How to Meditate

I am no teacher.  All I can tell you is how I meditate and what it has done for me.  Anything else would be a shocking arrogance.

It is very, very easy indeed. There is little if anything to learn. It is merely a practice which, if followed diligently, regularly and frequently has led many people throughout human history to experience a deep peace and to embrace a certain way of life. 

Some would make extravagant claims of experiencing their god or the paranormal or some other universe. I make no such claims.  My practice has merely made me see this universe in a different light.  It has made me appreciate reality.

I believe that meditation shows a way of life which, if practiced by more of us, could lead to a world in peace. Rather than one in endless conflict.

My first step was to write a list of my goals.  What would I like to achieve in my practice.  How did I wish to become.

It all started for me with self hypnosis, which, in retrospect, is identical to meditation. Perhaps the difference is that self hypnosis tends to be more obviously goal oriented, although meditation can be used in an identical fashion to achieve very similar aims.

Here is how my teacher began.  Write, he told me, what you want to achieve on a page of A4.  Each paragraph should contain a separate end, its own goal.

Then, summarize each paragraph into a single word which best describes the aim you have chosen for that paragraph.

End up with 5 or 6 separate words and then choose a further and final word which summarises and describes all these separate (but related) goals in a single word.

Eh voilà – you have your “mantra”.

Perhaps you seek emptiness (in the Buddhist sense). Perhaps your six words might be something like:

• Joy
• Safety
• Gratitude
• Courage
• Right Mindedness

And perhaps the single word you choose to encompass all of these objectives is:

Peace

You will find much has been written about the power of changing your own mind (and hence your life) by the endless repetition of your goals.  How ridiculous that sounds, but I have found it to be profoundly true.

By choosing a single word, you make life easy for yourself. You only have to remember a single word, not an entire list. The flow of your meditation might work better that way, although I frequently find myself repeating all of my separate goals as well at different points in my meditation.

Who knows what might work best for you?

I do at least an hour of “sitting” meditation each day, sometimes more. But when I began my current bout of serious practice, I did short periods of 10 or 15 minutes, two or three times a day, and then worked upwards from that. Maybe that’s all you need, but the more I got into it, the more benefit I got and the more I felt inclined to practice, and for longer periods.

What is “sitting” meditation? Just what it says – sitting down while you meditate rather than meditating while you exercise or travel on the bus. And oh what a great fuss is made about the “sitting”. You must sit cross legged on the ground, you must have your hands and your fingers configured this way or that. In a word, nonsense. I have found it best to be completely comfortable and not to ape a Tibetan monk. I’m happiest sitting propped up in bed first thing in the morning, with a couple of pillows at my back and my head leaning against the wall. Just do what works best for you. Sometimes I meditate lying down on a grassy bank under a shady tree in Battersea Park, having scooted from Fulham on my push scooter. Sometimes I sit on the sofa in the kitchen or the drawing room, sometimes on my favourite pink armchair in my gloriously studious and old fashioned study, surrounded by treasured books and pictures.

Feel your way forward. Don’t listen to a lot of bossy, pretentious nonsense handed out by people who have probably never practiced anyway, but are trying to promote their YouTube guru ratings.

As it happens, I start off by remaining profoundly still for a few minutes and simply relaxing, feeling my breath coming in and going out again. Nothing fancy then, and no more to it than that.

Then I usually use a self hypnosis technique but that is certainly not a necessity. You can just sit there, continue to relax and let your mind drift, and repeat your mantra now and then as you keep returning to following your breath. The point is not to struggle and not to worry. Not to have grandiose expectations. To realise that you can not get it “wrong”.

My self hypnosis technique is utterly simple. Again, you can read book after book about self hypnosis and end up chasing your own tail, none the wiser. Confused and agitated and worried. Don’t. When I am relaxed enough I tell myself I can not open my eyes and I try. Could I? Well yes of course but initially the pretence is what matters. Then I count down from 100 and on each count tell myself I am becoming more relaxed, and that is just what happens. I do become more relaxed and eventually the numbers just disappear of their own accord.

And I’m following my breath all the time. And then from time to time I repeat my “mantra”. What about the intrusive thoughts that crowd into your mind and seem to destroy the very purpose of your practice? Just notice them but above all don’t worry about them. Don’t fret, don’t imagine you are failing if the thoughts keep on coming back. Notice them and pass on. Keep on breathing and noticing your breath, keep on muttering your mantra in your mind. Eventually my experience is that everything just falls into place. After enough practice, your meditation resolves into peace and time doesn’t really seem to pass anymore. I seem to go through periods of simply no thought and periods where images or feelings or emotions come into my mind. Sometimes these are really quite unusual but in my own case at least, never alarming or unpleasant. Or very rarely.

There are times when I feel agitated or wound up – but it is very rare that eventually I do not settle down and pass into that state where none of it seems to matter.

If I were to wax lyrical I would tell you (and truthfully) that for me my periods of deep meditation make the world a different and better place for me. I see through a barrier, I see behind the curtain and with an enormous sense of relief and gratitude I recognise Trump and everything else that I find unpleasant and irritating (Elon, greed, violence) are a total irrelevance.

I see very clearly my own behaviour and determine to better it. I see my “work” and realise how I love tinkering with algorithms (even if they don’t always make money). I see that others are different and that I must respect that. I see how fiddling around playing the piano badly is important to me.

Some will claim to be “enlightened”, to have had an epiphany, to have seen their god. Well, good for them. All I claim is that I have found peace, and believe me, that is enough.

Above all the important point is to persevere. Not to give up. Not to assume that just because you haven’t seen god or the Buddha in person that you have failed. There is no failure. What I can say is that day by day my experience becomes more profound and my peace deeper.

This is where it all becomes rather hard to describe; this is where it becomes a temptation to exaggerate, to fantasise, to claim special insight, to pretend nutty and esoteric powers. To turn into some mad old guru sitting on a stage and preaching. Although I suspect such people are really after the money from their deluded flock.

No, I claim none of that. What I do claim is that it has become increasingly easy to recover after I have suffered some upset, some imbalance. What I do notice is that I tend to think before I speak. That I do my best not to judge or criticise or provoke. Its hard to imagine peace within without become more peaceable in one’s outward behaviour.

And again, I’m not claiming any special goodness (let alone special powers). I’m just saying that I am very much surer within myself and very much less inclined to get upset about anything external to myself.

What I will claim is “pleasure” , or should I describe that as an “absence of suffering” like a good Buddhist? Pleasure sounds a bit too crude and some synonyms my explain my position a little better. I increasingly feel joy – hitherto more noticeable in my life by its absence that its presence. Satisfaction, fulfilment, contentment. And lastly and perhaps most importantly, peace.

All of that I can claim with a very straight face and no exaggeration whatsoever. So if I were to have the temerity to offer advice it would be simply: plug on, I believe it will happen for you if you just plug on day by day. If you just practice and fall into it. If you just begin to enjoy it and not worry about where you are going and where if anywhere your mediation will lead you. Don’t give up – look at me, and I’m the least likely candidate for success you can possibly imagine.

But as ever, I witter, I ramble and haven’t even begun on what I call meditation through exercise. Which again I practice every day.

I’ve never tried yoga but I can imagine it’s wonderful. But I did stumble into slow Pilates and I imagine the effect is very similar. If there is a place and time I could claim “visions” it is on my exercise mat. But I don’t claim any special insight or powers – its just that through this technique I sense overwhelming peace (even stronger if anything than through sitting meditation). And I do have feelings which are very unusual, images, memories, qualia. I think I’ll leave it at that. I imagine this comes to most who practice for long enough but again, its probably best just to let it come. Don’t chase it, don’t get disappointed if at first it doesn’t happen. I suspect that eventually, its highly likely to happen for most people who trog along the trail diligently enough and for long enough. A treat in store perhaps but maybe not the goal in or of itself. I really couldn’t say.

But back to Pilates. I have to emphasise slowness because that’s the way the best feelings seem to come. To me at least. Probably the chemicals, but who cares and what does it matter anyway? But here is where the slowness happens. I do each of my chosen Pilates exercises slowly with many repetitions and then I simply lie back on the mat and let my mind drift, or repeat my mantra perhaps. I might spend many minutes this sway – just lying there in silence. For example one exercise is to lie on my back and to raise one straight leg up and then back down to the mat. I may do that for 50 to 100 times with the same leg without stopping or resting. At first I could only manage 5 to 10 repetitions but no matter, the after effect if anything was even stronger while my muscles were building strength.

After each exercise, lying back on the mat, I am flooded with what I can only describe as ecstasy. So I might spend an hour or even two exercising slowly and by the end of it I am in a state of, well, peace I guess is the best way to describe it. The whole world just seems a different and better place and I most certainly feel a different person.

Does this happen for everybody and if so to what extent? I have no idea – try it and see. But again, keep at it, keep experimenting. Don’t fret and struggle and get disappointed.

And so there we are. The gospel according to an aging eccentric who has emerged over a period of several years and a state of Stygian gloom into something or someone for whom life seems a great deal better than it did.

While I may not have discovered the Philosopher’s stone or the ultimate secret of the universe, I have at least reached a stage where I am mostly comfortable in my own skin and with an unshakeable certainty as to what makes for a good or bad world. What makes for happiness and what makes for misery.

Take me as you find me. Ignore me or reckon perhaps there may be some value in what I have to say. I won’t mind either way. But if anything I do or say is of any benefit to you, then I will be very glad of that, and it will make my endless scribbling worthwhile.