Life in the grey stage is quite comfortable where my spiritual explorations are only about the books to read, teachings to ponder, and walls to stare at. But once in a while from within those teachings would peek an allusion to the statement ‘Knowledge is useless without application’. Being a fine play on the guilt element, this would make me step into the next stage earnestly with techniques in hand and thoughts to conquer, but I end up staying in that space only for a brief while before backing off with confusion that is in equal proportion to the enthusiasm with which I walked in. Every Single Time.
Any effort at meditation beyond the initial breathing technique is confusingly difficult for me. It is not the ‘I am not able to sit still or quiet my mind’ kind of difficult but it is rather the ‘I don’t trust what I am doing to be that which I am suppose to be doing’ difficult.
Here’s the low-down on what happens whenever I try to meditate:
- Every time I sit down with my eyes closed in an attempt toward meditation, I would have numerous questions exploding in the back of my head that make me have serious trust issues with the process, like:
- Is there truly a magical alchemy in play when I breathe and watch my thoughts or is the regrouping of thoughts, relaxing, and recharging of my mind that is the result of conscious breathing just a natural, biological process mistaken to be the effect of meditation?
- How do I know that the surreal images that pop unsummoned are not a hallucinatory projection of my mind but rather an authentic divination of some sort?
- If my mind is playing tricks on my mind, then is the “I” still within the mind or outside of it?
2. Questions like these would be alarming enough to snap me out of my head trip for the moment and would make me turn to the established yogis in the field for guidance. But any teacher who is worth his salt is bound to make the lessons as painfully honest for the student as possible and those whom I refer to are no different. They would invariably add chaos to confusion with their teachings that hint as to why this is not supposed to be easy like,
“If you practice a method you are still living within a very small space which thought has created, as the ‘me,’ the ‘I’ practicing, advancing. That space is full of conflict, full of its own achievements and failures, and such a mind can never be quiet, do what it will.” –
Jiddu Krishnamurthy
3. So right about this point I would start feeling like Garfield when he said, “I seek truth. But a cookie will do,” decide to put off the hopeless attempts at meditation for a while, and go back to chasing my tail.
This is my erroneous cycle; this is my song and dance.
But this is also one process that I know I cannot give up just yet because I have too many questions within, questions that I don’t even fully comprehend let alone know where to look for answers; not to mention the surface level living and a talent to succumb to fear and worries at every turn.
So to counter this pathetic cycle, I recently braved a weekend’s worth of nonlinear, self-introspection which caused me to wonder if my problem is not about the technique or even the questions, but if it is simply the case of rationality interfering with the magic of faith.
Is my reasoning allowing me to take the path of meditation only as far as there is a clear stretch paved by empirical evidence (like medical benefits of conscious breathing) and is it pulling the stop sign the moment it sees an unpaved, dirt road beyond the perceivable bend? Am I refusing to trust the practice to lead me to where I should be? Is the head saying ‘Don’t venture past the breathing practices as anything beyond could only be hallucinatory’ while the heart is like, ‘so what if it’s hallucinatory as long as venturing into the unknown progresses the self toward its spiritual goal’?
Even more concerning was another disturbing possibility that sneaked up on me upon further drilling – what if my hesitance is not so much about meditation, but rather about the end point in this journey itself. What if my wavering faith is about The Absolute Self, The Pure Consciousness, The Universal Energy, or for lack of a better word, God? (Cont.)
