Mirror Mirror
Do you fear your mirror? Do the reflections illumine and reveal? Or do you worry about what you will find there?
Practicing meditation is like looking in a mirror. Meditation practice reflects you, your mind, your heart, and your experiences. Taking an upright and awake posture and focusing your attention on an object such as the breath is like standing in front of a mirror. The techniques of the practice, the posture, how you hold your attention, how you notice distraction and returning your attention to the object: these become the mirror.
My first teacher told me to focus my attention on breathing. “Notice when your attention drifts and comes back to the breath,” he said. “Everything other than the breath is a distraction.” With this simple instruction, I found myself face-to-face with my personal mirror. Thoughts flowed by and pulled my attention away from the breath. All those thoughts belonged to me. Some thoughts were noble. Most were mundane and forgettable. I call these my cheeseburger thoughts. Over and over, I fretted about the next meal in the meditation center. I let go of the focus on my breath to hold on to worry about lunch, snack, or dinner. Some of my thoughts were frightening. These reflections in the mirror were unthinkable and intrusive. Did I really want to hurt that person? How much time would I choose to spend away from the breath thinking about getting even?
“They are just thoughts,” my teacher told me. “They are like clouds passing by in the sky. Let them come and go. Bring your attention back to the breath.”
Even more appeared in my mirror. Now an entire spectrum of emotions, memories, physical sensations, and impulses rose to greet my attention. It was as if the mirror challenged me. “If your thoughts do not capture your attention, try this. Fear. Anger. Passion. Desire. Love. Sympathy. Sadness. Joy. Will any of these make you forget the mirror? Do any of these carry you away?” I spent many meditation sessions remembering a red tricycle I cherished when I was five years old. Other sessions filled with the fears and angers evoked by past hurts. Looking into the mirror of meditation practice, I fell in love, had passionate affairs, and fell out of love without moving an inch externally. But internally, my attention was far, far away from the mirror.
My legs hurt from hours of sitting. My back grew stiff. Yet when the bell rang for a break, all those pains dissolved away. Sometimes I wanted to run away. Other times, I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything but look into the mirror.
One brilliant thing about mirrors is that they are impartial. A mirror reflects a flower and a dirty coffee cup equally. There isn’t any strategy or choice about the mirror’s reflection. It simply and directly shows what’s there.
Meditation shares this reflective quality. Sit and focus and you will encounter yourself. This encounter is one of the principal reasons many meditators give up. You tell yourself meditation is too hard. It is no more difficult than looking in a mirror. You think that only special people can do this. Not true! Over the centuries, thousands of regular people have mastered this practice. You rationalize. “I’m not ready for this. I’ll meditate in some imagined future. Then I’ll be ready.”
You can waste an entire lifetime evading the mirror with excuses and stories. Or you can choose to look within, choose to look in the mirror. Meditation practice emerges as a journey to becoming more human. Nothing truly changes and nothing really grows until you are ready to see your reflection.
Here’s some encouraging news. Eventually, everyone finds the goodness of their own sky-like heart-mind in the mirror. Thoughts, emotions, body sensations, memories, and impulses float by. Beyond all this, the brightness of the mirror reflects your personal sky.
You can’t know that the mirror will reveal your own goodness until you try. Trust just enough to begin. An experienced guide can help, but the journey and discoveries are yours.
An ancient set of meditation teachings called the 9 stages of Calm Abiding offers a guide to mastering this experience. The 9 stages path is based on the experience of thousands of meditators, and takes ten weeks to master. I’m happy to announce Meditation is Freedom, a new online training on how to master the 9 stages, calm your distracted mind, and gain focus.
Like any other skill, mastering meditation requires practice. We will practice together for 30 minutes a day for 10 weeks. Do you have the desire, commitment, and grit to master this skill?
Meditation Is Freedom has a plan, a goal, and a guarantee.
The plan is to master the skills of Calm Abiding meditation within 10 weeks.
The goal is to gain a calm and clear focus that allows you to bring order to your experience of awareness.
The guarantee: if you participate and practice for 10 weeks + you are not satisfied, Meditation Is Freedom is so confident that this works that we will refund your full training fee.
