{"id":5494,"date":"2015-11-04T08:13:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T13:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=5494"},"modified":"2015-11-04T08:13:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T13:13:25","slug":"the-meditation-as-conversation-sutras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/the-meditation-as-conversation-sutras\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meditation-as-Conversation Sutras"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

It was impossible to get a conversation going. Everybody was talking too much. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 Yogi Berra<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A while back I posted this article<\/a> about meditation. It suggested that if we think of meditation as an internal conversation, we can stop wondering about the best techniques or the true self or ultimate states, and start asking about what kinds of conversations are useful, and what good conversations feel like. I argued that the tension between our private practice and our social reality might be softened if we model our internal dialogues upon what we desire from our relationships.<\/p>\n

But the article was terribly long, and terribly long articles can feel like one-sided conversations. So I thought this shorter and (I hope) more conversational version might help. It\u2019s still in beta mode.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Who told you that you wanted to meditate?<\/li>\n
  2. Why did you believe them?<\/li>\n
  3. Did you tell yourself? Where did that voice come from? Where do any voices come from? Would meditation help you find out?<\/li>\n
  4. You\u2019ve heard a voice that advises meditation. You start to wonder what meditation is, and how you would go about doing it, and what it would be like. But how do you know that you\u2019re not meditating already?<\/li>\n
  5. If the idea that it would be good for you to meditate came from a book, or a friend, or a teacher, or even this post, did it make you feel anxious? Hopeful? Both?<\/li>\n
  6. It seems that there are always voices asking you to do something.<\/li>\n
  7. They seem to come from the past, from parents and teachers, priests and nuns, bullies and senators, people you idolized, characters in books and commercials on TV.<\/li>\n
  8. The voices enter, and bounce around inside, echoing. They congeal into parts of ourselves that inspire, make demands, tell jokes, distract, criticize, threaten, or punish.<\/li>\n
  9. In time we come to think of them as our own. Although it might be more true to say that these voices own us. This is part of the problem that meditation might help resolve.<\/li>\n
  10. There\u2019s an old yoga book that calls these voices \u201cfluctuations\u201d, and suggests that if we can pause them through meditation, their momentum will slow down and eventually stop.<\/li>\n
  11. The old book says that focusing on a single thing, regardless of what it is, is a path towards this stillness. It says you can try focusing on your breath or a sound or an idea of God. The book doesn\u2019t care about your preferred content.<\/li>\n
  12. The book says that somehow focusing on a single thing will narrow the voices down until all that\u2019s left is a silent listener.<\/li>\n
  13. What happens after this silent stillness falls isn\u2019t clear, since it seems like human life is defined by an endless conversation with others and with ourselves \u2013 and with the others inside ourselves, the others that have become ourselves.<\/li>\n
  14. Perhaps the complete silence and stillness described in the old book and many other meditation traditions is a way of making death tolerable or even attractive.<\/li>\n
  15. In any case, meditation would seem to begin with listening to all the voices.<\/li>\n
  16. But that would mean that we\u2019re always already meditating. That can\u2019t be right.<\/li>\n
  17. Maybe it\u2019s about listening to all of the voices, and not reacting to them.<\/li>\n
  18. But is that possible? Isn\u2019t listening an act of dialogue? If you don\u2019t listen to your inner voices, don\u2019t they just start shouting? It would be nice if the shouting stopped.<\/li>\n
  19. The inner listener, no matter how non-reactive, is always feeling something. That feeling is a response.<\/li>\n
  20. All voices that impact you, that you remember, that you love or hate \u2013 they\u2019re all in there, echoing and blending as parts of the self.<\/li>\n
  21. A voice emerges\u00a0because it wants to be heard.<\/li>\n
  22. It is out of this chorus of external\/internal voices that thoughts about meditation arise.<\/li>\n
  23. If you hear a thought about meditation, it is already part of the internal conversation that meditation is meant to listen to.<\/li>\n
  24. This is ironically true for meditation instructions. Meditation instructions cue the meditation process, before they even tell you how to meditate.<\/li>\n
  25. You might know this is happening if the instructions make you feel inadequate.<\/li>\n
  26. It doesn\u2019t matter if the instructions come from Tibet, India, Thailand, Bali, Japan, or Cleveland.<\/li>\n
  27. It doesn\u2019t matter if the wisdom comes from Dr. Seuss: \u201cToday you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.\u201d<\/li>\n
  28. It doesn\u2019t matter if the instructions tell you to watch your breath, visualize yourself with four heads, or imagine that you\u2019re in love with all of humanity.<\/li>\n
  29. The voices you hate, voices that oppress you or that want to discipline you or change you \u2013 even these voices can show up to give you meditation instructions.<\/li>\n
  30. The thing that unifies all instructions is that they are instructions. They suggest that you do something.<\/li>\n
  31. From wherever it comes and however you hear it, the first thing that happens with a meditation instruction is that it confronts the listening self with the idea that the listening self should change.<\/li>\n
  32. The meditation instruction, therefore, provokes a simple tension that could become the first object of meditation, if we pay attention.<\/li>\n
  33. So let\u2019s say the meditation instruction asks you to meditate on the sound of a mantra. But before you even get to the mantra, you must navigate the feeling of needing to do something.<\/li>\n
  34. How that feeling unfolds is the starting point of meditation and will likely influence the sound and meaning of that mantra.<\/li>\n
  35. Jason Siff says, \u201cThe tension between the meditation instructions you use<\/em> and your mind as it is<\/em> in meditation leads to tightening or loosening around the instructions.” He goes on to suggest that this tightness or looseness in regard to the instructions determines the general flow of the meditation.<\/li>\n
  36. So really, we\u2019re talking about encountering an external voice that says You should meditate like this<\/em>, or an internal voice that says I should meditate like this<\/em>, and then seeing how the listening part of you responds in any given moment.<\/li>\n
  37. So really, we\u2019re talking about a conversation. Getting good at meditation \u2013 if that\u2019s a worthy goal \u2013 may be about becoming a better conversationalist.<\/li>\n
  38. A good conversationalist knows that no single voice is more important than any other.<\/li>\n
  39. Oscar Wilde said: \u201cConversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.\u201d<\/li>\n
  40. This would seem to contradict traditional advice about cultivating \u201csingle-pointed concentration\u201d, unless the focus of that concentration was the quality of conversation, and not its content.<\/li>\n
  41. A meditation\/conversation could be about God or your breath or social justice or particle physics. What matters is what that conversation feels like,<\/em> how open and receptive the conversants are with each other.<\/li>\n
  42. The more open and receptive your internal conversation becomes, the more integrated you may feel.<\/li>\n
  43. Some traditions say that this is the whole point.<\/li>\n
  44. But there are some traditions or interpretations that are so interested in helping you find the One True Voice inside you that they advocate one-sided conversation.<\/li>\n
  45. A good conversation is never forced. If one voice doesn\u2019t want to be in conversation after several attempts, there\u2019s no point in them staying. This is really important for people who feel immediately claustrophobic in meditation.<\/li>\n
  46. For some people, the pitch of internal voices is so acute that trying to allow them to converse is retraumatizing. It might be much better to go swimming, and let the breath rate converse with the heart rate.<\/li>\n
  47. A good conversation doesn\u2019t involve invasive eye contact. Or platitudes.<\/li>\n
  48. It doesn\u2019t pursue conflict, nor does it expect agreement. It\u2019s just happy to be there, learning.<\/li>\n
  49. Fritz Perls\u2019 Gestalt Prayer applies nicely to internal voices: \u201cYou are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.\u201d<\/li>\n
  50. There are too many instructions about physical posture in meditation to cover here. They\u2019re useful to the extent that they allow you to feel like you\u2019re sitting with a friend.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    With bows to the insights of Jason Siff<\/a>, and the research of Bruce Hood<\/a> and Willoughby Britton<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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