Two misunderstandings about meditation

We often hear that meditation allows us to escape our day-to-day lives and worry about “important things”. That’s completely false! Meditation is a way to connect simply and deeply to what is. That’s why it’s helpful to stop caring about spiritual experiences or looking cool on Instagram. Open yourself up to your life as it is.

I often see two ways that meditation is misunderstood nowadays.

The first one comes from the news and social media. People who meditate seem disconnected from this world. We see them with their eyes up towards the sky, their minds who-knows-where. They seem ethereal and self-focused.

What a misinterpretation of meditation! It’s not about floating in abstract space but sitting simply on the earth, like a Buddha. In the oldest depictions of the Buddha, in sculptures and paintings, the Buddha is displayed as present and dignified, although humble and alert. He is rooted in his body and to the earth.

The second misguided idea we have about meditation is that it’s a spiritual way to renounce our terrestrial life. But spiritual commitment is not about giving up pleasure or cutting ourselves off from our senses. It’s not about refusing the amplitude of life or a way to punish ourselves through restraint. The only asceticism—or restraint—specific to meditation is to give up to what hinders the life inside us. That means our fears, preconceptions, and tension. Meditation teaches us to let what we are feeling, doing, or thinking just be.

The problem with most pleasures is that they blind us – we strive for small pleasures without seeing anything else around us. We lose sight of what’s really essential.

Meditation has nothing to do with sexuality, food, or how to behave with others. It teaches us to do everything we do with awareness.

1. How not giving a sh*t will help you
When it comes to meditating, you’re not supposed to try and achieve anything or to succeed at something. You’re not even supposed to try to be good at meditating. You’re just supposed to not give a sh*t. Trust the present moment. Don’t try to control it or give into it.

During sitting practice, do nothing. Don’t try to think about your problems. Don’t analyze them. Open yourself and welcome them. Sit with your problems and do nothing. They are here, so let yourself live with them for a moment. Something is going to happen.

We want to understand things quickly. We want fast solutions and that misguides us even more. It’s easy to see why: either we are told we have to solve our problems, or, if we can’t, to let go of them.

We forget the other option: meditation. Sit on the ground with everything going on around you and listen carefully to what is happening. We’re not managing reality or giving up on it. But listening to it and meeting it. We’re neither controlling our emotions nor letting go of them, but being with them. Acknowledging them. Welcoming them with kindness.

I know meditation is rarely presented like this. People are told to follow their breath and to let their thoughts go by like clouds in the sky. This is so confusing! I understand why people tell me they are bored with it. They don’t feel like it has any effect on their lives.

2. Meditating means embracing your problems
When you sit, you sit not only with your body but also with your whole existence – everything that your life is made of.

Many practitioners, even skilled ones, have the bad habit of making meditation merely an interlude in their lives. They put their problems in boxes: their oppressive boss, their boring husband or wife, their children who won’t ever help out. They practice in a separate world. If you want meditation to transform your life, you need to practice with who you actually are, with what you are actually living.

So don’t try to drive away thoughts of your wife, husband, children, or boss. They are here. Even when you don’t think about them, they are here because they are part of your life. Whether you like it or not, you sit with them. You even sit with the social and political situation of the whole world. You have to practice with all of it.

Meditating is not about setting our difficulties aside. It’s about letting these difficulties transform themselves in a profound way.

The key is sitting, corporeally, and breathing with your life. It’s about sitting exactly as we are, with our life as it is. In one motion, everything included.