Lotus Blossoms and Pretzel Logic
We recently attended a meditation instruction class. It was not my first attempt at mental management nor will it be my last. Wealso signed up for a yoga series, which has historically held more appeal forme. I am flexible, and yoga is not for wimps.
Does this look easy?
As it happens, yoga and meditation are often intertwined to some degree -- myrecent yoga classes ended with brief guided meditations, for instance -- andfittingly neither is easy.
Lately, meditation has intrigued and amused me. I'mam trying to meditate more ... although I have serious doubts that I will everbe one of those people who can carve out 30 minutes or more every single day todo this. Mostly the lure is the effect it can potentially have on my bloodpressure, which has returned to a tendency to elevate and hover, now that Iagain live in the Antagonizing South. (Meditation Lowers Blood Pressure)
Thus,I looked into giving meditation a more-serious attempt than I have before, andas with most things I attempt, I like to be properly trained and have someclear, accurate instruction. So off we toddled to listen to regularpractitioners guide us through some meditation.
Let me set the scene: a brick-walled, ramshacklesort of room in an older building, with a scattering of little stamp-sizedpallets of blankets adrift on old wooden floors, pea-bag dollops centered oneach. Participants were to find a patch and cop a squat.
I expect this kind of sensation:
It is usually more of an experience like this:
Theceilings were high; the floors squeaked as people crossed them. The walls werethin, so traffic passing outside telegraphed its presence and was by turns whitenoise or intrusive distraction.
We assumed cross-legged postures and werewalked through an eyes-closed exercise, wherein we were told to imagine each ofus enveloped in a warm light of self-love, and then to spread that glow out tothe rest of the room, and then up and out of the building and into the streetand across the neighborhood, and so on. Then we were asked to picture “anunlovable person" and extend love toward them. Various examples of“unlovables” were proffered, from widely-recognizable political personages topotential coworker bullies or disagreeable family members. I was immediatelyskeptical; I’m to proffer love to Mitt Romney? Love? To the backstabbingjackass who would just as soon get me fired as eat a Danish for breakfasttomorrow? LOVE? I think not.
Itis all so very agreeable in premise, though, isn’t it? Self-love embodied andembraced and then peanut buttered out – astral-projection style – to thestrangers sitting in reasonable proximity, and on out to unseen passersby. It’ssuch an interwoven image, that we might all become tangled up and covered inthis blanket of ever-expanding love-light. It always sounds like more than itultimately is: a metaphysical hand-hold across time and space. Yet, none of ustouches; there is never any touching in meditation classes. (Ironic: when youdon’t want to touch the next person over, as in when we areall sweating in yoga, one finds far too little space between one’s self and thenext sweaty butt or armpit over.) At no point in the entire experience did Icome into contact with a single other person. Hardly even words were exchanged.It was just my butt on the blanket and the beanbag, hanging out in the space betweenmy ears. We were each perched on our own little islands of blanket, perfect individualmetaphors for the separate-and-distinct reality displayed across the floor ofthe room. Meditation is ultimately a chaste, sanitized, solo mental meander.
Yet, this group-mind meld approach is pushedpretty heavily in most any meditative act instruction, though, especially anyapproaches in the “loving kindness” vein. That's the dressing in which so manysessions seem inevitably to be marinated -- love yourself, love everybody. Soit flirts with the suggestion of group hugs. But no touching.
Meditationreally only works solo. Even if one sits in a room jammed with others, therewon’t be actual exchanges with them. It requires space and quiet, which seemsthe antithesis of actual human expression and the root of actual love andaffection for another. And it’s this juxtaposition that is so jarring for me --all that group-groping, mentally, with absolutely no contact with others, withhardly even a word exchanged.
I confess I am pretty push/pulled between the ideaof people and communion and the reality of it. Closeness comes with a price,after all, whether it’s the whiff of someone else’s BO or the banality of atopic they find endlessly fascinating and babble on about, when I find itendlessly 
boring and cannot easily or politely disengage from being aninsensate audience. And it ishard for me to do meditation, especially in a group, and not just because of myintensely impatient nature. Certainly the appeal of sitting cross-legged for30-60 minutes on a beanbag the size of a large teapot isn’t obvious. It is this-- I have a hard time finding the group-hug mindset appealing. Because while grouphugs sound nice in premise, the execution more-often-than-not includesstranger-style-danger: at the least-disturbing, the sticky person, and at worstthe peculiar person who might only be there to file away grope-memories forlater masturbatory use.
Anotherinstruction we were given during the class: to picture someone I love easily.Examples were again proffered, first and foremost of which was “kids.” Um,yeah, um, no on that, too. I don’t know many kids; I don’t like children, orany homo sapiens that cannot be reasoned with, regardless of age. I barely likethe few kids I do know, much less “easily love” any. At this point, I wasessentially striking out on the guided part of this; I had to substitute my doginstead – my beloved Corgi is essentially the only thing that is easily loved forme.
The next admonishment was this over-used littleacorn: "Be present and let go of the past." My skeptic’s mind wasalready engaged on the previous WTF suggestions -- is forgetting the pastreally something the human animal needs help with? We can't seem to rememberthe past well already, leading the species to collectively jump to judgmentsand repeat mistakes. I would argue that we would do a lot better by each otherto remember previous errors and fuck-ups and try not to repeat them. But thatisn’t really the touchy-feely sentiment they were looking for, so my InnerSkeptic fumed off into the shadows of my mind and tried to keep quiet.
Maybeif I actually knew someone who meditates, even occasionally, this would make better sense. How do they maketime – half an hour’s worth or more – of silence and aloneness to get tranquiland Zen out? Usually, any time I have met someone who purportedly does this, Ihave been left with this blank impression of them. Universally they have beencool and cerebral and utterly unmemorable. It is often like I didn’t actuallymeet anyone at all, they leave so little impact in my memory. Are they just sochilled out that they don’t even leave the imprint of introduction? I certainlynever “connect” in a way I could follow up on and grow a relationship withthem, to learn personally who they are and how they use meditation.
Although I did recently meet a woman who professedto Taoism, of a sort. I’ll call her Tao Tina, and s
he was more than passingpeculiar. She quickly admitted to being celibate as a part of her calling, andshe lives in a precarious sort of rental arrangement in the larger temple thatshe works and sleeps in. She offered that she avoids hugging and touching,“especially men,” since she’s celibate. Sometimes, I hear way more informationthan I would ever ask to know.
Iwonder sometimes if my hard-to-swallow reaction to group meditation -- sodetached, so mental -- is rooted in my jettisoned church/theist programming andexperiences. Certainly I have been involved in innumerable “group prayers,”wherein everyone gets in a circle and clasps hands, and each participant isexpected to chime in their contribution to the circle’s prayerful discourse. AsI migrated out and away from religious belief, it is so easy to see thecaulking of god/religion in the predominant culture, the ease that such commonbelief creates in building common cause and a sense of belonging ortogetherness. And it involves touching! Touch is increasingly complicit in allmanner of required human adjustment. So even though most average church memberswould not really choose to hang out with each other in any other context, theyare all driven and even a little desperate: to find a group wherein theireternal souls are salvaged, to feel simpatico under the same dogma, to belong.And church tosses them all together for a sense of group-grope that involvesvarious levels of exchange and communication with other homo sapiens, and for awhile maybe it’s better than the messes they have temporarily left behind athome. Let us pray.
Andthat’s the pretzel logic of my bemusement over the strange little contradictionof meditating in a group. It appears to be a group activity, but it’s performedat the individual and highly unseen level. It has all the trappings of being ahighly collaborative activity, but then it isn’t.
And I don’t understand any mechanism wherein my sitting around thinking happy shiny thoughts is going to make Mitt Romney less of an asshole. It won't send him an insightful dream from which he awakens and decides he's been a bastard, so he should change his company-destroying, "Hey, he built it -- I mean -- sold it" ways.
Disconnect.
Plus, the reality of group-activities is usually a little off-puttin’ to me.
