can a new yorker free the mind?

The email screamed: “It’s not too late to join our global med­i­ta­tion com­mu­nity. Reg­is­ter for Oprah & Deepak’s 21-Day Free Online Expe­ri­ence Today.” A 33-year-old, Indian-born, over­worked busi­ness con­sul­tant liv­ing in Tribeca couldn’t refuse an invite from Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey.

The power cou­ple extended this offer at the begin­ning of the year, and on August 11th they kicked off their sec­ond 2014 self-help party, which ran until the end of the month. The pair had nearly half-million Face­book devo­tees and, sta­tis­ti­cally speak­ing, some of my friends were also their evan­ge­lists. Near rel­a­tives and dis­tant friends pushed tales of tap­ping into higher con­scious­ness for months. Since prac­tic­ing med­i­tat­ing was now in fash­ion I was adamant to avoid it.

Given my divine pedi­gree, I wasn’t going to buy my ances­tral lessons from An Amer­i­can celebrity. Surely, I held a reces­sive Indian gene that I could acti­vate on com­mand to tran­scend beyond the phys­i­cal realm. Iron­i­cally, this fleet­ing thought got lost in the clut­ter of my brain, resur­fac­ing when the spam from Chopra-Winfrey duo accosted me. They got me curi­ous: can I really silence the inces­sant chat­ter in my head?

Seduced by the old­est trick in the mar­ket­ing books, I reg­is­tered for the pro­gram “at no cost,” for a trial period. Through an online por­tal, I gained access to 21 audio seg­ments, scripted as follows:

BELLS TINKLING.

Oprah, in a sure voice, drops some pearls of wisdom.

BELLS TINKLING.

Chopra, calmly, drops a few more, and then offers instruc­tions to guide the audi­ence into meditation.

SOFT BELL RINGS.

Chopra asks the audi­ence to gen­tly open their eyes and wraps up with his clos­ing remarks.

On an encore of this daily per­for­mance, I stum­bled on some answers. I had left work late that night and took a taxi home from Flat­iron. I decided to med­i­tate on the 10 minute ride. What about being hurled in the back-seat of a yel­low cab inspired me to unwind escaped now. I must have been try­ing to squeeze the most of out of an already squeezed day.

The dri­ver was speed­ily on his way to dump me out­side my down­town abode. I was war­ily on my path toward free­ing my mind. We were hurtling down the west-side high­way, but were on entirely dif­fer­ent jour­neys. After sev­eral min­utes of mum­bling curses at the dri­ver and few sec­onds of pri­mor­dial music I was relax­ing. But my eyes were open.

Ulti­mately, I aban­doned the notion of med­i­tat­ing in tran­sit and got lost in the view as we sped down­town from Chelsea. The IAC head­quar­ters, Frank Gehry’s edgy wave of glass, cock­ily embrac­ing its des­tiny to never crash on Hudson’s shore. The W-hotel, out of place in the New Jer­sey sky­line, reminds me of friends who move to Jer­sey in a short-lived act of penance for liv­ing large in Man­hat­tan. The face of my dri­ver grin­ning at me from his ID card — held by a plas­tic con­trap­tion attached to the back of his seat. In scratched text, the quiv­er­ing card informed me that his name was Demba.

Hav­ing learned his name, I was ready to make some imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tion. I said to him, “Well, Demba, it’s been nine years since I arrived on this con­ti­nent, to this city.” I silently ram­bled on, “I finally know that the IZOD bill­board at Chelsea Piers is not per­sis­tently nudg­ing me to go watch some golf-inspired sequel to IRo­bot. Now it’s just a reminder that I belong here.”

With­out warn­ing, my untamed brain swerved to another con­ver­sa­tion, “Yoda, Am I a Jedi? Am I the guardian of my peace?”

Yoda, replied “Only a fully trained Jedi knight, with the force as her ally, will embrace her innate har­mony. Beware of the dark side. Drama. Doubt. Fear. Eas­ily they flow. Con­sume you it will.”

“But how am I to fight it?” I asked.

Yoda, “Patience. Only at the begin­ning of the train­ing you are. You will. When you are at ease.”

This last piece of advice I couldn’t abide. As a New Yorker, I launched out of bed at 5 am daily to hyper-ventilate over office-emails, catch a morning-yoga class, skim the news between sub­way stops, and work dur­ing, before and after meet­ings, office hours and social­iz­ing. Mean­while, I was bal­anced: with one hand I switched between flip-flops and high-heels, and with the other I com­mented on Face­book, Insta­gram, and Twit­ter. Yoda, I don’t wind down, I do chamomile tea — to go.

But back to my quest to con­quer my fickle mind. The last ten min­utes elapsed exactly as I hadn’t planned. My head was like a hive that was rat­tled by exter­nal stim­u­la­tion. From it, I, the riled queen bee, lost con­trol of my thoughts that buzzed like dis­ori­ented min­ions and stung inno­cent bystanders. My star stud­ded panel of advi­sors — Oprah, Chopra and Yoda — had a point, I must cul­ti­vate an abil­ity to traf­fic my inner noise. Yet my prog­no­sis wasn’t entirely morbid.

A recent study showed that peo­ple would rather sub­ject them­selves to elec­tric shocks than enter­tain them­selves with their thoughts. Left by them­selves for less than 15 min­utes, 58% of the study’s par­tic­i­pants chose to self-inflict elec­tric shocks, repeat­edly. Despite my abysmal per­for­mance at con­trol­ling my men­tal actions I was pre­oc­cu­pied by my solil­o­quy. I bet, days ear­lier, I would have chugged the news­feed on social media instead.

I no longer cared that I wasn’t under the tute­lage of Bud­dha or his descen­dants. I pur­chased the med­i­ta­tion prod­uct. In order to find time for this new chore I could be an ele­va­tor medi­a­tor. My phone had no recep­tion in there any­way. This was my chance to save those lim­ited New York min­utes from dying in vain.

As the door opened onto the lobby I recited Deepak Chopra’s part­ing words from today’s ses­sion “carry a sense of abun­dance with you. Namaste.”