I meditated well this morning. I do sometimes. As I should. I’ve been practicing for nearly 14 years. You would have thought I had got my head round it by now. After all, it only took me 13 years to knock off school.
But meditation, it turns out, is harder than readin’, ‘writin’ and ‘rithmetic. Incredibly easy to describe (sit down, close your eyes, focus on your breath), incredibly hard to master. The reason I noted my good meditation was that sometimes I have an average meditation and sometimes I have a bad meditation. Today my mind was clear and focused, other days, thoughts come one after the other, dealing with one doing nothing but creating space for another, like a whack-a-mole machine between my ears.
There must, I decided, be a reason for this. My ability to meditate, I assumed, should be reasonably constant from day to day. If my output differed, it must be due to some external factor, like a gust of wind carrying a tennis ball just beyond the baseline.
If there is, I haven’t found it yet. None of the variables I could try to control for seemed to make any difference. I meditate early in the morning so perhaps sleep made a difference. It doesn’t. I can meditate well after a restless night, and sleep like a baby only to spend half an hour watching my mind run around like a dog in a park. I am a creature of routine. My body has exactly the same amount of caffeine in it when I sit down. That body still produces radically different depths of meditation, seemingly according to whim.
I did not, of course, choose this. We like replicability. It is the hallmark of a scientific theory. If other researchers cannot follow your process and produce your results, you don’t have a discovery, you have a mistake. A sportsman who wins one tournament might be on the cusp of greatness but if that is all they win, they are a fluke who got lucky.
This creates a problem. We spend our lives trying to define ourselves, trying to fit ourselves into easily understood categories. And we spend our lives trying to define ourselves well – our successes form a far larger part of our mental architecture than our failures. The former are the spacious sitting room we see when walking into the property, the latter the cupboard hidden under the stairs in the basement. Acquiring a new skill holds out the prospect of building a swanky new extension. Performing a new skill badly not only denies us that chance, but raises the possibility that the basement may be darker and dustier than we would like.
This creates a problem not just for the way we are but for the way we are made. We live in a progressive society. Not, perhaps, politically, but philosophically. We believe in improvement. Every day and in every way, I’m getting better and better. A good session means we are going forwards, doing what we are supposed to do. A bad session means we are going back, our lack of progress telling us we are not just bad meditators but also, in a way, bad people. If we should be getting better at something, and we get worse, what does that say about us?
“If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best” is the sort of phrase people use when they have been dumped. Yes, perhaps we didn’t do utterly the right thing, but putting up with occasional mis-steps is the price of admission to all the wonderful qualities we offer, like a set menu with one thing you don’t like. Saying so, however, is to admit that we are variable creatures. We have good points and bad points, good days and bad days. Sometimes we will brush off a stranger bumping into us, others we’ll turn, clench our fists and ask them if they “want some”. What we apply to the whole, however, we do not apply so easily to the parts. “We” may have our off days, our skills are letting us down if they do not always perform at their optimum. “We” are an average, they are a data point.
If we extended this charity to meditation, we might feel better. A good one raises our average. A normal one does not diminish it much. The latter following the former means our average is still improving; we are making the progress we crave. That we can focus deeper, that we can focus for longer means we have become people who can focus deeper, who can focus longer. We couldn’t do that before. We have got better, we have got new capabilities. Even if we don’t always use them. With the possible exception of the pole vault, we don’t expect a record-breaking athlete to break the record every time they compete. But averages are hard, averages take work. It is easier to work out the takings of a corner shop than the size of the economy. So we generally don’t.
Instead, we decide tomorrow will be better. We wanted to do well today, we failed to do well today, we don’t know why we failed to do well today. No matter. Somehow, for some reason, tomorrow, we’ll do it right. And sometimes we do. When we notice this, we snap out of our focus but that’s ok. We got there again. We really are good at this. Until the next time when we really can’t get it at all…
And then we get frustrated. Why can’t we do this? Why are we still thinking? Just watch your thoughts, they say. But thoughts stop being thoughts, they become a problem, the things blocking our entry to the promised land of nirvana (or just feeling really chilled), no longer entities to observe but enemies to be eliminated. As Hercules learned with the Hydra, cut off one limb and another two appear.
We might choose to see them not as opponents, but as opportunities. We now understand that the brain works like our muscles, the bits we use most, growing – it is well known that London taxi-drivers who have done the Knowledge have larger hippocampi, an area associated with memory. Meditation bulks up the parts related to focus and attention control. A gym-bunny does not get upset when his weight is on the floor – it gives him the chance to pick it up which, over time, makes him bigger. So too with thoughts – if they were not there, we could never notice them and shift our attention back to our breath.
Or we could relax and decide just to enjoy the view. Something is producing them. Thoughts seem to appear from nowhere, popping into our conscious minds unbidden. Yet they must come from somewhere, some hidden recess of ourselves, a part of us we never get conscious access to. Watching our thoughts flit by, we might ask what they tell us about this unseen creature. What type of thing would produce that response to that type of stimulus? Why does it keep producing that thought? What does it want? What does it need?
But we don’t. Because we want to get somewhere. We have been told about the benefits meditation offers and we want them. We want to think we’re good at everything we do so we’re jolly well going to be good at this. Like the Ugly Sisters demanding their feet fit into the slipper…Meditation, we think, should be linear – steady, notable improvements every day. Many things, however, aren’t. Many things have tipping points – long periods of failure suddenly giving way to success. Children spend weeks noisily blowing air before a whistle is finally heard. There is no “half-whistle” (what would that even mean?). There is blowing, then suddenly there is whistling. We accept that. But we don’t with meditation. We demand that it unfold the way we have told ourselves it should.
We don’t, however, demand that our stomachs digest better. Nor do we insist that our kidneys filter more effectively. No-one has ever told their spleen to buck its ideas up and do whatever it is spleens do more efficiently. Even suggesting so sounds stupid. It sounds mad. They do what they do, and we sit back and let them. We have no other choice. Digestion happens. Filtration occurs. Spleens do their thang.
Why not the same with meditation? Our conscious minds do not do it, they only experience it. They can’t control it, they can only watch it happen. For, we do not do it; it happens. In its own way, in its own time. The best we can do is let it happen. The mind will do what the mind will do every bit as much as our stomach, kidneys and so on. All we can really do is stop getting in its way. For we do our best when we stop trying to do well. But that’s the hard bit.
I didn’t meditate well this morning, actually. A good meditation just happened.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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It’s difficult to comment on the above article because the author does not give any indication of the subject of his meditation(s). In poor grammar… what is he meditating on of about?
Typo… “on of about” should be “on or about”; apologies.
I don’t think one meditates ‘on’ or ‘about’ anything. That seems to be the point. I come from a position of ignorance – if the writer is still trying to get it right after 14 years, it’s hard to understand what the aim of a ‘good’ meditation is, or the after effects (presumably), of a ‘bad’ one. Except to make you feel a failure. Which feeling I’m quite familiar with anyway. Perhaps the aim is to still the mind – one reads that it’s supposed to be good for you, indeed people swear by it for the benefits to physical and mental health. But I never know whether or not it’s akin to advice like ‘think positive’, which is almost impossible these days. Everybody is different – if meditation is your bag and helps you to deal with life, especially a ‘good’ meditation if you can master it, who are we to pass an opinion.
As I understand it (probably wrongly, as I don’t have the will to meditate nor really think it worth the effort) the whole point is to try and clear the mind and think of nothing.
Like this article all a bit too cryptic for me.
I think you are probably right, on this, but if so, it’s a dangerous pursuit. There’s been a fashion for a while now to link eastern meditation practices (achieving an emptying of the mind) with Christianity but that is a contradiction in terms. Christians can only really meditate on the life of Christ and His teaching, and their own response to it. One young Catholic saint (St. Thérèse of Lisieux) used to bemoan the fact that she always fell asleep during her early morning prayer time/meditation time, until, she said, she remembered that a surgeon did his finest work while the patient was asleep. Here, she was equating God working in her soul, as she had begun her prayer time by focusing on an aspect of her Faith and life. Otherwise, she is unlikely to have fallen asleep – I imagine that trying to empty our minds is exhausting!
However, I don’t want to turn this comment into another religion lesson after the evolution discussion, so I’ll merely sound a warning note; unless Stewart is focused on a particular reality in his life, or a supernatural truth, he is dancing with danger. The mind/soul is, in the nature of things, a place of spiritual warfare, so we need to be on high alert at all times, so to speak. More than that I will not say but I expect there will be plenty of commentary online on this important subject, worth checking out.
Of course, by “meditation”, Stewart may simply mean that he is spending time thinking about his life in its various aspects. That is fine. If, however, he is following those eastern traditions by trying to “empty” his mind – that is not good at all. I wish he had included the purpose of his meditation time, in his article, but in the absence of that information, I’m inclined to believe that he is “meditating” by reflecting on his life – which is perfectly acceptable.
I don’t think the writer is thinking about his life in it’s various aspects, I think meditation means trying to achieve a stillness of mind, or if you like, emptying it. For what purpose I don’t claim to know. But neither do I believe that meditation is ‘dangerous’ or ‘not good’. For me, it isn’t anything. Emptying or stilling your mind, in my opinion is not going to let the Devil in. Is that what you are saying? If the writer is still a decent chap after 14 years of meditation, it hasn’t done him much harm. I don’t want to start a religious discussion – I remember when Charlie Kirk was murdered you opined that his wife’s forgiveness of the murderer was not valid because only God can forgive, and I was quite shocked at how cruel that sounded. So we are obviously poles apart in our thinking. We are all entitled to our opinions – you, me, the writer of the article, and it doesn’t mean any of us are right or wrong as long as it does not harm others. With respect, it really isn’t up to you to tell him what is ‘acceptable’, unless he is doing harm, which he isn’t.
I would not have said “only God can forgive” – that’s patently false. What I may well have said – because I’m not a fan of these spontaneous, unsolicited announcements of forgiveness after such crimes – is that it’s difficult to forgive someone who doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong, or who doesn’t want a statement of forgiveness. To the best of my recollection, Tyler Robinson showed no sign of regret or remorse when charged with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I cannot recall, either, his response, if any, to the widow of Charlie Kirk when she expressed her forgiveness.
To be clear – if I were ever in the situation where I was the victim of a crime at some level, and the perpetrator asked for my forgiveness, I would certainly express my personal forgiveness. As a Christian, I’m obliged to forgive. So, I’m not sure what I said in my comment at the time of the Charlie Kirk murder that made you think I believed “only God can forgive” but that is not what I believe, or ever have believed. It’s obviously a false belief. I know you don’t want to discuss religion (who does, these days?!) but in my religion we are taught that it is “in the measure in which you forgive others, in that same measure will [God] forgive you” (Luke’s Gospel).
I can see that my remark about Stewart’s meditation on his life being “acceptable” might come across as arrogant. I apologise for that – I was writing in the context of warning against the “empty your mind” philosophy, so, having expressed my view that emptying the mind is “dangerous” then, by contrast, reflecting on our life is not dangerous, but acceptable. Still, I can see that I do come across arrogantly there – I take your point.