Reluctantly getting into mindfulness
Getting comfy with raisins, Sam Harris, and conscious presentness
–Good empirical claims. False.
One of my first encounters with Sam Harris was in this confrontation by the field anthropologist Scott Atran during the Beyond Belief panel about (religious) terrorism. At the time, and probably still, my academic inclinations was to listen to the person that actually has studied terrorist cells at close hold. Harris’ take on religion was too focused on belief and dogmatism as core features, missing a lot of the complexities one needs to face whenever one wants to draw causality between religion and something else.
Now, I’ve downloaded Harris in an app, and every day I’m letting him silently instruct me to pay attention to my breath, promising great insights.
During my years at the department for the study of religions, I studied new religious movements and the concept of spirituality. I was interested in definitions and how we approach central terms in academic research. I traced the term “spirituality” from Hebrew through Catholic history to modern use. I did folk-taxonomy fieldwork at one of the largest alternative faires in Norway. I read how “spirituality” was used in psychology and nursing studies, and argued about it in peer-reviewed journals. I read post-colonial theory that criticized Western appropriation of Indian, and Eastern practices and thoughts into a commodified package void of Buddhist trappings.1
Mindfulness had also become somewhat of an academic trend within psychology with claims of being able to work for pretty much anything that might ail us. One should always be wary of relying too much on promises made in an emerging study, especially when it seems to offer a cure to all. Good empirical claims, and all that.
I remember trying the raisin exercise and found it all too cheesy and cringe-worthy. It didn’t help my mindfulness at all. And I didn’t identify with the people I recognized as interested in meditation and self-help activities. It wasn’t for me.
Last week, I installed Waking Up on my iPhone, signed by Sam Harris. I’ve done a lesson every day. I will keep doing it. So, what happened? Well, depression happened.
(Un)binging on your stream of consciousness
We all are swimming through thoughts and emotions. And we get hooked. And sometimes we end up in patterns that bring us further from where we want to be or who we want to be. For me, depression eats my intentionality. I find myself mostly reacting to my surroundings, and often with negative feelings (or no feeling at all). I’m easily hooked and led into a narrow thought pattern. There is little clarity. I don’t give myself choices. And these are self-enforcing patterns.
So I need to be able to stop and remind myself of who I am, who I want to be, and what choices I need to make in order to get more of what I want from life. That’s where meditation or mindfulness practices come in handy. Maybe.
You start by noticing. More specifically, you start by noticing your physical body. Feel your feet on the ground, or try to notice the sensation where your hands touch a surface. Or notice your breath and how it is to exhale, without making the effort to breathe. Notice how hard it is to stay focused on noticing.
I nodded off twice in the second lesson.
But, I felt less stressed and calmer afterward. I felt more in control over my own actions and thoughts. I’m not sure it’s only because I meditated, it might also be because I had chosen to meditate and went through with it.
But that’s something that a lot of psychiatric therapy is about: Reclaiming your agency.
Breaking your own fourth wall
There’s some commonality between exercises you do in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy2 (CBT) and meditation. You are asked to start observing yourself without judgment. You are letting thoughts and emotions be just thoughts and emotions. You are trying to realize that there is no past or future, only a present. You are trying to accept whatever emotion or feeling you have, even if they are bad or hurting. Because being OK by feeling bad is better than feeling bad about feeling bad.
I’m not expecting Mindfulness and mediation to “cure” my depression. It’s just another set of tools and practices that I can use in order to sidestep destructive automatic thoughts and habits. There’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to restoring relationships, develop my emotional language, get enough sleep, rest, and physical exercise, and prioritize whatever creates meaning in life.
But all of these things that we want to do and get better at require that we’re making conscious decisions. And it certainly helps to be able to observe yourself non-judgementally and make a decision based on what you want from life.
If you’re like me, you might need to get past the branding of Mindfulness, or your prejudices against “people who meditate.” I know that I might fall straight into the stereotype of a Bay-area startup tech-guy who turns spiritual practices into a way to be a more productive contributor to capitalism, but I have stopped caring.
Instead, I’ve started facing the camera to ask if whatever I’m doing is what I want to be doing. And sometimes, that happens after I’ve sat comfortably for 10 minutes, situated my body in physical space, felt where my skin ends and where the universe starts and tried to sidestep all the worry, plans, decisions, and stray thoughts that might float by.
Have you tried meditation or Mindfulness? How did you find it? Or do you have hesitations? What are they? Do share your thoughts in the comment section below, or feel free to send me an email about it. I’d love to hear your story.
And if you found this post useful, do share it with a friend or someone you know.
Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (Carrette & King) is an example of one of these critiques.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a range of practices and has become widespread in the 2000s. It’s not very occupied by tracing your thought patterns to your childhood or finding meaning with your thinking. It focuses on making you able to intervene in the triad between thoughts, feelings, and behavior.