My Maiden Attempt at Meditation and The Lessons Learnt!

What do people do when they are trying to find a new meaning to the mundane routine called life? What do they do when they seek inner balance within? What proffers an orgasmic high to some; is the spiritual connect of celebs and is purported to be the panacea for all ills these days? The answer is not really so difficult if you think of how many times you have read or heard of the words MEDITATE and MEDITATION every day from celebrity interviews to health and fitness magazines to spiritual talk. Everyone talks about meditation and the miracles it bestows on us vain people.

I too have been enamored by the promise of tranquility and mental happiness that meditation for a while. So after toying with the idea for some time and reasoning with myself on why I should pursue this path towards self-actualization, I decided to take the plunge. A back injury that left me grounded for six months definitely helped the cause.

The obvious questions arose; how to meditate, how much to meditate, what is the right time to meditate and where is the correct place to meditate? I began my ground work with zeal, researching for the correct answers to my questions. As any responsible netizen would, I logged onto my iPad and ‘Googled’ the word meditation & in that momentous millisecond while the search engine looked up my query; began my tryst with meditation.

Millisecond over, hundreds of results stared at me. I browsed up and down quickly on the first page results (I recalled the first lesson of online writing -Search engine optimization, no one ever goes to the second page of search results, first page is all that matters) and started reading. After hours of reading, I was amazed to discover that not only there are as many different interpretations of what meditation means to diverse sets of people, there are also various meditation styles. This was a revelation to my naïve self who thought that meditation meant sitting down in one place with an empty mind for 15 minutes if you were an amateur and for over an hour if you were a spiritual guru or a diva or an escapist, not necessarily in that order!

Curiosity now completely awake, I delve into the various sites rejecting the content mills and looking for sites by spiritual gurus, meditation experts and sites which promoted mental health and peace. Lo and behold! One site defined 16 different types of meditation. For example there was mind-centric meditation and heart-centric meditation; an upward meditation that is aimed at lifting consciousness and creating detachment and conversely a downward meditation that aimed at collecting all the love of the universe enriching your heart.

Another site classified meditation in 4 ways; meditation which involved concentrating on one aspect or object; generative meditation focusing on generating creativity using sensations; receptive meditation which involved imbibing an experience and reflective meditation which involved feeling every sensation of that experience. But as these sites enlightened me, so they confounded me. Not knowing what the best approach would be I made mental notes, deciding to go with the flow and keeping the research handy for when I was more accomplished at the task.

The next morning armed with knowledge and resolve, I took out my brand new yoga mat and spread it on the veranda floor. My husband was at work and my son at school and I was convinced that nothing and no one could disturb my quest for peace. I switched off the doorbell receptor, put my cell-phone on vibrator mode determined not to allow any distractions! Only, at that point I did not know then how wrong I was. I crossed my legs, closed my eyes, held my hands in the yogic posture and took a deep breath, ready to delve into my inner consciousness and empty my mind.

It was then that all hell broke loose! As I tried to calm my mind and focus my energies, my mind fought my every attempt tooth and nail. The more I tried to drive away thoughts, the more vengeful they became till I realized I was unconsciously clenching my fists and squeezing my eyes as if the very action could drive out all those nagging thoughts. I opened my eyes, forced myself to relax, too a deep breath again and chanted 'Om'. I repeated the exercise, thinking that this time, I would adopt one of the approaches I had read namely to acknowledge what is disturbing you rather than trying to force it out. The 'Guru' had advised that one must acknowledge the distraction and then move on.

So I decided to acknowledge my thoughts, I identified the first buzzing sound in my brain as the tune of a song I had heard on radio the previous day. I softly hummed it wishing it away but it persisted and then suddenly a part of my brain wanted to know which album it was from. To me, this was crazy! Why did I need to know the name now? I had been curious about the album since I loved the song but had always procrastinated looking it up. Now, it seemed I had no choice. It was futile to fight my rebellious brain, so i turned on the iPod, checked for the song and having found the name of the album I quickly made a mental note of it.

First distraction attended to, I sat down on the mat again and closed my eyes. Just then something amazing happened. I had been going through a writer’s block since a week and had not been able to finalize a topic to write on. But as I closed my eyes that fine morning, I got at least two terrific, money spinning ideas for articles. The topics were timely, currently in vogue and I had back up research on them. Excellent! I was about to jump for joy when I realized that the flash of brilliance had struck at a time when my aim was peace of mind. Eager to acknowledge my distraction and move on, I quickly jotted down the titles on a small pad and rushed back to my mat, determined to make it work this time.

For the third time as I closed my eyes I managed 20 to 30 seconds of quietude before sheer kaleidoscopic imagery came rushing in. As images merged and colors faded out, there was one image which seemed to grow larger in my brain- it was green, leafy …hoorah it was spinach! Spinach, why was spinach so important now? Another flash of brilliance and I remembered, I was to buy spinach for my son’s vegetable day the next day in school and one of my special agendas for the day was to look for some cool spinach recipes that he would enjoy! And I had completely forgotten about it till now.

I was flabbergasted, why was this happening to me? Why could I not concentrate on not concentrating on anything?? Why could I just not blank out and let my inner self take over. A trifle disillusioned, I pulled back the notepad and jotted down spinach under my grocery shopping list and ‘search cool spinach recipes for kids’ under my ‘To-do’ list. Mentally drained by now, I crawled slowly back to the mat, my heart crying out for some divine intervention to end these worldly distractions.

But my overworked mind was merciless that morning and refused to calm down throwing in image after image, thoughts about unfinished tasks, even snatches of conversations I had in the recent past with friends and family. Resilient by nature, I persevered but soon a caravan of yawns came trawling across my consciousness, gaining in size and power till I succumbed!

I don’t know how much time lapsed but I woke up with a start.The earth was trembling! Disoriented after my nap, I soon realized that the trembling was my hand phone furiously vibrating. I answered the call- it was from my husband who had been trying to contact me for a long time. Feeling guilty about the whole episode and not wanting to reveal that I had failed my first attempt at meditation and had slept instead, I made some excuse and quickly hung up, my eyes darting to the clock.I realized that I had slept for over an hour in my veranda oblivious to the sun’s harsh summer rays beaming down on me.

My first reaction was anger for not having achieved what I had set out to do. A part of my brain chided me for having wasted my whole morning (which should have been spent writing) in a failed attempt and then sleeping off. But minutes later, a smile escaped my lips. It was not really that bad, was it? I had looked up the name of the album which I had been procrastinating for long; I had broken out of my writer’s block and now had two brilliant titles to write to; I had remembered in time that I had to look up recipes and buy spinach for my son’s school. Last but not the least I had slept like a baby curled up the mat in the veranda unmindful of the sounds, the heat and the day light for the first time in many years!

In retrospect, I may have failed my maiden attempt at meditation but I had achieved a lot that morning including the knowledge that inner distractions –those which emanate from our brain are the most powerful and the most resilient of all. These are the ones which are the most difficult to tame and these are the ones that need taming before we embark on this journey called meditation!