Get up early and sit in an uncomfortable position in the dark for a long time and do nothing? You're kidding, right?
It's
hard to explain why anybody would want to meditate. For a long time I
didn't want to myself, and then for an equally long time I did but
couldn't gather up the requisite willpower to make a regular thing of
it. But now there's been a corner turned and the quiet spaces in the day
are my favourite bits of it. Partly, it's a cognitive thing. My life
has been dominated by an insatiable quest to understand and lately
there's been a sort of nagging inner certainty that the path to
understanding somehow lies through this period of enforced inner
silence. There's also Ian Gawler, who seems to think that meditation is
as important, more important even, than any other lifestyle change you
might want to make if you are intent on pursuing healing, and I have
been quite predisposed to listen to him of late. And then there's lots
of frazzled people out there for whom a little bit of completely stress
free time in the day seems like a pretty good sort of idea and I can see
their point. But wait.... there's more.
Think
of the last time you drove somewhere. No doubt you made the journey with
very little thought, if any, about the actual process of driving. We
drive, and simultaneously converse, or talk on our cell phones, or
listen to lectures on the CD player, or take careful note of the real
estate for sale along the road and all the while our brain is performing
all the complex operations associated with driving completely
automatically and unconsciously. Now think about how much you knew when
you were new born and what you know now. You have learned countless
things, and perform them so unconsciously that some tasks - walking,
controlling your bowels, talking, standing upright for example - you
have forgotten that they are learned and that there was a time when you
didn't know how to do them. You run through your day performing
thousands of different operations unconsciously. Which is wonderful, but
it does mean that the way you learned to do something sticks fast, and
is not accessible to change. Try changing the accent with which you
speak, for example, let alone the language.
These
automatic patterns are not just to do with physical activities. They
also dominate the way we think, the emotions we feel, the way we relate
to other people, and the very way we perceive the world. Our whole sense
of self is a collection of these automatic patterns: patterns so
automatic and so unconscious we don't even know that most of them are
there. Most of our physical, emotional, intellectual, and cognitive
lives are lived unconsciously, on autopilot. Despite our illusion to the
contrary, we are not in control of much of it at all. Anthony De Mello
says,
Most
people, even though they don't know it, are asleep.They're born asleep,
they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children their
sleep, they die in their sleep, without ever waking up.
Meditation
is about waking up. It is about escaping from the clutches of the
automatic patterns: patterns of our bodies, of our minds and of our
spirits. It is about being aware: of the world around us that is
normally seen through the lens of our habitual patterns and being aware
of ourselves, including the bits our patterns have long since numbed out
and kept well away from our conscious minds.The patterns are very
resilient and hard to escape. They are shy of awareness and like to
scurry for cover at the first opportunity.The sense of self that is made
up of the sum of all those patterns is also very resistant to being
sidelined and protests about it. This is why this little thing: simply
doing nothing, is such a tricky thing to acheive. But when you do manage
it, there is the momentary inner reward of knowing that you are awake
(momentary because immediately the old patterns kick in: Hey! I've done
it! and you're thinking again and immediately back where you started
from.)
Meditation has its physical rewards.
Fairly robust testing shows that ,performed regularly, it lowers stress
levels, increases immune functioning and has a positive effect on pretty
much any bodily system you care to name. I find that after meditating I
am more focused and efficient, my relationships seem to run more
smoothly and I have a much improved inner sense of equilibrium. But in a
way these are secondary. It is the short but increasing periods of the
day when the old patterns are shelved that is the real reason I do this.
It is the realisation that the sense of deepened reality that comes
with the shelving is starting to very very slowly leach out into the
rest of my life.
So that's why. And once that
question fades from people's faces, there's another one waiting,
especially if they are Christian: is meditation a form a prayer and
should Christians be doing it? The short answer is well...maybe and yes.
The long answer will take a bit of time and I'll get onto it in the
next day or so.
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