Meditation isn't about doing it right. It's about trusting yourself.

TIME magazine rarely has stories about meditation. So it was a pleasure to turn a page of the February 12, 2024 issue and see a title: "The noises in my head at a silent retreat."

I could relate to those words. For after starting to meditate every day in 1971, during the past fifty-three years my meditation has involved a lot of noises inside my own head. 

Thoughts. Emotions. Cravings. Things to do. Cosmic conceptions. Crude desires.

You know, everything that's going through my mind outside of meditation. It's just more obvious when I'm sitting still, usually with eyes closed, doing whatever sort of practice appeals to me that day. 

The online version of the TIME story also has a good title: "How I Learned to Speak My Truth at a Silent Retreat." Here's a PDF file if that link doesn't work for you.
Download How I Learned to Speak My Truth at a Silent Retreat | TIME

Dorie Chevlen's description of the retreat made me realize why I've never wanted to go on a 10-day Vipassana meditation session.

So off I went, first to Chicago, then the middle of seemingly nowhere, for the retreat. I signed away my wallet and cellphone; I listened to the rules: No speaking, no eye contact, no physical contact, no drugs or alcohol, no sex or masturbation, no technology, and (scariest to me) no writing. I felt like screaming, but I trusted my boyfriend more than my own instincts; if this was good for him, this will be good for me, I assured my racing heart.

Had I bothered researching Vipassana prior to attending one, I would have read plenty about the hours. We awoke at 4 a.m. each day to make it to our first meditation by 4:30 a.m. After two hours of that, we’d congregate for our 6:30 a.m. breakfast. Then a brief break. Then more meditation. Lunch. A break. More meditation. Tea. More meditation. Then a viewing of a taped lecture by an esteemed teacher of the practice. More meditation. Then bedtime to prepare to wake up and do it all again.

That sounds ghastly to me, though I know many people enjoy retreats of this sort. It just strikes me as unduly structured and artificial. Shouldn't meditation be aimed at helping us navigate life as it usually is, not as how life is lived during a rare Vipassana retreat? 

(Vipassana basically is meditation based on Buddhist mindfulness principles.)

Initially, Chevlen doesn't do well with her meditation, or other aspects of the retreat.

In our nightly lectures, the teacher encouraged us not to think while meditating, and when a thought inevitably did cross our minds, to pass it aside without judgment. I floundered at this initially. Unintentionally, I’d screen entire films in my head (mostly M. Night Shyamalan, because even my subconscious has no taste), and analyze years-old interactions.

Constantly, helplessly, my mind kept replaying “Closing Time,” for which, unfortunately, I didn’t know all the lyrics. The result was a horrible mental performance in which Cohen would croon “And the bupbupbupbup dun-dun and the ladadadada and the Johnny Walker wisdom runnin’ high,” Plus, the campus’s picturesque geese were in the midst of mating season, so Cohen’s half-wrong lyrics were punctuated by the honking of fornicating waterfowl.

What I mean is meditating was difficult for me. But so was the time spent not meditating. Have you ever heard a cafeteria full of people eating in silence? An entire room echoing with the sound of conversation-less human mastication—all wet chewing and slippery gulps, suppressed belches and scraping silverware. 

But after a few days, she did better.

To my relief, meditating became easier, slowly, as the first days of the course passed. Whereas initially I couldn’t sit for five minutes without needing to shift my hips, I found myself still for longer and longer stretches of time. My hummingbird brain, too, slowed its vibrations; my thoughts still fluttered, but I could go stretches of time before they pulled me away. And yet, I still fantasized about leaving. Yes, I can sit here and not think, but what is the point, my mind demanded. “Run,” it urged. “Run!”

Chevlen ends up running, leaving the retreat after a few additional days. Her boyfriend was disappointed. So was she. Eventually, though, she realized that she also needed to run from the relationship with her boyfriend.

I considered leaving the life we’d built. But I didn’t. Not at first. I spent a few more months unhappy; I was sure, more so now than ever, that there had to be something wrong with me. I couldn’t meditate right. I couldn’t love right. Was there anything right about me?

Eventually, my fast-expanding misery burst like a balloon in my mouth. Pop!  “This isn’t working.” The words felt like poetry on my lips. My boyfriend helped pack up my stuff and drove me to the airport. This lovely man, with real sheets on his bed and the generosity to schlep me all the way to O’Hare International Airport—I was leaving him?

My intuition shouted to be heard over reason and though I thought it would break me, I hugged him goodbye and walked away. My legs nearly collapsed with relief on arrival. I was in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing the wrong things, yes, but I wasn’t wrong. That toilet was probably busted before I ever used it [at the retreat, where she had to deal with a clogged toilet].

Her final paragraphs appealed to me. It mirrors, in a way, how I felt when I trusted myself and ran from the India-based religious organization that I'd belonged to for 35 years. It was a difficult decision, but I embraced the notion that after practicing a form of spirituality that involved a lot of rules, commandments, dos and don'ts, it was time to relax into a less rigid approach to life.

I’d love to say I’ve followed my instincts since then, but trust is a muscle, like any other; it only grows with pain and repetition. So I kept writing, even though it seemed doomed. I moved to New York, then I moved to LA. I got rejected; I got published; usually I got ignored. I fell in love and fell out of love and fell in love all over again.

I made a lot of mistakes, is what I mean. But they were my mistakes, at least; made from listening to my own inner voice, a voice which sometimes stuttered or misspoke or vocal-fried, but always rung true as my own. I made a lot of mistakes. But slowly, I started trusting that I could fix them. Even better, I could learn from them.

I didn’t finish the meditation course my ex-boyfriend recommended, but I sometimes still try to meditate. I’ll sit for 20 minutes and try to focus on my breath, on nothing else but just being, until my alarm goes off. I’m still not sure I’m doing it right. But I trust, now, that I don’t have to.

Comments

[um]

Even in days when smoking was normal for adults,it was in a way alarming when seeing youngsters and women smoke. Alarming in the sense that I am looking at something "normal" while my body tells me the opposite.

These days have gone as hardly anybody smokes here, or better said not where I happen to be.

But a couple of days ago I was faced with a young lady of 16 lighting a cigarette before me. I could not prevent myself asking her about how it was for her smoking the first, second and third cigarette. Innocent and honest she told me how horrible it had been for her and how she managed to bypass her own feelings and reactions.

She said ..I did it because it was not allowed, against the trend of non smoking and because of "respect" of my peers.

This is more or less the mechanism by which we come to do what we do, think what we think, feel what we feel.

We do things etc because we are told, we have heard about it praised etc by others and we do it at the cost of our selfs.

And doing that decades of our lives, we wonder why we develop psychosomatic diseases, conversion disorders and are unhappy ... have a look at the Monday morning faces of people going to work ... they are on there way to jet another week of doing what they do not want to do, socializing with people they do not like.

If asian practices were not presented to the public at large as the last snake oil solution for their life, probably none would ever have taken up the practice of meditation..

In time the lady in the article found out that she had no interest in meditation at all.

Instead of fighting teachings and teachers, many would be better served by searching their own hearts about the motives , that made them join this or that practice..

When I asked our dad why part of the priests in the college had always these grim faces, He explained to me that it was due to celibacy issues. Celebrate he said is an burden for all men but if you have no idea why you have to pay that price and do not agree with it, celibacy will become a mill stone around one's neck and eventually draw you under.

The practices in Asia are very cleverly designed, in using the love for the teacher as a bridge to overcome the delay of the outcome of one's effort.

What remains for me, against this background of thinking, WHY people from the west are accepted and in such an number,

[sant64]

I've done those 10-day retreats and I concur they are no fun. But then, that's the point. I could explain what I mean by that, but what's the use.

RSSB Sant Mat "involves a lot of rules, commandments, do and don'ts"?

The four vows are:

To adhere to a lacto-vegetarian diet.
To abstain from alcohol, tobacco products, habit-forming and mind-altering drugs.
To lead a pure moral life while performing one’s duties in the world.
To practise meditation with sincerity and dedication for two and a half hours daily, as taught at the time of Initiation.

I can totally understand how the RSSB satsangi mindset can be onerous. Every satsang is a lecture about how everyone is failing to control their minds "good enough" and time is short to get to the eye center before death overtakes us and we find ourselves reborn as penguins. But I can't agree that RSSB sets a lot of rules. Certainly not compared to Buddhist sects, which have literally thousands of rules for monks.

The only rule that's really stressed as an absolute in RSSB is vegetarian diet. I was a vegetarian for years, but now believe it's a diet that's completely contrary to human health.

[um]

@Sant 64

After I left it all behind I came to understand the teachings better than ever before ...AND ... the3re are several different teachings.

There are the teachings as delivered by the teachers

there are the teachings of the students, to be divided in sub-cultures all along their cultural/religious conditioning.

The stress on do's and don'ts are presented in the west in a more or less CALVINISTIC way in these parts and those rather "strange" way of dealing with them by the Americans ..One can "smell" the americans having their roots in the orthodox rather fanatic Christian believers that fled from Europe.

What I do remember from my days with this religious multinational as presented to me by its teachers, both oral and in letters, was NOT on do's and don'ts but a simple advice ...PLEASE, do your Bhajan and simran with love and devotion. Nothing more nothing less.

The rest how it is seen and made seen in the west is IMHO just fabrication of the students, students that leave no stone untouched to reform the simple teachings according their local, regional, cultural and private liking.

The whole issue is about something that is said but not stressed ..do it with LOVE ...and...DEVOTION. ... and mind you, love and devotion for one's OWN practice,

Bhakti Yoga
Gur Bhakti
All things I came to understood later that are little understood if at all, let alone practiced in the right way ..nobody to blame .. after all we are not born Indians, not born into a culture that teaches GUR BHAKTI on ALL levels, not only religious

For those that like to understand what I am hinting at .. watch some video's of the "sufi Qawwali Ensemble" ..do not focus on the music, if you are not used to it probably you will not like it ... hahaha ...but focus on the faces and the body language of the western players. Than compare it with asian ensembles. ....

Those great performers of music and other arts do not let anybody come near to them that has not given his heart to music or art. The relationship between teacher and student, is of service to the music, the art. No teacher is interested in those that come to love THEM instead of their music or art

And not only does one need that love for music, one needs also a talent to be developed ...and finally ... if it is not there, it is just not there and there is nothing do do. about it

[Ron E.]

In June Tolifson’s ‘Outpourings’: - True Meditation: ‘The Art of Going Nowhere,’ there are a couple of quotes that (to me) sum up meditation – and perhaps the end of meditation as we know it!

“As you walk the spiritual path, it widens, not narrows, until one day it broadens to a point where there is no path left at all.” Wayne Liquorman.

“Meditation is not about manufacturing a state of mind that’s clear, calm or full of insight. It’s about interfering less and less with what is actually here.” John Tarrant.

I don’t see these comments as decrying the various meditation systems, even strict and prescriptive systems (similar to what that Dorie Chevlen describes here) may be a ‘kick-start’; after all, whatever system (or non-system) we are engaged in, that is where we are at that time, in that present moment.

There may come a time when it is felt or realised that there is nothing needed or to be aimed for (in the meditation sense). Some point out that as the bulwark of contents that comprise the self structure with all the self-protecting beliefs that acted as shields from just this, fall away, simplicity or clarity become apparent. This is not to say that the self, disappears – after all, an identity is need to navigate the world – it’s more to do with the various self concepts used as crutches of attachment no longer hold influence.

[Roger]

Yes, meditate if you enjoy it. And do something else if that makes you feel better than meditation does.

In the long history of humanity, most people have lived their lives pleasantly and meaningfully without doing a special thing called "meditation."

During my years of nonpracticing “quiet periods”, I haven't found that, in general, people who meditate are any kinder, happier, or wiser than people who don't meditate.

Like bowling, meditation appeals to some, while not to others. Each to their own. We are engaging in the living of life

[um]

@ Roger

Eating can be done for feeling good, for pleasure, but is that its function?

Walking can be done for feeling good, for pleasure, but is that its function?

Meditation can be done for feeling good for pleasure, but is that its function?

Etc.
Etc.

[Roger]

@um

"can be done for feeling good, for pleasure"

Having peace of mind, I would think, reduces the need for feeling good and for pleasure. Feel free to google eating, walking and meditation to obtain further information. Don't forget, I always reserve the right to be wrong.

[um]

@ Roger

Almost everything can be done for pleasure ... even killing.

[Roger]

@um

Yes, you are correct. We humans can engage in that.

[um]

meditation can be done for pleasure, and is done for that reason and yes, meditation might not have the power to change anybody .. like walking doesn't change anybody bus your legs might bring you somewhere and so can meditation.