Easier Said Than Done

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a traveler. A special kind, one who embarks on expeditions to fantastical worlds of splendor, terror, and madness alike. You travel with a companion, a dear friend of yours. This companion wears a blindfold, purposefully depriving themselves of their sight after a trip to a realm where, in something of a lovecraftian manner, a mere glimpse almost drove them insane.

And so you and your companion amble onwards, into the unknown. With you guiding ahead, your companions hand and heart are steady, knowing they can trust you.

Then you happen upon it—the most astonishing place you’ve ever seen. You arrive there, whether by portal, time machine, spaceship or otherwise, and your jaw rockets to the floor. The colors and shapes are a symphony for your eyes, as if the landscape itself is experience and emotion personified, solidified. A dazzling kaleidoscope of brilliance. Your senses are bewildered, but your sight is shaken altogether. It’s as if you’re seeing color for the first time, as if another dimension of reality has been revealed to you by stepping foot in this garden of splendor.

And then you turn to your companion. You realize, in that moment, that they are blind to the tapestry surrounding them. Immediately, you strive to pour your heart out—to describe the gut-wrenching beauty that you are both standing within. You try, with desperation, to communicate the entrancing dance of light and shadow, of saturation and color. And yet, despite your best efforts, you barely manage to encapsulate even a drop of the ocean of beauty in front of your eyes. Your companion smiles at your excitement. They feel the firm ground beneath their feet, they hear the dance of life around them, and they feel they understand. They feel they don’t need to see, or perhaps that it’s not worth seeing. And so you deflate. Like explaining color to the completely blind or sound to the completely deaf. You fail to communicate how shaken—how changed—you are by the experience. Perhaps you even beg them to take the blindfold off. Maybe you try to tell them how easy or simple it would be, or perhaps you ask them to simply trust you and give it a try. But the blindfold is comfortable. the blindfold is safe. To remove the blindfold is to be vulnerable—to confront yourself and the world. To truly live in this moment, assaulted by the poignant reality you find yourself helplessly submerged in. “Better I not,” thinks your companion. “For what if the desperation to make me see is some new form of madness?”

This is the struggle of communication, of attempting to explain how something has expanded your horizons. The existential terror of knowing how faulty all communication will always be. You attempt to translate your ideas into soundwaves—literal vibrations of air particles—hoping and praying the ear the soundwaves hit has a brain behind it capable of discerning even some meaning. It’s like exercising, and then being unable to explain how much better you feel to someone who doesn’t. It’s like being in a relationship and trying to explain how much it fills your heart to someone single. It’s like recommending your favorite book, movie, or TV show to someone who has never tried the genre—to someone who has no frame of reference. The phrase “easier said than done” rings true. It is easy to say a great many things, but saying and doing—really feeling, experiencing—couldn’t be more distinct. A blind man can know everything about light. About color. He can be the world’s foremost expert on the electromagnetic spectrum, knowing every miniscule detail of how light works and how it interacts with the human eye. Yet, he will never understand what it is like to see red. To understand red, to know it. Just as the sighted will never imagine a new color. We are permanently and irrevocably disconnected from that which we have not experienced; and no explanation will ever close the chasm.

With all of this in mind, allow me to—perhaps in vain—explain meditation to you.

To say very little, meditation is everything and nothing. There are as many definitions of meditation as there are people who practice it. To some, prayer is a kind of meditation. An exertion of will, a focus and a reflection. To others, prayer could not be further from meditation. To them, prayer is misguided and perverted. Focused on wants and conversation rather than the present moment. To say nothing at all, both are right. Both are wrong.

The best piece of advice I can give in regards to meditation is to dial back your expectations, as carefully as you can. Understand that anyone who attempts to explain meditation is often just communicating their own personal experience with it. A corner of the tapestry.

In this corner, in mine, I would posit that meditation is best explained as the Venerable Henepola Gunaratana puts it: meditation is “seeing reality exactly as it is”. His book, Mindfulness in Plain English, is a masterfully written piece which I believe to be one of the best introductions to meditation in existence.

But, hold on, “seeing reality exactly as it is?” What does that mean? Well, as previously discussed, communication of such a thing is flawed. Many books have been written on it, mostly because the subject requires a thorough elaboration to sufficiently communicate. That is all to say, please understand that the following description will necessarily be missing depth.

Meditation is seeing reality exactly as it is. Seeing the truth of the matter, the ground base. You exist as a being with a conscious experience—a bewildering fact in itself—and you are at all times assailed by your senses. Sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, the standard five, along with balance, temperature, pressure, pain, kinesthesia, proprioception, interoception, and likely a whole host more. One of the greatest wonders of the human mind is that it is capable of accepting all of this raw information and weaving it together into a coherent narrative. Yet, it can be argued, the coherence of this narrative is not always guarenteed.

We are storytelling creatures, the lot of us. Perhaps as a simple extension of our ability to categorize and remember. We feel a rumble in our stomach and the story becomes “I am hungry.” We wake up in the morning and tell ourselves “I am exhausted.” We turn sensation into explanation, regularly and constantly. We live our lives pulling the thread, chugging along the tracks, sprinting forward like a horse with blinders. Even in our most mindful moments, we simply skew the blinders up or down, left or right. Now we see something different, but we gallop all the same. We fail to pause and feel, without interpretation, without narrative.

Meditation is a pause, a shift in focus. For many, it may be a rare kind of focus. A single extended period of time dedicated to focusing on one singular thing that isn’t work, play, or consumption. It is a focus on existence. It begins the second you commit yourself to it. The second you have come to terms with not doing anything else, for that singular moment. You might focus on your breathing, on how your body feels, or on the ambient sounds you hear around you, and for a moment, it all becomes more real. What used to be the blurry background noise of your accelerated reality has become reality itself. Your heart beats: fa-bump, fa-bump. Your chest rises and falls. You are really, truly alive, here and now.

If you’re lucky, you’ll realize. Like the Grinch, your heart will grow. You’ll find out, for the first time, where you are. This present moment. So much time spent worrying about the future, about tomorrow, and so little spent today. You look forward to a future of looking forward to the future. You look back on regret and you regret regretting. Tomorrow, you will regret regretting regretting. The day after that, and so on, and so on.

Your limbic system, for the first time in what might be a long time, will realize you’re not in danger. You’re just sitting on a chair, or on the floor, or on a bed. The modern stressors of life are serious and of great importance, sure, but your brain has been built to survive far worse. So much so that your survival systems are slowing you down. You are an ape that grew out of the African plains, built to run in fields and chase down gazelle with a spear. Now the mind made to survive the hunt fills out a spreadsheet with equal tension. It does not have to be this way.

Meditation is everything. It makes you kinder, more understanding. As you begin to acknowledge your thoughts—letting them flow by, unbothered—you finally allow yourself to confront them. You face the music, you face reality, you face yourself. Without interpretation, without narrative, with feeling. With understanding. It will scare you and for once you will let yourself be scared. You will look upon your internal landscape with a mindful, patient kindness. As you begin to understand yourself, you begin to understand others. Through understanding, compassion. Through compassion, understanding. You grow to be loving, to be caring and compassionate. You grow less judgemental, less irritated, less annoyed. All through simply sitting and paying attention. Akin to pausing your rifling of clothes at the mall to hear the music. It is a beautiful and poignant song. “I should listen more often,” you tell yourself.

With meditation, if you do it right, once you begin, you never stop. Your perception will be inexorably skewed. Colors will be brighter, music will be richer. You’ll begin to live life in the present moment, the only place you can ever truly live it. You’ll embrace the gift of experience, of sensation, and be glad to live for the sake of living. Your career? The afterlife? Meaning? Love and loss? Heartbreak and strife? All in due time, dear friend. For we live today. We live in this moment, and no other. Take it in. Smell the roses. “Now” happens only once, and we have been given the privilege of noticing, of watching it happen.

And you’ll still be human. You’ll still be you, as you are destined to be. From the outside looking in, you’ll simply sit quietly every once in a while. You’ll smile a tad wider, you’ll stand a tad straighter, but you’ll still be you. Pain will still hurt, anguish will await you, as will joy and laughter and bliss and the lack thereof. Life will still be complicated. Both all too long and frighteningly short. Both cruel and unfair and unreasonably kind. Everything will be the same, but you’ll be paying more attention. To say nothing at all, meditation is everything, and nothing.

Meditation is nothing. It is nothing special. Nothing remarkable. Nothing complicated, at least not more than anything else. Consider it, when you have the time. Maybe even set aside the time for it, if you can. Like exercise and stretching for the body, meditation and mindfulness for the soul. Or the spirit, if the soul’s not your style.

It does not take very much at all. Just sit down, eyes shut, and do what you have always done and will always do—feel. Alas, alas. It is easier said than done.

Resources

I’ve said quite a lot, and at the same time, very little. In regards to resources—actual “I’m in, what’s my next step?” advice—, I have the following to say:

As with most things someone might want to “get into”, meditation is plagued by an ocean of content—books, videos, websites, articles—attempting to explain what meditation is. My advice: pick up Mindfulness in Plain English and read it cover to cover. Then practice. Do not concern yourself with the ocean of stimulation the internet will dump into your eye sockets. If you feel meditation is worth trying, pick up Gunaratana’s book (a fantastically written piece, by all accounts), and like a seedling in the soil, attempt to grow.

To say absolutely nothing at all, do your best to find something you personally connect with. If you want to let meditation into your life, it should be an unambiously positive addition. What I have connected with might not be what you connect with. My perspective on religion and spiritualism has undoubtedly skewed my perspective away from ideas that you might find useful. Don’t let my skepticism harden your heart. I may not be happy with how you meditate, but my opinion shouldn’t matter.

Below are a list of resources that I have, at one point or another, found useful (or heard enough about to feel comfortable recommending). I don’t necessarily agree with everything found within, but there is utility here nonetheless.

• Mindfulness in Plain English - Amazon, Goodreads
  • Gunaratana’s book is a piece I feel lives up to its title. It cuts the fat, it clears the air, it lifts the fog. It explain mindfulness—and better yet, a specific kind of meditation—in plain, understandable english. I found myself highlighting quote after quote after quote while reading this book. The book was dripping with things that resonated with me or broadened my perspective. I recommend it highly.
• The Mind Illuminated - Amazon, Goodreads
  • For those who don’t click with Mindfulness in Plain English, I’ve heard good things about this book. Some say The Mind Illuminated helped bridge the gap between the insight of Gunaratana’s book and actual practice, or that it has a more practical and instructional perspective on the process of meditation itself. Perhaps if Mindfulness in Plain English can be said to be the “why” of meditation, then The Mind Illuminated would be the “how”. As of yet, I haven’t read it myself.
• Sam Harris Guided Meditations - 9 minutes, 26 minutes
  • There’s a lot to be said about Sam Harris. Those familiar with his work may feel some animosity towards him, as do I. Undoubtedly, he has said a great deal of bone-headed things. As a student of philosophy, I find his perspective on the is-ought gap ridiculous. That said, Harris has put a great deal of effort into knowing and understanding meditation, especially from a grounded, secular perspective. He has a lot of intelligent things to say about the value of spirituality, and the ability to retain it without religion(if that’s your thing). Point being, His guided meditations are well worth a listen, and have at many times been my go-to meditation.
• Reddit guides on meditation - What meditation will do for you, Meditation guide, How does it help?
  • At time of writing, there is a lot to be said about Reddit as a company and social media platform. Without touching too much on it, I would say that Reddit is one of the best sources for anecdotal explanations and advice in existence. If you’re lucky, Reddit may even link you to the best hard-hitting evidence for a subject. There are a million posts on meditation or even more guides, but here I’ve linked a couple that I found useful during my first experiences with meditation.

Above all else, be kind and patient with yourself. Root for yourself—be on your own side. Meditation may be easier said than done, but you’ve said quite a lot and done even more. Through understanding, compassion. Through compassion, understanding.