What is Meditation?
Meditation is a Mental Super Power!!
Your life becomes infinitely better when you acquire this super power.
See – the mind is a mean-mean machine!! It is only 2% of your body weight but it consumes over 20% of bodies energy!!
If this energy is consumed negatively – it will destroy you. Meditation prevents that destruction.
If this energy is consumed positively – it will make you super human. Meditation assists in making you super human.
Patanjali, the ancient Indian sage, used the Sanskrit words ‘Chitta Vritti Nirodh’, to describe the meditative pose. It means “Cessation of the disturbances of the mind”. (Nirodh – Cessation, Vritti – disturbances/whirlpools/tribulations and Chitta – Mind).
Such a beautiful way to describe meditation – Chitta Viritti Nirodh!! – Mind’s disturbances ended!!
To get a glimpse of the Meditation practice – just sit quietly, close your eyes, take a deep breath in, keep your mind on the air blowing in, hold the breadth for a couple of seconds and then breathe out, all the while keeping your mind on the breadth.
This simple exercise is Meditation.
Doing meditation for one moment is very easy. It is not really a super power.
The challenge is in doing meditation for thirty minutes on a regular basis. Then it becomes an actual Super Power. This whole guide is about getting to those thirty minutes.
When I tell my friends about my ability to do meditation for thirty minutes to an hour – they call me crazy. Because most of them are not able to sit for more than five minutes for meditation.
I faced the same hurdles which my friends had faced. But I was hell bent to master meditation. Hence, I not only did the practise – I went through hours and hours of reading and listening to Meditation Gurus.
Unfortunately, most of the meditation literature has got polluted. Hence, there is a lot of confusion created on Meditation.
I am always surprised to see books on Meditation with more than 200 pages!! Jon Kibbat Zinn’s ultimate book on Mindfulness is called as Full Catastrophe Living and has got 720 pages!! It is a gem of a book – but the size of it scares the budding practitioner.
In this guide, I have taken the essence of meditation from all the learning that I have got. I have put that learning into practise and mastered it. Now, I have converted this mastery into a simple program to get to those thirty minutes of effortless sitting.
The guide is structured as follows:
Section 1 – This is the current section with a brief introduction about things to come.
Section 2 – This section covers the Brain functionality which actually makes the practise of meditation necessary. While benefits of Meditation have been known for thousands of years, it is only now that we know the exact working of the brain so as to pinpoint how exactly Meditation works to give us that super power edge!!
Section 3 – In this section we cover the Barriers to Meditation Wisdom. Mastery in any topic is essentially a Mind Job. That is why I like to call it Magic!! This section becomes essential, as the barriers to Wisdom prevent us from imbibing New Insights. In this section, I will list down the misunderstandings about meditation which prevent the budding practitioner to get to those thirty minutes of meditation.
Section 4 – This section lays down the Meditation Method. It’s a one pager. That’s it!! This is the heart of the meditation. If you want – you can directly go to this section and start practising immediately. The rest of the sections are all supportive sections to dispel mental blocks and clarify on the meditation essentials.
Section 5 – This section is the critical section which guides you through going Stages of Meditation. You move from Stage 0 of 0 practice to Stage 1 where you are able to at least sit for meditation for five minutes. Then you progress to Stage 2 – where you are able to sit for 10 minutes. Finally, you move to Stage 3 – where you are able to sit for a whole thirty minutes.
Brain Science – Mind Wandering Vs Mindfulness
If left to its own devices, our mind can make us go mad.
It is not the mind’s fault. It is just that we have failed to train the mind to deal with the complex and frustrating world out there.
There are three parameters for mental habits:
- The Complex and Frustrating World
- Our Unconscious Mind and Body
- Our Conscious Mind and Body
These three interact with each other and this interaction results in our experience of our life.
For the strong minded – the Conscious Mind and Body takes precedence. Such minds are well trained to deal with the myriad problems that the world throws at us daily. Resilience, Anti-fragility, growth mindsets are the hallmarks of such minds.
For the weak minded – The Unconscious Mind and Body takes precedence. Such minds are not able to bear the onslaught of problems thrown at them by the world. They keep on going in mental circles and feelings of anxiety engulfs and overwhelms the life experience of such minds. They cling and attach to things needlessly.
It’s not that the world is kinder to the Strong Minded, it’s just that they have trained their own reactions to be in tune to a capricious world. They expect the world to be bad – and they are prepared for dealing with the bad.
The weak minded on the other hand have a fantasy that the world is good. And when the world acts normally – they assume that the world is acting abnormally. They are surprised that the world is out to get them. And why the Government, the society and their own family fails them at each and every moment.
See – it is not about what is on the outside. It is only about what is in the Inside. And the simple act of observing the breadth can tell us a lot about what is in the Inside.
When tasked with observing the breadth continuously for a period of thirty minutes, the mind immediately starts misbehaving and the disturbances and whirlpools of the mind start forming. These whirlpools of thoughts continuously take your attention away from your breath. This is called as Mind Wandering or Monkey Mind.
If you observe your day closely, Mind Wandering is ever present part of our lives.
While driving to office – Do you remember what happened?
After taking a bath – Do you remember anything of the experience?
While eating – Did you note the texture and smells of the food?
Our daily lives are full of such examples of Mind Wandering where we hardly remember the experience. In some ways, when our mind wanders, we switch to an auto-pilot and become like Zombies!! Zombie movie genre does have a point after all!!
But seriously, when Mind Wandering gets out of hand – it can lead to serious problems – like depression and anxiety. You end up ruminating negatively for hours about negative elements of our lives. Such negative thinking takes a life of its own and we end up in the dark world of shadows. Anxiety and Depression are common hallmarks of Mind Wandering gone wrong.
In opposition to Mind Wandering is the experience of Mindfulness. When we are fully present in the moment and when we remember each and every part of the experience, we savour that moment. We are in an experience which has been called as a Flow experience. We can feel our breath, we can feel the touch of our hand on our own skin. We become aware of the sounds in our surroundings without getting disturbed.
Take a moment to experience this Mindfulness – Notice the things around you. The vividness of the colours around you. Listen to the sounds, maybe it’s the wind or the clock or the chirping of the birds or even the drone of the air conditioner. Feel your phone or tablet or your book that you are holding. Move your fingers on the object and feel the texture. Take a deep breath and feel the breath going in and out. Feel your chest moving up and down with the breath.
Once we become aware of the phenomenon of Mind Wandering Vs Mindfulness – we can immediately see how much better Mindfulness is as opposed to Mind Wandering.
Most of us spend almost 50% of our day in mind-wandering. This mind-wandering happens mostly without our conscious awareness. The question is why does our brain spend almost 50% of our waking time in this Mind Wandering activity?
Brain and the Default Mode Network
The brain takes up 20% of the body’s energy budget while being only 2% of the total body mass. That is a lot of energy for such a small organ!!
As Brain is energy hungry, scientists had earlier hypothesized that Mind Wandering is the resting state of the Brain which occurs to conserve energy.
But in 2001, M.E. Raichle showed that the difference in energy consumption between resting state and mentally focussed state is less than 5%.
Surprise! Surprise! There is nothing called the Resting State of the mind!! Every waking moment your mind is always active.
This discovery shook up the neuroscience community as it went against established common-sense assumptions. After this discovery, a lot more research was done on the so-called ‘resting/mind wandering state’ of brain vs the ‘active/mindful/flow’ state of brain.
This research led to the discovery of two large scale brain networks which show contrasting behaviour in the Mind Wandering State and the Mindfulness State.
The first brain network is the Default Mode Network (DMN). DMN lights up in fMRI and PET scans whenever our brains are Mind Wandering in an auto-pilot state.
The second brain network is the Task Positive Network (TPN). TPN lights up in fMRI and PET scans whenever we are undertaking cognitively challenging tasks such as solving puzzles or doing creative writing or reading this guide with actual interest.
These two large scale brain networks are negatively corelated to each other. Negative corelation implies that when DMN switches on, TPN switches off and vice-versa.
Hence, scientists have now confirmed that Mind Wandering and Mindfulness are see-saw activities. One goes up and the other goes down.
Coming back to our earlier question – if energy conservation is not the reason why our brains waste significant energy in Mind Wandering – then what is the use of this Default Mode Network?
In the book Social, neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman has linked the Default Mode Network to humans being Social Animals.
Lieberman’s hypothesis is that humans are social creatures because our brains are designed in that manner. Lieberman argues that whenever our brains are not focussed on a specific task, the brains uses that spare time in the Default Mode Network to learn and master the social world. By reminiscing about social status, thinking about other people and fantasizing, the brain forces humans to be social creatures through this naturally occurring brain circuit activity. By the age of ten, humans have already put more than 10,000 hours in such simulated social conditions, through DMN activity, so as to become primarily social creatures.
As per Lieberman, this sophisticated DMN brain wiring has given us the unique ability to read other people’s mind, to figure out their hopes and motivations, thus helping us to effectively co-ordinate our lives with one another. Lieberman has also linked DMN with feelings of social pain such as being slighted or not being awarded. These in turn flare up our anxiety circuits.
This Social Power of DMN is so strong that DMN switches on immediately whenever cognitively demanding tasks are switched off. DMN is thus the preferred mental state for the mind. It is our Social Brain.
Research into DMN has further shown that the brain connections constituting the DMN increase from childhood to becoming an adult. The DMN therefore leads to development of the sense of self as one matures. As we mature, this sense of self gets tightly coupled with our stimuli, habits and our social status.
Anxiety & Anger – The Dark Side of our Social Brains
Our social brain and our sense of self is not only associated with our general social ruminations but also with the feelings of Social Pain and Existential Crisis. Lieberman and his colleagues at UCLA have shown that our brains respond to feelings of Social Pain and Pleasure just as powerfully as they do to physical pain and pleasure.
In the book, The Status Game, author Will Storr reveals that the hidden force which triggers most of our anxiety is Social Status. Storr argues that the human need for status is ancient, universal, and remains deeply ingrained in all of us.
While mind-wandering DMN time does lead to Social Skills, it is estimated that we spend less than a third of our time in happy mind-wandering.
More than two-thirds of this mind-wandering time is spent in negative or neutral thoughts.
Such large negative DMN energy drain can make one feel exhausted both mentally and physically – even if one has not done anything during the day!! Negative DMN drain has a tendency to quickly devolve into helpless rumination or distracted monkey mind behaviour.
If such negative drain continues on our brain for extended times, this can lead to disruptions in our DMN activities.
Neuroscientists have linked such disruptions in DMN with mental issues such as ADHD along with a host of mental disorders ranging from Alzheimer, Schizophrenia to Chronic Depression.
As observed by Will Storr, a fall in Social Status leads to severe anxiety and in extreme cases such Social Status seeking even leads to anger driven murders.
The popular myth that humans use only ten percent of their brains is largely the result of an observation by William James on the tendency of humans to mindlessly squander one’s mental potential. While the ten percent myth is false, William James’ observation on squandering our energy is correct as a malfunctioning DMN is a serious energy drain on the body.
In contrast to DMN, Task Positive Network (TPN) of the brain lights up when we are in a focussed state paying attention to a particular task in the external world. Positive TPN brain activity has the potential of blocking the negative DMN drain activities.
So how does Mediation fit into the functioning of the brain and the malfunctioning of the DMN.
Meditation is a scientifically proven method of reducing DMN malfunctioning.
Remember that humans spend over two-thirds of DMN activity in negative or neutral thoughts. By keeping us rooted in the present and preventing wayward self-referential thinking, Meditation and Mindfulness techniques nudge the Brain towards the flow state of the Task Positive Network. Hence, Meditation short-circuits this negative DMN activities.
Using Meditation, we consciously learn to navigate between our default mental state of DMN and the engaged conscious state of TPN.
Meditation teaches our brain to become hyper-aware of negative DMN activities. Whenever the Meditative brain notices the negative DMN activity, instead of getting pulled deeper into this negative thinking, Mindfulness causes the Task Positive Network to switch on, thus reducing the negative DMN activity.
In this simple manner, Meditation helps to tame the Monkey Mind.
- Feeling anxious in a social situation – Pause – Become Aware – Take a few deep breaths and reduce the anxiety.
- Just snapped at your Significant Other at a trivial issue – Pause – Become Aware – Apologize and tame your and your SO’s feelings.
- Netflix flashing the Watch Next button – Pause – Become Aware – Look at the time and switch Netflix off.
- Feeling down after a showdown with a colleague at office – Pause – Become Aware – Get back your mental peace.
- Neighbors undertaking repair work while you have a project submission – Pause – Become Aware – Take constructive mindful action.
- Thinking of COVID and Negative Economy making you lose your sleep – Pause – Become Aware – Take constructive mindful action.
The above is the power of Meditation and Mindfulness. It is the gateway to complete living.
While scientists have only recently caught up on the neuro-biological mechanism of the Monkey Mind and its relationship with Mental Wellness, Meditation and Mindfulness have been advocated for centuries for a serene living. Before going into the ‘How’ of Meditation, let us look at some Barriers to Wisdom which might prevent you from Meditating correctly.
Why we are not able to Meditate? – Barriers to Meditation Wisdom
The biggest barrier to Meditation is the assumption or the feeling that you have to Control your thoughts by exerting Will Power.
If Meditation is not about Control and Will Power – then what is Meditation?
Meditation is the process of getting to know our Conscious/Unconscious Mind as an organ. And the method of getting to know the Mind as an organ is to stop using the mental processes that the Mind is habitual at.
The habitual processes of the mind have been variously identified as the Six Enemies of the mind (Arishadvargas) or as the 3 Poisons of the mind (Kleshas) in the Ancient Indian systems. These habitual processes are:
- Desire or Lust
- Attachment or Fascination
- Greed
- Pride
- Delusion or Confusion
- Jealousy, Aversion, Hate and Anger
As mentioned above, these enemies of the mind are intricately linked to the Default Mode Network of the brain and consume considerable mental energy. Imagine that Fifty percent of your brain energy is consumed by these mental states. That is a humongous amount of daily damage that is happening to your brain.
Now the most important thing is that all of the above processes happen at the First Level of Awareness.
This First Level is the level when you naturally and effortlessly identify with each of the six enemies as they occur in your mind. Hence, it is YOU who is angry, not your organ Mind which is undergoing an emotional state of Anger.
This is also the level when the obvious solution to ending the misery of the Six Enemies is by Controlling them.
Except CONTROL does not work. In fact, Control acts as an exercise for the Six Enemies and strengthens them.
Hence, if you try and control Anger, Anger comes back more strongly the next time.
When you control Lust, as does most of the Clergy, Lust comes back even more stronger.
This is the ultimate Catch 22 where you are caught between the Rock and the Hard Place.
If you feed the 6 enemies of the mind they grow worse. If you control them, they grow even worse.
So what is the Solution?
The solution is to elevate yourself to the Second Level of Awareness.
How?
By practicing something which Jon Kabbat-Zinn calls a special type of Awareness which does not include anything the Mind is habitual at. These are actually a set of Non-Doings.
What?! – You might ask.
Yes. There is something called as Non-Doing. These Non-Doings are:
- Non-Judging
- Non-Striving
- Non-Attachment
- Non-Anchoring
- Letting Go
- Timeless Patience
- Acceptance
As you can see, the above list does not include the word Control. (Note: The above list is adapted from Jon Kabaat-Zinn’s list of 7 Attitudinal Foundations for his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program).
With these Attitudinal Foundations, the Mind is reduced to just an organ which experiences all the thoughts and emotions and YOU become the observer who Without Judging and Without Striving is observing the Mind Organ and the resultant happenings.
Now, with the above learning we can finally come to the crux of ‘How to do Meditation’.
How to Meditate Properly?
Meditation is simply following the below technique:
- Sit comfortably.
- Observe something in the present without judging anything. Most commonly it is your breath. Sometimes it is the sounds. Let us say you are observing the breath. Note – the important thing is that whatever you are observing is in the PRESENT MOMENT.
- Your awareness for some time will be with the breath.
- Then on its own the Awareness will start wandering.
- Something will happen to remind you that your awareness is wandering at that time.
- At this moment, WITHOUT JUDGEMENT, WITHOUT STRIVING, you have to bring your awareness back to the PRESENT MOMENT.
- Again, your awareness will wander and again WHEN YOU NOTICE, you have to repeat step 6.
Repeat Steps 2 to 7 till your meditation session is over.
Reflect on the Meditation session for five minutes especially on the flow of thoughts and emotions – again WITHOUT JUDGEMENT.
NOW MOST IMPORTANTLY – (A) DO NOT JUDGE (B) DO NOT TRY AND CONTROL, except for bringing your mind back to the present moment when you notice that mind has wandered.
You will notice that sometimes the sessions are good where you stayed in the present for longer. Sometimes you will notice that your mind keeps on wandering.
Do not Judge – this is how it is.
Over time, your mind will stay in the present for longer.
During the reflection phase of meditation, you will notice all that the spiritual guides say:
- Thoughts come and go.
- They are like ripples on a pond. And they settle unless disturbed again.
- Emotions are strong and they hold your body physically. Notice the emotions like lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride, jealousy – the six enemies of the mind.
- These Emotions also come and go. Allow them to flow and run out of steam.
- Your Mind is just an experiencing organ which is just doing its duty. There is no need for you to Feed it or to Starve it. It will quieten on its own.
How to progress from Meditating for 0 minutes to Meditating for 30 minutes?
Once you start your meditation practice, you will find that the brain is indeed a powerful self-driven organ which hardly ever stays still. Hence, a lot of practitioners get troubled by the Meditation practice. Most are not able to undertake meditation beyond five minutes. Those five minutes also appear very tortured. Sometimes it is sleepiness or fantasy thinking which takes over.
When I started meditation, I also found it difficult to sit and meditate.
As mentioned above, in Jon Kabat Zinn’s book MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), I came across the Seven Attitudinal Foundations of Meditation. These made a lot of sense to me. At that time, I was just flirting with Meditation and trying to understand it. From that time onwards, I started embracing these attitudinal foundations into my practice.
Now, I am able to meditate daily for upto 30 minutes easily and sometimes going to 45 to 50 minutes also. From these seven foundations, three slightly modified versions really stand out and have helped me in understanding the meditation practice and the play of mind which goes with it. These 3 Pillars of Meditation Practices are:
Non-Judgement:
When starting meditation, we are mostly frustrated, and I was also frustrated. Sometimes you would get a good session and at other times you would feel that the session was a disaster. During one of these times, the practice of Non-Judgement really hit me.
The Mind just is.
By Judging my session or by judging my mind – I am making things worse. Hence, just accept whatever has transpired. Good-Bad, these are just labels given by the judging mind. The mind was on the breadth – So be it. The mind was not on the breadth – So be it. Simple and Non-judging.
With this Non-Judging attitude, I could build my ability to sit for meditation. The episodes where the mind was wandering just became episodes for simple non-judgemental observation and learning. This Pillar helped me to stop quitting meditation.
Non-Attachment
After a few months, I decided to increase my meditation sitting from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. But this was difficult. For although I was Non-judgemental, the thoughts would keep on appearing on their own.
At the same time while reflecting on my meditation, I was wondering what exactly Non-Attachment is.
It was a moment of insight when suddenly one day, I observed that my mind was on the TV serial which I had watched the previous day. At that time, I reflected on why the TV series would play on my mind. With this reflection, I suddenly realised what attachment is.
Attachment is nothing but memory formation and strengthening of the memory formation. Whenever our senses are observing, some part of this observation is getting attached to our minds through memories. The thoughts are nothing but the residual of this memory which is being formed. This residual initially comes as a simple thought trying to reinforce the memory from the short term to the long term. If we refuse to participate in this – slowly this residue will disappear for we never allowed it any energy to move from short term to long term.
On the other hand, if we participate in this thought – then this memory residue will start morphing and taking a life of its own in our minds. Slowly over time it will become a part of our identity and our habits. These are our attachments. These are the layers which have slowly creeped all over our minds and cover us. Simple thoughts reinforced again and again.
Non-attachment during meditation is then a simple refusal to have an interest in these thoughts. Left to its own devices, the TV serial will try to become a part of my mind. But when I just simply observe and refuse any interest in the thoughts of the TV serial, that residue will disappear on its own. It will lose the power to influence my emotions as I become non-attached to it.
With this understanding and realisation of non-attachment, the period in which a thought could take over my mind reduced quite a lot. It became much easier for me to catch myself and come back to focussing on the breath.
Secondly, the thought would not cause emotional imbalance which is the core of meditation. I learnt that such attachment thoughts are the normal process of the brain trying to learn from its environment. After all that is what the brain is supposed to do.
Thirdly, by knowing how the layers of attachment have formed in my mind I could reflect on starting to delayer the same. This is the long-term objective of finding my true and untainted self. Many times our past traumas haunt us. We tend to push them inside. But situational cues keep forcing them back. Then we get surprised at our own behaviour. Delayering is a method to start dealing with these ignored traumas and work at resolving the traumatic memory as a normal learning memory.
And finally, I can now prevent new layers of attachment from being formed on their own. This benefit alone is the true understanding of what a Monk really is. One who by being non-attached refuses to surrender his energy to his surroundings.
Timeless Patience
After the insight on Non-Attachment, long peaceful meditative experiences became more common for me. But at other times the meditative experience still appeared to be very rushed.
At one of the sessions, during this slight frustrating rushed period, a thought suddenly came to me that there actually is No Time only Energy Flow.
Now, this is something which is a deep philosophy.
I have an engineering background and Time is woven into physics as a physical reality. Recently I had read a book by Quantum Physicists Carlo Rovelli where he had described Time as an illusion. Maybe the sense impression of that book had stuck with me.
But when this thought about No Time came to me, that very moment my mind stood still. Time ceased.
Then, I could sort of look into my mind, at all the layers of attachment which had accumulated there. The first impression was that these layers of attachment are like the unknown filth filling a pure place. In the next moment, all that filth was cleaned out leaving a shiny empty and pure space behind.
For that moment, my mind was what has been described by the sages – totally clear of all attachments, including the attachment to Time. I then realised the power of Timeless Patience as the third pillar of Meditative Practice.
Behind the curtain of time is the flow of your energy. And to reach that flow, the pillar of Timeless Patience, an attitude of total surrender to the task at hand, the task of delayering and decluttering our mind has to be adopted. This is the strength of the third pillar of Meditation Practice.
I hope that you also integrate these three pillars into your meditation practice and reap the real benefits of Meditation.
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