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Should Any Of Us Be Meditating Now
Well, Grasshopper. That depends.
When I say meditation, I mean my preferred style (read: the one that makes me feel like I’m doing it “right,” a trick of my ego) — silent. That means there’s no visualization, no mantras, not even counting the breath. The attempt is to get to a word-less space of observation. I learned this technique in 2007, on a 10-day vipassana retreat in India, under the direction of S.N. Goenka. I’ve been doing a pretty shitty job at it ever since.
Don’t get me wrong, when I get to that space it’s an incredible feeling. And I do believe it has permanently altered my response to life. But the fact is, I’m a terrible meditator. And because of my many as-yet un-altered responses to life, this has various consequences.
For many years, I used the practice as a bludgeon. I’d sit in silence and in the name of observing, I’d seize upon any negative sensations that came up. There was some benefit. Eventually I did learn to see and stop telling stories around the sensations. So when anxiety would bloom in my chest, rather than wondering if this was from sadness over the death of my boyfriend, the end of my marriage, or my impoverished state, I’d instead focus on trying to simply feel the feeling. I didn’t realize that this was another way of making it bigger and easier to find. This was entirely my…
