Credit Simon Migag

Why Meditate? Redux

Again, the question is asked. Why meditate?

This question (abbreviated) popped up in the channel where some of us discuss such things.

It seems like you don’t get any benefits for normal life until [The Mind Illuminated level] 7+

If meditating doesn’t enhance the other 15 hours of your life (8 for sleep and 1 for meditation) - I don’t know why anyone would do it.

You can learn detachment without losing 6.25% of your conscious life.

I responded, but my response was reflexive, mindless, automatic.

It was a pretty good response, because AutoMike, who delivers reflexive, mindless, automatic shit-on-demand is good.

But there are better responses.

How do I know? Because I fucking wrote better ones. Several times.

I wrote this one: Because I keep forgetting. And I wrote this one: Why meditate? Oh, yeah, before that I wrote this one: Intention lost, intention regained? And I also wrote this one: An intentional meditation on intention and meditation,

So you could read them, and you’d have a better understanding. But it’s a lot of words. And some are not relevant. And you might be too fucking busy.

So let me try to boil things down for my future selves (who, like me, will probably forget the shit that I’ve already learned.)

Meditation results depend on intention

First: meditation is mainly a good use of time or mainly a fucking waste of time depending on the intention you bring to the practice. It depends on you.

I wrote about that in this post: Intention lost, intention regained. It’s not too late to read it. Or you can keep reading this abbreviated version.

If your intention is just to rack up another notch on your meditation streak belt, then it’s mainly a fucking waste of time.

And sadly, too often that’s all l bring to my practice.

Not to say I don’t get something out of it. I did say “mainly a fucking waste of time” not “totally a fucking waste of time.” But it could be a way better use of time if I was just a little—well, mindful about my mindfulness practice.

And I haven’t been. Or haven’t been as much as I could be.

If you intend to get to level 7+ so you can get some value from the practice, then you’re likely not to get much value until you get there.

But you can have other, more immediate intentions.

The waking up intention

Here’s an intention you might want to bring to your meditation practice, Future Me—and anyone else who gives a shit.

You might intend to wake up and spend more time awake.

Some time ago a Past Me woke up and realized, for the first time: “Fuck! I’ve been asleep!”

Every time after that when another Past Me has woken up, he’s realized pretty much the same thing: “Fuck! I’ve been asleep. Again!”

I spend most of my time on automatic, in a dream. I have little rituals designed to help me wake up. But they’re dream-rituals, and they’re easy to do on automatic, too.

It’s like being deep in a dream and the alarm clock rings. I hit snooze and don’t really wake up.

And because everyone I know is also in their own dream, and we’re all pretending we’re all awake, there’s a lot of agreement.

Yay! We’re awake.

But maybe we’re not.

There’s the reflexive, mindless, automatic reminder to wake up and the reflexive, mindless, automatic response to someone’s reminder.

And then there’s actually waking up. Hearing the sounds around you. Did you do that, Future Me? Being aware of your mood. How about that, Future Me? Thinking lovingly about another person (which means being aware of someone’s existence beside your own.) Did you do that, Future Me?

There’s the easy and instantaneous experience of waking up (“I’m awake. Yay! Now back to sleep.”) and the more difficult and intentional experience of being awake for more than that instant of realization.

So my intention in mediation is to wake up. And to be better at waking up and staying awake.

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