By Jan Bidwell
I’ve been meditating since 1985 and teaching meditation since 1987. Without question, the most frequent obstacle people hit when they are learning to meditate is that they overthink it.
I can’t emphasize this enough. It isn’t complicated. However, it also isn’t easy.
My students and clients want to figure out how to do it, what they need to do next. That’s a natural process when we are learning things. We want to organize, figure it out, and then we judge our performance.
The work in meditation is to give up working. Meditation consists of shifting your attention away from the conversations in your mind and focusing on the present moment. Again and again and again.
If it gets noisy in the house, or the park, or the church where you sit, just shift away from that too. Notice what it is like to turn your awareness away from the noise.
Most often I hear that people have “tried to meditate” but they couldn’t quiet the mind. There is good news here. You don’t have to quiet the mind.
What can happen is that the space between your thoughts may lengthen as you meditate regularly, but most likely your mind will stay somewhat active. There may be times you are suddenly thought free. The thing is, if you try to quiet the mind, you are trying. If your goal is to quiet the mind, you are striving for a goal.
That doesn’t mean you’re not meditating, it means you need to continually shift your attention away from your thoughts and your striving. It is a no-judgment zone. Focus in the present means noticing when you are trying or striving, then drop that and witness where you are…. again and again and again.
It is very helpful to focus on the inbreath and the out-breath. You may want to silently repeat a word as you breathe in and out. Try “Here” as you inhale, and “Now” as you exhale. You may have words that suit you more. The shorter the better. Don’t keep changing the word while you are meditating. You don’t want to give your mind something to argue with you about.
I’ve been meditating most every day for 37 years and there are days when my mind chatters all through my meditation. It’s true that after all this time I more easily fall into a state of silence, but not always, not by any measure. It doesn’t matter at all.
Meditation is a practice of radical acceptance of this breath, then this breath, then this breath. Your mind is going to tug at you, it wants to do its job. Ignore your mind. If you have ever just completely ignored whatever someone has said to you, then you know how to do this.
The hardest part of meditation is not trying to force it at all. There’s no need to swim up upstream when you’re meditating. It is most helpful to simply notice, to simply witness what is happening in your mind, your heart, and your body.
What will happen when you shift your awareness away from everything except your breath is that you will experience how you can control your awareness. Your awareness is not your thoughts. You are reading this, your mind is working on understanding this, and you are also aware that you are in a certain place, and you are reading. You have control of your awareness, possibly more than you know.
This continual shift of your focus is essentially a brain exercise. If you have ever meditated, you know that you are not being idle. You are focusing without getting attached to anything, not getting swept up into thoughts. It is a state of alert stillness. It is not spacing out. Meditation is practicing being attentive. Paradoxically, there is effort in remaining attentive without working at it.
So here is the hard part. This is where people get stuck. You are sitting with yourself and becoming highly aware of how much you think and highly aware of the nature of your thoughts. That could be unpleasant if you don’t shift away from all that thinking. Drop it. Let it pass you by like leaves floating past in the river. Again and again and again.
When you set a length to sit (I use my phone alarm turned to low volume chimes), you will find that as you come out of meditation you are very relaxed, no matter how active your mind has been.
There is stillness in each of us and it is helpful when we turn toward it with the intention to meditate. That is meditation. It is that simple.
Jan Bidwell is a licensed clinical Social Worker, an author, social activist, front line crisis responder, community activist, psychotherapist, and mediation teacher. She is currently in private practice, offers training in resilience and mindfulness, and continues to volunteer in Ingham County. For more information log on to janbidwell.com.
