On Meditation

It’s lost a lot of its esoteric appeal.

Perhaps because we expected too much of it: something transcendental from within or some stimulus from without, making our not doing something for an hour – or fifteen minutes, depends upon your threshold for inactivity – worth the time invested. Maybe you’re lying on your back, maybe you’ve contorted your legs into a fine pretzel and tried to will your ass to rise a foot off the ground. Or you just close your eyes and imagine, let yourself drift freely. But the bottom line – you want some return, even if it is a calmness you carry with you for the rest of the day.

There was a time in my life when I belittled the idea of meditation, writing it off as a waste of time and whimsical pursuit. Guess I had little patience for whimsy. That was a turn-off, as well as its proponents – at least those I’ve known. Either they were people who are easily pigeon-holed as escapist or people wanting a little more mysticism in the world. In other words, their insisting on meditation and raving about its benefits fit very nicely in a ready-made profile – with meditation a necessary, correlative behavior. Meanwhile, my skeptical nature passes judgment on just how messed up these people’s lives really are, and I have a difficult time seeing how meditation is helping with the things that really matter. Even one of my heroes, David Lynch, has been stumping about the artistic/inspirational benefits of transcendental meditation. Sadly, his book about it coincided with laying a turd of a movie, Inland Empire. The world continues to reinforce my negative notion.

But I’ve turned a corner on it.

I’ve always had a broad, negative interpretation of the word consume. I was never satisfied with a definition targeting the material objects that we ingest or buy. I’ve bought into a notion that we are by default, always consuming: we consume scientific and theological knowledge; we consume lifestyles that are idiosyncratically individualistic or follow a nice cultural script; we consume our own thoughts as we rethink them and we consume others as we listen to them. Our appetite – whether seemingly sated or unquestionably hungry – exists in our mind, and it is never turned completely off. From day one, people, we are eating ourselves and the world around us, alive. We’re all living on the clock, and time is our tender…our attention our account. Even as I type, I am paying and I am consuming.

And the entire world is doing it, there’s always demand for it, and we’re getting more efficient and faster about the business of stuffing things into our eyes and ears. It is no surprise we are in an ‘information age’; what is surprising, is that we can suspend our defense against people wanting our attention – or just a societal pressure prompting you that your attentions need to be focused on something – long enough to comfortably go to sleep at night.

I’m not about to put a value on what is consumed. Be an atheist or theologian, see if I care: you’re both eating something up. Macrobiotic or McDonald’s; John Coltrane or Madonna; Mann or Grisham. Pursuits? Don’t mind if you are studying to be a yoga teacher or blazing a trail as a tweaked out graffiti artist. Whether your cause is noble – like finding a cure for cancer – or tangential: street corner musician. You, me, we’re all consuming. This has been a bit of a leap of faith for me, since the idea of inputting and outputting strike a beautiful balance. And it might be for you too. I’m basically saying, when you think you are inputting, or taking in, you are still consuming.

And it’s become a bit of an obsession for me. I mean, how do I turn it off? How do I embrace an impulse that negates itself, that implies that nothing has to come next?

After aborted attempts at multi-tasking it (you can ‘meditate’ while weeding the garden or doing other mindless, repetitive work), I began putting aside time and space to meditate. I’m not putting any expectations on it – I don’t care if it makes me happy or more virile or gives me the power to fly or throw balls of flame at my opponents. I’m not expecting it to remove emotional pain or give me a metaphysical high.

I just need to turn of the consuming. Just for an hour or so.

So, I’m going to be one of those people to recommend it…surprise! I think anyone can relate to how engorged our minds are, and I think most can relate to moments in our life when time stops, we feel a little out of our selves, and we enjoy the suspension in that moment. Everything feels in synch and nothing is placing a demand upon us. Well, you can force it. The key is focusing – or not focusing – on what meditation could do for you. Just go into it without asking any question whatsoever.