I Did a 5-Hour Meditation Retreat, and All I Got Was This Deep Sense of Peace in This Hellish Existence!
I once had a mind that told me to do It.
That told me I’d be better off…not here.
I was younger then, just a teenager, and I heard these voices. They all sounded like me. They were all talking at once, in voices that all sounded so much like the one that comes out of my mouth. Leaves my tongue. Parts my lips.
The voices were deep like mine. The voices were assured like mine. The voices all seemed to be mine.
I heard myself in these deep, assured voices.
Telling me telling me telling me.
Do It. Nobody fucking cares! You don’t really want to go to school or your shitty part-time job tomorrow, do you? See the same people? Do things you don’t want to do? That’s the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever heard! You do things you don’t want to do? Tell me, do you really want to wake up? Set an alarm? Who cares about any of this? Do you care about any of this?
Do It.
You’re nothing. You’re nothing. You’re nothing.
Do It.
My mind told me this. The voices, they told me this.
And I believed them. I believed I was nothing. That nobody would care. That I hated my education and my job. That my alarm was the closest thing to the devil’s whistle. Some sort of siren that signaled the beginning of a hellish existence filled with meaningless distractions.
This was, of course, the most extreme my mindlessness ever got. The farthest my thoughts ever pushed me to. The most I’d ever let my thoughts and emotions go unchecked. Run absolutely mad. Completely unrecognized. Like masked thieves in the night.
Do It.
I just didn’t know back then that there was any real way of understanding or temporarily disabling the voices. I had no real tools or methods to drown out the noise. If there was a way, I was without a map. If I had a mental illness, I lived blindly and didn’t know the first thing about getting a real diagnosis or professional help. I just lived so senselessly. I lived both on the outside of my body, dissociating from my shameful acts and shitty attitude, and in the dead center of my mind, unable to detach myself from my vicious and undisciplined thoughts. I existed in this constant state of dissonance, a million minds and thoughts and emotions and ideas and and and and and and and and and and the endless endlessness of it all.
I’d think the worst things—things that never made any sense in my mind and multiplied in volume, extremity, frequency, paranoia, every single day. I’d be completely convinced that merely thinking something could cause someone I loved to die or a national catastrophe. Other times, my mind would insist on having the strangest, darkest, such unexplainable intrusive thoughts that I’m —still—not sure what to make of.
The worst part, though, weren’t the thoughts themselves. The worst part was being so sure of the legitimacy of it all.
During this time, I thought I knew what it meant to suffer. To never see the end of it. To live at the bottom of a well and that it was torrentially raining the stupid fucking things I thought. It was all so legitimate to me. My problems and pain and paranoia and suffering—they were all real. Such incredibly serious business that belonged uniquely and exclusively to me. Because the proof was in my tears! In the flab that hung over my pants! In the way I had to touch this token my dad made me in my car or else I’d die in a fiery car wreck. In the recurring nightmares of myself dying in such painful, horrible, physically demanding ways. I had all this proof! Of my mental anguish!
The proof was in the physical ache I felt in that pumping, chambered, aortic organ. The proof was in the dark shadow that seemed to follow me everywhere—waiting in the corner cloaked in joyless muslin; gaunt, so gaunt, with hollow cheeks and broken teeth ready to eat me when the alarm sounded off. I just suffered underneath a seemingly insurmountable number of problems. My self-consciousness. My consciousness. My finances. My dreams. My education. My alarm. My friends. My body. My job. My future. My alarm. My to-do lists. My family. My alarm.
I was quite certain of it. Of the suffering.
I feel sad. So aren’t I sad?
I’d thought so seriously of my thoughts—so incepted into thinking about the validity of them. My problems always felt so heavy, like I, I, I, was the only one on Earth to understand, have, endure them. They all felt so real, as real as the ocean or a meaningful kiss. I could see them, feel them, look for them and find something there. I felt so assured of that reality, that I had these problems and dark thoughts and was always suffering. And the voices, they’d come at night when the sky was a deep purple, when everyone was fast asleep on metal springs, and they’d tell me. They’d sing, chant, echo in a thundering choir. We’re here, you, us, I, we. Do It. Your, our, my problems are real and heavy, aren’t they. Yes, they are. You’re nothing. You’re nothing. You’re nothing.
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Oh, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to check myself. How to restrain the thoughts or voices. It wasn’t like I could put my hands against my ears, no. No no no no no. That’d only trap me with them even more. I didn’t know what it’d take to finally shut them all up for good. I thought I could give into them—throw myself off a cliff and finally shut them up forever—but really, I had an even bigger fear that they wouldn’t actually be stopped once I did It.
Okay, so what if I did It. What if they laugh at the gates that I listened? Fell for it? Which gates would I even be at? They’d laugh and point and I’d have done It for nothing. What if the voices don’t stop even in death? But then would it be death? What is death? Is it nothingness? Is it nothing but consciousness? Are souls real? They’d be insufferable then, the voices. I can’t let them win. I’d be damned. And I’d be damned. You’re being paranoid. Are we now? Shut up. Who? Us? We’re you. You’re I. I’m you. And you’re nothing. You’re nothing. You’re nothing. Wait, but I—
SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!!!!!!!!!!!
It was this fear that the voices wouldn’t shut up even in death that helped keep me alive. But besides this fear, there’s something else I can’t deny or pretend didn’t happen. Another just as real reason I kept on living.
Truthfully, I held onto the hope that the voices would stop or at the very least whisper as I got older.
Because that was still possible, wasn’t it? It was possible that things would get better? That the chance of solving some of my problems would increase the longer I lived? The more time I had to solve them? Right? That these god-forsaken voices would shush and the thoughts would regulate somehow? Yes, I had thought these things, too. Among all the terrible, shitty, painful thoughts—were some of hope. I won’t deny myself the truth of that.
Well, maybe the voices will quiet. One day? I’m still young. It’ll pass, won’t it? Yes, it must. It’s probably nothing. It’s nothing…
I held onto this. I did. I wanted to believe that things could get better one day. I didn’t know what it’d look like or take, but I wanted that for me. I wanted to get better. The mere fact that I was even having these thoughts—the thoughts of possibility, of the future, of hope—told me I must not have been as close to the edge as I thought I was. Then I’d feel phony about my suffering. That I’d needed to revert to true hopelessness. And the voices’d start all over again… until I got real close to the edge again… and thought again…“But what if…?”
What if, isn’t it?
What if.
What if things did get better? What would happiness feel like? Your life look like?
We’re so happy for you.
Right? Me, too.
Took us long enough.
Ha. Yeah. Well.
I had that conversation with my selves so many times. Just imagining a future state where the voices and thoughts didn’t suffocate me.
So, what if? What if it did?
And then it did.
Sometimes, it just happens this way. Life just unfolds as you’re trying to strategize and dignify your death. Sometimes, or in my case, you become so consumed by the Idea of Your own Grand Death and all its mathematics, musings, and engineering, that you don’t even realize you’re just…still here. Your arrested life becomes your life, and in all that planning to die, you’ve just been living all along.
Huh? But how did this happen? The voices… They were so loud…
I said, sometimes, it just happens this way. No rhyme, reason, or electroshock therapy.
It might have been that there were enough smiles in between to hold you over. That someone held the door open for you when it was raining. Or maybe your grocer wished you a good day, and meant it. It could have been that funny ass joke you heard, or the damn good meal you ate, or seeing the most marvelous thing—fireworks in the night, a crimson sunset blanketing the wheat that grows beside a highway. Perhaps you held a puppy, smelled its paws. Or you saw a baby smile its toothless smile, and played peek-a-boo to, against all your better judgement, make it smile again. You might’ve celebrated your friends’ milestones, clinked glasses to what other than life? Maybe it wasn’t yours to celebrate—not yet—but you were close to it, close enough to where the clink of glasses produced a splash that landed on your cheek, your lower lip. Maybe you watched a movie that broke your heart but it reminded you that it was there, and that it beats. I think you heard a song that pulsed through your veins, competed with the voices. Maybe, just maybe, you fell in love.
Sometimes, it just happens this way. Through a combination of all the seemingly impossible (fireworks), or insignificant (a dog’s paw), or even miraculous things (falling in love), the voices in your head, while they don’t completely go away, quiet.
It can happen. It does happen. It did happen.
I’m older now. Wiser. Somewhat taller.
Today, I’m twenty-seven years old. Older. Wiser. Somewhat taller. No longer the sad and angsty teenager convinced all of her problems were real. In addition to all the impossible, insignificant, and miraculous things, I want to credit the hope I held onto and the very nature of time—the passing of it. How it is the hooded figure standing behind the dark shadow in the corner cloaked in joyless muslin. Time is there, too, and it’s waiting for you to invite it into your life.
Time made me older. Wiser. Somewhat taller. In all the waiting, all the time I looked for Death, I lived.
I’m alive today because of so many reasons. I’m alive today for so many reasons. Reasons I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t invited time to do its thing.
And yet.
Even older, wiser, taller, I can’t say that I’ve completely muted the voices. That I’ve mastered my mind and am beyond human suffering.
Thoughts of despair and anguish and hardship and worry and and and and and and and and and still appear. They’re not always as loud, sad, desperate, or powerful, but they’re there. Sometimes, I hear them whispering behind the sulcus of my brain, passing notes from lobe to lobe.
Yeah, you’re happy now. But you should do It anyway. The world's gone to shit, hasn’t it? Or don’t do It. Who really gives a shit? You’re here anyway. Boo-hoo. Blah-blah.
And some days, they dust off the old megaphone, stand directly on my brain stem, and shout.
We’re baaaaack! Do It Do It Doooo It! You’re still doing shit you don’t want to do? Have any of your dreams come true? What’s the point in trying? Have you even read a newspaper lately? Nobody likes you. Your brain is fucking rotting. Hey, Mom called. She’s—get this—heartbroken! So there’s that information. God, your skin is dry. By the way, if you don’t think or do this specific thing in exactly this way, something terrible will happen! Don’t look now, but someone’s about to ask you for a favor that’s most definitely inconvenient. You should see our to-do list, by the way. You don’t want to do any of it. Yeah, I know you’re not sad. I know you’re happy. But I can’t do this anymore. Not today. It's sometimes still too much, isn’t it? Everything? Do you ever just shut the fuck up? What are you even talking/thinking about? You’re being goofy and paranoid again. The world is on fucking FIRE! Hey, what time is the alarm set for?
I’m afraid this’ll never change, no matter how many sunsets I chase or people I love. I hear the voices today at varying volumes, and I’m sure I always will.
The difference between my younger self and myself today, though?
I do have a tool to help me quiet the voices. And not to be that person that obnoxiously recommends meditation as a tool to quiet the voices, but it’s meditation that helps me quiet the voices.
(PS: This is just what works for me. Meditation, and a combination of other things [reading, writing, exercise, nurturing my relationships, mainly.]
But this is my prescription for now. I want to clarify that my prescription may not be what works for someone else, and I would never suggest that meditation is a one-size-fits-all miracle cure to suffering. If you’re suffering, I encourage you to start figuring out what might work for you, seek professional help, and/or reach out to people. Do your thang, and I love you.)
I started meditating in 2020 (otherwise known as the year the world imploded) as a result of watching my husband meditate consistently. By then, he had already been practicing mindfulness for a couple of years, and I was so impressed (and envious) by the state of serenity he’d acquired. I knew the work he had put into meditation had worked for him because he was calm, composed, compassionate in the face of one of most heartbreaking, loud, challenging, disemboweling years in history. I knew I needed some of this impenetrable composure.
I wanted and needed it so bad.
Because the voices were coming back. They were growing stronger, louder. But these voices, they were different. They seemed to have, alongside me, matured.
They weren’t so intrusive, but they were still true. Truer, if anything. Because now, they reflected the actual state of the world, not so much my dark, internal fears and paranoia. They were of actual hopelessness after yet another group of children died at the hands of a gun, not spawn of my own anxiety over something trite like what my body looked like.
No, my thoughts and emotions weren’t self-made bacteria from unchecked anger or irrational fears. Now they were in reaction to the very real downward trend (and freight train) to moral, ethical, political, social, and natural dystopia. (I suppose the world has always been on this trend, but I wasn’t old or wise enough to understand it just yet.)
Yes, these voices listened to the world outside, its endless sewage and vitriol, and decided to scream back.
I started thinking terrible things again. I felt miserable and the physical weight of all this information.
For fuck’s sake, we’re back. Hey, you asked for it. How many people died? Oh, are people still complaining about a face mask? Hahahahaha. Oh, my god. Just do It already. This is all so ridiculous and meaningless. Bezos made how much today? How much in a minute? How old? 6 years? How many bullets? A FACE MASK??? ARE WE EVEN ON THE SAME PLANET? The planet is dying, by the way.
My mind tired itself constantly, just doom-scrolling for hours and hours. I drowned in information I wasn’t equipped to handle—that no one is equipped to handle. And everyone seemed to have an opinion about everything that year, including myself. I found myself more vocal than ever before for the simple fact that my mind needed some sort of ventilation system. I did not know how much I was actually feeding into the voices. Into my ego, even.
For I was a good and righteous person for vocalizing my contempt for anti-maskers, billionaire capitalists with a god complex, and Derek Chauvin?
Wasn’t I?
Oh, my godddd. Stop thinking about yourself. Stop thinking about us. Me. You. I. I mean, really, Self. While people are dying? Fighting the good fight? And you’re here, convincing yourself of your own virtue? Get over your Self. I mean, seriously! You’re nothing, you’re nothing, you’re nothing.
I was so sick of myself and my Self. Sick of everything that was not silence. I drowned in thoughts and anger and impatience for so long. And because we were stuck at home (this was at the height of COVID and enforced quarantines), I didn’t have my typical, necessary distractions and outlets. Like everyone else, I couldn’t see friends, party into oblivion, or hit the gym. I was just… stuck at home. Trapped with these thoughts and an endless barrage of voices and opinions and doom. This didn’t make me special, we all suffered from this during this time.
But with a mindless disposition like mine and a overwhelming tendency to think so legitimately of my Self, I felt alone in this and, worse yet, convinced of my unique suffering again. Like I was the only one who knew they were suffering, because I had thought it so.
Enough. You’re doing it again.
Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.
Anyway. Where were we?
I had had just about all I could of my Self. I was just so over it. Having my mind. Being in my body. Thinking these thoughts. Attaching feeling to everything. The way the coffee maker seemed to make one less ounce than it used to. The way birds chirped in the morning. So loud and fucking obnoxious. The way my dad’s voice sounded on the phone. The way I felt when I saw or did or heard anything. I wanted nothing to do with any of it anymore. I wanted to float above all this and detach myself from the shackles of my own Self.
When I eventually shared these feelings with my husband, he didn’t shove meditation in my face. He knew he had to approach the subject gently, or risk pushing me further away. He knew I was susceptible to rash and extreme emotions over something as small as a suggestion.
“It works for me. You can try it with me, if you want,” he said. He held my hand, smiled a bit.
“Err… I dunno…”
“It’s up to you.”
Why the fuck isn’t he making me do this with him? Doesn’t he know I need more convincing? Why’s he so aloof about this? What the fuck?!
“How long is it?” I asked.
“Meditation?”
“Yeah. Like how long will we just be sitting there for?”
“It depends. The sessions I do are ten minutes.”
Holy shit. Yeah. Kill yourself now.
“It goes by pretty fast. It’s guided, too.”
“Hmm…Yeah, fine. Okay. Let’s see what all this bullshit is about.”
He laughed. Kissed me. “Come on then.”
The first time sucked. I hated it. It felt as if megaphones were lodged into both ears and shouted into for ten whole minutes. I heard everything then. In this supposed “silence.”
The million things I had to do. How much my ass was already aching. The weird kink in my trapezius and the red hot pang in my ankles from sitting such a long time (a record-breaking 2.5 minutes) on the hardwood floor. It felt like the voices had all but silenced. In fact, they felt amplified in all the sitting.
When the ten minutes ended, I sighed with relief.
“The fuck?” I said. “I just thought about literally everything. How’s this supposed to help me?”
“Ha. Yeah, I thought about some things, too. It’s okay. I know it can be frustrating, but meditation isn’t something you have to master or anything.”
Great, you’ll be bad at this, too! You must be the BEST AT THIS.
Shut up shut up shut up shut up.
“Okay, well when does this start working?” I said through clenched teeth.
“Mm. I dunno. You can’t force it. Just keep trying.”
“Like… willingly?”
“Yeah. Or if you need some help showing up, there’s this 30-day beginner’s challenge on the app we just used. I think things started clicking for me after I finished the 30 days.”
30 FUCKING DAYS? Get real, Self. You’ll, I’ll, we’ll never be able to do this. Anyway, what’s for dinner?
“But you already did it? The challenge?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I don’t wanna do it alone. Or make you do it again.”
He smiled then. “There’s nothing more important to me than your wellbeing. I’d gladly do it again.”
You don’t deserve him. I KNOW!
“You’re sure…?”
“Hey, it’s not just for you, you know. If it helps you to understand and want to do it, know that it helps me, too!”
I hugged him tightly. “Okay. 30 days. Let’s do it.”
Fuuuuuuuuck. You’ve fucked us.
Shut up.
I’ve been meditating ever since. I won’t bore you of the, at times, mind-numbing (ha!) work that’s gone into learning how to control some of my emotions and thoughts. In short, I read books on the subject, got more aligned with exercise as a form of meditation, uninstalled social media apps on my phone, learned about Stoic philosophy, and just showed up day after day to meditate. I, above all things, really tried.
One day, I noticed that—hey, what the?—I wasn’t so distraught over the simplest things. It happened as swiftly and unnoticeably as a blade of grass grows in the night. Blows in the wind.
Sometimes, it just happens this way. You wake up one day and your chest doesn’t feel so tight. The way the birds chirp doesn’t bug you as much.
Since incorporating the practice, I’ve become closer to the version of myself I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve learned through different teachings, readings, techniques, how to recognize thoughts and emotions as they appear. More importantly, I’ve learned how to detach myself from the thoughts that used to plague me. I’ve practiced the embracing of thoughts, and the dissolving of them. I’ve learned how to better surrender. I’ve learned how to better recover from emotional, irrational, mindless thinking.
While I’ve gotten better at recognizing and disabling my thoughts, I’m not perfect.
Some days are good, where I feel untouchable and that nothing could penetrate the mindful wall I’ve built. You could bombard me with—for a lack of better words—a bunch of bullshit and I wouldn’t even blink. Just accept it and let the feelings wash over me and move on.
Other days are not as strong. I will curse disgusting things at a box that won’t open as easily as I want it to. The sound of a lawn mower outside my window when I’m trying to work will turn me into the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. A call from my parents at the wrong time will send me in a blind rage.
Still, on those days, I am able to recover quickly, and understand what happened to me. Sometimes, I can even recognize my negative thoughts and emotions before I have them, and this allows me to save myself from my Self.
I don’t react as extremely as I would have in the past. I don’t go off the rails with my thoughts or emotions.
Yes, I still falter. Yes, I still cry. Yes, I still say and think terrible things. Yes, I still feel my heart pump with anger when I see someone litter. Yes, I still yell when I’m in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Yes, I still see red when men want to control women’s bodies. Yes, I still get heartbroken when a natural disaster kills or displaces hundreds.
It’s not that meditation wiped me of my ability to feel or think. It didn’t make me ignorant or naive or heartless or above caring. It didn’t give me the sudden ability to witness tragedy, apocalyptic threats, injustice, and evil human nature and just shrug it off.
On the contrary, it’s helped me recognize my feelings and thoughts, and provided me a way to work through what causes me unnecessary suffering. A way to filter through and silence the unimportant things, and think more clearly and carefully about things that are meaningful. A way to pause, deeply consider, and feel compassion for things and those that transgress me.
So, yes. I still do suffer.
Just not as much.
Yes, I still do suffer from the irrational things that used to haunt and torment me.
Just not as much.
Yes, I still do understand and feel empathy and register tragedy and sorrow.
But even better now. I am more useful and more appropriately responsive now, as a friend, a lover, a sibling, a daughter, a fellow human.
And isn’t that the point? An irrevocable win I have over life? A triumph in this hellish existence?
To be—when life makes it so goddamn hard and all things point to you not having to be—a better person for the people you love?
A few months ago, I participated in my first-ever meditation retreat. It was put on by the folks at Waking Up, the meditation and mindfulness app that introduced me to the whole thing. The very app Chad introduced me to. The one I followed along with for 30 days at the beginning of my journey.
This would be the biggest challenge I’d have yet—five whole uninterrupted hours of meditation.
There’d be no talking, no eating, no drinking.
Chad and I wanted to do this together. It was a random Saturday morning, and we’d set the alarm to wake up in time to do it.
The memory of this makes me smile.
The retreat consisted of:
Walking meditations, wherein you literally walk at a painstakingly slow pace and mind the way you walk and think during the walking
Guided meditations, wherein Sam Harris (app creator, neuroscientist, philosopher, and author) guides you through meditation with cues, instructions, and different mental exercises
Metta meditations, wherein you think about a person or yourself and practice loving kindness
Sitting meditations, where the meditations are not guided
Talks and meditations led by Buddhist nun, Samaneri Jayasara
A poetry recital from David Whyte
Long periods of looking at your reflection in the mirror
At times, I wanted to quit. I wanted to shake off the cramps, babble, move on to the next thing I had to do. I caught myself constantly thinking, “Okay, okay. What’s next? How much longer? Please be a walking meditation so I can stand up. What’s next? When will this portion end? How long has it been?”
But I recognized all these thoughts of angst and impatience, and I was able to feel them—and, more importantly, let them pass. Then I was able to finally enjoy a second, perhaps two at the most, of utter silence.
Two seconds of peace I otherwise wouldn’t have had.
Two seconds of calm. Just a moment. A finger-snap’s worth of serenity.
Isn’t that still worth the effort?
In the span of five hours, I had these brief moments of clarity. Of calm. Of understanding. Of unadulterated compassion. It took five hours of deep meditations, failing and attempting and failing and attempting for 300 minutes, all for but a moment of actual peace.
As someone who has suffocated underneath terrible, painful, paranoid, loud thoughts—as someone who used to be hellbent on believing in the legitimacy of their own feelings—this is by far one of the most remarkable things I’ll ever achieve in my life.
For so long, I heard the voices tell me you’re nobody you’re nobody you’re nobody, and it’d send me into a crippling depression.
On the day I looked at myself in the mirror, I meditated about my existence. I saw nothing there, and nothing looked back at me. And I understood, finally, that yes, “I am nobody,” and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Isn’t that thought so freeing?
Sam Harris describes in his talk housed on the Waking Up app, the way we think of our Selves. To preserve the meaning, I’ve transcribed his words from the recording:
“There are many ways we use the term ‘self,’ and not all of these selves are illusory. I can talk about myself in terms of my personal history, or with respect to my location as a body and physical space. I can think of myself in various social roles—as a writer, or as a father, or as a customer in a store. And there’s nothing wrong with thinking about ourselves in these terms. Most of this is unavoidable.
There is, however, one sense of self that is confusing, and [one] that produces a tremendous amount of suffering for us. And, happily, this sense of self can be dispelled through meditation[…] And this self is the feeling, in each moment, that we are subjects internal to our bodies. The feeling of being inside our heads. It’s almost as though we feel that we’re passengers in our bodies […]
If you’re like most people, what you are calling “I” is this feeling of being the internal subject of your experience. “I” does not refer merely to the body, and it certainly doesn’t refer to the totality of experience. “I” appears to be the center of experience. It’s that which is appropriated experience.
Now this feeling that we call “I” is, itself, the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing you’re thinking. It’s the feeling of being identified with thought […]
How could [your] next thought, however urgent, define consciousness at all? Consciousness is the prior condition of its arising. It’s this state of being identified with thought, of there being no space, no perspective, that each thought is just you […] Thoughts are arising in each moment, and you don’t even know that you’re thinking […]
That experience—of full capture—by the contents of consciousness is the ego. It is the self that is the target of deconstruction by the practice of meditation. And this self, is a burden.”
Sam Harris on “The Nature of the Self”
From The Illusory Self, a recorded lesson on the Waking Up app
As I listen to and read these words, I can’t help but recognize so much of my old thought patterns and ego. It’s not so much what I thought, but precisely how I thought. I always identified so much with what I thought. I thought I was my thoughts, my feelings, my sadness, my pride.
I think therefore I am—I truly lived this way. I was everything I ever thought and felt, and there was no way of ever separating it from one another.
What a terribly loud and chaotic way to live.
Now, after three years of education, practicing mindfulness, investigating my Self, I’ve come so much closer to resonating with the below. From the same talk, Harris tells us:
“Whatever is there when you’re paying the closest attention stands a better chance of being real than what seems to be when you’re not paying attention.
What doesn’t survive scrutiny cannot be real. Now, as you get further in the practice of meditation, you will discover that there is no thinker apart from your thoughts. There’s no one producing these thoughts, and there’s no one receiving them. There’s just consciousness and its contents as a matter of experience. There’s no one who’s choosing the next thing you do. Thought and intention and choice just arise and become effective (or not) based on prior causes and conditions.
The feeling that you are in the driver seat, able to pick and choose among thoughts, is itself a thought that has gone unrecognized.”
As a once self-proclaimed control freak, the thought of not being in the driver seat to my own thoughts would have sent me into a spiral.
Huh?! What do you mean I can’t choose what to say or think?! Of course I can! I’m thinking this right now. And this. And this. You can’t take my thought-agency away from me! I’m my own person! I am the master of my life and fate!
Oh, little Michelle. How grossly you would’ve missed the point.
Luckily I understand that—now—I have never been more in control of my Self, thoughts, and emotions in all my life.
Before, I’d let my Self feel and think whatever I want. After all, it was my life and mind, wasn’t it? No one or nothing would ever sway my mind unless it was Me. So I indulged in my Self and all my thoughts. So much so that I let my Self talk myself into harm. I allowed more and unnecessary pain and suffering into my life. I was convinced to accept and even desire pain. Because I thought it was the pain that made a real person.
I wish I could hug little Michelle. Tell her to just shut up for a second.
I don’t meditate every day. Admittedly, (these days especially) I’m a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency kind of meditator, where I’ll start meditating daily during times of high stress or when I can tell I’m starting to feel my emotions a little too seriously.
While I’m not as disciplined a meditator as I’d like to be, I know my unique practice pays dividends for my mental health, and I can still point to the drastic difference between myself now and my Self a while ago.
Still, I don’t think I’ll ever get to a state of total enlightenment. Not even close. Not unless I (completely seriously) renounce the life I know, all of its possessions, and join some sort of monastery (which I half-jokingly, half-seriously consider sometimes).
But for now, I’ll continue trying my best.
I’ll keep showing up for ten minutes.
For 30 days.
For 5 hours.
Because I’ve somehow found a way to win. To get a small, but necessary sense of peace in an otherwise hellish, loud, bankrupt existence.
That’s gotta be worth something, isn’t it?
Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.
Huh.
What?
Nothing. Just that, a thought occurred to me.
What is it?
It’s pretty quiet right now, isn’t it?
Yeah. I guess it is.
Who’da thunk?
