Meditation: Mundane Magic
After a period of glamour and trendiness meditation has become a standard, maybe even boring, part of many of our lives, and I think that’s a good thing. I remember when I was first getting into meditation in 2015. I was awarded the Daiwa scholarship to live in Japan, and I took it as an opportunity away from my usual social scene and habits to dive into something new, something that was, at the time, very foreign to my fast paced, cynical, maybe slightly punk viewpoint.
Around that time meditation was beginning to explode into mass media, but was still a novel or even esoteric concept to many or most. I can well remember the giddy articles and books that were coming out, which I was voraciously consuming, about the wonders of mediation and the incredible data from scientists like Jon Kabat Kimm and Judson Brewer. Meditation would save humanity! Meditation will save the world! If only all world leaders meditated it would bring on World Peace! I drank the kool aid, and can honestly say that meditation did partly save MY world. Over the coming years I, often with difficulty, found my practise, hitting an hour a day for a few very committed months. I became less reactive, better able to unhook myself from negative thought patterns, more resilient. I waxed lyrical about its benefits to anyone who would listen, and it ended being one of my key research areas for my Masters. My final project Metacognition Revolution (as terrible a name now as it was then) imaged a future where mental health care was as much a part of our routines and society as physical health care.
Then, as is the way, the bubble burst, and the zeitgeist moved on. Books like McMindfulness (highly recommended) illustrated the limitations of meditation, it would not alone ‘save the world’. Indeed once one realises that meditation can be used to train soldiers to stay calm in the face of killing, one grows out of the idea that meditation alone will be enough. These days I firmly believe that meditation can and will be part of a healthy and just society, but it will only reach its full potential when supported by a moral and/or spiritual framework.
However the impact of that heady few summers where meditation was so cool remains, and has forever changed the way we view it. I clearly remember when friends of mine would subtly roll their eyes at my recomendations, these same friends are now sending me podcasts of their favourite meditation teachers. I remember when the idea of creating an electronic guide to meditate with was a revolutionary concept worthy of wild student projects and concept visualilazations, now the Headspace meditation app sits alongside Instagram and ebay, a standard part of our digital mental health care, in many ways the sci fi project of my masters has become reality.
My own journey has followed a similar course, from an all consuming passion, to a consistent warmth that compliments and enhances the rest of my life. It is currently a small part of my mourning routine, often I’ll only do 5 minutes. Not because I don’t think an hour is worth it, quite the contrary, but because that’s all I feel I can give it, for now. And that is ok. 5 sporadic minutes is better then nothing, as the data shows.
Meditation has become boring, like the idea that drinking lots of water is good for you, boring and true. This is a good kind of boring, the kind of boring that comes when something moves from being an exotic exciting trend that people temporarily jump onto, into a standard part of our lives that we accept as being true and essential, get enough sleep, drink enough water, make time to meditate.
So I say it loud and proud, in the knowledge that it is also boring and predictable, I love meditation. I truly believe it to be part of a healthy and well lived life, so please do try it! Don’t expect it to change your world after one sitting, do expect it, like any other skill you can build, to be difficult at first.
And never forget that this mundane action is also a miraculous technology, one which has been honed by generation after generation of our finest thinkers, scientists and spiritual leaders. Nothing, not one single thing, happens to us outside of our perception, our brains, therefore nothing, not one single thing, is unaffected by your meditation practise. Meditation is a tool that improves communication, sleep, creativity and even your sex life, if you have one. So, be boring and predictable, make room for meditation, not because it’s cool, cause it’s not really any more, but because, like drinking enough water, your life will almost definitely be improved by it. A boring and, at this point, uncontroversial claim, isn’t that refreshing?