Misconceptions about meditation and mindfulness?

[rva_jeremy]

Clearing the mind is a means to meditation, and that clearing can be fairly characterized as what meditation feels like, as an activity that one performs in life. However, I feel that it is actually about decoupling the observing self from the mind of the observer, so that instead of using the mind as a perceptive tool for judgment and reasoning, one can perceive the mind and one's environment as it is, raw and unfiltered by the inertia of mentation. This way, one can gain insight into something that one has to date approached as a matter of habit or identity, such as how to respond to insults, or what your opinion on something is. It is the habitual nature of the mind, the way it shortcuts to conclusions based on conditioned responses and selective perception, that one is trying to get below when one meditates.

Because clearing the mind is what meditation entails as an activity, how one relates to it is a huge factor in what work it accomplishes. This gets into the area of discipline, where meditation as an ongoing practice becomes not simply about clearing the mind but rather what one gains from learning to clear the mind. It is in the practice of learning to release thoughts in meditation that one learns how to release thoughts and not become fixated in waking life, for example.

A "bad meditation" where you get distracted and drawn into other thoughts a lot is actually a good meditation, in the same way that straining when you lift weights is no indication of a bad workout. It is instead an opportunity to practice patience with yourself, a willingness to return to the clear mind over and over and over again, no matter how long it takes. Each return to stillness is a "rep" in the mental gym. Incidentally, as Pema Chödrön says, when we learn to never give up on ourselves, we learn how to never give up on others, and that seems to me to be one of the keys to being able to truly be there for others and forgive them. Discipline doesn't have to be harsh and unkind; it's just being willing to put the time in, however long it taks.

Another thing Chödrön says about meditation: "We don't sit in meditation to become better meditators. We sit in meditation so that we'll be more awake in our lives." Again, the point is not to have an affirming, effortless, calming meditation. The point is to train ourselves to have a different relationship with mentation and thinking so that how we act and think aligns more and more with the true desire of our hearts. It is learning about yourself as a new, uncharted, but nevertheless strangely familiar territory, one with surprises but nothing that is truly "other". For students of Confederation philosophy, it should be obvious that we can polarize more efficiently if we're paying better attention to our lives, allowing ourselves to react more mindfully and intentionally and less habitually.

She also helped me realize that meditation does not have to be conceived of as some closing off of the self from all outer stimuli. Of course it's convenient to practice in a place free from overt distractions. But it's actually really helpful to have distractions at a certain point, because they give you things to practice releasing and noticing your reactions to. In meditation you are opening yourself up to your entire environment, physical and mental, and what you're practicing is not ignoring stimuli or thoughts but releasing them, over and over and over again. Even if you have to interrupt your meditation, say to let the dog out, coming back and starting over and feeling your feelings fully without trying to think them is an excellent way to work with reality rather than against it. My point is that while some structure is helpful to getting started with meditation, over time you will have plenty of opportunities to use the structure not to protect yourself but instead to reach outside the structure to more fully open to the universe and study your reactions better.

I do consider contemplation and visualization as different kinds of disciplining of the mind that are separate from meditation as tasks. However, there's plenty of overlap: the mind is so incredibly vast and wild. If the point is to notice the mind without exercising it, so you understand the nature of the tool, it's meditation in my book. If the point is to use the tool of mind to do something, then it's not meditation. It's basically a passive vs active concept, although please understand that the attempt to focus on nothing definitely feels like something you're positively "doing" at first.