I used to think meditation was the act of emptying the mind, but after more practice, I’ve learned that it’s really quite the opposite. It’s about noticing what goes in and out. Feelings, thoughts, shifts in pace. It’s a quiet dance in the mind.
For the most part of our waking hours, we follow where these thoughts and feelings lead us. We grab hold of them like Tarzan grabs hold of vines to swing to the next one. The mind is a curious thing. It loves to do this. It loves to stray away from focus, following one thought to the next one. There is no end to the connections.
For a moment, think of these thoughts as clouds, like how they “cloud your mind.” The blue sky, as Headspace creator Andy Puddicombe puts it, is where we attempt to place our focus on. Behind all the clouds is that blue sky. The blue sky is the breath. It’s the mantra we repeat over and over again in our minds. It’s the calm.
Now, the goal of mindfulness and meditation is not to erase all the clouds in the sky but to notice them, let them pass, and let them go. Still, the focus is on that blue sky. That’s the sweet spot.
However, I recently learned that there is an even sweeter spot.
Dan Harris talked about this a few years ago on JRE. The common experience in meditation is this back and forth between focus and unfocus. Like I said, it’s a dance. One moment, you’re all about that blue sky, all focused on your breath. But the next moment, you’re in Antarctica looking at Emperor penguins pile up in huge group hugs to conserve heat. The mind loves to do this.
And then, you notice. You notice that you’re no longer focused on that blue sky, you’ve followed the trail of clouds. So now, you bring the attention back to the sky behind the clouds, back to the breath underneath all the thoughts and feelings. This noticing and shifting back to focus, that’s the stuff of mindfulness.
It feels like a solid burn from a rep when working out. It’s a moment of pure awareness that lasts a second or two. It’s a moment between moments, the attempt to transition from one to the other.
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned through meditation so far, it’d be that. The magic is not in the end goal, nor the starting point, but in the subtle but consistent shifting back to focus after lengthy moments of getting lost.
The magic is in the attempt.