On Meditation and Sleepless Nights

on meditation and sleepless nights

           how I thought my mind is a problem…

I thought meditation would help me. Help me to become more mindful and less attached to everything. Which would lead to less compulsive thinking and quiet the endless internal mumblings and commentary and unconcious reactions. Meditation as becoming  aware of everything, residing in awareness, just being the observer. Observer of my body, breath and mind as well as to what is happening around me.

Besides this helpful aspect — helping me to be more relaxed, to sleep better, to handle situations better, to not be so stressed by work or my parents — there was this idea of becoming a ‘mindful person’. Someone who is a little bit above all that daily struggle, who has this higher goal, who somehow knows a higher truth or reality, who is not so identified with everything. It matched well with ideas of being less materialistic, less of a consumer, of not achieving a career, of living a minimal lifestyle.

But at the end, it was meditation which kept me up all night. Frustrated that I couldn't control my mind, that I wasn't detached, that I couldn't put myself to sleep even though I was practicing so-and-so-many minutes a day, for so-and-so-many years, I felt like I wasn't getting closer to anything after all. The frustration added even more stress. Sometimes I got so desprate not being able to sleep, not getting rid of this terrorist in my head who was somehow myself, I cried.

Real change came not through what I was trying to do when I lay in bed and couldn't sleep (meditate, being mindful, being detached), but when I stopped thinking that my mind, my body, myself, my job, my apartment was a problem, not enough, to be perfected. When I started to appreciate or at least not question what was there, even if it didn't look like I'd imagined, which was what it should look like if I had  mastered it, if I was really in charge. When I started believing and feeling that I don't have to do everything 110 percent, not even 100 or 75, that I don't have to be good and please everyone. When I started believing and feeling that I was allowed to enjoy my life, even if it was not perfect, if I'm not there yet. That doesn't mean that I don't have desires, wishes, a will or goals. I just started to relax a little bit more. And of course it's not always like that. Sometimes fear comes up that I'm getting lazy and soon won't be able to get out of bed in the morning if I continue like that. That I don't have things under control, that I'm not making progress. That I'm not curating my life well, that my couch doesn't fit to the lamp. I stopped thinking that my life, myself, and even my mind were problematic. 

I had a squirrel visiting my balcony regulary (I lived on the 10th floor!). The thought never came up that this squirrel was not right and perfect the way it was. On the contrary, I always had this feeling of sheer amazement and admiration of everything she did. Moving and climbing around. Holding the peanuts in her paw-hands, nibbling on them, running around hiding them. Coming the next time searching for them and not finding them. Finding old nuts in other places (usually in the plant pots of me or my neighbours). Surely she encounters difficult situations, most probably she is sometimes exhausted (she seemed to have had babies at least three times during last spring and summer!). Isn't it strange that I thought my being was not perfect, when everywhere I looked around in nature, everyone — daisy, sparrow, lime tree, bee — seemed to be perfect? Not in the sense of there being no struggle. Too little water and food, someone eating your leaf or hunting you to get some food for themselves. But also blossoming, taking a nap in a plant pot (squirrel), chirping. It felt like everyone knew what to do and didn't push themselves around all the time. Why should I be different?

So what was the problem? Meditation itself was, not my mind or anything of the things mentioned above. “Dont worry about the mind, just stop meditating. Do your practice, rest, and enjoy your life.” It hit me when my Yoga teacher friend Mark said that. I just recently joined his classes, which were mostly chatting about what was going on in each participant’s life, on how was their practice (which was intermingled with the topic of life), any questions on the practice? Followed by a short, simple practice.

Here is what I took away from those conversations and my personal practice: When meditation (or a yoga practice!) is seen as means to reach a different state, even just a state of being aware instead of being involved, it puts us in conflict with our own reality. It creates a dissociation from our lives.

Meditation is nothing that can be done. It can not be practiced actively. “We cannot put ourselves into meditation as we cannot put ourselves to sleep” — these words from Mark hit me and made it absolutely clear. It just happens. It arises spontaneously and I think we all know that from everyday experiences. Enjoying the warmth of sunrays on the body after swimming in chilly water. Being together with someone doing nothing special, just chatting about this and that while on a walk, just enjoying company and forgetting completely about time, yourself and the other. For me it's especially hiking in the mountains, one step one breath, body, breath and mind  moving together, which I'm not even aware of. It just feels good. Feeling myself, the ground under the feet, the sun, the air, smelling the trees, hearing a distant river or bird.  What this requires — at least it seems to me — is to truly enjoy yourself and what is around you. Rather than trying to do something or get somewhere first, and only when you're there or have reached that state will there will be joy and lightness.

Written in 2020, and still true today

My favourite insightful passages from the book God and Sex: Now We Get Both on meditation:

“The point of life is to embrace experience, not to detach from it. It is intimacy we need, not meditation.” (73)

“Uninformed spiritual teachers have reduced everyday life — food, family, work, relationships and Sex — to merely the content of your awareness training or, worse, as an obstruction to it. This is a mistake. These seemingly mundane activities are your reality, full and complete in themselves, not a means to an end or an obstruction on some imaginary path. The great advice from the wisdom traditions of humanity is to fully take on and merge with your experience, to embrace experience and get amongst it rather than merely to be mindful of it or witness only.” (75)

“Chaotic and compulsive thinking is not a design flaw in the human system that we must medicate or meditate our distance from. It is the intelligence of the body-mind letting us know that our mind has become dissociated from its source, and needs to participate in what is actually going on. The mind is overactive because it thinks there is somewhere to get to and it is trying to help us get there. The solution is releasing all the engrained doctrines towards future sublimities and practicing participatory embrace of all, not tuning out of the whole mess for a fragile inner peace.” (76)

“... the movement away from actual tangible conditions to escape all the drama creates the drama.” (76)

“In truth, the content of our troubled minds is caused by a lack of intimacy and desire for connection. ... Therefore, what we need is a philosophy of intimacy, not a philosophy of detachement. Clarity of mind arises through our embracing our tangible connection to what is already right here. We priortize our relationship to our own embodiment and our relationship with others, including and especially intimate sexual union. This may be a little hard to swallow for those of us who have experienced relief from total identification with our own chaotic thought patterns and who are familiar with the scientific research showing how mindfulness brings relief. There is nothing wrong with this relief. But there is so much more that is available to us! ... We can now turn the dissociative practices of transcendence and awareness in the opposite direction of connection to and caring for Mother Nature and life on Earth” (77,78)

“The earliest roots of most modern meditation techniques and teachings lie in the ancient Indian culture of Veda, a culture where God, deity, guru, spouse, the body, and the whole seen and unseen elemental world were known to arise as One reality. Besotted relationship with all was the way of this culture, not contemplation toward a future result, where human life and all life is imagined to be less. Meditation is action, which may well turn into quiet times of motiveless sitting, self-abiding in and as the absolute condition that is arising as the whole body in its intrinsic harmony and connection with the whole of life. That is, self-abiding in relationship. It does not exist as a practice by itself, however. The power of mindfulness meditation arises naturally as part of one's overall life, a gift of our intimacy with our life. ... Contemporary meditation culture has provided a fertile ground for ideas of inadequacy and self-improvement to flourish in.” (78)

“What is meditation? It is the mind and body's intrinsic feeling-connection to what is already the case, the natural state. It cannot be willfully done, but arises naturally in a life of intimate connection. It is there in all natural intimacies, from a kiss, to the touch of a leaf, or the wind on your legs. Just as you cannot willfully put yourself to sleep, you cannot meditate. Trying to sleep will prevent sleep. Trying to meditate will prevent meditation. It arises naturally as a gift when the conditions of intimacy are present. When you link the breath to the whole body, the mind automatically follows the breath. The mind therefore gets linked to the whole body, which is the power, the intelligence, and the beauty and harmony of the cosmos. The mind feels itself to be arising as a function of its source, which is Life itself. There is no problem to mind. You don't need to keep reminding yourself to 'be here now'. You are here now." (78,79)

"The practice of life is to merge with perception (body, breath, and relationship in that order). The mind is for this merging. It is not for dissociating." (79,80)