The Eureka Epiphany!

The how-to of Meditation for the chaotic mind!

I’m in Memoir mode. So this newsletter is a distraction. A welcome distraction but a distraction nonetheless. Having said that, Memoir progress has slowed as I’m now bogged down in research, leafing through handwritten dog-eared notebooks from yesteryear. But I digress in this digression! Because, in the intervening period, I’ve had an epiphany in my Meditation practice. I’ve cracked the code to level one of Meditation. At the very least you can now afford to feel seasoned in the art of Meditation.

Whether I’m sat upright on my knee chair or flat on my back in Shavasana, I meditate pretty much every day for fifteen minutes. And I’ve been in a friendly wrangle with Meditation since participating in Tara Brach’s Conscious Loving course some five months ago. Friendly, because I am aware that Meditation speaks my truth. A wrangle, because I couldn’t figure out how to Meditate efficiently and constructively. The fact that I have spent the past fifty years of my life being held hostage by the world at large is a condition of being a disciple of Generation X. Though as I say this, this might just be a generic condition of humanity. That it is unique to every generation. And by world at large I mean my ex-civil-wife, my family, my countless bosses, my extended family. Generation X is a dutiful people designed to serve. That is, serve everybody but myself. The flaw being that my lens faces outwards rather than inwards. Meditation presented me the opportunity to reposition that lens. Meditation is not only my saviour, it is my best friend. And the wrangling persisted in an inability to still my mind. Indeed my mind is like a Jack-In-The-Box. The moment I close my eyes to meditate, all hell breaks loose. My thoughts and feelings start hogging the limelight like porn stars in a Tijuana Sex Show. In other words I can’t get no peace. I quickly figured out the Zen practice of Meditation was not only hard, it was impossible. The idea of thinking about not thinking is a trap that is doomed to fail. So for five months I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, a stubborn belief that meditation is my destiny. On the other, I am clueless as to how to unlock its immense power. Until this morning’s eureka moment…

When Meditating, it is important to note that the essential physiological act of breathing is not enough. No, it is important to note that each breath is a reboot. It is the capturing of feelings/thoughts in your belly by inhalation and the release of those feelings/thoughts in exhalation through the mouth that is the hook. In other words, breath the feeling/thought in through your nose to accept its presence then breathe it out through the mouth to let it go. That’s how you make space for the here-and-now that you experience through your senses. You now have agency to see, hear, taste, smell and touch in your surroundings while providing you with an opportunity to engage with your feelings/thoughts in a constructive, mentally healthy way. This is a practice that can be taken into the real world in the fight-flight situations we experience everyday.

It’s amusingly odd that the panic that this morning’s prospective Meditation session brought can lead to peace, if only you choose to breathe through it! I have ultimately been defeated a millions of times throughout my life because I refused to accept the conditions that threw me into fight-flight mode. Sure, I won the battle with my civil combatant and saved face in having the last word but lost the war of conscience. And you can’t cheat your own conscience since it is hardwired into your nervous system. If you defer to Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score, this is how you wind up enduring all manner of maladies (neurological disorders, Cancer etc.) in later life.

Anyway that’s my hack for beginners struggling to begin Meditation. Do you Meditate? Any thoughts on my hack, or your own Meditation hacks, would be appreciated. Feel free to let me know how you feel in the Comments. Anyway, back to Memoir-mode!