going Deeper
In my experience most people who start practicing meditation find it, at first, to be an unusual or unnatural experience. Asked to sit still and pay attention to our breath repeatedly, most of us will formulate some version of the thought,
“Why would I do this?” and after a little while,
“Why would I keep doing this?”
It feels like an artificial, contrived activity.
“I don’t want to do this anymore. What’s the point? I could be doing something productive, or enjoyable. On top of it, I’m no good at this. I can’t do it.”
If it were a TV show, we would change the channel; a conversation at a party, we would move along; a concert, we would leave at the intermission, and maybe never buy a ticket for the band or orchestra or singer again; a website, we would bounce. I have indeed seen people leap up very early in the proceedings and leave for good. One guy stormed out, proclaiming,
“This shit is stooopid.”
In point of fact, we are not wrong about the strangeness. The standard instruction for mindfulness meditation is artificial. It’s an artifice, a technique to gradually—or possibly in a sudden flash—bring us down into where we are. Paying attention to our breath is pointless and unproductive, and yet that is the very point.
We need to be tricked into not escaping from where we are. We like to have tasks, so when given the task
