How The Hell Do You Meditate, Really?
2 concepts for effective meditation.
Open awareness is a beautiful thing. It’ll relieve your heartbreak. It’ll clarify your thinking. It’ll make you a more authentic and loving person. It’ll make you honest. It’ll bring you peace.
But how to actually do it? Not from the outside, but from the inside?
Okay, so you’ve sat down to meditate. You’ve closed your eyes or left them open. You take a few deep breaths to relax. Now what?
If you’re following a guided meditation, you’re probably instructed to “become aware of what you notice”. You’re told to ‘let go’ of all efforts.
But what does this mean? You’re clearly not putting in effort as you sit there motionless. Why haven’t you reached Nirvana?
As I meditated this morning I realized that the things you do with your mind when you meditate can’t be explained in words.
Practice is the most effective way to transcend thoughts and emotions, dispel the illusion of the self, and awaken to open awareness.
But, there are pointers: concepts that guide you to better meditative sessions. Here are two:
Peel the Onion
To meditate effectively, you must let go of all efforts, intentions, and desires.
Begin at the outermost layer of consciousness. You might find thoughts about a work project or your latest Tinder match. You’re gonna wanna peel that layer. But how?
By noticing. Bring attention directly to the thoughts. Bore into them with attention. Investigate what they actually are.
The closer you pay attention — the more awareness you bring — the less you’ll find. The thoughts dissolve as you seek their true nature.
The more you attend to the true nature of a thought or feeling, the less solid it becomes. Like peering into an object with an electron microscope, the closer you look, the more you find it’s just empty space.
This act of paying close attention to whatever you notice is exactly how you peel the onion. As each layer dissolves in the light of attention, the next appearance will rear. You’ve gone a layer deeper. Peel that layer too, not by force or judgment, but by pure attention.
Now, as you peel layers, you’ll come to some resistance. Some objects of consciousness that it’s difficult to let go of. The resistance is probably there because you can’t see into the true nature of the blockage.
This tricky layer is probably your desire to meditate. It’s the part of you that wants to attain the serenity of awareness.
Layers like this, difficult to describe, are products of the ego (obsessed with ends and not means). At these layers, you’re wanting the experience to be a certain way. You’re wanting to control the process.
This too is an appearance that will dissolve in the light of awareness. Indeed, it’s only by letting go of your desire to meditate that you can meditate.
If you can peel away all the layers, you might find something waiting at the core: pure awareness. Now, you’re meditating.
Be the River
You might imagine your consciousness is a streaming river. And the idea behind meditation, you might think, is to ride peacefully along on the surface of a gentle river instead of a polluted, violent flood.
So you might rage against the pollution you find floating on the river’s surface. You might try to force the river into cleanliness and calm. But this is not the way.
Your mind is not a river on which “you” float. You are the river. You are consciousness. Consciousness is the river, and its contents (thoughts, sights, sensations, sounds) float along the surface.
The river is not concerned with what’s on its surface. It is not judgmental. It carries and contains all objects, whatever their nature.
When you meditate, be the river.
After you’ve peeled your layers of resistance, you might allow whatever floats on the surface of awareness to do just that — float. Simply be aware of that floats — i.e. of what you notice. The river is awareness. It isn’t contracted by whatever floats on it. It welcomes all visitors.
For the river knows it’s not defined by what floats on it. It’s the river. The contents on its surface might change with each day, but the river is constant.
Awareness is constant. Notice the distinction between constant awareness and the ephemeral objects that float on its surface. Be the awareness, without resisting the objects.
Quick Takeaways
Here are two concepts to guide you to better meditations:
- Peel the Onion. Remove each layer of distraction by noticing it’s there. By the light of awareness, all things dissolve. Peel each layer of distraction in this way, until you find the space of awareness.
- Be the River. Don’t resist the objects that float on the surface. Be the river, allowing everything — good and bad—to flow.