My Troubles with Meditation

I've mentioned before on this blog that I have trouble with meditating. I don't want this blog to be all fluffy bunny posts about card readings and sharing my latest crystal. I want it to be an honest sharing of my spiritual path -- both the smooth and the rocky parts. So today I'm going to talk a bit about the trouble I've had with meditating.

I must have first heard about meditation when I was a kid or a teenager. It was in the same category of wierd hippie things as wearing robes and eating yoghurt. I thought only practitioners of mysterious cult-like religions practiced meditation. Thankfully I was open-minded and when I was at University, I decided to try it. After all, I was a budding Taoist and that's what Taoists do. Every morning, I would light an incense stick, read a passage from the Tao Te Ching and meditate for about 10 to 15 minutes, or however long I felt like it.

During these meditation sessions, I would sometimes reflect on the passage I had just read. Other times I would clear my mind and try my hardest to think about nothing. One time I decided to meditate on the whole universe, and for a split-second, my mind encompassed it. It blew my mind, as they say, and from that day on I was confirmed as a Taoist.

Clearing my mind and thinking about nothing was relatively easy in those days. I was a University student, doing an Arts degree so I didn't have that much homework to do. It was work that I enjoyed on subjects that I was interested in. I didn't have a job -- my parents paid for my board. I lived in the student dorms so I didn't have much more to think about than what I was going to have for lunch that day. It was also nice and quiet in the mornings, too.

When I finished University, I lived in a series of share houses, which were noisy and stressful to a quiet-loving introvert with undiagnosed social anxiety like me. I completely forgot about meditation, and wouldn't have had the right circumstances to practice it in anyway. By the time I moved out on my own into a small apartment, I'd replaced meditation with playing computer games and watching TV as ways to relax.

A little while after that, meditation started to feature in the media as a way of combatting stress and promoting health. I remembered the times when I used to find it of so much benefit, but found myself unable to return there. I borrowed many books from the library and tried techniques from them, but none of them seemed to work for me. There was just no way I could sit down and think about nothing. My brain was always racing at a hundred miles an hour. I had the stress of work, bills and rent to pay always weighing on my mind. I thought it was impossible for me to meditate anymore. The books never explained that it's a practice. You won't get it straight away. You won't get it in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. You have to keep going, even when it seems impossible.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't happen straight away. But I felt like I didn't have the time or patience to keep going. The benefits weren't tangible enough. I stopped borrowing those books from the library, and told myself, "oh well, I just can't meditate." I gave up.

One day a few years after that, I heard about the technique of imagining that your thoughts are clouds, and let them drift away. I really liked that idea. Clouds are so soft and gentle. I started to imagine the clouds inside a sphere. I was standing in a darkened room, looking at a huge glass sphere. The sphere was my brain/mind, and my thoughts were clouds inside it. Occasionally there were vague images, but they were usually clouds. The important part is that they were separate from me. Any time that I realised thoughts were invading my head, I took them out and put them in the sphere. I tried not to focus on what the thoughts/clouds were, but just that they were away from me.

This is a nice meditation and I'm able to focus on it well, but I wonder if it's really meditation. As far as I understand it, meditation is clearing the mind. It's not thinking about ANYthing. Under that definition, thinking about a sphere full of clouds, or anything else for that matter, is not meditation.

One night a few years ago, I was feeling very anxious in bed and not able to get to sleep. Husband suggested that I try thinking about the colour blue. It was relaxing and fun but again, is it really meditation?

Another technique that I've used successfully when I'm feeling social anxiety in public is to repeat over and over, "I have love in my heart." This calms me down a lot and enables me to go about my everyday life. I'm pretty sure it's not meditation, though.

Lately I've been wondering if the word meditation is sometimes misused. Sometimes I will read that someone 'meditated on' a topic. Another example is Marcus Aurelius' book Meditations. In these cases perhaps 'reflect on' or 'contemplate' might be more what is meant. For, how can you think about something and clear your mind at the same time?

Then there are the types of meditation I've read about which can be done while doing things, like walking, painting or repetitive motions like craft. These require some concentration, but not so much that it's distracting. You can enter a mindful state where you are fully in the present: your mind is integrated. You're not "thinking about two things at once." When I've gotten into a state like this, while walking, crafting or even at work, I've found a great deal of peace and happiness. But this isn't meditation. Is it?

By the time I started with the Grey School, my thoughts on meditation were: "too hard, too confusing, not worth bothering with, oh well." But then I saw that I have compulsory classes that involve meditation, and realised I can't have this point of view anymore! My heart sank. I couldn't avoid it any longer. I would have to try again at this thing that I'd told myself for so long I was no good at.

I've gone through a lot of ups and downs in the last few months of being a student at the school, in regards to the meditation classes. Some days I think I get it, and others I collapse into a puddle of confusion and self-doubt. I ask myself: "Can I do it? Am I doing it right? Is what I'm doing even meditation?" Then I berate myself for over-thinking things.

It was a struggle, but I managed to finish the first two assignments. After that, I decided to continue meditating independently of the assignments, because I do know that doing well in future assignments will involve deepening my practice, not just doing the bare minimum to get by. (See, I am a good student!) So I have been using the Insight Timer app to meditate with once or twice a week.

After thinking about it for a while, I think the best course is to just do what the assignments tell me to do. Don't worry about what the words 'meditation', 'visualisation', 'grounding' etc mean, but just do what the instructions say and observe my experiences.