Meditate me
You are the sky, not the clouds. You are big enough to contain them all.
Meditation is not eliminating thoughts. It’s being able to see them as thoughts.
When you’re flying in a plane and it enters a cloud, it doesn’t look like you’re in a cloud that is floating in an endless sky. You just see fog. Your reality is that it’s foggy outside. For all you know, it might be foggy everywhere.
We spend most of the time so closely identified with our thoughts that we think we’re just seeing the world as it is. Sometimes we’re in a rain cloud and we must react to darkness and sometimes we’re in the glowing pink of a sunset and we’re allowed to feel peace and joy.
What meditation offers is the chance to expand into the open sky of our minds and watch those cloud-thoughts float by. It offers us the chance, when we’re sucked into a scene of our lives, to zoom out and observe the scaffolding holding up the set walls and the lights giving mood to the stage.
Meditation gives us practice in recognizing the space between what we think and that we are thinking.
And guys, so much cool stuff happens in that space!
It’s where we meet our core selves, it’s where we can feel instant relief from pain, it’s where we are able to fee every emotion without judgment, it’s where we can create new ones, it’s where we can find the choice to act instead of react, and it’s where we can be utterly present. Which is another way of saying it’s a place where we can find joy.
But I can’t sit in lotus.
Me either.
Don’t worry. The only right way to meditate is the way that gets it done.
For me, that usually means in bed, either at night or first thing in the morning. Sometimes I make it to the couch. Or sometimes I meditate while hiking or driving or sitting at my desk. There are so many ways to meditate because ultimately anything you do to become aware of your body and thoughts is meditation. This can be as simple as a few breaths. Or using your five senses to describe a room around you.
My favorite way to meditate is by using apps. Here are some you could try (all free, though some have paid premium versions):
Headspace: If you’re brand new to meditation, this is a great place to start. There is a free 10-day introductory “course” that explains the practice as it guides you through it and also offers brief animations illustrating concepts.
Breathe: This app starts by having you pick a few emotions that you’re currently feeling (a practice that has value in and of itself), then offers short guided meditations tailored to those emotions. Another good one for beginners. (There is also a Breathe Kids app good for younger kids.)
Rituals: Don’t underestimate this app because it’s made by a makeup company. It offers a very nice guided meditation, in a soothing voice, that incorporates a lot of silence but has enough reminders to keep bringing you back to watching your thoughts regularly. Rituals offers longer free tracks than Headspace or Breathe.
Insight timer: The longer I’ve meditated the more I’ve come to find this app indispensable. It offers a timer for silent meditations with sound prompts of your choosing. But what I usually access is its collection of thousands of guided meditations from numerous contributors on a wide range of topics. I use it to calm myself before sleep (my kids also use it nightly), when I’m feeling hard emotions, when I’m working through a particular problem, or when I’m trying develop a specific skill (like compassion). It does take some sorting through to find the ones that work best for you (the voice really matters to me), but when you find them, you can bookmark them for easy, quick access. Below are some of my favorites (which you can find via the search function).
Everything that Sara Blondin has released as part of her Live Awake series. Any explanation of her magic voice, honest descriptions, and poetic call to life will fall so short of just experiencing her. Go try one of them immediately!
Compassion for Challenging Emotions (Christina Sian McMahon)
Calming the Mind and Opening to All Experience with Acceptance (Richard Shankman)
Mindfulness Meditation for Stress and Worry (Hugh Byrne)
The Dream for Sleep (Bethany Auriel-Hagan)
Tropical Paradise Guided Relaxation (Zofie Lloyd-Kucia)
Source of Life – Guitar & Strings (Hawaii Healing Music)
I’d love to hear about what practices, apps, and tracks you discover as well.
Check, check. Is this thing on?
So how do you know if meditation is “working”?
If you’re doing it.
You will get different things from it at different times. Sometimes it will offer huge relief, as it helps you process through difficult feelings. But often it will just be building the discipline to sit (or lay), and the space that discipline slowly opens will be almost imperceptible.
Which makes is no less valuable.
Meditation doesn’t get you anywhere. It unfolds you where you are.