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Why are You So Sure You Can't Meditate? · Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: And welcome back to season two of Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in this season two, episode two, why are you so sure you can't meditate?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Before we can talk about what meditation is, we have to clear away what it isn't.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot to clear away.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the strange thing about the myths of meditation.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody told them to you on purpose.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's no conspiracy.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: They came from pictures.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: The monk on the mountainside, the magazine cover with the woman on the beach, legs crossed, eyes closed, face serene, not a thought in her head.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have absorbed those pictures the way we absorb everything.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we did it without ever deciding to.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, they became the definition of meditation.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when your experience doesn't match the picture, you don't conclude the picture was incomplete.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You conclude that something was wrong with you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And those myths do more damage than any actual difficulty in the practice.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: The practice itself is not that hard.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's the myths, it's what the myths are that defeat people.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's usually within the first week.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take them one at a time.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: The first, the biggest, is you must clear your mind.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: If I could remove only one belief from every person who wants to learn meditation, it would be this one.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the truth: you cannot clear your mind.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Neither can I.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Neither can anyone.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: The mind produces thoughts the way the heart produces beats.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's its job.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And asking your mind to stop thinking is like asking your ears to stop hearing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've been meditating for most of my life.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I still have thoughts when I meditate.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every single time.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: An old conversation shows up.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: A to-do list disappears.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some song I haven't heard in 30 years, maybe, and it usually is one I didn't even like the first time.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what changed after all those years if the thoughts never stopped?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was my relationship to them that changed.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the entire skill.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Try picturing it this way.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your thoughts are like leaves floating down a stream.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Before you learn to meditate, you're in the water with those leaves.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every leaf that comes by, you grab it, you climb on it, you ride it down the stream, and 20 minutes later, you look up and wonder how you got there.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Meditation doesn't stop the leaves.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Meditation moves you to the bank.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: You sit on the bank, and the leaves keep coming, and you watch them go by.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you forget yourself and you jump back in.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone does.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the practice is simply noticing that you got wet and climbed back out onto the bank.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the part almost nobody tells beginners.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The noticing is the meditation.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: That moment when you realize your mind wandered off.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Most people count it as failure.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a win.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: A session where your mind wandered 40 times and you noticed 40 times wasn't a bad session.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was 40 successful repetitions.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't fail at meditation because you had thoughts.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: You had thoughts because you have a mind.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the club.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a large club.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's the myth that you need an hour a day.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now this one is sneaky because it disguises itself as respect.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: An hour sounds serious.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else feels like you're not really doing it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you what happens over and over.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Someone gets inspired.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: They commit to a full hour every morning.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Day one, they feel wonderful.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Day four, they're negotiating with the alarm clock.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: By day ten, they've probably quit.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And now they carry a new piece of evidence that meditation isn't for them.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, I know people whose entire practice is five minutes with their morning coffee before the house even wakes up.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Five minutes nearly every day for years.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And their lives show it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Consistency always beats duration.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even close.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Five minutes a day, most days, will change you in ways that an hour, once a week, never will.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because daily practice trains a reflex.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And reflexes are built by frequency, not by intensity.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Start smaller than you think you should.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can always grow a practice.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's much harder to resurrect one.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's another myth to tell you about, and that meditation is religious.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you might expect a man with a swami in front of his name to be the last person to knock this down.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: But my spiritual life and my practice are deeply connected.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I make no secret of that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: But attention has no denomination.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: What the techniques train is the capacity to reset your attention on something and notice when it wanders, which is not a belief.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's human function, like balance or memory.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if meditation deepens your spiritual life, wonderful.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you have no spiritual life and no interest in one, meditation is still fully available to you, and all of its benefits come intact.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next myth is that meditation is escapism.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the one that usually comes from the skeptics.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: The charge will go like this: the world has real problems.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your life has real problems.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And sitting there with your eyes closed is a fancy way of hiding from them.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it has the practice exactly backwards.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us spend our days escaping.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: These days, we escape into our phones, into the television, into busyness, into replaying the past and rehearsing the future anywhere, but here, but in the present.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: See, meditation, though, is the opposite of escape.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the practice of turning around and looking directly at what's here.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: The restlessness, the worry, the boredom, or the grief.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get still, all of it still comes up to meet you.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who has actually meditated through a hard time will tell you it's not a hiding place.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some days it's the most honest 10 minutes of your day.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to end with the myth I find saddest of all, because it disqualifies exactly the people who would benefit most.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The meditation is only for calm people.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it constantly.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm too high strung.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: My brain never shuts off.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me, meditation is not for people like me.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they all say it with total confidence, as if calmness were an entry requirement.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: But listen to the logic underneath it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's like saying the gym is only for people who are already in shape.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: The calm you see in longtime meditators isn't a prerequisite, it's a result.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Every calm meditator you've ever met started as someone with an unruly mind.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the only kind of person there is.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So take a step back and look at what we just cleared away.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to empty your mind.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to sit still like a statue.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need an hour, a religion, a calm disposition, or even a robe.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now notice what all these myths had in common.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of them measured you against a picture, and every one of them found you lacking.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: The myths always locate the problem in you.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now notice what's left when those myths are gone.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Something much simpler and much closer.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Attention resting on something and returning when it wanders.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's the seed of every technique and every tradition.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you've already done it.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've done it by a stream, over a coloring book, or in your garden.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: If your mind is loud, you are not disqualified.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: You are actually the target audience.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Join me next time for episode three of Meditate Right for your personality type, where we will discuss what is actually happening when you meditate.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, I'm Sawami Larry.