Serve Yourself / How To Meditate
“Oooooommmmmm”
“Oooooommmmmmmmmmm”
You’ve seen it…at the park, at the gym, on TV. Perfectly toned and peaceful people, cleanly sitting in traditional lotus position. Eyes gently closed, giving zero fucks to anything else going on around them. Breathing in and out.
They don’t seem like they have a care in the world, these folks. They don’t have dirty laundry piling up. They don’t knee-jerk react to shit. They’re measured. Careful. Calm.
These are the meditators. They’ve got their shit figured out. Right?
Not exactly. But maybe more than others.
Like probably a lot of folks, I dabbled in meditation and yoga and all of that mystical stuff for a big portion of my life. You know, played with it…patted it on the head…absorbed some of it into my personal aesthetic in the form of evil eye jewelry and maybe a few floaty linen tops.
Then the pandemic hit and suddenly we all had a big ol’ surplus of time. Time was something we all said we needed in order to accomplish the shit we either said we were always going to do or were currently sorta phoning in. I did all of the pandemic things from reorganizing my house to learning how to bake homemade bread from scratch to obsessing over all of the CDC updates. Once I exhausted all of that, I turned toward myself.
I turned toward myself. And not in the way of finding my ideal eyeshadow shade or working on my passive income because, hustle culture.
I turned toward myself for real.
Why did certain issues continue to crop up in my life? How was it that I could have most of what I said I always wanted and still be so super-dissatisfied? Why did I sometimes eat my feelings or felt bad about having feelings? How come I acted in ways that I didn’t want to, ways that didn’t serve me?
Who the fuck was I?
I started reading everything I could get my hands on about meditation, yoga, the ancient philosophies. I started a daily yoga practice, learned how to properly breathe for optimum health, and learned about the how and why of each yoga principle.
And I started sitting in meditation a whole bunch.
At first it was impossible. Freaking impossible. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do exactly. I couldn’t “empty my mind” which is what masters instruct, and I didn’t even really understand what the point was.
Am I even doing it right? Nobody gives any tangible step-by-step guidelines. It was all a mystery. And I felt like a failure of a loser meditator. And I was checking my meditation timer app too much. I’ve really only been sitting here for 5 minutes? What the hell?
Then one day, during one meditation, at a moment I can’t even put my finger on or describe…it happened.
The “ahhhhhh” moment. And I’m gonna try and lay it out for you so maybe you can find your own path to your “ahhhhhh” moment.
So once I reached that “ahhhhhh” moment of understanding, that brief flicker of Knowing, the first thing I realized is WHY all of the masters were hella secretive about how to meditate.
There is no One Path to it. It’s you dealing with your own unique brain. Masters and gurus talk in riddles and Buddhist parables because they have to. Nobody can teach you how to meditate. It’s different for everybody. The riddles and the parables only serve as tools for you to use and your individual, unique brain to work with.
It’s like seeing images in clouds while we’re gazing at the sky. Everybody can see something different. We’re meant to take meditation and interpret it how we will. Your meditation is not going to look like mine or anybody else’s. Meditation is YOUR way, when YOU feel need for it, done how YOU need to do it. No right or wrong. It just is. You can meditate standing on your head or while listening to death metal music. Whatever works for you.
Okay, that’s all nice and fine, but what does “working for you” mean? How do we know what that is? How do we know how that looks for us?
Once I had my “ahhhhhh” moment, I found I was able to fall into that magical moment pretty much whenever I said to myself that I was now meditating. For me, the getting there looks like getting real still in my mind. Which looks different according to what’s swirling around in there.
Which doesn’t help you at all so I’ll try to explain things more concisely.
Our brains aren’t meant to empty when we meditate. Maybe for some, but for most of us an empty mind equals being dead or blackout drunk. So the “emptying” process could look a lot like just checking out your thoughts as if you were looking at them from a distance. Don’t get inside the thoughts, meaning don’t be the main character in that shitshow. Just observe them. No judgement. Now’s not the time to start berating yourself for what you said or did, but even if you are…just look at the beratement. See that it’s what you’re doing without feeling any particular way about it.
“Oh, I’m beating the shit out of myself again for that thing which happened 20 years ago that I’m still hanging on to. Yes, I see that I’m doing that.”
That kinda thing.
Once we just start saying “there’s that thought. There’s that old trauma. There’s that obsession” instead of investing our feelings into all of that, a crazy thing happens.
Our brains get bored of us just checking things out and not being judgey toward our internal brain vomit. It could take 3 minutes or years to get there. How you’re wired and how you’ve done your thinking your whole life has a ton to do with it. How much you practice meditation has a ton to do with it. Do it a bunch. Practice really does make…if not perfect, at least perfect for your needs .
Another component of meditation is staying in the present moment. Not focusing on past or future stuff. Just noticing your now.
How the hell.
Masters tell us to focus on the breath. And we should breathe both in and out through our nose. Nose is for breathing, mouth is for eating. Okay.
What the hell.
I personally interpret the focused breathing thing as a means to the end of staying present. We can’t regret a past breath and there’s no real need to anticipate a future one. In the present moment, all we’ve got is the breath we’re taking. If we’re paying attention to that, we’re staying in our present moment.
And it’s okay if our phones are ringing or the kids are loud or the neighbor is banging on his piano. That’s alllllllll part of your present moment. Silence isn’t necessary to meditate unless you decide it is. Calm surroundings and a zen sand garden aren’t required. All that’s needed is your focus on your thoughts. I like to see my thoughts as falling stars or clouds just passing through the atmosphere of my mind. I watch them come in and go out. I don’t try and push stuff out of my head. I just am and part of that is the wandering thoughts my human brain has. It all empties out as much as it will once we don’t emotionally invest in it.
That’s it. That’s meditation, at least how I see it. But doing all of that leads to something incredibly valuable.
We start to see ourselves for who we really are. We start to wonder why we’re spending so much time worrying about what other people think about us. The superfluous, fake shit about us begins to naturally fall away. We see we somehow don’t need that anymore. All the game playing and the mind tricks we use on the other humans starts to feel really freaking unnecessary. For me, that took on the form of not being able to be coy or untruthful anymore. How I feel is what I say is how I live end of story. I can’t not be authentic anymore.
It also led me down the rabbit hole of the ancient stoic philosophies, studying Buddhist/Taoist/Zen principles, delving into vibrational energy and quantum physics, and a whole bunch of stuff that might be meant for another article. Just know that once you start unpacking your messes and really looking at them unravelling, you may go down a couple rabbit holes yourself. Being in your own frame and owning your own self is addicting in the best way. It’ll become your drug of choice without a doubt.
Another thing that sort of happened organically for me is being able to be more present with whatever I was doing and appreciating everything more because I can stay completely in whatever I’m doing. Another thing that happens for a lot of regular practitioners of meditation, me included, is the sudden ability to pause before responding…be it in our heads or out into the world toward other humans. We begin to see that this world isn’t about what we can wring out of it for ourselves as individuals who are separate from the other individuals. It’s not about being individuals at all. We’re all here, hearts all beating, lungs all breathing, brains all growing. Together. We’re all doing this thing, and we’re all doing it with the help of that chirping bird and that tree reaching into the atmosphere over there and the kind person who helped us and the produce that we’re growing and the offspring we’re raising. We’re all in it together and we cannot do it as a singularity because WE’RE not. We need that atmosphere and the tree to help us breathe. We need to have those birds, for pleasure in their song if we choose, for food if we choose, for the picking up and the dropping of seeds and pollen because it has to happen for life to happen. We need humans to be kind to us so therefore to be a part of that beautiful mess of humanity we also need to extend kindness and understanding to the other humans, even if that doesn’t serve our immediate wants and needs. We all have a part to play in taking care of this space rock we’ve named Earth because it gives us all the soil to grow our crops and the air that we breathe and the conditions of our existence. This is why we’re all one. If we feel we’re separate or better or more entitled than the other people it doesn’t work. It only works if we all work together. It only works if we consider everything else with the painstaking consideration we give our own personal selves.
Meditation can take you there if you choose for it to. Getting your own brain to cooperate with you and learning how that process looks for you is something wholly unique to you. Meditation is both the most selfish and selfless thing we can do for ourselves. If we all did it, boy would this world look and function a lot better.
Meditation is serving yourself so you have the clarity to properly live and serve others. Once you find your “ahhhhh”, you’ll see how necessary all of that is. The “how to meditate” is up to you. Nobody can teach you or tell you.
Serve yourself.
