I meditate with a crowd, a chorus of voices that won’t shut up. They’ve got me cornered. I’m a captive audience with no way to escape my own head.
All the noise provides a good excuse to skip meditation. Whenever I do attempt it, I spend way too much time stuffing the voices away, clamping them back into whichever box they escaped from as I try to achieve pure silence.
Doing that is pretty much anti-meditation. Trying to quiet everyone down only adds to the stress I’m looking to overcome. I’m defeated before I even begin.
I’ve always thought that because I’m incapable of achieving completely silent headspace, I’m no good at meditating. But the original definition of meditation (as derived from Latin) focused on contemplation and reflection rather than on emptying the mind. Required letting go came later.
Apparently, there’s more than one way to approach a meditative state.
Lately, I’ve started letting everyone have their say. Without me stifling them, words flow through my mind and upward, released into the stratosphere. Some phrases are nonsense, word soup strung together in non-sequiturs that don’t make sense. Sometimes, images appear after the words float away. They don’t always make sense, either. Why do I often see a neighborhood I never lived in and only briefly knew? Why am I sometimes in an alternate future that might have been but never was?
“Making sense” is relative. Maybe the trick isn’t to muffle the sounds and sights that pass through my mind, but rather to hear and see them. The frazzled, busy ones tend to dissipate, curling upward like wisps of smoke. The more resonant ones stick around, even out, invite me to stay with them for a while. I think of them as guides meant to lead me through memories and issues that still need resolution.
Finding my peace may be less dependent on stashing thoughts away than on understanding them more completely. Once I better understand a presented situation or examine a lurking fear, the nagging tends to go away (at least for the moment — my concerns can be very tenacious).
I’m grateful for however I find my peace. Inward focus helps me cope with the cacophony of the outside world, where the noise can out-blab anything my own mind produces. I need all the centering I can get to keep my balance there.
I find some refuge in, of all places, the Zoom sessions (who’d’ve thunk it?) I conduct with different individuals and small groups. Some of us have been meeting for over a decade now, and our play with Old and Middle English texts (which really is play and not work) reminds me of what the idea of a ‘college’ is supposed to be: an amiable gathering of colleagues. Our focus on the play of language, on its constantly dancing forms and sounds, anchors us in a way that completely shuts out the babble/Babel of voices that pour in, from outside (the constant media rumble) or from inside (the echo-chambers of our own heads). Not everyone’s cup of tea, I’m sure, but it’s worked for me so far . . .
I used to think this, too. “Oh I’m terrible at meditating, my inner voices won’t shut up.” I used to use this mental image of an arm sweeping across a cluttered desk to shove all that stuff away. But that was still aggressive, resisting energy. Then I read some meditation books.
Now my favorite image is of a campfire, and the thoughts are smoke and embers rising into the dark. I just watch them go and eventually they wink out of sight.
I’m not perfect at this (who is, at anything, ever?) but it’s made all the difference.
Robert, I’m glad you found something that lifts you higher. Zoom would be a non-starter for me, but if it helps take you where you need to be, more power to you!
Kristina, I like that! My image seems to be a boat drifting on a peaceful lake between two land masses. I dunno, it’s just what came. I like the ripples in the water, the calmness of the sky. Maybe that image will change one day, but for now it feels like peace.