As songwriter in my 20’s, I had the opportunity to work with quite a few ‘legends’ in the music industry. I would always ask them questions about their lives, their ability to sustain this career and the passion to continue creating, or any ‘secrets’ to their success they were willing to share. Back then, I was very ambitious, and desperate to ‘make it’, and I thought I was willing to do anything. In almost every conversation, the question, “Do you meditate?” would come up. Most times I replied, “Yeah, most of the time, what else?” The truth was, I didn’t. I may have tried it for a few seconds, a few times, which probably added up to a full minute of attempt during the span of my lifetime. I didn’t actually know what meditation was, and it never occurred to me to ask them. It felt like something I was just supposed to know already, like knowing how to pray.
I continued on my path adding several of the ideas and advice they gave me, but I never did meditation. Even when I tried it a few times, it didn’t seem to do anything for me, so I’d get frustrated and quit. I just didn’t see the point. Meanwhile, I suffered with depression, deeply suppressed anger and rage, indecisiveness, perfectionism, addiction, body image and intimacy issues, self hatred, guilt, inauthenticity, loneliness, sadness, and an irrational attachment to the identity of being successful.
Meditation is anything that brings us to the present and keeps us there. It not only increases our consciousness of what is happening around us, but more importantly, it raises our awareness to what is happening inside of us.
That was exactly what I was avoiding.
For several years, I lived in the false illusion that as soon as I get ‘there’ (the hit song on the radio, more money, a longterm relationship) I would finally be happy. What I did not know is that once you arrive ‘there,’ your mind goes with you. So even as I achieved all of those things, none of my suffering disappeared. In fact, it only got worse.
I worked with another accomplished Artist during this time, who mentioned to me that when they were going through their own ‘rise to fame’ in this fear-based industry, they couldn’t imagine what they would have done without their meditation practice. I felt my whole self fill with envy. I wanted that. I didn’t even know what it was yet, but I wanted it. I wanted it more than I wanted the excuses that had kept me from it. I had made several failed attempts at it, so my perfectionist self sought out my first meditation teacher, even though it was difficult to imagine needing a teacher to help me sit still and be quiet. "Shouldn't we just know how to do this?"
My first teacher, had studied several years in India with the Indian guru, Maharishi, who achieved notoriety as the guru to The Beatles in the late 1960’s & 1970’s. He wore all white, with white hair to match, and cedar colored mala beads around his neck. He had a commanding presence and radiant peace surrounded him. He did not use many words, or story to teach me. As someone who used only words and story to explain and defend everything I did, this was quite a mental challenge. I asked him how to meditate the right way, and he responded, “There is no such thing.” Then, I asked him what was the best way to meditate, and he said, “Whatever feels the most true for you.” Feeling very frustrated, I asked “Do I just get to the point of having no thoughts?” He replied, “Why? Are your thoughts your enemy?” I was getting nowhere with this guy. I asked, what I was doing wrong, and he responded, “What feels wrong about it?” I told him, it didn’t seem like it’s working, and he said, “In meditation, there is no ‘working.’ There is no outcome that you can achieve.” Finally, my brain was exhausted, my anger boiled up to the surface, and just like I would react in my teenage years when I wasn’t getting what I wanted, I yelled in a more raised voice, “Then why the f *** would I ever meditate?” With a little chuckle and a big smile, he said, “Ah, now there’s a question I can answer, and one that can serve you.”
He went on to explain to me that
Meditation is charging the soul’s capacity to hold more.
“More of what?”, I asked. He said, “More of everything. Right now, it seems that you’re having a tough time holding in all the anger you’ve stored in your lifetime.” “So I want to hold more anger?” He responded, “You want more space for it, so you can let it come up to the surface for healing, and it will not threaten your peace any longer. You want more space for fear, challenges, and the ego self, as you do for inner peace, truth, love and happiness.” Otherwise, you live with an inner land mine, that can be triggered at any time, and then needs to be suppressed by some sort of distraction, so you don’t explode. He had just described my life.
I was always doing my best to avoid conflict, burying my own emotions about it. If I was going through a tough situation, or even an extraordinary moment, I would binge eat to suppress it, or watch hours of television to shut off any thoughts or feelings about it. Only with the people I dearly loved, I would lose my temper and go into rage episodes that would sometimes result in black outs. I would clean the house obsessively, to calm my system down, or the triggers as he called it. Suppressing my feelings became a low-grade spiritual depression, like a ‘blanket’ over me, to shield myself from my own false reality.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, mindfulness teacher, poet, and peace activist, explained it best when he said that one reason we might want to practice mindfulness meditation is that most of the time we are unwittingly practicing its opposite.
Every time we get angry we get better at being angry and reinforce the anger habit. Every time we become self-absorbed, we get better at becoming self-absorbed and going unconscious. Every time we get anxious, we get better at being anxious. Practice does make perfect. Every moment in which we are caught, by desire, by an emotion, by an unexamined impulse, idea, or opinion, we are instantly imprisoned by the habitual way we react, whether it is a habit of withdrawal and distancing ourselves, as in depression and sadness, or erupting and getting emotionally "hijacked" by our feelings when we fall headlong into anxiety or anger.
I asked my teacher, “What does it take for me to have a strong meditation practice like yours?” He simply answered, “Bravery. Courage. Love for self.”
After several years of being in and out of that practice now, I know his words to be true. It is a very brave gesture to bring yourself to the present moment, into your fullest authenticity of emotions, wounds, and imperfections without judgement or your inner critic building up walls around it. It takes great courage to ask your higher self what matters most in this moment, then trust and patiently listen for the answer. Self love can only exist if you know your true self (so far), accepting yourself for who you are, as opposed to who you are being, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Meditation is not a study to perfect. It is a practice. Some days it is easier than others, and both experiences hold tremendous insight and gifts. There is no ‘working‘ at it to get better. The only thing for you to do is show up to it with willingness. In that space, the practice finds you, and it creates itself. In the past several years, I have practiced with many teachers, who taught me Transcendental Meditation, Sanskrit mantra, Walking & breathing meditations, Gong Meditation, Buddhist Loving Kindness Mantra, Standing meditation, and now, I am embracing the English mantra meditation practice that A Course in Miracles offers. Some forms of meditation are to help you empty the mind and relax. Other forms are used to ‘erase the tape, and record over it,’ replacing all fear with truth, which is what the Course in Miracles workbook does.
We must get to a place where we look at the stuff that we don’t want to look at, where we want peace more than we want the chaos,
where we want love in our lives, more than we’re willing to settle for the pain.
This stuff doesn’t just go away on it’s own.
We must work on it.
Instead of talking to God, we must expand our willingness to talk with God, taking time to listen in stillness. It is only in the silence, that we can hear our own intuition, which is the way God speaks to us.
When I think back to my Artist friends who said they couldn’t imagine living without a meditation practice, I understand it now. It is that simple, and that impactful. Once you get into the practice, you know what they mean. If you don’t practice, there is no way to know.
Expect A Miracle
