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.