A Most Valuable Skill

Le Petit Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

To us westerners, true meditation is an alien concept.

What meditation tells us about our brains is akin to what Copernicus told the world 500 years ago - the earth moves around the sun (instead of the sun moving around the earth). Very few believed him and others just thought he was on a bad acid trip. Why was it so hard to believe? Because no one could feel the earth moving, duh. But now we know the truth. This big ball of rock we're sitting on is hurtling through space at over 67,000 mph and rotating at 1,000 mph. And so are we. You may not know what 1,000 mph feels like, but I bet you could imagine it. Take a second, look away from your computer screen, and.imagine everything around you going 1,000 mph in one direction. You probably imagined all your shit getting slammed into a wall of your room, right? It's hard to accept that we're moving that fast, but we've been conditioned to the idea since infancy, so we accept it. I won't even bother with the 67k. The point is, it's extremely difficult to separate what we feel from actual fact if we have not been conditioned to it.

In order to understand meditation, we have to accept something we have not been conditioned to feel. Give some thought to the following cause and effect scenarios:

• If our 40" plasma TV gets knocked over and breaks, we get angry. 
• If our significant other calls and says, "I want to do something special for you tonight," we get excited. 
• If we're arriving late to watch our favorite show or to the Twilight premiere, we get anxious (I did). 
• If our college of choice admits us into their program, we get overjoyed. 
• If our best friend lies to us, we become mistrustful.

Anger, excitement, anxiety, joy, mistrust, and every other thought and emotion wield a profound influence on our moods, decisions, and behaviors. For example, say you're already pissed off because your dog took a shit on your white carpet. You cleaned and scrubbed it to death, but a little brownish stain remains. You are now predisposed to react more harshly to otherwise trivial issues throughout the day, like if your friend forgets you don't like butter on your popcorn and adds it by accident. All the responses listed above are quite normal, expected, and most importantly, automatic. But what's really happening here? We are being controlled by external factors. Emotions, involuntary thoughts, and bodily sensations are all external factors that induce near automatic responses in us. This weird phenomenon restricts us to remaining positive only as long as the outside world is smiling upon us. Check this:

"I'm having a really bad day."

     "Oh no, really? Why, what happened?"

"I ordered the wrong automatic espresso cups for our coffee machine."

     "Oh no! That sucks! Did the boss get pissed at you?"

"Yeah, he's so angry, and on top of that, the dry cleaners ruined my black shirt. Damnit!"

     "Well, how about I treat you to Starbucks after work? That'll cheer you up!"

"Wow, that sounds great, thanks, you're such a great friend!"

We are on an invisible leash that's tugged by our emotions and our thoughts. Wherever they tug, we go. They tug towards positive, we get happy. They tug towards negative, we get sad or angry. We are, essentially, fully reactive, and therefore, controlled by external stimuli provoking the same automatic reactions out of us over and over again. Our "true selves" are merely riders in the rollercoaster of reactivity while someone or something else pulls the levers. Here is where Copernicus fits in. We can't "feel" that we're being controlled, but meditators know that we are and psychologists have proven that we are. We do not have control. You do not have control. For real. I ain't lying.

Did you have a strong reaction to this last paragraph? Then smile for the rollercoaster photo.

Riding the Rollercoaster of Reactivity

You may see where this is going. Meditation separates the self from external and involuntary stimuli. It allows us to see emotions and thoughts at a distance, as they attempt to exert their mighty influence on our vulnerable selves. Once we see them for what they truly are - external stimuli that our self latches onto - we can successfully decide whether or not to react to them and to what degree. I've oversimplified the process but please consider that these concepts are quite complex and extremely difficult to attain in practice. I walked out of my first day of meditation. The mental exercises were ridiculously difficult, stupid, and useless. I fell asleep numerous times over and over in the beginning, drooled a little even, but it all clicked in the end.

There are more benefits derived from being able to consciously separate the self from involuntary stimuli than my fingers care to type. From increased compassion, to increased happiness, greater stability, better relationships, more authentic decision-making, longer life, stronger immune system, the list goes on and on. It probably cures erectile dysfunction and enlarges breasts too, but those are still under scrupulous peer review I've heard...

If simple "relaxation" could do all of this, I would spend my life on a hammock by the beach with barrels of pina colada and a constant supply stream of (medical) marijuana from Jamaica. I would probably be writing this post from that very hammock in Jamaica.

As a final note: Meditation has nothing to do (except a shared history) with religion - buddhism, hinduism, or otherwise. These religions have adopted it as part of their routines and we now associate the two accordingly. Meditation is simply a skill or a tool. I've been a secularist for years and had absolutely no problems detaching religion and the supernatural from meditation. I would even argue that detaching the two is ideal.

There's much more to this skill than what I've discussed, and there are numerous studies of its effects on the brain and well-being. For example, some studies found that meditation actually adds mass to the brain... WHAT! Yea, crazy right? Anyway, the research is still very recent, with more publications and experiments yet to come I'm sure. If you're interested, I highly suggest you check out some of these links, you hippies.

Meditator Brain Analysis

     How Meditation Reshapes the Brain (Big Think)
     Buddha on the Brain (Wired Magazine) 
     Just Say Om (Time Magazine)
     Short-term Meditation Induces White Matter Changes in the Brain (scientific)
     Mindfulness Meditation Reveals Distinct Neural Modes of Self Reference (scientific)