From Madness to Mindfulness

Back in the days when I thought meditating was sitting with your legs crossed, the soles of your feet aimed at the ceiling, your first finger and thumb touching in a cosmic, “ok” while chanting “ohm.” (which honestly seemed like a rather dreadful waste of time) I would put myself to sleep at night in a particular manner I much later found out to actually be a form of meditation. I got the impression the forced posture and chanting was meditating because in the 70’s, the glowy cube of infinite knowledge suggested such things through hypocritical prejudice against other cultures for the sake of amusement with no balance of real educational information about what the world is really about. Well, except for the Wild Kingdom, because that show could get pretty wild and often had me covering my eyes in terror… for a lot of different reasons, but I digress… Except not really.

I have mentioned before that I am not the best sleeper. In fact, I’m rather bad at it to the extent that when people tell me, “goodnight” I have to remember that they are not mocking me intentionally. This rivalry between sleep and I goes way back. Back to days when creatures blacker than night waited under my bed to reach out with their long slender arms to wrap around my limbs and pull me through the floor into the depths of hell through the access tunnel located in the darkest corner of our basement. Well, that is what my siblings told me it was, I’m pretty sure now that it was the hole for the sub-pump. Also, there was not one person in my family who shared my concern that there could be a mean monkey (baboon) in my closet. I needed to find a way to go to sleep at night and not worry my extremely sensitive self into a fit with my over active imagination so I developed this survival technique that is obviously, easy enough for a child to do.

Each night to get to bed, I would stand at the door taking my final breath of light, planning exactly where I had to step to avoid being sucked into the danger zones around the room. The closet, the window, the dark area on the far side of the chest of drawers, all had to be avoided while on my way to the only island of safety, my bed. Unfortunately, it happened to be perched precariously on top of the doorway to some God-forsaken abyss from which the grotesque and distorted henchmen of Satan regularly emerged to terrorize me. I had devised a way to walk across the dresser and leap into bed after turning the light out. This is not part of the meditation, by the way, and I don’t necessarily recommend it as a nightly ritual. Prayer, incense, and a glowing smart phone have proven to be safer and more effective way to face the long mile to my temporary resting place.

Lying on my back, I would start by taking long, deep, breaths while imagining breathing all the substance out of my body. Each inhalation vacuuming the dense particles from my body, then blowing those particles out into the universe. Starting at the tips of my toes, I work up my legs, up through my torso, up my arms, converging near my throat. I’m explaining this to you as an adult with some more complicated language about substance and particles than I understood at the time, but back then, in my little child head, I was making myself weightless and invisible.

I had to very specifically and intentionally focus my mind on this process. If I allowed stray thoughts about whatever misery had befallen me that day, the pain in my body… “What was that noise?” It would not only slow removing the matter from the area I was working on, but I could lose ground in other areas I had already cleared. The point was to get invisible before the evil lurking everywhere became aware that I was in the room, while completely ignoring any fear I had about what might happen if I was unsuccessful. Once I felt I had breathed enough of my substance out, to be sufficiently invisible to any malevolent room mates, my body was completely still and peaceful, no twitching, itching, or aching, like it wasn’t even there.

At this point, I found my consciousness rather stuck in a position somewhere beyond the back of my throat, which was rather boring. So, I walked up a spiral staircase, climbed through a trap door, and left my old life entirely behind to lie in a field of grass and stare into the vast dome of a clear starry sky and eventually drift into a dream of a different life free of fear where I was loved.

I discovered that breathing makes your body relax by accident one night when I nearly asphyxiated myself hiding under my blanket in 90 degree weather to protect myself from the bastards who’d besieged my room. Sweat was trickling down my neck, I felt dizzy, I was starting to get thirsty, and there was no way I was getting out of my bed to get a drink. In reckless abandon I threw back my covers, the thin shield that protected me, at least psychologically, from what dwell in the darkness. Although I was still in the stifling room with no breeze and 98% humidity, the air felt as fresh as spring winds off the Himalayas rushing over my body as I filled my lungs again and again with its life-giving essence.

By the time my elation at having discovered oxygen wore off, I found my body in a bliss full state of emptiness. Free from all the pains and worries of the day, I was not afraid of anything, I felt empty, quiet, peaceful, invisible, and therefore concluded that I must be and was not the least bit afraid that the goons in my room would get me. So I found a systematic way to achieve that state again by combining a thought process in my imagination and focused breathing.

Definition of MEDITATE
intransitive verb
1 : to engage in contemplation or reflection
2 : to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness
transitive verb
1 : to focus one’s thoughts on : reflect on or ponder over
2 : to plan or project in the mind : intend, purpose
— med·i·ta·tor noun

I became a meditator in order to survive, possibly not the way I thought at the time, but knowing what I know now, it helped me cope with the stress in my life and that is pretty important in terms of survival. I was bullied a lot at home and school, was often sick, and didn’t have the support system I needed to process and understand my world. Sad but typical child of the ‘70’s. About 10 years ago, after reading some information about meditation being healthy for you, I started to investigate exactly what it was. I had a terrible time following the suggestions to “empty your mind of all thoughts,” until I realized I had been doing essentially that half the days of my life, but rather than drifting into dreamland, you allow yourself to drift into a peaceful stare, similar to the space I access when I’m creating solutions, designing phrases, clothing, or planing the remodel of a house.

Through further studies, I found some guided meditations to be helpful, where someone with a nice voice talks you through a relaxing visualization, often with some ambient music or nature sounds. I think they are a nice place to start for someone who wants to get familiar with the experience. Mindfulness meditation helps train you to be present in your life right now rather than allowing your thoughts and emotions to drag you through past troubles and future worries, getting there can be difficult without some foundation work.

Once you are able to wrangle your brain into thinking about what you want it to think about, or better: nothing at all, you can meditate any time you want. Experiencing life on this planet is the ultimate meditation. I met a Gentleman once who taught me Hong Sau, it was my favorite technique for a time before I upgraded to some bootleg Kriya. I often have one of these running as a background program while I’m going about my daily tasks that don’t take concentration. It keeps my head from running off track and is quite uplifting, it is not the best meditation for everyone.

Recently, I discovered the White Skeleton Meditation. When I first read about it, I giggled myself silly because it is so perfectly brilliant. After getting comfortable with the full meditation, I modified it to suit me and use it whenever my brain is telling me to be uncomfortable with my circumstances. Basically, I strip down to my skeleton using my invisibility technique then remain focused on what my skeleton is doing. It’s great for your posture, and is especially useful in public situations because the big skeleton grin I have on my face makes people think I’m a happy person when really I’m just amused to think of a shiny white skeleton pushing a grocery cart full of food, sipping a macchiato in the coffee shop, attending social events, waiting patiently at the doctor’s office… My skeleton is never nervous.

I have also found using these on the go meditations helpful in dealing with PTSD addictive or OCD behaviors. Children experiencing any learning difficulties, ASD, anxiety trouble, ADHD, can benefit from learning simple meditation techniques because they are all rooted in the same areas. Our mind is a battlefield of competing thoughts and ideas, most of us have learned negative, or unproductive ways of thinking along the way, which leads to destructive behavior. This is not because we are bad people, but because we have not been taught to think right and cope with our emotions. It is our responsibility to train and maintain our thoughts in safe, honest, and true paths that improve our life so we are not led astray into painful ways of existing. Now, when I find my thoughts running in directions that I know to be destructive, I stop, put on my grin, and think about my shiny white skeleton instead. It keeps me out of a lot of trouble. It can be quite difficult at times, but it is well worth the effort.

Once you start taking a serious look at your thoughts, you see how they affect your life, if you want to have positive change; you need to generate positive thoughts. That can be very difficult for people who have been abused and traumatized and taught to think of themselves, others, and the world around them in a negative fashion. Harboring negative energy including fear, anxiety, or angry, and hateful thoughts towards yourself or another is damaging to your spirit and keeps you from enjoying the life you have now. It can be nearly impossible to think of positive things when your life is a wreck, but you can turn your thoughts inward, to your shiny white skeleton and whatever it may be doing. Suddenly, you are here and now, with no fear, no anger, sorrow, blame, worries, anxiety, or stress. Later, when you are calm and have the ability to process your thoughts and feelings on a subject, take the time to sort it out, I recommend writing, and walking, but hopefully not at the same time because that is dangerous. Please, love and forgive yourself, and also the other people who harmed you.

We all are broken, failing, imperfect but trying anyway humans, be merciful in your judgement of yourself and others. Forgiveness feels better.

Learning to meditate does not mean all your problems go away. In fact, you may find that it creates more problems initially, especially in relationships. You are the only person with full access to the thoughts in your head. It is important that you begin to face down the thoughts you have, even if you don’t like what you are thinking, you have to be honest with yourself and acknowledge what is running through your mind if you ever want to change it. As you learn to slow your thoughts, you notice the persistent ones that are causing fear or anxiety and limiting you from being free to enjoy life. Focus your attention on those thoughts and challenge them. Ask your self some questions. Dig through the sand til you get to the foundation of your fears.

• Why do I think that? Find memory attached to the source of the anxiety/fear if you can. Is this information still relevant today? (Is it time to let it go?)
• Is this real fear or irrational fear? (Research real facts)
• What’s the worst that could happen? (This is a Stoic form of meditation that is very useful breaking down irrational fears.)
• Is there something I can do to change it? (This is crucial, because when you change yourself, you change the world)

In my case, I was tortured by a family of flaming assholes. I realize it is mostly not their fault either. We were all grievously abused, I just happened to be the weakest and least useful and therefor the easiest target.

Sometimes, we hold on to thought patterns that may have helped us survive at one point but are not really relevant to life now and contribute to states of mental illness. I look at meditation as mental decluttering; it clears the way to take a good, hard look at the thoughts that drive you, which is similar to cleaning out your closet and discarding the clothes that no longer fit. Sometimes there is a sense of loss when you have to part with a comfy sweatshirt that is tattered, and paint spattered. Yet one day you look in the mirror and you realize that it does not portray the person you want to be, so you let it go. It can cause some identity crisis because you have to find new ways to think about things, a new more comfortable way of being.

This is part of the reason in ancient times, (and still occasionally) meditation is taught by a Guru to a student so as the student becomes more aware of the thoughts that are thwarting his progress, the wise guru is there to help sort it out in a loving manner. Since real gurus have pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur or left this planet for worlds where inhabitants embrace and honor messengers of truth and love rather than abuse and slaughter them, You may have to be your own guide. Hopefully, you have a good friend, spouse, councilor, or therapist who can act as a sounding board. The most important thing is that this person is honest with you. When you are replacing that old sweatshirt with some cute velour yoga pants with matching hoodie and you say, “Does this make my butt look luscious or disproportionately large?” You know this person will be straight up.

As I said earlier, the inner process you are going through can create stress in relationships. This is because when you change your thoughts, you change your life. Your habits change, you may stop addictive habits, which can leave companions who would engage in those activities feeling neglected, and sometimes angry at you for taking yourself away from them. You also may find that the people you are closest to now have a difficult time accepting the new person you are becoming. Perhaps they have become accustomed to behaving a certain way around you due to the way you were before, and they have to learn how to adapt and change as well to keep up with you. It is very important to keep open, honest, loving communication flowing with your spouse or significant other about what is going on inside you, encourage them to take the journey with you so you can grow together, or be prepared to grow apart.

Choosing the inward path to face and deal with your problems is difficult. The thought patterns and addictive behaviors that we use to numb ourselves are the very things that keep us caged and uncomfortable, they were developed from the time of our birth and it will take some time to unwind the damage. You won’t wake up all-knowing with super powers after a 15 minute meditation, and you wouldn’t want to. Change is difficult, it can make you feel isolated, and even crazier than before as you become more aware of your perceptions, but as you let go of delusions and learn to love yourself truly, you will find yourself doing things you never thought you could do, and you know it is worth the effort.

The power of the human mind is amazing, it can create miracles and you have your very own unique model to mold into something incredible if you choose to take the driver’s seat. The only investment is time and love. You are the only person that can make the trip inside an discover who you really are, erase your misconceptions, and turn the key to your potential.