I can’t even remember exactly when I started meditating. It was somewhere in the early 2000s. I had a ghost-writing client who had a meditation practice and was writing about it. Or rather, I was writing about it for him. As him. That is, after all, what ghost writing is. So, in the spirit of understanding the mind from which I was supposed to be writing (that is, the mind of my client), I thought, I ought to meditate a little, to see what it’s all about.
At first, I meditated fitfully. There was no regularity in my practice and when I sat, my mind could not even grasp itself. The whole idea of watching my thoughts like so many passing clouds, as some meditation teachers proposed, was an image that did not speak to me. My thoughts were more like a rickety wagon, piled precariously high with junk, under constant threat of toppling, if the wheels didn’t just fall off first.
I found a low-key meditation center in New York City and went from time to time. Mostly with a friend. Every once in a while, on my own. Sometime before 2009, I recall doing a walking meditation on a misty summer day, during which I walked around the house my then-partner and I had in Vermont. Passing barefoot over grass and our pebbly driveway and flagstones. I might have done that meditation more than once. Not often enough that it rose to the level of ritual. I know it was before 2009, because we sold the house that year.
Still fitful, my practice was deepened by three silent meditation retreats and a vision quest. Again, I can’t quite remember when the first retreat was, possibly 2012. I do recall that after a retreat in October 2014, I joined the Insight Timer meditation app, which I’ve been on ever since. I remember the timing, because on my way home from the airport after the retreat, I had the conversation with my father in which he told me that he had decided to stop radiation treatment for his skin cancer. He died 6 months later.
At this point, my meditation was far from daily. Now and then, I would set myself a goal of 10 days in a row, which felt heroic. Then, at the end of 2018, following a teaching session about meditation with a group of friends (an experience we’d bid on at a gala), I set myself the goal of 30 days in a row. Never done before.
Now that I’m writing this down here, I see that was a step change moment in my practice. Since then, my meditation practice has been a succession of long periods of daily sitting, followed by no more than a month of not-quite-daily, then a return to daily practice.
Two shifts happened. I became conscious of whether I had meditated on any particular day. And, after much self-testing, I realized that, for me, longer than 10 minutes was not necessarily better and something was better than nothing. With these two shifts, meditation has become part of my daily routine, akin to drinking water, sleeping and brushing my teeth. A third and more recent shift, since I started living alone, is that I allow myself to meditate in bed first thing in the morning (or, if I’m not sleeping, sometime in the wee hours to help myself get back to sleep), instead of always getting up to sit on my cushion.
Here’s what has happened when I meditate almost daily. I’ve become more aware of my thoughts as they are arising. I can even find that sacred pause between thinking a thought and acting on that thought. Less often than I’d like. Which is okay, because the sacred pause is a lifelong practice.
Here’s what has not happened. The rickety wagon of junk is still there. Except now, I notice more of the distinct thoughts on the pile. Which means it is less precarious. Just noticing increases my capacity to be with uncomfortable thoughts without descending into self-laceration or lashing out at others.
Recently, I’ve been engaging even more specifically in the practice of noticing. My only goal in my meditation is to notice my thoughts. I’m listening to the same 20-minute meditation every morning, which begins with a body scan. This makes it easy to notice when my mind has wandered away and when it comes back.
On Monday, for example, I breathed in and said to myself, I am aware and breathed out and said to myself, I am aware of my feet. As instructed. My attention stayed enough in the meditation to get to breathing in and out and being aware of my thighs. But then I totally missed my pelvis, belly and heart, my attention returning to the meditation as I was being guided to breathe in and say to myself, I am aware and breathe out and say to myself, I am aware of my nose. What was I thinking when I should have been breathing in and out awareness of my midsection?
Here’s a random sampling of thoughts: My legs are tired. I don’t want to take the day off, because I only have a few days left before I leave the mountains and won’t be able to cross-country ski. I need to get caught up on email. My heart feels squeezed. I should have looked at email on the weekend. But it was so nice to read Greenwood instead. Do I love trees enough? Am I being genuine when I hug my tree at home? Did I miss the pelvis in this meditation? I still feel put off by how sharp M was with me on the phone. When will I mend the holes in my cross-country ski long johns? I don’t want to spend money on new ones. Why does my thumbnail grow back faster in that corner? Don’t forget to cut your nails today. I’m running short on tahini, so I’ll have hazelnut butter by itself on my toast and save the tahini for my roasted vegetables. Are we already at the nose? I miss my matcha. I’m lonely. How great is that bran muffin without raisins at Blondies? Why do people like raisins in muffins and other things, like cinnamon bread? Tragic. I miss my mother, even though she would never leave the raisins out. Should I wear the green sweater today? Why have I never heard that line before in this meditation?
And on and on it goes. Incredibly rarely I’ll have a moment, a glimpse, a nano-awakening to something important or simply touch a state of open awareness and connection with all that is. Mostly it’s about bran muffins and fingernails and emails.
So why do I meditate? Because of this: The practice of noticing that meditation enables creates space between thought and action. Even if that space is only infinitesimally larger than it was before, that space, that sacred pause, is the moment where I expand my self-compassion and my compassion for others.
That’s why I meditate.
Oh, and, also for the gold stars from Insight Timer. Tomorrow, all going well, I will hit a nice milestone of days in a row, which I won’t mention, because I don’t want to jinx my little dopamine hit.
