Are You There, Zen? It’s Me, No One
Inhale. I forgot to send that email. Was that my phone buzzing? It might be important. Exhale.
In a tiny sliver of floor space in my bedroom, I attempt to lose myself in meditation. I sit cross-legged with my back positioned upright against the foot of my bed. Closing my eyes, I start by listening and absorbing the sounds that surround me: the hum of the air conditioner, the engines of cars passing on 49th street, the cabinet being opened then closed in the kitchen. Be present. Listen. Be an anonymous spectator. I must force myself, once a day, to be physically aware and then to track my own breaths.
My exploration of meditation isn’t going so well. For one, I’m a seasoned veteran when it comes to panic. I’m hyper self-aware to a fault. The opposite of Zen, if you will. But still, I try. I have a deep-seeded desire to lose my sense of self — one of the most difficult aspects of meditation.
Meditation is a challenge for anyone, but I find it to be especially hard for “millennials” in a digital world. We’ve been raised to distinguish ourselves with manicured identities: from AIM screen names and Xanga posts to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles. It’s relatively impossible to disengage with the notion of “me” when I am physically represented in the form of a digital profile across multiple mediums.
Internet culture thrives upon the very notion of “identity;” we are participating in a phenomenon that’s fueled by our need to create a unique, polished identity — a concept that I find directly contradicts meditation. Each of us acts as a distinguished identity contributing content, manufacturing a voice and receiving validation in the form of “likes.” No wonder I can’t stop concerning myself with myself — I nurture my ego while simultaneously attempting to abandon it.
I go through great lengths to edit my Instagram pictures. I think in tweets. I take photos of trips with the intent of uploading them to Facebook. I Snapchat anything I do to seem cool. I’m entirely preoccupied with my perceived identity that transcends real life. All of us do. And it’s driven by our natural-born, human egos.
Sitting on the floor of my bedroom, it doesn’t take long for thoughts to creep in. My mind distracts itself with fictional conceptions and worries. Petty details dart across my brain like frantic pinballs. I can’t help but wonder how I’d appear to an onlooker (a common fear in an ego-centric culture). Do I look ridiculous, or cool? Isn’t the point of meditation to forget about perception? How do I rid myself of the pestering details and tap into an understanding of universal consciousness?
While I have the desire to receive attention as an individual, I also have a desire to be freed from myself. When looking back on a journal entry from 2/13/15 — a time before I explored meditation — I was shocked to read a vivid and clear description of my need to lose my identity:
“I wish I could see everything as uniform, “part of” opposed to apart of. I want to be so smothered by the connection of things that I forget to question the reason of my own existence. To wonder why I am here seems silly. Isn’t it enough just to exist? I am beginning to feel a new, deep happiness living in my chest like a second heart. It is nothing but existing.”
I felt the urge to abandon my sense of individualism and experience “unity” before I had even known that there was a name for it, or a practice to experience it.
Meditation is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do, but it’s probably the most important practice I participate in. In “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion”, author Sam Harris wrote, “Our minds are all we have. They are all we ever had. And they are all we can offer others.” It’s a great challenge to abandon the physical, digital identities that we manufacture in everyday life. At times, meditation feels less like a path to spiritual healing and more like an awkward coffee date with an acquaintance. I sit across from myself, dredging up things to talk about because silence isn’t yet possible. But in time, it will be.
