How is it we make everything so complicated - especially when are trying to do something very simple? Today I was talking with a sangha member about the meditation we have all been practicing together. If you have been reading these blogs you may remember that we have been following a trail of instructions from various teachers such as Tara Brach, Pema Chödrön, and most recently, Loch Kelly. Together they have given us a unified practice that always begins with mindfulness of the bodies sensation, particularly the out breath, and then using this as our calm foundation, either choosing to be mindful of the emotions felt within our body - the felt sense. Or alternatively deciding that we are calm enough to simply do nothing, the ‘doing nothing’ practice that is being aware of our awareness.
What came out in the conversation for me was these three very simple sets of instructions can become a huge distressing burden when, I guess, we make them so. I don’t know what’s behind this - is it that we are seduced by the complexity of the methods into wanting to have a meditative experience and then get anxious about whether we’ve ‘got it’ or not, and this causes us to cling on to the instructions, making them a kind of magic pill? I really don’t know. What I do know is that the mind becomes cluttered and frantic and because this is about the meditation method we don’t notice it is actually just ‘thinking’ and drop it. The basic instruction for all mindfulness meditations.
Another thing that emerged was that our type of meditation contains within it options. We are required to do something more than just plonking ourselves down and more or less paying attention. It actually requires a monitoring of our mind and based on what we observe making decisions.
I had an image of this being like living in a house with just three rooms. I always start off my day sitting in the same room. It’a a lovely calming room that brings me back from being caught up in all the stuff in my head. I’m actually seeing a big comfy chair. Now this room has two doors leading off it. If I find that I’m emotionally wound up about something I just notice this and get up and go into (let’s say) the room on the left. This is the room where I pay attention to my emotions - I ask myself, “Where in my body am I feeling this?” and when I know, I drop the story line and breath through and around the sensation of the emotion. Then, when it has all calmed down, I leave that room and return to my comfy chair in the first room. So here I am again. Just sitting, focusing a little more on the out breath. Then maybe, noticing that my thoughts are no longer distracting me, I decide to go into the third room in which I do nothing at all. This is the more tricky room because, as we all know, trying to do nothing never works. We have to just get up, go in and sit. Nothing more. No correcting. No thinking about it. Nothing. A most demanding room! It’s also a room where we stay for no more than a couple of minutes at first and then out we come back to our comfy, calming chair - breath. And so it goes on - observing my need in the moment and moving back and forth between my three options accordingly. No set pattern. No start and finish. Every sitting a fresh adventure.
When a meditation is being lead it can never properly fit the needs of the listening meditator. Maybe I need to just stay in room one - particularly if I am only going to sit for a short time or really have hardly established being able to sit in my comfy chair and not get washed away by thought. Maybe there are no emotions particularly demanding attention so I need not go in the second, felt-sense room. And maybe, when the spoken instructions invite me to simply sit and be aware of my awareness, I am actually so distracted that the wise thing to do, based on my observation of myself, is to not to even try, knowing what I need in this moment is to sit in my chair and breath. A guided meditation, where there are individual choices to be made, is at best a very rough tool. When I go back and forth between my rooms can only truly be chosen by me based on my observation of my own needs in this present moment.
It’s not quite chuck out the guided meditation instructions but it is a recognition of the need to become my own authority during my meditation session. Stepping up to be my own guru.
NW. with help from CAG. 1st February 2024
Such a wonderful encapsulation of sitting in our own practice. An incredibly helpful image of the moving between rooms. Thank you so much.
Oh Nigel a winner and so succinctly put. I shall sit in my comfy chair and own my authority and consider my options. Thank you
I found the analogy of the three rooms really helpful as it clearly defines what is the function of each room ie each type of practice, depending on what is the wisest choice to make at any given time. Very helpful, thank you.
Phew! That feels like an enormous relief. Thank you