Secret to Meditation Series: Part 3- Intake
You’ve done the hard work. Here comes the fun part. Because you’ve made time to just BE, we can start building your own meditation roadmap. This can be as routine or as loose as you like, but the idea is to come up with a list of those activities that increase stillness in your life. Your stillness moments are how you weed the garden. Make sure you are bringing enough of them into your daily activities for you to connect with yourself. I’d caution you against going overboard on the stillness. There is so much more to life than sitting in meditation for hours or running from one silent retreat to another. Additionally, if you are in the midst of a crisis, emotional or otherwise, the presence of stillness may be too overwhelming.
Schedule in your stillness moments, and make those habits stick. Now that we’ve cleared the garden, we can start to plant. List out activities where you receive. The body is relaxed, and your mind is alert — taking in the inputs around you. I’m sharing my list below.
Intakes
Listening to music/podcasts
Attending a lecture/play
Going to a museum
Lunch with friends
Watching my favorite channel/YouTube
Waking up to my kid’s chatter
Reading
Writing
Sitting outside/looking out a window
Chatting with neighbors
Road trips
Oh look, I have smartphone activities on here! Bad meditator! Actually, not bad. Now you aren’t obsessed with your phone, it should pose no problem for you to engage in the best bits of our technology. Just be mindful of who you are watching, and what types of energy they are pumping into you.
Compare this list to your stillness list. Is it even, or lopsided? What I notice about many people (esp. Americans) is the intake portion is excessive.
If your intake list is bloated, no amount of formal meditation will help you.
You’d have to do back-to-back silent retreats to process all of what you’ve consumed. Know that when you indulge in intake moments, you are allowing someone else’s energy into your space. What do I mean by that? When you watch a sad movie, does it make you sad? Does a confrontation with your boss put you on edge? No one is physically touching you during both scenarios (at least I hope not), but you can still feel the energy of the interaction. Road rage is like this. Sitting in our metal boxes, we can feel anger seething through us when someone cuts us off, or are likewise bewildered when someone swerves around us or makes another aggressive gesture.
On the other side of the coin, you have stillness professionals, who reject all intake activities like television, reading, etc. just to revel in intense presence. If you feel your purpose in this life is to escape it through these practices, follow your path. But I would argue for the vast majority of us, it's just another ego trip. We cultivate stillness and intake moments because we are having a human experience. Why deny yourself that pleasure?
Are you worried formal meditation isn’t on your stillness list? Don’t be. Formal meditation is one of many strategies you can use to create stillness in your life. There are many paths to the same road.
Go off and enjoy your new sense of balance, and stay tuned for our next installment, where we learn what to do when things go off the rails. Stay still, my friends.