Positively Glorious!

For large portions of my life, I meditate regularly. Then, for large portions of my life, I fall off the wagon. I don’t know why I stop, because it’s so important to me. The only thing I can think of is that I fall into the same old “no time” mindlessness that we all succumb to.

This is strange, because, if anything, meditation stretches time. Meditation makes time. To those who’ve never done it, It sounds weird that you could have more time after taking an hour, or a half hour, or even 5 minutes and doing absolutely nothing. But nothing is quite an important thing, and it makes space for many other things.

It’s weird how seeing the world through someone’s eyes can clarify things that you already know.

Kathleen McDade has been writing about depression and mindfulness. It’s interesting to read another person’s take on these because, as someone who’s dealt with depression, I’ve been thinking about those two topics a great deal myself lately. It’s weird how seeing the world through someone’s eyes can clarify things that you already know.

Lately, I haven’t been meditating, and the lack of mindful time is wearing on me. I’ve also noted that recently, I’ve begun to feel those first faint glimmers of depression. Years ago, I felt this and did nothing about it and ended up staying at home for days at a time and doing nothing, because- well, why bother? Putting it mildly, that was a bad time, and one I don’t want to re-live.

Is Meditation Like Smoking?

At some level, I’ve known this connection exists. At some level, I know that my life is better when I meditate, but it was reading the story of someone else that made the synapse finally fire. When I don’t meditate, I fall into depression.

Part of me wonders if I never realized this before because it’s not really common. I mean, most other people don’t meditate, and they’re not depressed. Maybe it’s like childhood smoking. Apparently, starting to smoke before puberty makes it harder to quit because your body has basically developed around the smoking, like a tree growing through a fence. When a childhood smoker quits, there’s actually something that their body has developed around suddenly missing.  As if you pulled the fens out of the tree. It’s almost as if their body doesn’t know how to function without it.

Maybe my body/mind complex has developed around meditation, and I need it to function, or things go haywire. That might be a stretch, but it’s an interesting thought.

Ways In Which I Meditate

I’ve meditated in many ways during my life, both moving and still. Martial arts is what started the trend as a child, the mindfulness needed to obtain a perfection of form in a whole body exercise demands a great deal of concentration, and is a very meditative act. But, as Kathleen notes, meditation can be done with many physical activities if they are done mindfully. I remember being about 15 and realizing, shockingly, that I was meditating as I was washing the dishes one day. It makes you realize why the Japanese see seemingly simple things like flower arranging as intense, meditative arts.

It makes you realize why the Japanese see seemingly simple things like flower arranging as intense, meditative arts.

My two favorite physical meditations outside of martial arts are cycling and cross-country skiing.¹ The mindful engagement in an activity for an hour or more is an wonderfully meditative act for me. It’s also why, despite trying very hard, I never got into mountain biking. When I’m on a road bike, I can focus on the perfection of form, dial down my brain to a nothing state, and be. The harder my body works, the more struggle I’m in to just keep moving, the less I have to think about. At some point, my mind focuses to a near point: my thigh muscles, or my breathing, or my circular cadence to a single rhythm. Nothing else exists.

On a mountain bike, if I focus like that, I’ll die. Because on a mountain bike, if I focus on anything except basic survival, I’ll fall off a cliff. Things happen too fast in mountain biking, and in downhill skiing/snowboarding. Sure, they are fun, but generally I’m not looking for something that’s just fun, I’m looking for a meditation- so they end up as primarily stressful adrenaline injections for me.

Still, as much as I love cycling, I do love merely sitting or standing. Still meditation is a quiet place unlike any other. Sitting or standing for a half hour or an hour and quieting my thoughts opens a space for my mind and allows it to just be. I find that when I do that in the morning, my life the rest of the day is so much better. After days or weeks of doing that, I’m much more able to keep my life in perspective. Rarely does anything anger me.

To use an analogy: when my body has been working for hours at a time, non-stop, it feels grumpy and turns my whole person grumpy. I’m tired. I need rest. It seems to be the same for my mind. If it’s always working and doing, it gets grumpy and needs rest. Long enough without rest, and I end up depressed and sitting in a dark room for days at a time wondering why I don’t just end it all. Maybe, for me, meditation is that rest.²

The Right To Do Nothing

Lately, as in over the past year or so, I’ve been falling into the habit of doing something at all times. I’ve got projects outside of work, we’re involved in the theatre, radio station, working with community-based organizations and projects, etc. If I had a todo list in front of me, I’d probably just be overwhelmed. So, when I sit down, I think “I’ve got a half hour. I’ll grab my computer and work on <whatever>.”

The other night, Jessie was reading a book and really wanted to finish it. I couldn’t disturb her, so  my first thought was “I’ll grab my computer and-”

My second thought was “No, I’ll practice my pennywhistle so that-”

My third thought was “No. I’ll just sit here and do absolutely nothing for an entire hour. No reading, no playing, no working. I’ll just sit and listen to her turn pages… and I’ll drink this glass of water… and maybe I’ll pet my cat if she sits on my lap… Maybe.”

Industrialized societies see time as a commodity. As a currency. Time is spent and wasted, squandered and saved.

Of course, the first two thoughts are the so-called “right” things to do. We live primarily in a society where doing is valued. It’s interesting to think that in many languages- primarily pre-industrialized ones- there is no real concept of “wasting time.” Time can’t be “wasted” just as time can’t be “spent.” Time just is. Industrialized societies see time as a commodity. As a currency. Time is spent and wasted, squandered and saved. This cultural perception of time is a topic that’s been written about a great deal by various people, from anthropologists like Edward Hall to science writers like James Gleick.

I feel this view of “time as currency” is a dis-service to us all. It puts a pressure on us that should not be there, and forces us to feel as though we have to do something with every minute. It focuses on economic productivity, rather than on us as people and members of a community. It treats time as money more than a manifestation of life, the universe and/or God. We are forced to try to hoard it, save it, stop it. Rarely, if ever, do we merely appreciate its existence and swim in it. Waiting for something, someone, is agonizing. After 15 minutes, we give up.

In many cultures, waiting for days for the arrival of someone is little more than a fact of life. Why the difference? Maybe because in industrialized culture, time is money, and 15 minutes is too much to spend on another human being. In other cultures, time merely is. There’s no spending or wasting. The focus is on the person, rather than on any concept of “wasted” time. If you want to see this person, you wait until you see them. It’s that simple.

Industrialized society is very productive, yes, but what is the outcome of all this doing? Time has become money, and people have become secondary to money. They are merely something that we chose to “spend” time, or not “waste” time on. A simplified version of industrialized culture, admittedly, but a valid one, nonetheless.

And nowhere are we given messages that there is importance in nothing. Even if you end up physically doing nothing, you should at least be thinking about something. You should never “waste” time. Our cultural messages really don’t value actually doing nothing.

“It is impossible to be bored if you are comfortable in your own mind.”

My father instilled the value of nothing in me at a young age. When I was a young child and would complain that I was bored because we weren’t doing anything, he used to say “It is impossible to be bored if you are comfortable in your own mind.” He would just sit there for hours at a time, it drove me crazy! I think about that now and realize how important it is to me. Then I wonder why I so easily fall into the mindset where I’m trying not to “waste” time. Why is it so easy for me to forget?

Because the messages we see everyday make it quite clear that “wasting time” is bad. And I’m just as prone to those cultural messages as anyone- much as I like to admit otherwise.

Coda

Jessie read for a bit over an hour. And at the end, I was really really glad I went with thought number three.

I didn’t actually meditate, I just sat quietly. Even so, I got a lot of nothing done during that hour, and it felt really good.

1. And running, before I blew out my knees at a young age [↩]
2. But it’s not exactly rest. It’s not sleep. Scientists researching the mind have found that there are not two states that the mind can be in, wakefulness and sleep, but rather there are at least three. Meditation is a completely separate state of consciousness, different from both wakefulness and sleep! [↩]