“I could never meditate. I can’t sit still for more than five minutes. I’m too impatient, too restless, too driven, too abstract, too ambitious, too overloaded, too much of a worrier, too much of a multi-tasker, too much of a rapid-fire thinker and talker, too easily bored, too attracted to action, too much of a sensation junkie.”

In my recent writings about secular meditation, I’ve been making a point of staying away from proselytizing. I’ve been focusing on my own experience with this practice, and talking a little about the research about it, and not trying to persuade everyone else to do it. I’m going to continue with that policy. For one thing, I don’t know enough about the research on this mindfulness/ meditation technique: I don’t know if it’s a universally useful form of mental-health hygiene, like brushing your teeth; or more of a “This is useful for people wih X, Y, and Z personalities and conditions, not so much for people with A, B, and C” thing; or more of a “This is useful for X percentage of the population we’ve studied who’ve tried it and stuck with it, but we have no idea why it works for some people and not others” thing. I don’t know. So I’m not going to pitch this practice to everyone. That’s not what I want to do today, and probably not ever.

What I want to do today is counter a mistaken assumption some people make about this practice… so y’all can make up your own minds about whether it might be something that would be good for you, without the mistaken assumption gumming up the works.

This is probably one of those “white van on the corner” things, where once you’re thinking about something you start noticing it everywhere. But I’ve recently started seeing a bunch of writings from people insisting that they could never meditate, because, reasons. I saw it in a fashion/ lifestyle magazine (“More,” I think — it wasn’t very good, I tossed it right after reading it), a piece that was supposedly about “why I gave up on meditation” with no actual explanation of why she gave up on meditation other than “I tried it for an hour and it was boring and made me twitchy so I gave up.” More substantially, I saw it in Michael Pollan’s new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (a fine book, btw, and one which I’m enjoying a great deal), where he said this on trying to have patience, practice, and presence in the kitchen:

Unfortunately, not one of the “p”s came easily to me. I tend toward impatience, particularly in my dealings with the material world, and only seldom do I find myself attending to one thing at a time. Or, for that matter, to the present, a tense I have a great deal of trouble inhabiting. My native tense is the future conditional, a low simmer of unspecified worry being the usual condition. I couldn’t meditate if my life depended on it.

And I’ve seen this same trope elsewhere, although offhand I can’t remember where.

So here’s the thing:

I’m one of those people, too. I’m impatient, restless, driven, abstract, ambitious, overloaded, a worrier, a multi-tasker, a rapid-fire thinker and talker, easily bored, attracted to action, a sensation junkie who can’t sit still for more than five minutes.

And that is exactly why meditation feels so good, and is so good for me.

If I was already naturally peaceful, naturally accepting, naturally good at staying present in my life and being in the moment, I probably wouldn’t need to meditate. Meditation feels good, and is good for me, precisely because I’m impatient, restless, driven, abstract, ambitious, overloaded, a worrier, a multi-tasker, a rapid-fire thinker and talker, easily bored, attracted to action, a sensation junkie who can’t sit still for more than five minutes. Meditation feels good, and is good for me, precisely because it gives me what I lack: the ability to be still, to focus on one thing at a time, to have a modicum of serenity about things I can’t change, to actually experience my life and my surroundings and the people I’m with without constantly planning and analyzing and worrying and thinking about how to fix things and rehearsing an endless stream of “what if” scenarios.

Now, it is certainly the case that, for all these reasons, meditation doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. It took me a while to feel comfortable with it… and I’m still not always comfortable with it, there are still sessions where it makes me anxious and twitchy and bored. It took me a while to get the hang of it… and I suspect that I still don’t really have the hang of it, not nearly as much as I will in a few months/ years/ decades.

It’s reminding me a bit of weight training. When I first started hitting the weights, it felt weird, awkward, self-conscious, uncomfortable. I felt better after I did it… but the doing of it was hard. But it was exactly the stuff that was hard about it — the fact that my body wasn’t used to working in this way, or being worked in this way — that was why I needed to do it. I needed to get myself from a state where exercise was hard, to a state where it was relatively easy, and seemed natural, and actually felt pleasurable and good. And the only way to get there was to go through a stretch where it felt uncomfortable.

It feels like that with meditation. My mind isn’t used to working in this way, or being worked in this way. It sometimes feels weird, awkward, self-conscious, uncomfortable. I feel better after doing it, but the doing of it is sometimes hard. Less now than it was at first… but still sometimes. I need to get myself from a state where mindfulness is hard, to a state where’s it’s relatively easy, and seems natural, and actually feels pleasurable and good.

I’m one of those people. And I’m so glad I didn’t give up after the first week and say, “This isn’t for me.” This is definitely for me. And the very fact that I’m not there yet, the very fact that this doesn’t quite feel like me yet… that’s the reason it’s for me.

Other pieces in this series:
On Starting a Secular Meditation Practice
Meditation and Breakfast
Meditation, and the Difference Between Theory and Practice
Some Thoughts on Secular Meditation and Depression/Anxiety
Secular Meditation, and Doing One Thing at a Time
Secular Meditation: “Energy,” and Attention/ Awareness
Secular Meditation: How Down Time is Changing
Secular Meditation: “This is my job”
Secular Meditation: I Am Who I Am

“Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”

This is a moderately famous Zen koan. And it’s a phrase that keeps popping into my head as I pursue the secular meditation/ mindfulness practice that I keep gassing on about. Like many Zen koans, it seems to mean somewhat different things to different people (if you Google the phrase “chop wood, carry water,” you’ll find hundreds of people explaining what it “really” means). There’s the obvious meaning: after you get enlightenment (whatever the hell that means), the everyday tasks of your life aren’t going to go away, you still have to do work and manage your life. There’s the somewhat less obvious meaning: after you get enlightenment (whatever the hell that means), the pains and stresses of your life aren’t going to go away, chopping wood will still be hard work and carrying water will still make your back hurt. There’s the still less obvious but more commonly- understood meaning: our lives are largely made up of mundane tasks, and these tasks aren’t just junk we have to slog through to get to our real lives, they are our real lives, so it makes sense to embrace them and fully experience them rather than racing through them distractedly as if they didn’t matter.

All of which is true. But here’s what this koan has been meaning to me, and why it keeps popping into my head when I meditate:

I am who I am.

I will always be who I am. I am not going to get away from myself.

Here’s what I mean. There’s this weird paradox I keep running into. Meditation and mindfulness are having a dramatically transformative effect on my mind and my mood, my emotions and my approach to life. At the same time, they’re not really changing who I am at all. I am still fundamentally the same person that I was before I started, with the same affections and ambitions and anxieties, the same irritations and guilts and self-doubts. And I have to accept that if this practice is going to work.

When I meditate, I sometimes get frustrated with the constant hamster wheel in my head, chattering and nattering and worrying and distracting me from my focus. In theory, my meditation practice is supposed to involve focusing my attention on something specific (such as my breath, or scanning my body from foot to head); noticing when my attention has drifted from this focus; observing my distracting thoughts or feelings without judgment; and gently returning my focus to my breath or my body or whatever. In practice, my meditation often goes something like this:

“Focus on my right heel. My right heel. Jesus, I can’t believe that idiot commenter on AlterNet. Did I remember to pitch my AlterNet editor with that story idea… hm, I’m noticing that my attention is drifting. I’m gently returning the focus to my right heel. Right heel. Sole of my right foot. Sole of my… I haven’t returned that email from Charlie, I really need to do that. I wonder if Charlie would be interested in a workshop or a discussion group on mindfulness and sexuality? Who else would be interested in that? If I do that, should I do it as an in-person group in San Francisco, or an online group, or… no, this ISN’T what I’m focusing on right now. Crap. Observe that my attention has drifted onto this thought, LET THE THOUGHT GO already, return my focus to the sole of my right foot. Sole of the foot. Ankle. Notice that my ankle is a bit sore and tight… probably from the gym yesterday. Am I going to have time to go to the gym tomorrow? Maybe if I get caught up on my email and the messages in my Facebook inbox. You know, I haven’t done the Atheist Meme of the Day on Facebook in a while, I know people really liked that, but it was such a time-suck… GODDAMN IT, YOU STUPID FUCKING BRAIN, WILL YOU SHUT THE HELL UP AND LET ME FOCUS ON MY RIGHT ANKLE FOR TEN FUCKING SECONDS?!?!?”

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what my meditation teacher meant by “observe without judgment, and gently return.”

In fact, getting frustrated and angry with myself for having thoughts and feelings and plans and ideas and anxieties and so on arise in my mind when I meditate… it’s totally counter-productive. When I get irritated with my distracting thoughts or feelings, and angrily shove them on the back burner, and jerk my attention back to my breath or my left knee or whatever… I lose the flow of the practice. When I can observe my distracting thoughts or feelings, and sit with them for a moment, and let them be what they are, and then gently return my focus to my breath or my left knee or whatever… the practice is much more effective. (Not to mention more pleasant.) And the thoughts and feelings and so on don’t jar me out of the practice. They become part of it.

So when I meditate, and the hamster wheel is being unusually loud and active and frustrating, one of the things I do to stay in the practice is to remind myself: I am who I am.

This practice is not making the hamster wheel in my head go away. And I don’t think it’s going to. I think I’m always going to be a person whose mind is perpetually spinning at a zillion miles an hour, a person who has dozens of thoughts on her mind at once, a person who’s constantly thinking of the future and trying to shape it, a person who lives in the future far more than she lives in the present, a person with plans and worries and hopes almost constantly on her mind. And I’m basically okay with that. It’s frustrating and annoying at times… but it’s also a big part of why I am where I am today, and why I’m able to live this life and do this work that I find so fulfilling. This practice isn’t going to make the hamster wheel go away… and I wouldn’t want it to.

What the practice is doing — gradually, to a small degree, to a very slightly greater degree every day — is changing my relationship with the hamster wheel.

What the practice is doing — gradually, to a slightly greater degree every day — is enabling me to have my thoughts and feelings and plans and anxieties… instead of them having me.

This has become one of the chief ways that I frame this practice, and one of my chief goals with it. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of being goal-oriented about a practice that’s fundamentally about self-acceptance and being in the moment. But… well, again, that’s sort of the point. I am who I am. And who I am, among many other things, is an intensely goal-oriented person. And I’m basically okay with that. Again: big part of why I am where I am today, and why I’m able to live this life and do this work that I love. And — returning to the point — one of the chief goals I have with this practice is to have my thoughts and feelings and plans and anxieties… instead of them having me.

I want to have ambition — I don’t want my ambition to control me. I want to have anger — I don’t want my anger to overwhelm me. I want to have plans — I don’t want my plans to spin me, to drown me, to constantly poke me and prod me and nag me and swamp my entire field of consciousness. I want to respond to the things that happen in life — I don’t want to react to them. I want to have lots of ideas and hopes and analyses and strategies and imaginings and desires and feelings. I don’t want them to have me.

I am who I am. I will always be who I am. Who I am is changing, of course, and I don’t know for sure how I will and won’t change. But some things about me have been pretty much constant throughout my life, and I don’t expect them to change. The hamster wheel in my head will always be chopping wood and carrying water. But as I continue to work on mindfulness, I’m finding that — gradually, to a small degree, to a very slightly greater degree every day — I’m better able to notice when my attention has drifted, and to observe it without judgment, and to return my attention to the task at hand. I’m better able to notice when I’m having strong emotions, and to observe them without judgment, and to make decisions that are informed by those emotions without being a total reflexive reaction to them. I’m better able to look at a long to-do list, and pick the next most important do-able thing on the list, and do it, without being overwhelmed and paralyzed by how much I have to do.

The hamster wheel in my head will always be chopping wood and carrying water. But as I continue to work on mindfulness, it seems that I’m becoming better able to consciously choose which wood to chop, and which water to carry.

Other pieces in this series:
On Starting a Secular Meditation Practice
Meditation and Breakfast
Meditation, and the Difference Between Theory and Practice
Some Thoughts on Secular Meditation and Depression/Anxiety
Secular Meditation, and Doing One Thing at a Time
Secular Meditation: “Energy,” and Attention/ Awareness
Secular Meditation: How Down Time is Changing
Secular Meditation: “This is my job”

“This is my job.”

I have a few quasi-mantras that I sometimes use when I meditate. They’re not mantras, exactly: they’re not words or ideas that I’m making the focus of my meditation. They’re more like reminders, ways to pull my focus back to whatever it is that I am working to focus on. “I am my body.” “One thing at a time.” “Notice that, acknowledge it, gently return.” “Forgive yourself.” “Put it on the list” (a phrase I use when I’m fixating on some undone task: if I externalize it by putting it on my to-do list, it’s easier to let go of and return to the meditation). “I am who I am” (more on that in a future post). “Be here now.” “Let go.”

But there’s one quasi-mantra in particular that I’ve been using a lot, probably more than any other. It’s one that I’m finding both interestingly useful and interestingly problematic, and I want to think out loud for a bit about both.

That quasi-mantra: “This is my job.”

Here’s the thing. When I meditate, the thoughts and feelings and anxieties that rise in my head, and which I notice and acknowledge and gently let go of so I can return my focus, are overwhelmingly about work. I’ve let my work plate get full to the point where it’s overflowing and spilling onto the floor. I have two five twelve hours of work to do for every hour that I have to do it in. And even if that weren’t true, the nature of being a writer is that I essentially have an infinite amount of work I could be doing at any given time. There is always, always, something that I could be writing about. Always. So there’s a part of me that sees myself lying quietly and paying attention to my body and my breath, and thinks, “What the hell are you doing? Look at all the work you have to do. This is a waste of time.”

But at the same time, I am vividly aware that one of the many benefits I’m getting from meditation — and certainly the most tangible one — is that it’s cranking up my work productivity to eleven. My increased ability to focus, my improved ability to prioritize, my new-found technique of ditching the inefficient multi-tasking crap and doing just one thing at a time, the returning joy and pleasure that I’m taking in my work… all of this is coming largely from my meditation and mindfulness practice.

So when I meditate, and I find my thoughts continually returning to work-related anxieties and to-do lists, and I find myself getting guilty and anxious and impatient about the time I’m spending meditating when I could be writing or answering emails or picking up promo cards from the printer or something… I tell myself, “This is my job.”

“This is my job.” My quasi-mantra shorthand for, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing right now. The time I’m spending on lying quietly and paying attention to my body and my breath is more than paying off in work productivity. This is not technically speaking work, but it is making it easier for me to do my work, and is making my work better. This is not wasted time. This counts as work.”

“This is my job.”

On the plus side: This quasi-mantra works. It quiets my brain. It lets me get on with my practice. It helps me stop thinking of meditation as a waste of time… which makes it possible to pursue it. People I know who have meditated for years (including my meditation teacher) talk a lot about doing whatever practice works for you, in whatever way works for you… and this works for me.

On the minus side: Do I ever get to value myself, not just for my work, but for myself?

Do I ever get to take care of myself, just for my own sake?

When I wrote “In Praise of Frivolity,” when I wrote about finding meaning not just in big things like work and family and social change, but in little things like donuts and fashion magazines and Cards Against Humanity, I said this: “If we exist to make other people happy, and they exist to make other people happy, and so on and so on… at what point does that end? At some point, doesn’t experience get to just matter, simply because it matters?”

Do I ever get to apply that to myself?

For now, I’m going to let this quasi-mantra be. It’s working, and I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Meditation is turning out to be hugely beneficial, not just for my work productivity but for my mental health and my physical health and my self-awareness and my ability to connect with people and my ability to fully experience and take joy in my life… and if this work-around lets me get on with that, I’m not going to worry about it too much. And the reality is that my work is a huge part of who I am, a huge part of what gives my life not just meaning but deep pleasure and joy. So if it’s easier for me to focus on my meditation practice by framing it as work, for now I’m going to let that be.

But I’m looking at this. I suspect that this gift horse may have some sharp teeth. At some point, I may have to let this go. At some point, I may have to find some other way to quiet the “work! work! work!” hamster wheel in my head. At some point, I may have to find a way to value this practice, not just because of what it lets me do, but because of what it lets me be.

Other piece in this series:
On Starting a Secular Meditation Practice
Meditation and Breakfast
Meditation, and the Difference Between Theory and Practice
Some Thoughts on Secular Meditation and Depression/Anxiety
Secular Meditation, and Doing One Thing at a Time
Secular Meditation: “Energy,” and Attention/ Awareness
Secular Meditation: How Down Time is Changing

So here’s a change I wasn’t expecting: I’m no longer annoyed by down time. I’m actually welcoming it and appreciating it. At least sometimes.

As regular readers know, I’ve recently begun a secular meditation/ mindfulness practice, based on the evidence-based Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction techniques. There are about eleventy billion ways that this is affecting my life, many of which I didn’t expect going into this and which have taken me very much by surprise… and there’s one in particular that’s both small and profound.

It’s this: I’m no longer being distressed and annoyed by down time.

Not nearly as much, anyway.

I tend to be a very active, goal-oriented person: always in motion, always seeking stimulation, always wanting to be doing something, trying to be super-efficient and fill every waking second with productivity. You know those people who are constantly looking at their phone during any break in the action, when they’re waiting for the bus or waiting in line for coffee or waiting for their email search to quit spinning its wheels and finally freaking open, come on, it’s been ten seconds already for crying out loud, I don’t have all day? That’s me. I’m one of those people. Like I wrote when I wrote about learning to love our play-aggressive cat, and how she had picked me as her favorite: “How is it fair that I got Comet: the high-energy, high-maintenance, perpetually-in-motion sensation junkie with a near-constant need for attention and … oh. Right. Never mind. I totally got the cat I deserve.”

But ever since I started the mindfulness/ meditation practice, I am doing this stuff way, way less. I am seeing the breaks in my life, the minutes and seconds when I don’t have anything particular to do, not as a waste, but as an opportunity.

I’m working on bringing mindfulness into my daily life. I don’t just want to meditate once a day and then run through the rest of my life like a bat out of hell. And I’ve been finding that, if I’m waiting for a bus, or I’m stuck in a line at the coffee place, or whatever, I’m not feeling a pressing need to fill the time. I can fill the time with just… being. Just noticing my surroundings, noticing my thoughts and feelings, noticing my body and my breath. Just being present with my self, and my life, and the people and the world around me.

When I do small pieces of the mindfulness practice throughout the day, I get more out of the practice. So these small moments of down time aren’t irritating me nearly as much as they used to. I’m actively enjoying them, and looking forward to them. I’m seeing them as an opportunity.

I suppose that, to some extent, I’m still being goal-oriented and filling the time with activity here. After all, there is a sense in which paying quiet conscious attention to my self and my surroundings is an activity. And the mindfulness/ meditation practice is a means to an end, as well as an end in itself. I am still me here, I’ll probably always be a hyper-productive, future-oriented go-getter, and I’m actually finding it funny the way I’m working this “be here now” practice into my go-getting. (That’s a topic for another post: the ways in which my life with meditation both is and is not the same, the ways in which this practice is both radically transformative and almost blandly mundane.)

But when I started this practice, I said that I was doing it because, quote, “it offers, or seems to offer, some things I’m in great need of: peace, calm, the ability to be present in the here and now, the ability to sit still, the ability to not constantly be either in motion or feeding my brain with stimulation, the ability to stay centered and focused and keep my mind from racing in a million directions at once like a hummingbird on meth.” And for now at least, that seems to be working.

This practice is helping with a lot of things: depression, anxiety, work productivity, motivation and focus. But I wonder if one of the most valuable things I’m going to get out of it is simply the ability to sit still, or stand still, and not feel like I have to be rushing to do something or get somewhere. I wonder if one of the most valuable things I’m going to get out of it is simply the ability to sit still, or stand still, and not feel anxious or guilty about the waste of my time. I wonder if one of the most valuable things I’m going to get out of it is simply the ability to sit still, or stand still, and be at peace.

Other piece in this series:
On Starting a Secular Meditation Practice
Meditation and Breakfast
Meditation, and the Difference Between Theory and Practice
Some Thoughts on Secular Meditation and Depression/Anxiety
Secular Meditation, and Doing One Thing at a Time
Secular Meditation: “Energy,” and Attention/ Awareness

This is going to seem ridiculously obvious. It is ridiculously obvious. I feel more than a little silly that it’s taken me over fifty years to get it. But it’s making a big difference in my life and my work, and I want to share it with the rest of the class.

As I’ve been writing about for the last few weeks, I’ve begun learning a secular meditation practice: an evidence-based, non-supernatural practice, supported by research and taught in a medical setting, called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Much of the practice, and the theory behind the practice, has to do with… well, mindfulness: being in the moment, and fully experiencing the moment, rather than constantly getting lost in worries and fantasies and memories and plans and regrets and worst-case scenarios and action-items and to-do lists. It has to do with actually experiencing — for instance — my breakfast, actually smelling the food and tasting the food and feeling the sensation of it, rather than distractedly eating while thinking about a hundred things other than the food in my mouth. When I’m doing the practice, I notice when worries and fantasies and memories and plans and regrets and worst-case scenarios and action-items and to-do lists rise up in my mind; I observe them without judgement (or try to)… and then I gently return my attention to whatever it is I’m focusing on. Whether that’s my breakfast, or the fall of my foot on the pavement, or whatever body part I’m focusing on during my body scan at that moment.

As someone whose life is a little much at times, someone with a whole lot on her plate and some very long to-do lists indeed, someone whose worries and plans and action items can feel overwhelming, this can be something of a challenge. But one of the take-aways from this practice has been a change in my work habits that’s been weirdly profound, one which has been making work both more pleasurable and more productive.

That take-away:

One thing at a time.

If I’m feeling overwhelmed by the forty unanswered emails in my email inbox, my new policy is to not focus on the existence of all forty at once, which is guaranteed to freak me out and paralyze me. My new policy: Open the first email. Read it. Answer it if it needs answering. Move on to the next email.

Similarly, if I’m writing an essay or a blog post, I write that essay or blog post. I don’t check my email every ten minutes; I don’t check Facebook and Twitter every ten minutes. I write. I write until I’m finished, or until I come to a reasonable stopping place, or until it’s lunchtime, or until some specific piece of scheduling demands that I stop, or until Ingrid comes home, or until I run dry and need to take a break.

I know. Like duh, right? How can you read forty emails at once? How else can you read your emails, other than one at a time? But this is coming as something of a major revelation for me. Of course I can’t read more than one email at a time. But I can read one email at a time, while stressing out about the other thirty-nine… or else I can read one email, and give it my full attention, and then move on to the next one with my full attention there as well.

See, here’s the thing. Continue reading “Secular Meditation, and Doing One Thing at a Time” →