Symphony of Mind

Be Still; be in the moment

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Meditation is not just for the times when you are able to sit down undisturbed.

The most important aspect of learning to focus on your breath is to learn to centre your mind and calm yourself to the point where you attain an ability to concentrate that allows you to clear your mind and be in the moment at any time.

It is that gradual expansion of presence from the moments you spend meditating into your daily life that is the path towards truly freeing yourself from the confines of the constant chatter of "you".

Be still. Be in the moment, and you will pick out the individual voices of your mind.

They are all you, together; yet no one voice is you alone.

Be still. Be in the moment, and you will pick out the individual voices of your mind.

They are all you, together; yet no one voice is you alone.

This can not be repeated often enough. Too often we fall for the illusion of a singular self, and assume that when that little voice tells us something, it is you talking, rather than just one impulse, driven by one singular motivation or another.

As a result we fail to question impulses even when we know we will regret them later.

We let ourselves get caught up in drama, or give in to emotions or drives we know will leave us annoyed with ourselves afterwards.

Even if you have not explicitly recognised it, almost all of us will at some point have been present enough to feel like we have observed ourselves from the outside, helpless to stop ourselves from doing something we know then and there is stupid, that we are still doing.

But we will also have had moments where we feel perfect clarity about the present and a sense of calm.

Being present lets you be the mediator between the variety of impulses coming from different aspects of yourself. It lets you address bad habits.

It lets your check yourself when you're about to do something stupid, before you do it instead of recognising it after the fact.

It lets you see where your anxieties come from so you can address them.

It is one of the most powerful things you can learn about how to know yourself.

Meditation often focuses on the traditional aim of Buddhist practice of detachment and realising the illusion of the ego. And while that in itself is beneficial, the benefits you get from simply being able to "catch yourself in the act" and stop to consider what you are doing and why are worth it irrespective of your religion (or lack of) - it is universal.

Try it whenever it springs to mind: Take 30 seconds to slow your breath, clear your mind, and be present, and quickly survey what you see, what you feel, your physical sensations.

Try it whenever it springs to mind: Take 30 seconds to slow your breath, clear your mind, and be present, and quickly survey what you see, what you feel, your physical sensations.

The more you do it, the more often you will become aware, and eventually you will find yourself falling into the habit of doing this automatically whenever you can.

So many of the challenges of your day to day life will start falling away, because they stop mattering when you actually scrutinise the underlying behaviours with detachment instead of just reacting.

Even now, after many years of meditation, I regularly need to remind myself of this, because it is so easy to push it aside, get caught up in whatever is happening, and decide you are too busy to sit down and do nothing.

But meditation is not doing nothing. Meditation is self-care. It is introspection. It is learning. It is healing.

Your Mind is a Chorus

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I've talked briefly about the idea of the mind as a chorus of different voices of the mind in my introductory post.

If you have experience meditating, you almost certainly have at least an inkling about what I mean. Otherwise understanding this idea is best done through a simple demonstration.

The gentlest introduction to meditation.

You need no preparation. No special clothes. No special place.

Just sit comfortably. On a pillow or in a chair. Or a park bench. Where does not matter. Sit alert, upright. This is not essential - you can meditate standing, lying, walking -, but it is the easiest way of minimising distractions while reducing the chance of falling asleep.

The only advice I will give is to avoid meditating in your bed. Actions create associations, and teaching your mind to stay alert and focused when you wish to sleep is not a good idea.

If your view is gentle and not chaotic, you may keep your eyes open, or half-open - it too helps avoid falling asleep but may make it harder to focus. For some dryness of the eyes will also make it hard to avoid the distraction of blinking.

Breathe. In. Out. Slowly.

Start a timer. If you want to, you can set an alarm for 5 minutes or 10 minutes, or just let it run so you can see afterwards how long you lasted. This too is not essential; it is an aid that serves two purposes:

it makes it harder for your mind to fight you by insisting you've been meditating for too long (any impulse suggesting it's been "too long" is almost certainly false).
it teaches you how long 5, 10 or whatever amount of minutes of meditation feels to you.

I give this advice as one of the biggest hindrances I faced when I started to meditate was a sudden insistence in my mind that I was late for something. My mind could not tell me what, or why. I knew I was not, but the compulsion to stop meditating and check my watch got stronger and stronger. Your mind will throw up hindrances, because meditation is different, and strange. It may be like mine, or different, but the more you can find simple ways to counter these hindrances the easier your path will be.

But if the timer is a hindrance, don't use it. If you do use it, do not place it so that you can see it count the time, as it will distract you.

Breathe. In. Out. Slowly. Pay attention to your breath. How it passes your lips or your nostrils. In. Out. Feel yourself become calmer. Your breath slower.

Whenever a thought pops into your head, let it slip away and gently return your attention to your breath. Again, and again.

Whenever you notice your concentration lapsed and you got caught up in thoughts, return your attention to your breath.

This is all. You now know all you need to start meditating.

Afterwards, do two things:

Take note of how long you sat, and how you feel.
Think through the thoughts that popped into your head.

Chances are if you managed to silence your mind enough at least some of the thoughts that popped into your head will demonstrate wild inconcsistencies.

"You" are shifting constantly. "You" are amorphous like the ocean; a collection of voices creating and breaking harmonies in a dramatic symphony with every moment.

Our lives are full of them: We go on a diet, yet absolutely deserve that cake even though we know it is counter-productive. We're going to be good and do our work in time, but suddenly cleaning the kitchen is vitally important. We're too tired to clean the kitchen, but suddenly we have all the energy we need to go out with friends.

You will start noticing your mind acting much more like a chorus of voices playing out an elaborate drama than a single, united person. I am not talking about literal separate voices (auditory hallucinations happens at some point in life for a lot of people, but that is different), but about impulses driven by separate motivations.

Day to day they appear part of a single narrative. But the moment you allow yourself to truly pay attention, the inconsistencies will leap out at you, and you may start to notice different strains of motivations.

"You" are shifting constantly. "You" are amorphous like the ocean; a collection of voices creating and breaking harmonies in a dramatic symphony with every moment.

You can fight those impulses blindly, like most of us do; you can learn to notice what is happening and fight it knowing what you're facing, or you can learn to listen to them play out, observe them, and learn about yourself.

While repeating just the simple exercise outlined above is often tremendously frustrating at first, fighting to push aside intrusive thoughts your mind throws up to derail your effort, pay attention to the voices.

One notable constant is that these voices often do not present the real reason behind the impulse...

One notable constant is that these voices often do not present the real reason behind the impulse: You do not crave that cake because you deserve it, but because your gut is signalling it's not getting the calories it is used to, and your mind throws up the excuse that seems most likely to push past your diet goal.

You will learn to quieten them when necessary, but do not ignore them. They are just as much part of you as the "you" you hear when you talk to yourself.

Become the director.

Become the director

With time you can recognise the different voices as coming from different motivations or arising from different situations. You'll recognise that the voice telling you that you really deserve cake is just a product of being hungry while going to the store, and learn how to settle it and "negotiate" with the other parts of yourself rather than blindly accepting an internal narrative that is inconsistent and chaotic.

While meditation has many other benefits, I find it important to highlight this one because it is often ignored amid lofty promises of enlightenment and all kinds of spiritual rewards. Meditation can grant a lot of rewards, but this ability to sort through your own motivation is to me the most immediate tangible reward you can expect in your day to day life.

Recognising the illusion of the ego is central to many meditation practices. And that is a worthwhile goal. But the first small step on that journey is to shatter the illusion that your mind speaks with one unified voice.

Symphony of Mind

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is a story about the symphony of our minds. Or the beginning of one, at least. It is a personal journey, but at the same time a journey many have travelled before.

It is about meditation, and self improvement, but also not about either, but about something more. It is about exploration through introspection.

Those who do not meditate often look at it with a mix of bewilderment, dismissal and admiration. Bewilderment because it is so different from what most of us are used to in our daily lives. Dismissal because it is often associated with spiritual practices we are not used to or consider too out there.

Admiration because despite this, it seems impossibly hard to sit there and empty your mind and think of nothing, and many of us have this image of meditators as involving serious monks with shaved heads and robes living lives impossibly remote.

This is the common image of meditation: That it means emptying your mind and sitting there doing absolutely nothing, in some act of impossibly hard self discipline.

This what part of my own misconception as well.

But while many practices do include work to focus on concentration, I quickly realised how wrong I was. My first weeks of meditation was on the contrary spent dealing with a cacophony of thoughts I had never had to deal with before, and compulsive thoughts that seemed strange and alien.

My mind was resisting, on one hand. My "me" voice in open rebellion at my attempts to quieten it. All kinds of urges to do everything else except try to meditate kept coming to the surface.

But suddenly I started picking up and noticing the impulses that were bubbling to the surface that I had previously just accepted as part of a single, united identity.

I was for the first time in my life noticing the hum and song, and tic-tock of all the impulses that make us walk around and do our things and talk and work and love and hate while we're stuck in our head not paying attention or only paying attention to the booming voice of our ego.

Meditation is not about being still. Being still is a means to an end.

Meditation is not about being still. Being still is a means to an end: To observe and experience that we are not singular beings, but a sum of a vast number of competing impulses; and to beyond that observe and experience unity with the wider world.

Meditation has a long history in religious practice. More recent is growing secular acceptance of meditation that has come with an acceptance that meditation can be separated from its religious background and still have tangible, measurable benefits.

An essential part of my journey into the mind was to focus on observing, and avoiding trying to label these experiences purely in secular or religious terms. Others will work through the science of why meditation works.

What matters, though, is that it does, and that it creates profound realisations and experiences as your journey progresses.

Part of that realisation to me is that while I derive immense value from the work done by Buddhist and Hindu meditation teachers in particular, there are other paths, many perhaps better suited to people who do not wish to become separated from their "normal" lives, but just want to be better, do better, feel better.

I want to tell you what I have learned.

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