My horoscope suggested that I try to include a regular new thing in my life, and that now is the perfect opportunity to not only begin, but to make it a habit. So I immediately thought about the things that I always wanted to try to include as a regular practice in my life but never really got it to stick.

That thing is meditation. I’ve read a lot of articles on it, it comes up over and over in Buddhist and Zen texts, and I’ve even gone so far as to get applications that help support it. The articles read a lot like the Chinese websites do about their tea, all about the benefits and nothing to point at any detractors. Much like tea, there is little that exists that could harm me. In fact, meditation contains nothing at all that could harm me beyond perhaps being eaten by some sort of apex predator while I’m meditating. The only downside that I can see to drinking tea is frequent bathroom visits. A lot of the sites I’ve seen and articles I’ve read approach meditation from various angles. Some approach it from a spiritual side, here you have the line that I think I remember Deepak Chopra saying about it, that what lies between thoughts is the thinker and if you stop thinking you can exist all by yourself. There are other articles that I’ve read, books too, that go on at length regarding the neurochemistry of meditation. That neurons that fire together wire together, and that meditation can actually increase the speed of cognition. For that I have no proof and it smells like a placebo, however it’s tea all over again. Even if the claims are bunkum, it’s not like I’m going to harm myself at all so if there is nothing to lose, perhaps anything gained is what I was always after from the beginning. I also remember reading a LifeHacker article regarding daydreaming and how if you just stop trying to drive your mind to unravel a question that sometimes the answer comes ready-packaged and drops into your lap if you back off the whip and let the mind work on it’s own. Do I believe any of this? I am skeptical however over my life and over the times I’ve tried to meditate I have to say that something is indeed there.

So earlier today I took a break from work. I plugged in my iPhone earbuds, set the volume low and ran one of the apps that I recently acquired, it’s called Naturespace. It had 109 reviews in the Apple App Store and the overall rating was almost five out of five stars. Since the app was free I tried it, loaded up one of the sample tracks and sat back in my chair. At work there is a problem, if you sit with your eyes closed, even if you are not pursuing a nap it looks nearly indistinguishable from actually sleeping on the job. I found meditating with my eyes open to be very difficult, but not impossible. The natural sounds helped mask the office noises that surround me in my workaday world and I had a bit of time to myself and thankfully nobody walked in on me and felt at-odds about seeing me sitting attentively in my chair with my eyes closed. One thing I did do was join my hands near my face and steeple my index fingers and rest them lightly against my philtrum, which I’ve heard referred to as a fairy-saddle. The book I read about the neurochemistry of Buddhism went on at length about the existence of an accupressure point right in this spot that supposedly activates the parasympathetic wing of the central nervous system. The parasympathetic slows and relaxes everything and it seemed to be a great way to help push myself along the path to entering a meditative state of consciousness.

My skills for this are picked up like trivia from lots of different places, when I’m bored I tend to graze on information on the Internet and I find myself reading lots of different things so the way I begin is to sit comfortably, make sure I don’t sense any ‘biological imperatives’ coming from my body and then I really should close my eyes to quiet the visual field. The natural sounds help bring on relaxation which I always think of as the foyer or antechamber to a true meditative state. The constant light touch against the philtrum may or may not be anything useful but earlier this morning I found that if I concentrate on my breathing and make it very natural and regular that I can figuratively imagine my mind as a surface of water. As I come down from the natural jitter and jump of being “online at work” I imagine the surface of water that is my mind getting more and more calm as time goes on. There is definitely some kickback as random things pop up out of nowhere and break the surface of the water image in my imagination. As I sat there I actually slipped into a meditative state and it felt ineffably wonderful. Thankfully I had a timer set on my iPhone that would send an alarm after 15 minutes so when I heard it I had to stop what I was doing and get back to work.

Now the only question is, where do I fit this into my life? Do I only spend about seven minutes in this state twice a day or do I devote an hour a day to it and give up something else? I have to admit that the experience was something incredibly positive and rewarding and was so inherently wonderful that I find myself craving to get back to that state. Then I start to wonder if it’s better to fix such a thing at a specific time or is it better to simply assert that I will intend to devote an hour to it and then find the time each day to fit it in. There may be a higher chance of me actually integrating the practice into my life if I give myself a small bit of flexibility without letting myself be totally floppy with timing. If I have no discipline for it I’ll never do it. Like a lot of things in my life, only time will tell. I’ll blog as I progress, which might inspire others to try what I am attempting.