For many years, over a quarter of a century in fact, I meditated daily – but always with a sneaking suspicion. Was I doing it properly? Often I was lost in thought, my mind snatched away by worries or plans, or sunk inside memories and dreams. Really, I was not so much aware as ‘elsewhere’. Was I doing something wrong? Was I ‘failing’ in some way? When I look back now, a couple of decades on, I’m surprised I kept going.

I am glad I did because it led me somewhere new. In the end, I worked out how to meditate without the invisible stress of getting it ‘right’, or even the tarnished hope of making progress. I found the joy of meditating stress-free, liberated from doubt, self-judgement and criticism. Stress-free meditation comes with gentleness and a touch of infinite kindness. Its benefits pervade your whole life. And even if individual meditations leave you baffled, still, you never fail.

Most of us meditate with a hope, a wish for something more. Yet this can be double-edged. Goals motivate us, it’s true, but then they can also turn sour. Nagged by a slew of empty promises, and discouraged by disappointment or defeat, we soon question: Is it worth the effort? And eventually, Why bother? My mission is to proclaim the opposite. There is a way to meditate which is easy and enjoyable, and which leads (no surprises) to ease and enjoyment.

I have a friend who lives by the Atlantic coast. He walks daily on the Irish shores, his dog beside him. The dog is a blue-merle collie, who streams through the foaming breakers like sea-mist. Simon, meanwhile, combs the beach for pebbles. He finds them too: stones with fantastic shapes and shadings, marvellously patterned, etched with sea-runes. Palm-smooth pebbles pave his way as if by secret assignation, each one a rocky anthem to perfection. When I walk with him, I pick up stones that are nice, but mostly grey. For me – nothing special. No marvels from the ocean bed. I sigh for Simon’s enviable expertise in stone-spotting. I grumble, ‘You have all the luck!’ But then, he hunts daily. And that’s the thing. His ocean-lore has grown in time. Just as his collie dog learned to dance with the waves, so Simon has learned to see.

Meditation is just the same. The more you practise, the more you see. You comb the shores of your inner being, and treasures waft up from the depths. Fragments of freedom float by. You catch stray gestures from moments that pass, pebble-painted with runes. There is always a way to meditate. All you need is to find it. In the end, we mostly teach ourselves. For myself, to ‘get my eye in’ I turn my meditation over in my mind, exploring its ambles and gambols, its tumbling textures. Afterwards, I may see more than I did at the time. Sometimes, this turns into words, and the words into poems. As I write, I soak a little longer in the tides and currents of my ocean being.

This is something we can all do: to explore and express what comes in the wake of our meditation, to swim and swirl within our ocean reefs. For here are sea-treasures. Our beings are vast and unfathomable. They hold more than we can ever know. Looking below the surface, whether ruffled or smooth, we encounter the ocean within.

Recently, I hit on an idea. Instead of stressing about the pile of chores facing me each day, or the tasks over-spilling my desk, I would give up ‘admin’ altogether. So I put away my To Do list, and banned any reference to work-related items. To be more precise, I re-named them. I did Really Useful Things all day instead. This made a real difference. I no longer groaned over my loss of adventure or fun. Instead I basked in a vision of usefulness, where purpose and meaning meet in perfect union, and sighed with satisfaction at the really useful way I spent my hours. Believe it or not, as my attitude changed I felt the burden lighten. Seeing time so usefully employed, I began to appreciate my individual efforts, and how each creates the whole.

Did this work? Well, yes. Up to a point. But …

I had to wonder: is a simple change of attitude enough? Can it sustain us through horribly busy patches? Would it cope with undue stress? And then, what about those ‘really useless things’ which are just as important? Some activities serve no obvious purpose but still lend a dash of colour: ones without rhyme or reason that bring added zest to life; or, being unexpected, open up space for unplanned joy. A change of attitude may help in part, certainly, but more is needed. We need a change of state.

What state is that? It is the state of FLOW. When we flow with the stream of life, we are never stumped or stuck, stopped or stymied, bored or burdened The endlessness of our jobs dissolves, because it too is part of the flow. This is not an idea or attitude. Flow is something we experience deeply from within. It is our essential agreement with Life as it is. Flowing with whatever comes, we have the energy to engage fully and creatively, with focus and care. How different we become – and how different Life looks – from a state of flow.

Into the Flow is the second of my Gentle Guides to Meditation. It is also a guide to flow. For meditation, in essence, is the practise of flow. Meditating, we see flow close-up, from within. We explore what it means, how it feels. We taste for ourselves its infinite ease and freedom.

Flow is a blessing, in meditation and in life. Finding flow is the first step to making peace with ourselves, with the world – and (as it happens) with our ever-flowing To Do list.

My father had an embarrassing habit. He would unexpectedly break into poetry at odd moments, and, more embarrassing still – his own poetry. He wrote colourfully, but mostly didactically, insisting that his methods add spice to learning. Since he taught homeopathy, his poems were embellished (or encumbered) with anatomical parts, bodily functions and psychosomatic turns of phrase – topics I rarely touched, especially over the dinner table.

Imagine my concern when I found myself following in his footsteps.

Teaching mindfulness to students is a blessing of a job. My classrooms are full of people who actually want to be there. There’s no marking, no exams, and we follow that most engaging of curriculums: the human heart and mind. And as I hear about my students’ mindful journeys, it inspires me to follow my own. I’m sure I learn as much or more from their insights than they ever do from me. Then again, my approach is never to teach, but more to share. Forty years of tumultuous inner life comes in handy – so I have been spared the imposter syndrome that plagues some teachers. That is … until I started sharing my poems.

One of my greatest pleasures in meditation is to take time afterwards to write. I search for a way to describe to myself what went on. Can I find a way to express even the most humdrum meditation let alone the most profound? I play with words and metaphors; and feel an exquisite pleasure when they fit ‘just right’. Often they tell me something about myself that I did not know.

The occupational hazard of all this is the way it lingers. I’m liable to turn up for a class with a poem still in mind, and when a hapless student unwittingly asks a question that touches on the same theme, I can’t help myself. ‘I wrote a poem about that this morning!’ I proffer. The words are out of my mouth before I know it. ‘Oh help,’ I mutter, turning red, ‘I’m turning out just like my dad.’

Possibly more forgiving of me than I was of him though, my students encourage me. They like the poems (they say); it helps them understand their own meditation. And so my Gentle Guides to Meditation came to life, including both poems and prose. If my poems could help me learn – might they also help others?

Journeys to the Deep is the first of three slim volumes, each exploring different aspects of meditation – in this case Setting Out, Curiosity and Enjoyment, and Listening Within. I hope you enjoy the book. Who knows? Perhaps it may even inspire you to write, or draw, or sing about your own inner journeys too?

ELIZABETH ENGLISH