the storms of your Self like a surfer – to be aware and accept and let go. The meditation methods help you to stay afloat.

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The other aspect of meditation you must remember, there is in the initial stages, a purification effect of meditation – which can seem as if meditation ‘is not working’. This purification effect begins as soon as we begin meditating, where all the mental and physical anxiety that’s been buried beneath the surface of our day-to-day mind/body begins to arise and we become conscious of it.

It’s normal that your first reaction will be to think something is wrong – to think meditation is creating the thinking and pain. But it’s not. All that’s happening is old anxieties and physical tensions are showing themselves, and giving us the opportunity to witness them, know them, and let them go.

So don’t give up. Keep meditating. It’s an adventure that never ends.

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‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’, Roger’s new book, is available now.

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‘BEING STILL’ is available on Amazon as a paperback ……………. AUD $26.40 (incl. GST)