I dabbled in meditation for years before I took up a regular practice.
And that regular practice didn\’t last long, honestly. I am, at best, a sporadic meditator. Same with yoga. Same with writing.
about fifteen years ago, though, I got serious about meditation for quite some time. It was transformative–and not always in a pleasant way. Daily meditation practice is meant not simply to relax us, but to allow our armor, our defenses, so soften. Maybe even to melt. To become more authentic, less shielded. To connect with deeper levels of ourselves. (this is what got me into my first run of trauma therapy. I\’ll save that for a different post.)
So I went to these weekends at a meditation center, where we were there all day, but stayed at home. It was kind of like a retreat; not only did we not have contact with the \”regular\” world all day, we were very quiet. I wanted to be quiet at home, in between. It felt jarring to go home and have a phone call, or watch a movie. We had talks by teachers, and some snacks and meals, but mostly we meditated.
And each day of the weekend, we got to meet with a seasoned meditation instructor to process our experience a bit.
They say that the first full day of these kinds of weekends is the hardest of anyone\’s practice; it\’s the first time you formally just…..do nothing. We alternated between sitting meditation and walking meditation, so that our legs wouldn\’t get stiff. But we didn\’t talk. Some of the meals were in silence. It was very strange at first, but you get used to it.
That first Saturday afternoon was indeed the hardest for me. When I met with my meditation instructor, I said, \”I don\’t think I can do this. I feel like I\’m going to jump off the cushion, and go running out of the room screaming.\” (If you\’ve done this kind of practice, you may relate to this!)
She smiled and said: \”that is normal. Just keep sitting. Keep going back to the breath.\”
(this instruction pisses me off-but that, too, is for a different post.)
For someone like me, with CPTSD my whole life, a writer with a vivid imagination, a Highly Sensitive Person who thoroughly processes things, and can hear, smell, even just sense everything, it\’s REALLY FUCKING HARD to just sit still. The inside of my head goes apeshit. It\’s not always a good neighborhood up there.
On Sunday, when I met with her, I was both excited and a little freaked out. I was excited because, as I told her, \”I can sit on the cushion! I don\’t want to run out screaming! I don\’t feel like my head is going to blow off my shoulders!\”
\”But….?\” she asked, sensing that I was also freaked out.
\”But….the chatter in my head is SO LOUD, I\’m afraid the other people can hear it.\”
She laughed. It was a kind laugh. Not a mocking one. She smiled her huge, infectious smile. She said to me:
\”yes.
This makes sense.
Imagine if you lived only in your living room, with your TV on at full volume. All you ever heard was what was on your TV.
And then one day, you turned it off.
And you heard all the other sounds: birds, traffic, children\’s voices, airplanes, sirens.
All those noises had been there the whole time-but you could not hear them, because the TV was too loud.
The chatter you are experiencing now has always BEEN there. You just don\’t hear it, because you don\’t allow for enough quiet. Enough space.\”
I often teach or facilitate meditation now. I say, almost every time: \”you will get distracted.
It may be by noises outside.
It may be by your own thoughts.
The loudest place I\’ve ever been is the inside of my own head.\”
YOU GUYS.
That is what is happening now, and has been since March, for many of us-and also on a systemic level.
In all of the ways that life has metaphorically turned off the TV because of the pandemic: working from home, not socializing, not going to restaurants, or traveling as much–not rushing around all day every day, distracted, unable to finish our to-do list. Staring at people on screens, not commuting in traffic, missing our loved ones. It has forced us into a kind of quietude. It has left us with the chatter in our own minds. The chatter in our families, our communities. Our countries. The planet.
I very firmly believe that the death of George Floyd sparked the exponential growth of the BLM movement because we white folks had a greatly reduced ability to look away.
And: this wasn\’t a gradual slowing down. It was like….a power outage. A car hitting a wall. BOOM. We are at home. We can\’t do all of the things we usually do. For many of us, we can\’t do MOST of the things that we usually do. Or the ways we do them has changed, limited them. Our worlds got a lot smaller, in many ways.
And we–as individuals, as families, as communities, and as nations–are hearing our mind chatter, the chatter that was hidden under all that NOISE.
Like racism, and police brutality, just to name one example.
The pandemic has brought many of us face-to-face with ourselves.
So what does that mean? What do we do now?
I don\’t have an answer, but I will say that my meditation instructor was right. (which pisses me off, still.)
Sit more.
Allow more quiet.
Go back to the breath.
I would not call my experience that year pleasant, or easy. But it was pivotal. It got me to trauma therapy and on a healing trajectory I would have previously thought impossible. I\’m still on it.
So while I\’m not trying to sugar-coat anything–this sucks. Believe me, I am not downplaying that. Yet…don\’t give up. Reach out, and reach in.
Go back to the breath.
Learn to get comfortable with the cacophony of quiet.
We don\’t really have a choice right now, but there are gifts in that too.
[image: stock photo, silhouette of a person in the lotus meditation position, against a sunset sky]