Meditation Schmeditation

If you’re reading this, you probably know all about the benefits of meditation already, so I’ll spare you the sanctimonious proselytisation. If you’re anything like me, knowledge isn’t the problem, it’s feeling. I just can’t bring myself to sit down every day and (invariably) do battle with my thoughts, try and fail to ignore itches, fidgets, pins and needles, distracting noises, and the tortuously slow passage of time. In fact, what could be more awful than that, I often wonder? I have enough to be getting on with as it is: enough discomfort, enough distraction, enough irritation and impatience, and all this meditative ‘goodness’ seems to do is slap another 10 or 20 minutes of the same onto the soggy toast that is my day ahead. Not for me, thangyouvermuch.

And you’d be right to think so too. For a very long time, the only way I could make myself meditate was to treat it like an imposition, another challenge, a stricture to be observed and ultimately added to the long list of things I resent, but know I ought to do, and – to be perfectly honest with you – don’t give up on because I have a childish stubbornness when it comes to stopping anything. “I don’t like to think of myself as a quitter or a failure.” (And yes, I know full well that Freud would be rubbing his hands and twizzling his moustache, but that’s a can of worms I won’t be opening on this particular Saturday morning.) So, after all that, you’ll hardly believe me when I tell you that I have a practice now that I can’t wait to get out of bed to begin, that sometimes even sees me foregoing my cup of builder’s tea just so I can get cracking sooner and sit for longer. “Nonsense, Andreas,” I can almost hear you thinking, “I’m quite convinced the entire meditation thing is a global conspiracy of epic Emperor’s New Clothes proportions. You must have lost your mind to be telling me you look forward to doing something as boring and irritating as that.” I understand where you’re coming from – hear me out.

It all started in Bali back in late 2022. (Ok, call it a belated Gap Yah if you must.) In typical fashion for me, I tried the bulldozer approach to what wasn’t working. After years of not really getting on with it, I looked this so-called meditation in the eye and said, “Fine, if you’re going to be like that, I’m going to book myself on a 200 hour intensive training course, and get you that way. You’ll see! Ha!” Well, no prizes for guessing how that approach panned out. Oh the struggling. The sweating. The torture. The tears. The absolutely zero results, other than self-pity. Worse than that, as the days wore on, so did my ability to recreate even the few seconds of whatever ‘it’ was. I actually seemed to be getting worse at meditating! How was this possible? Yet every morning, Punnu Wasu, our teacher, was there, resplendent in a dazzling new colour of turban, the linen immaculately pressed and wrapped, a twinkle in his eye, and a playful smile on his face as he bid us “Goooooooooooood…. MORNING!” after our first hour of meditation. Honestly, a large part of me wanted to give Punnu a slap, but the better part of me felt he was onto something…

There came a point on the course when I just had to give up. For hours every day, my mind was trying to create and hold space in some way, whether it was to create stillness, push away thoughts, visualise something, or generate some other kind of experience. After about 12 days of doing this and not managing more than five hours’ sleep each night, the whole edifice I was holding up on my shoulders like some long-suffering Atlas simply collapsed. I flatlined psychologically. No juice left. Now even the little glimmers of pleasantness I was experiencing before were gone. For the next three days, it was just one god-awful minute after another, by turns excruciatingly boring, uncomfortable, or painful, or some combination of the three. And to boot, as if this massive anticlimax to my fantasies of enlightenment wasn’t enough, Punnu let us in on a little secret… momentarily my ears pricked up and my monkey-mind spluttered back into life with glee, “Aha! Now, finally, comes the key to it all!” And with that characteristic glint in his eye, and his disarmingly affable Indian head-wobble, Punnu said, “Well, the truth is…” Dramatically long Indian pause. Roguish smile tickling the corners of his mouth. All breaths in the room in kumbhaka. “No one can really teach you how to meditate. You have to find that out for yourself.” WHAT! Punnu just smiled from ear to ear, and started to chuckle. I was quite literally beside myself.

But it turned out that these words were the wisest I’d heard in many years. They join the ranks of some of the greatest lessons — mostly painful or embarrassing — I’ve ever been given by any of my teachers, parents included. They all constellate around some recurring core principles:

1.     If you have an intuition, follow it. There is no public record of curiosity ever killing a cat.

2.     Great discoveries are often preceded by intense ridicule, so you have to be prepared to take it.

3.     Follow the path that you most enjoy, for its own sake, and be careful not to confuse it with the path that others want you to tread.

What I didn’t realise until a while later, was that Punnu was giving us carte blanche to truly create our own relationship to our minds, one based on what he called “effortless effort”, and not struggle. The problem with meditation for me up to that point was that it was prescriptive, formulaic, unnatural – in other words, another thing I had to perform in a certain way, which required the expenditure of mental and/or physical energy, which slowly depleted me, and felt deeply unsustainable. If Punnu’s course had been anything, it had been a tour de force in ripping up the playbook, borrowing from different traditions, from Sufism to Shamanism, from Pranayama to Panjabi MC. In his own words, it was seriously playful, and playfully serious. The game was on to find my own way.

Since coming back from Bali, I connected disparate ‘practices’ that have since grown together into something completely new. Often, to steel myself before a morning run or even yoga of some kind, I would listen to my favourite tune, dressed in my kit, cradling my cuppa tea, and staring out onto the lake. As I did this, I’d observe how my mind would transform, all the tension slowly changing to what felt like pulsing electricity flowing through my body, as the contraction of anxiety softened and my motivation ignited. In just a few minutes, what had felt like the impending doom of some medieval torture started to feel like scintillating joy: I would rush to get out of the door in rain or shine, or prepare my mat and start to stretch.

It took me a while longer to make the final connection to meditation itself. Why not, I thought, replace the ritualism I had inherited around it with my own ideas? Did I not already have rituals for running that worked? Why did meditation need to be done in silence, anyway? Did it need to be any particular way at all? Was I allowed to experiment? A flashback to Bali, the sweet-smelling incense snaking up from the Canang Saris lining the streets, a voice teasingly echoing, “No one can teach you how to meditate...” Fine, let’s try. No more solemnity for me, sitting there with a face like a slapped arse, trying not to move a muscle. One morning, I simply put on a music mix I knew I would love, took a few deep breaths, and resolved to follow the soundscape unfolding before me with all my heart. And click, the key turned. It really was as simple – and as difficult – as finding the courage to do my own thing. I had to laugh.

Try this when you next have a chance:

·      The night before, choose your favourite album. Ideally, make sure it’s ready to play without having to switch your phone on from airplane mode.

·      In the morning, focus on making sure you’re comfortable and relaxed, so feel free to start the music playing while you brush your teeth and have a brew.

·      When you’re ready, sit or lie down, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and commit to staying absolutely still.

·      Try to feel the music in your heart, hands, and feet as you listen. Just follow the sound as closely as you can, and whatever thoughts and emotions come with it.

·      You’ll know when it’s time to open your eyes – it might be when the music stops, it might be before that. That point will come sure enough, there’s no need to plan for it.

With immense thanks to Punnu-ji, and all my teachers in life.