What Happens in the Mind of a Meditation Teacher?

This morning I decided to really notice what my mind did when I sat to practice meditation. I talk a lot about the importance of really knowing what our method is so that the whole thing does not just lapse into a kind of spaced out state where we just drift along half conscious, so what about me? What do I observe myself doing - at least this morning?

So, starting with just noticing the sensations within my body including the breath I was present for about five minutes and then discovered I was composing this blog. Hmmm … back to the breath. This for me is always a tricky moment because I have noticed that I can whip off even before or almost immediately I supposedly return. So return to the breath - gone again! I know we teach this practice as a way of calming the mind but its also quite hard work - it requires I concentrate and sometimes I just really don’t want to. Thinking is like a drug.

OK. So coming back and forth a number of time until I get a kind of dim intimation that I don’t feel that good. Again I realise that many of us know exactly how we feel loud and clear immediately but with me it’s more like down a dim corridor and just round a bend. So where do I feel this in my body? … Not sure … ah, yes, I kind of faint feeling somewhere in my solar plexus and chest. What sort of felt sense is it? Dread. A quiet alarm free floating and alighting on one scary bit of news after another. A core wound I’m very familiar with being almost silently triggered in the background of my being. This place is dangerous and I don’t know how to get out. The fear niggles away, its unsettling without being loud or shouty but it’s there. So, breath in and around it. Say “It’s OK to be with this. I can feel this, it’s fine”. …. And then I notice there is a sneaky bit waiting for it to go away. This part says, “I’ve been present (10 seconds) now do your part - disappear, get better.” And of course it doesn’t.

Another distraction. I start thinking about the transition between being present with my felt sense to resting in awareness, the doing nothing meditation. This actually creates a moment of insight: really the ‘doing nothing’ type of practice is just noticing the awareness that is aware of the breath or felt sense or whatever. It is there all the time, present in every form of meditation practice, but not seen when the focus is on something else … it’s almost like looking at the screen images are projected onto rather than the images. It’s there, right in front of our eyes …… yes, this is one great distraction! OK. Stop thinking about it and instead do it …. and then I come out of a very long reverie about the “Great Pottery Throw Down” winner and its time to ring the bell. Ting!

On days like this it would be so easy to think “Why do I bother?” I’m a hopeless meditator. This makes no difference to me or this horrible world. But on the other hand I have discovered that it doesn’t really matter. Acceptance, equanimity, whatever we call it, is born out of hours of this …. just sitting and coming back interspersed with moments of relaxed lucid clarity that somehow gets into the muscles of my face making me want to smile. What an idiot I must look grinning at a blank wall!

NW. A cheery wander on a grey day. 17 March 2025