MGD’s

“Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences – the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be.” – Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi (3-2-1 quote from 11/30/23)

“Why meditate?  The basic logic is quite simple: the quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.  Happiness and suffering, no matter how extreme, are mental events.  The mind depends upon the body, of course, and the body upon the world. But everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter.” – Sam Harris, “The Logic of Practice”

This quick primer makes the case for why you should seek to integrate meditation into your life as a practice and then goes on to provide a quick beginner’s overview to the practice itself so you know what you can expect.  The short answer as to why you should meditate is that the quality of your life is largely determined by the quality of your thoughts, and the practice of meditating helps improve the quality of your thoughts along several important dimensions, all of which have to do with gaining a better understanding of how our minds work.  I have read several books and spent time on several meditation apps but the best of what I have learned on the topic has come from using Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” app so you will see that I refer to him and his app in several places below.  Here are some of the key benefits meditation has to offer:

1. Improved Emotional Resilience: Life is replete with ups and downs, and navigating these well requires emotional resilience. Meditation cultivates emotional resilience by teaching you to carefully observe your thoughts and sensations that accompany any given emotion you may be experiencing.  Over time, this practice decreases reactivity and creates space between you and your more automatic emotional responses.  With this increased awareness of your thought patterns, you can learn to let go of negative emotions when they appear, or at least decrease their duration.  In Sam Harris speak you can choose to “get off the ride” instead of letting whatever emotion you feel in any given moment dictate your state of mind until it runs out of gas.  This enables individuals to respond to life’s inevitable fluctuations with more grace, poise and self-control. 

2. Enhanced Mental Well-being: Meditation can quiet the incessant chatter of the mind by directing our attention to particular sensations arising in the present moment instead of being lost in thought (our default state). One learns to sit back and observe thoughts, emotions and sensations as they arise without judgment. Individuals can gain insight into their thought patterns and emotional reactions, leading to greater self-awareness and emotional regulation and thereby decrease suffering and increase well being.     

3. Improved Concentration and Focus: As Sam Harris says, “there is a multi-front war being fought for our attention, and most of us are losing.”  By training the mind to anchor its attention on a single point of focus (as is done with many of the practices in meditation, like observing the breath), individuals can improve their ability to concentrate.  With this comes increased productivity and overall cognitive performance.  It has been shown in numerous studies that those who regularly meditate have beneficial changes to the area of the brain responsible for focus and attention.  If you can cultivate these benefits, you will have developed a significant advantage over the vast majority of people who are constantly drowning in a sea of distractions (and cease to be one of them).  

4. Teaches You to Be More Fully Present: Much of meditation practice is centered around grounding our attention and focus in the present moment, rather than getting lost in rumination about the past or worries about the future. By training ourselves repeatedly to bring our attention back to our immediate experience, meditation leads to an increased ability to immerse ourselves in the here and now, filling our lives with a sense of deep awe and appreciation. Whether it’s the taste of food, the feeling of sunshine on our skin, or the sounds of nature, meditation helps us to fully appreciate the beauty and intricacy of life’s small details by paying close attention to what is arising in our conscious minds at any second.  This level of awareness, when applied moment to moment, enriches our interpersonal relationships, our work, and our overall quality of life.  

5. Stress Reduction: Yes, meditation has also been shown to reduce stress.  I put it down here at #5 because it is often the first and only benefit discussed but I have learned that meditation is so much more than that. However, it is a noteworthy benefit nonetheless as stress is increasingly taking a toll on our collective mental and physical health. The time you actually spend meditating can provide a temporary sanctuary from the chaos, offering a few sacred minutes each day to step out of the flow of constant activity. But also, by practicing mindfulness, individuals learn to observe stressors without reacting to or becoming entangled in them, which can help to reduce the intensity of the difficult moments we experience every day.

Increasing resilience, decreasing emotional reactivity, learning to fully inhabit the present, enhancing our ability to focus. These are superpowers.  It comes down to getting a better handle on the mechanics of our own minds operate at their most fundamental level, the level of perception and direct experience.

One additional point worth emphasizing is that meditation is a genuine skill or practice that does require some actual training.  As Sam Harris notes in his introductory course, “you will not learn to meditate by accident.”   As I mentioned above, I have spent time on several meditation apps (Calm, Headspace) over the past few years and read multiple books on the topic but the practice only really clicked for me after taking Sam Harris’s introductory course in his “Waking Up” app, so that is where I suggest you start.  His explanations of the “why” behind the practice and the specific tactics you explore throughout the course are head and shoulders above anything else I have come across in terms of practical guidance.  Once you have taken his course and have that foundation, you will be well equipped to take your practice in any direction you choose (e.g. explore other apps or meditation modalities) but with a better understanding of what the point is of practicing in the first place.

I will close with a quick overview of the practice itself.  That is, what does the act of daily meditation actually look like?  What will you be doing in these sessions? In his introductory course, Sam Harris presents the practice of meditation in stages (which is similar to approaches taken in other apps, though they tend to be less explicit), each level emphasizing a particular skill.  The following is an outline of the basic progression from Harris’s intro course. It’s important to note that his approach is nuanced and adaptable.  It emphasizes personal exploration and understanding over strict adherence to stages. But in general, the progression looks something like this:

1. Stage 1: Mindfulness of Breathing: This is a common starting point for beginners in several meditation apps.  The objective with this simple practice is to develop concentration and present-moment awareness.  You will be asked to focus on the sensation of breathing. Notice the details of the breath, such as rhythm and how it feels in different parts of the body. When you notice your mind has wandered, you will gently return your focus to the breath.  This stage aims to calm the mind and reduce distraction, serving as a foundation for deeper observation and insight. This is also training  of the “attention muscle”, increasing your mind’s ability to return to and remain on a specific point of focus.
2. Stage 2: Mindfulness of Sensations and Thoughts: After you have spent some time following the breath, you are then asked to expand awareness beyond the breath to include all bodily sensations and the flow of your thoughts.  You will begin to observe sensations throughout the body, noticing any discomfort, pressure, tension, or pleasant sensations without trying to change them. Similarly, you will observe thoughts as they arise, treating them as objects of awareness without getting caught up in their content.  This stage cultivates an understanding of the impermanent nature of thoughts and sensations.  That is, by their very nature, every thought arises and then falls away.  This practice fosters a non-reactive mind that can merely witness these things arising in consciousness without responding to them.
3. Stage 3: Open Awareness or Choiceless Awareness:  Here, the idea is to develop the ability to remain aware of the entire field of experience, without focusing on any particular object.  Allow all experiences (sensations, sounds, thoughts, emotions) to arise and pass without preference or aversion. The meditator learns to observe both the ever-changing nature of the contents of consciousness, as well as the unchanging nature of consciousness itself, leading to a more profound sense of interconnectedness and equanimity.  An analogy Sam Harris uses in his course is that of a mirror, where the content that the mirror  reflects (analogous to our thoughts, sensations, impressions arising in each moment) is constantly changing based on what passes in front of it, but the mirror itself (i.e. the base layer of consciousness in which everything arises) remains unchanged.
4. Stage 4: Insight Meditation: Finally, you will seek to gain direct insight into the nature of mind and reality. This involves a deeper investigation into the nature of thoughts, emotions, and sensations themselves, recognizing their transient and “empty” qualities. The goal is to see through the illusion of a permanent, unchanging self and to experience a liberating understanding of reality, leading to a decrease in suffering.
5. Special Topics: Outside of this progression, Sam also intersperses special sessions on forgiveness, gratitude, appreciation and compassion. These are some of my favorite sessions in the app.  

Meditation is a skill that develops with practice and that various techniques can be beneficial at different times.  There is no need to get too caught up in the order and whether I accurately captured the progression. You should explore these various practices to find what works best for you. The ultimate goal is to cultivate a mind that is clear, open, and compassionate, capable of navigating life with greater wisdom and ease.  

Give it a shot.  You have nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain from integrating this practice into your days.