Writing about meditation.
Meditation is, in many ways, an extremely ordinary activity. At its most basic, it involves sitting, maybe with your eyes closed. And many of us spend a lot of time sat down already, while working an office job, waiting for a train or being on some form of transport. Closing your eyes is perhaps a little less ordinary, but we still do this every night before we fall asleep. So at the face of it, meditation involves doing nothing extraordinary whatsoever.
Yet, meditation can be an an oddly distinct experience from e.g. waiting for a bus or sitting on a train. Just try setting a timer for 10 minutes, sit with your eyes closed and see what happens. Depending on your current state, you might find this pleasant, relaxing, intensely stressful, boring, anxiety provoking or any sequence of these. If nothing else, it will be a very different experience from any 10 minutes you spend browsing through instagram or waiting for the bus. 5 years in, its still not entirely obvious to me, why.
This contrast betwen ordinariness and intensity makes meditation both intriguing and difficult to write about. Meditation is a predominantly internal experience, and internal experiences are notoriously difficult to put into words. Because to come back to how I started: What do you do when you meditate? Well you sit.
In this blog, I want to attempt to describe what some of these experiences are like both to reflect on my own experience and to help others who are starting out make sense of theirs. When I started meditating, I found a lot of the literature I came across somewhat confusing, as much of it focuses on abstract, technical language, often refering to Eastern philosophy or other spiritual or esotheric corners. For the un-initiated or spiritually agnostic like me, this did not seem helpful in making sense of my experience or engaging and responding to it. What I would have preferred, is writing that describes in plain language what is actually happening when meditating.
So over time, I want this to become a growing collection of ‘experiences when meditating’ that map out the territory of ‘what meditation is like’, grouped (in the broadest terms) by the dimensions of experience I have come across so far, without any aspiration to be comprehensive:
Physical sensations (e.g. pain, tension, cramps, tiredness)
Thoughts (e.g. about work, worrying, or some form of internal monologue)
Emotions (e.g. frustration, joy, happiness, anxiety)
Mental states (e.g. feeling tired, alert, calm, restless)
Lastly, I am also hoping to create debate and community around this. As much as I want what I write to be helpful to others, I am by no means an expert. I write to make sense of my own questions, confusions and roadblocks, and I’d love for others to contribute, challenge or share expertise and experience where something resonates or they want to contirbute .
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