Shut Up About Meditation and Mindfulness

Unless you’re going to explain the point of it all.

If you ask someone how to be more centered, calm, or spiritual, whether they know anything about those topics or not, they’ll probably tell you to meditate.

If that doesn’t really satisfy you and you ask them what meditation does, they’ll likely tell you that it makes you more mindful.

If you’re feeling particularly plucky and ask them, “How?” they’ll likely mumble or stammer for a second and change the subject.

To close down the conversation completely ask them if they meditate.

I’m not trying to be a troll or a spoiler here. There are clearly people out there who make meditation a regular, meaningful part of their spiritual practice and do so to great effect. If you ask these people about meditation and mindfulness, they will likely have good answers to any and all of your questions.

But, let’s be honest — outside of the world of Tibetan Buddhism and Tantric practices, meditation is one of those things that people give lip service to in spiritual circles whether they know why or not.

I’ve been one of those people in the past. I’ve embarked on a mediation practice, spent about a week doing really well with it, and then finally gave it up out of boredom and a lack of positive effects and results. But that didn’t stop me from recommending it to others. I’m guessing my experience is pretty common.

If few people really understand it’s benefits and few people actually practice it, should we just throw it out? Should we all quit pretending and do something else like prayer beads or those bowls that make music maybe?

Not so fast, I think. I think getting the benefits of meditation probably just require us to know what we mean when we say, “mindful” and then, from there, backward engineer what we mean by “meditation.”

Picture this — it’s early tomorrow morning and you’re half-asleep in the shower or maybe brushing your teeth — you’re doing something you do every morning, something you’ve done a million times. Something so common and normal to you that you don’t have to consciously focus on it. So, your subconscious takes over — moving the rag, moving the toothbrush.

Your subconscious mind’s got this covered, so what’s your conscious mind going to do?

Often, it starts thinking about the past — and it hones in on a moment from your life that has a lot of emotional charge (an emotional charge, for consciousness, is like honey to a bee). So, it begins reliving that argument you had with that guy on Facebook. You start reliving in great detail everything he said and everything you said. Then you start imagining if you had said something different — what he might have said then -then what you would have said — until finally, your rapier wit sends him off social media forever, in tears, to rethink all his political ideas.

Or, maybe you think about the future — what might happen at work. And again, your mind is drawn to the potential moments with the most potent emotional charge. Meetings going poorly. Or getting chewed out for a thing you did badly.

Reliving these painful moments from our past or living these potentially stressful moments from our future isn’t harmless. They create an excess of cortisol in our systems. Cortisol is a stress hormone and it’s supposed to be created in moments of danger, not while you’re brushing your teeth. Too much cortisol, created constantly in these mundane moments leads to a compromised immune system, weight gain, and high blood pressure.

So, mindfulness presents a real benefit. Mindfulness means instead of letting your subconscious mind take over while doing common tasks, you stay present. You brush your teeth consciously. You shampoo your hair intentionally. That way your conscious mind stays in the present instead of drifting off into a remembered past or an imagined future.

When we think of mindfulness this way, it kind of changes the way we think about meditation. Yeah, you can still sit still, and focus on your breathing — the thing most people think of as meditating — and that strengthens your ability to resist letting your mind drift away from the moment. Mindfulness is like a muscle — the more effectively you can use it.

But meditation can also just be the act and practice of not letting your mind wander during mundane moments of maintenance and repetition — being intentional with your thoughts when you're getting ready, cooking, cleaning, driving, and walking.

Maybe stop thinking about it as some hard to describe transcendent movement into a zen state and start thinking about it as a way of actively stopping your brain from creating potentially damaging chemicals at the wrong time.

I talk a lot about results-oriented spirituality. I think there’s a way to approach meditation and mindfulness that has the potential to be highly results-oriented instead of just some squishy notion of an eastern practice that we all give lip-service to whether we understand it or not.