I’ve always felt a bit disembodied. 

It’s been quite a process for me, to understand what it means to be a physical body. To move, breathe, walk, carry, stand, sit properly. I can do the simplest of movements completely wrong. Repeatedly. Years of inadequate movement have left me weak and achy. The goal is for me to reframe the idea of the meditative state of mind so I can understand it.

Meditation isn’t a thing you do but a place you access. Once you know the path, once you have the key, it will take you a second. Learning those can and will take a lifetime. 

•  It means emptying the mind 

It’s not quite “thinking about nothing”. It’s getting to a place of non-thought. But you cannot force yourself to stop thinking. It’s a patience game. The thoughts will run out when you stop feeding them. 

First: Reduce interaction. Close off all my senses, so that no new information can  interfere and distract me. It means darkness. Silence. Quasi-stillness (what about yoga?) 

It seems like understanding what it is like to quiet the mind is the same thing as understanding what it’s like to become still. 

• It means breathing 

Getting to a point where the breath alone can sustain you fully, so that you have filled every need and every want with a rich and fulfilling breath. Every corner of every cell is nourished. you let the breath occupy every chamber of your being, flood every inch of you. It is to drink the world through your nostrils. 

I can relate that to food. You can eat more or less “thoughtfully”. Slowly, with intent and gratitude almost seems to make food more nutritious than when we’re hurried, distracted, elsewhere. 

It doesn’t mean just “focusing on the breath”. It means becoming your breath, it means disappearing in your breath. (?)

• It means paying attention/being present 

Being in the moment means not being able to look at it from the outside. It means not contextualizing what you are experiencing. It means not fitting it in a story. It means not being able to analyze, to question, to plan, to regret. It means fully being there. It’s the difference between looking and seeing, the difference between hearing and listening. When you’re listening to me, you are giving me something.

Attention as a currency that you exchange with the world around you. Paying attention is different from focusing. Paying attention is something you do for instance when balancing on a rope. A concentration of energy. It’s having your ears open, in that you don’t have to. You just have to tune in, as opposed to the activity of the eyes, that you have to fight to keep open longer than a second, a day, a lifetime. 

• I means sinking 

Meditation as an act of immersion, or submersion. A whole world underneath the surface. It’s deep, it’s dark. It’s foreign and scary. Imagine yourself sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Imagine being pulled by a heavy weight tied to your waist. Imagine not resisting the pull downward. 

It takes a lifetime and yet, we sink into it effortlessly every night. I’m kidding of course: We get there kicking and screaming. Every metaphorical fiber of your mind resists it. The struggle to meditate is of the same vein as the struggle to sleep. You have to understand what is preventing you. The parts of you that interact with the world through your eyes (and their questions/analyses) are fighting tooth and nail to remain active. The fear of non-interaction, like all fears, is easily overblown. 

To be continued.