On The Meditation Drug: Meditative Milestones
Yesterday I spent a half hour watching birds, filled with a pervading contentment. No television show can compare to this, I thought.
Meditation connects you to a contentment that changes notions of happiness and peace. Is most entertainment consumed by the world at large really just a distraction that keeps us connecting to a joy-well within us?
At first watching television may see more enjoyable than sitting outside on a late afternoon and watching birds fly. But at first cocaine seems a better way to get invigoratingly blissful than pilates—so just because we feel we “like” or “enjoy” something doesn’t necessarily mean we ought to go for it.
I’ll spare the details. But for reasons which behooved me, three years ago I stumbled off yoga and meditation cliffs. I had gone to yoga at the YMCA, but there’s a moment when you see such as only going to exercise class (but a window is better than the latched gate of not knowing!)
What Lingers from Long-term Meditation
Taking up a meditative practice and holding it for a long period of time is like the opposite of quitting smoking. (And meditation is as addictive, but in the way that kindness is addictive).
There are milestones you notice—tweaks in your life that go way beyond the freed breath and posture. My own experience is just that—my own experience. After three years of holding a consistent practice, here’s what I’ve noticed (my own practice was kickstarted by a 10 day Vipassana in Thailand—but that’s another story).
6 Months of Meditating
After six months, you get glimpses of this whole other part of you. Every time you touch it, you rejoice and try to hold onto it. But this “thing” doesn’t like being chased. Seeking it somehow is what causes it to elude you.
Then your body begins to relax and you spend less time evading the pain of an unmoving body. Your mind wanders less.
Is meditation just another drug?—you have a few conversions on this topic.
1 Year of Meditating
After a year, you can barely believe that there was a time in your life when you did not meditate. How do people deal with life if they don’t have a consistent meditation practice?, you wonder. It becomes less work and your meditation sittings are something you look forward to. You’re less flighty in life, more grounded, and certain of the path you are embarking on in this video game called life.
2 Years of Meditating
By year two, you’ve dialed into something. Life begins to even out. Despite its sucker punches to the gut, there is this space where you go and start to disappear.
3 Years of Meditating
Meditation begins to creep into corners of all parts of your life. You truly begin to understand what it means to take meditation off the mat. You’ll be washing dishes and suddenly fall in love with the water on your hands, the feeling of the sponge—You begin to fall in love with moments in life like falling in love with a lover.
And that’s when you’ll begin to watch the day, the birds, you take time off the mat to feel the wind weaving through that deep part of you which you sometimes glimpse on the mat. Magic starts to happen in your life—your heart is open and this inspires a rebirth within the life you already lead.
*5, 10, 20 Years of Meditating?^
Wondering what more years of meditating will feel like is just a question of the mind—something a deep meditation practice will cause you to contemplate less. I have no idea what life will look after 5, 10, even 20 years of holding a meditation practice. But the benefits have been so profound after three years, I hope from the deepest place of my heart I find out.
And of course, this is just a bit of prose of my own experience—yours will be yours—And I’d love to hear about that!
May be you be happy and well,
Alekosh
Next post we’ll talk about breath—Are you breathing right?!