Why I Hate Meditation
I’m not sure why I don’t like Meditation. So many self help techniques or skills call to my soul and resonate with me and I can’t wait to try them out. Meditation has never, ever felt that way to me. It’s always felt like a You Do You kind of thing. Glad it’s working for you; leave me out of it. I’m really clickbaiting by using the word “hate.” It just doesn’t speak to me and never has.
I was not particularly seeking “enlightenment.” I don’t consider myself a “seeker” in the sense of yearning for some greater sense of something. I am not sure why I was not attracted to it for relaxation purposes. It has never called me as a tool for coping with psychological pain or for insight purposes.
Why I Started Meditation Anyway
A few people I trust and respect talked about Meditation in a way that made me think it might be useful. I still had no attraction to it, though. Then a close friend of mine wrote up his experience of One Hour Meditation and it sounded intriguing. At this time, my insomnia was getting progressively worse no matter what I tried. I hoped the calming effect of meditation would help with the odd and ever worsening racing thoughts I was experiencing almost nightly at 3 and 4 a.m. My friend quoted something that said that the full impact of Meditation can’t really be felt until doing it for 2 months, so I decided to try it.
Upon beginning, I almost immediately discovered that my intuition about my feelings about Meditation were correct. I dislike meditation. Only the fact that it was temporary and finite and my intense curiosity about whether or not it would be effective caused me to stick it out.
What Technique I Used
There are SO MANY ways to meditate. I chose to focus my attention on the breath (the inhale, exhale). If I realized that my attention wandered away from the breath, I’d note that (“thinking”) and bring my attention back to the breath. I did that for one hour a day for 2 months.
My Previous Meditation Exposure
Eat Pray Love (2006) by Elizabeth Gilbert has a fantastic description of the various thoughts and feelings that went through her head as she sat to meditate, which I found very true to the meditation experience. I don’t remember what page it’s on but it’s the one where she ends up with a lot of mosquito bites.
I’d practiced at various times:
Jon Kabat Zinn’s mindfulness (2011).
Eckhart Tolle Power of Now (2014).
Pema Chodron inhale the [negative], exhale the [positive] and some of her other techniques (2017)
I’d tried mindfulness during housework and crying children and out in nature. I did Power of Now during many drives to and from work, about 15-20 minutes. I tried Pema Chodron’s various techniques during my insomnia or to combat—er, embrace— specific emotional challenges that came up.
What Meditation Does Is Both Specific-to-the-Individual AND Universal
What happens when you sit in silence with no distractions. What comes up? I spent over a year on IFS Therapy so thoughts coming up weren’t new. What insights you get will depend on where you are on your individual growth journey. How my friends were using meditation was different from how I was using meditation. What I was learning about myself and about meditation was different than what they were gaining.
In a future post I’ll discuss some of my specifics and some of what I perceive to be Universals. But it did strike me that where an individual is at in their own personal development will very much affect what happens for them in Meditation. Even the myriad specific daily things that happen affects meditation.
Different Times of Day Affect Meditation
I discovered that I am in very different physiological states (which affects my emotional states) late afternoon, vs. middle of the night, vs. first thing in the morning. I’ll talk more about this in a future post.
Various Mantras That Came to Mind During Meditation
Mar 21:Rolling Stones, as I wrestled with wanting to think about To Do List: “And they helped her on her way, to her busy dying day”
Mar 14: Ramones keep popping into my head "Nothing to do, nowhere to go-oh-oh"
Mar 12 Princess Bride: “Get used to disappointment”
Upcoming:
My individual insights from 2 months of daily one hour meditation
Universal benefits that I gleaned from meditation