The way I like to think about meditation: going home

I sit down to meditate. I sit on my meditation stool, assume the posture, and direct my gaze at a point in space 50 feet in front of me, some tree branches out the window. I zero in on a set of five branches, the same ones every time…I wonder if they sense my psychic energy.

I do my best to permit thoughts to come and go. It takes a few minutes to settle into the groove, to stop twitching and scratching my balls, etc. (Tip for the guys: I have found that a pre-meditation spray of tough-actin-Tinactin adds an icy hot sensation that can expedite your trip to zen.)

I don’t normally have deep thoughts while I meditate; usually, I’m ushering along surface level thoughts and worries. But this time I find my mind reflecting on how to conceptualize my mental state during meditation in relation to other states of mind throughout the day. My thought is that when I am meditating, I am returning home.

I ruminate on this notion after my meditation. I realize that by conceptualizing a meditation session as being home, I am trying to induce myself to think about meditation not as an ‘alternative’ state of consciousness to the mental states I move through during the day: the state I am in when reading, filling out paperwork or driving. I don’t want it to seem like when I finish meditating I am returning to my normal or default state of mind. Because how I see it, the more common and prevalent states of mind we find ourselves in these days — fretting about something at work, wishing we were thinner, or irritated at the traffic on our commute — are usually not as pleasant.

So I want to think the opposite; that when I begin my meditation, a state where the mind is more idle, where the main focus is on the breath, where the wants of the ego are suppressed, this is my ‘home’ state.

To me, the appeal of this notion is that I can return home regardless of where my body is physically. If I am stuck in traffic, I can perform the basic meditation exercises, the breathing, the posture, and return to a relative state of calm, even if only for a little while. Before an important meeting with a client, I can spend 5–10 minutes ‘back at my place’, resting and rejuvenating, before heading into the conference room.

So now, when I begin my meditation I say to myself, “I’m headed home”. I’m headed back to a state of mind where ego and material wants are suppressed. A familiar place, where through simple breathing and an agenda-less gaze at the tree branches I feel more connected, less lonely, and traveling in harmony with the forces and beings in the universe around me, as we move through time and space together.