Following Jess & Henry Holme's wonderful wedding last night (obligatory but happy shout-out!), I have had very little sleep and don't feel 'meditated' as it were. I'll sleep on the train shortly.
Speaking of meditation, Vedic, or transcendental, meditation has crept back into my life in the last week or so. I thought I’d explain why…
Although I'm not a monk (important but obvious caveat!), my mediation practice is also not virginal. I've been through the mill of various retreats, plenty of YouTube, and hours on Sam Harris' app. Nevertheless, meditation has often felt like a chore or a nuisance rather than an enabler. I sometimes feel frustrated that I spent a half an hour session failing to silence the mad-man in my head. Or have spent the *entire* session daydreaming. This pot-holed backdrop makes it even more surprising that it feels quite good today.
Last weekend, when hiking through the Cotswolds with a dear friend, I read The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. In it, Singer realised—at age 19 when sitting on the sofa with a pal—that he has a repetitive narrator in his head. We all do. Singer subsequently spends years trying to silence it through meditation. Eventually, he surrenders to the voice and the whims of the universe, and life unfolds like origami: It's a fantastic read.
On meditation, Singer explained *why* he meditated in a uniquely effective way. It's this description that's flicked the switch in my practice.
First, note you have a subject and object relationship with your phone. As you read this, you can tell you are not the phone because you are looking at the 'object'. As a matter of experience, it feels like you are somewhere in your head (where exactly is indescribable), but you are not your phone. The subject and object's presence distinguishes us from the object (albeit one relies on the other to exist).
Now, moving inside our head, we have a persistent muttering internal narrative. It's a voice that takes us away from a conversation to think about work or the voice that questions how our glasses look, or whether someone has texted back. It's the voice that narrates our life, yet often isn't our best friend. It's the voice that overthinks.
Yet again, just like when looking at your phone, we have a subject/object relationship with this voice inside our head. Our thoughts are not us, and whatever 'I' is is not the voice. The voice is distinct from 'me' because I'm aware of it from the indescribable seat of awareness. Physically, I might be behind the thoughts themselves, yet when one asks where is 'I', it's hard to say. It exists observing the world outside in the same way that 'I' observe the mad-man talking. Thomas Nagel describes this perspective as a 'view from nowhere', which is beautifully apt.
Singer talks about how our thinking voice fights with reality:
"Could it really be so hard to just let it rain when it rains and be sunny when it's sunny without complaining about it? Apparently the mind can't do it: Why did it have to rain today? It always rains when I don't want it to. It had all week to rain; it's just not fair."
Although our thoughts are untameable most of the time, it is possible to get the voice to say something. We can get it to say the alphabet or recite Latin vocabulary. When I force it to say ABC… the voice stops saying anything else! It quiets! It can actively say anything I want it to, but if i' tired when I am not concentrating, I forget the subject/object separation. It forms part of me, and those thoughts begin to feel like me (of course, they are not). I slip into identifying with uncontrolled thoughts.
Some forms of meditation (which, frankly, I have always been wary of) encourage the meditator to repeat a mantra using this internal dialogue. Following reading Singer, I suddenly realise the power of this practice. When repeating a mantra, one gets the voice to say nonsense again and again. Why?! It reinforces the subject/object relationship. The practice shines a light on the gap between 'I' in the seat of awareness. Thoughts are an object in our minds. It reminds us that the thoughts are not 'me’—they are a racket we have no control over.
Again, meditating with a mantra practices the subject/object mentality. When we feel overwhelmed by the cyclone of our thoughts, it becomes easier to not identify with the raging storm! We see the thoughts for what they are: uncontrolled and unwelcome guests.
A couple of years ago, I watched the following video: Transcendental meditation for scroungers. I love it. After watching the clip, I invented a mantra (just made it up!), and it's stuck with me broadly unpracticed. This week, with a new marginally altered perspective, I now am making time to settle the mind from the internal dialogue and reminding myself 'I' am not the thoughts, but I am the view from nowhere that looks past them and out into the world. The mantra is the same as years ago, but the experience is radically different.
Now, I may not be meditating in a week, but this week has been enjoyable, so I thought I'd let you know why! Here's a brightly dressed man talking about the practice.
From the YouTube comments, which I think is helpful:
What irks me about TM is that you still have to be cognitive about the rhythm and tempo of the mantra. I have found "So Ham" meditation, which is nearly identical to TM, to be quite effective (a few times I experienced extraordinary bliss by the end of the meditation). So Ham is very similar, except that the mantra is synchronised to your breathing. "So" is in sync with the inhalation and "Ham" with the exhalation. Don't think about your breathing, just breathe naturally through your nose. Since breathing in itself is a very natural process the mantra will also flow more naturally and further alleviate your mind. "So Ham" does have a meaning, but personally I believe that whether the mantra has meaning or not doesn't matter.
My week in books 📘
The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer
Have a wonderful week,
Hector