Episode 19

Meditation Without the Artificial Sweetener

Hello again. Welcome back to the follow through Formula Podcast. This is Rick Lewis coming to you with Episode 19. I have committed to do 21 days of podcasting in a row. I am almost at the finish line, and I love the challenge this creates to be completely present with myself each day and really ask myself, “All right, what's going on today?” and to share that with you. Because I’m uploading this every day, I don’t have the time to preplan or script it, and that’s why I chose to do it this way. It’s just me talking from what's really happening as I attempt to follow through on this commitment to speak about how we attend to what matters most in our lives.

I'm going to further this experiment today. What I've noticed in the process of recording these podcasts is that even though they are all fairly spontaneous, still, I sit down and I'm choosing my words quite carefully and trying to craft and control where this message is going to go. As soon as I do that, I let my mind take over and direct the flow, which can often inhibit the outpouring of something that's more authentic and unrehearsed, which is what I’m trying to offer with this particular podcast. This podcast is about how to build confidence even in the unknown and unpredictable flow of life. It’s about managing anxiety in the midst of change, it’s about following through on what you love, identifying your purpose and taking action on it in ways that can increase your sense of confidence and joy. So, what I'm practicing here on Episode 19 is just talking and not letting my mind take over the conversation.  

How often have you lived your life from a perspective where you feel like your mind is taking over your life and the conversation? 

When you allow that to happen, you get this kind of stutter step effect where things aren't flowing, and what's coming out, what you're saying to other people, the actions you're taking are not the real you. It's something that's tentative and hesitant and maybe full of doubt or a lack of confidence. On the other hand, there's a kind of practice of living that has to do with being authentic, and in order to be authentic, we have to be observing ourselves and saying, Who am I right now? What's really happening here? 

What I want to talk about today is meditation. Meditation is a sacred act to me, and I have been delaying this conversation and putting it off, even though it is what I really want to talk about. But meditation is a very difficult thing to talk about because it is a deeply experiential process. Someone can guide you a little bit and tell you how you could practice meditation, but at that point, after a little bit of instruction, the only way you can learn about it is if you go do it. 

Additionally, a lot of talk about meditation is just gonna lead you sideways. A lot of it surrounds how meditation is a kind of magical process where suddenly you're calm and you're feeling good and you feel happy and relaxed. That can be very misleading.

I’ve been doing meditation for more than 40 years. My first attempt at meditation was when I was 18 years old. I was a type who was into all sorts of accomplishments: I was a theater artist, an actor and a performer, and I was an athlete, and I was driven to excel in any way that I could. I did tons of extracurricular activities after school. I remember this day very vividly because I had nothing coming up for my afternoon and my evening, which was fairly unusual for me. With nothing going on, I just thought, Okay, well, that's kind of interesting. 

I noticed I was very agitated about having nothing to do. I was watching my mind get very anxious and agitated, and I was starting to try and plan, “Okay. What am I going to do? What am I going do with my evening? Am I gonna watch TV? Um, I could practice my juggling, my circus skills.” My mind was kind of spinning and worrying. And in that state, the thought that occurred to me was, “This isn't good. This isn't healthy. Something about this isn't right that I'm panicked about not knowing what I'm going to do with myself.”

I'm sure I had heard about meditation at that point. But I had never done it. I thought to myself, “Well, because this isn't good, I need to look at this. I need to figure out what's going on here. I need to let myself experience this instead of running into some kind of activity.”

I waited until everybody else in the house had gone. I had some dinner and I drew it way out, I took a long time to make my meal and eat my food and clean up, knowing that once the cleanup was done, I was going to be faced with this gaping void of doing nothing. Once I was done in the kitchen, I went and I sat down on the couch and I remember looking at the clock and thinking, I just need to do nothing. 

Something about this was really important. I needed to know I was capable of just doing nothing. So I sat there on the couch. I squirmed and fidgeted and my mind was jumping all over the place and I felt uncomfortable for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I looked up at the clock again and seven minutes had passed. 

I thought, “This is crazy. Why am I so anxious? Why is it so difficult for me to sit in one place?” So I sat there for a couple of hours enduring this inner torment until my family members started to come home. This was an important experience in my life because it showed me something about the state of my psyche and the lack of discipline in my mind. 

At that point, discipline was everything for me. I was really into practicing all sorts of things that I wanted to be good at. I became quite good at sports and circus skills and theater. And yet what I realized was that I had no control over my mind. My mind was this wild animal that was bouncing off the walls in every single direction. I had no command over it. There was no mastery of the movement of my attention or my thoughts, and that was alarming to me. It was alarming enough that I started to investigate. “What is meditation? How does that work?” And I started practicing sitting still and doing nothing. 

The reason I tell you this story is that the idea of meditation as something that's supposed to make you feel calm and peaceful and relaxed and happy was not my experience at all. And I think that's true for many people who try to meditate.

I've been meditating for 40 years now on a daily basis, and for a period of many years I was meditating up to four hours a day. Some people might hear that and think that's ridiculous. What a waste of time! Some people can't even stand sitting still for a few minutes, they feel like it's such a waste of time. 

My passion for this practice of meditation doesn’t have anything to do with that stereotypical idea of an experience where you're having this great, wonderful thing happen. It is unfortunate that in the ethos of our modern Western culture the way we relate to meditation is that it is supposed to make us feel good, because that stops a lot of people from actually having a relationship to this profoundly important practice.

Meditation is not about having any particular experience, especially a really “good” experience. It's about simply having the ability to be with yourself the way you are. That's it.

If you look at all the various forms of suffering that we go through as people, most of the problems and concerns and everything that goes sideways in our lives (aside from the objective challenges we face), they come from one root cause. That root cause is that we keep trying to be something other than what we are in the given moment, so we don't even see what's actually occurring for us. 

If we're not observing the fact that we feel agitated in a given moment or fearful about something, the next thing we know we're biting somebody else's head off and they're looking at us like, What is up? Where did that come from? We may even be wondering that internally ourselves. Why did I just lash out at this person? Why did I have a big reaction to what they just said? It's because we're not paying attention enough to see that what is there in our body mind complex is agitation or anxiety or rage, or trepidation or doubt or panic. 

The process of meditation is learning how to get into the very moment that we're inhabiting and be deeply connected to this body, so that we actually are feeling what's really happening inside of this skin bag that we inhabit. What are the sensations? What's going on in my gut right now? What's going on in my chest? Am I tensing my jaw? Is my face relaxed or open? Is my mind racing so much that I'm not even feeling my body at all? 

If we can be with whatever it is that is going on, then our ability to actually follow through on who we essentially are is greatly enhanced. 

The job of meditation practice is to become the place, the room in which all the different characters and habits that have a life inside our psyche and mind can just be. What do I mean by different characters?

If you've ever tried to commit to a diet practice or an exercise practice you may notice that the person who made the decision to follow through on a commitment to practice isn't here in the next moment or the next day. Instead, it’s another person who's here who's going to go ahead and have that piece of cake or skip the gym. We're fragmented as people, and it is easy to observe. It could be something that's full of good humor when we can look at ourselves and go, “Oh, my God, look at this. Just five minutes ago I said that I wasn't gonna gossip about other people, and here I am, five minutes later, and I'm fully into some juicy bit of gossip!” I mean, this happens all the time. 

Meditation is a space that we practice inhabiting, where we watch all of these characters try to enact their own priority system and take over, and instead of letting them take over, we just watch the play of this, and we just sit back and we allow. We allow these different characters to kind of run amok inside of the room of our presence, but we don't have to do anything about it. 

Meditation is a place where nothing has to be done. 

Meditation is a posture and a disposition where all the crazy characters inside of you don't have to be indulged with action. You can simply let them run around and talk about everything they're scared about or panicked about or passionate about or think has to happen or must not happen. All these characters have a million different opinions about how life should be. What ordinarily happens when we're not paying attention is that those characters take over our mouths and our minds and our bodies, and they make us do things and say things that are only in service to that one character, not to our overall purpose. 

It's baffling not only for us, but for other people. When we completely reverse the stance we've had about one thing or we completely go back on a commitment we've made or we don't follow through on something we said we were going to do, that's confusing for everybody. But it can also be the source of a sense of humor because it's just what's true of the human psyche and a human being who hasn't developed a presence practice.  A presence practice asserts one point of witness that can actually see all these different characters and begin to create the possibility of something called integrity. 

Integrity (steadfast, wholesome, unimpaired) simply means that somewhere in there there's one perspective, one point of witness that actually sees all the other parts and doesn’t get drawn in. 

If we have this point of reference, this perspective from which we're aware of all these other parts, then we can successfully manage them because we're seeing them all together. “I made this commitment over there. This was a priority to me. But now when this character rises up inside the room that priority disappears and goes away. Suddenly I'm more concerned about making money than I am spending time with my family. But when I'm with my family and I really take a break, I say to myself, Oh my gosh, nothing's more important than family.” This is the theater that goes on inside of our minds. But it's all unconscious. When it runs itself unconsciously, without the presence of an overall witness character, of a director, then it distracts us again and again. 

Meditation is simply the practice of being a space that's big enough to allow all these characters to be present and for them to all come into full view, without being compelled to do their bidding. When we are present we can see the whole show for what it is, without being drawn in.

When we're not present, what happens is each of these characters becomes seductive enough and alluring enough and clever enough that they're able to make a case for what they see needs to happen or what needs to be said in the moment. And suddenly we find ourselves tearing into somebody in anger and saying something that five minutes later, we regret. “Why did I say that? I'm really sorry I lost my temper. I lost my cool.”

What we're saying is, I wasn't there. The part of me who is the master of this house, the presence witness of all the parts inside of me just wasn't there in that moment. 

When that part is present, when that master is present, the characters enter the room and they can make a very loud case or a very pitying case, but we don’t go along with it. We might have parts of us that are victims, that will come in the room and say, “I can't do it. I can't. I'm too scared. I'm too incompetent. This will never work.” When a character like that enters the room and convinces us to stop pursuing something that's deeply important to us, then we've lost the presence game. 

There are all sorts of parts inside of me. There are very aggressive parts, parts that are like, I'm gonna crush it, I'm gonna conquer, I'm gonna win no matter what. There are other parts that want to be very relational and they're very concerned about other people, so concerned that I might get very adaptive instead of speaking what's really there for me, and then I don't stand for something that's important to me. There are parts of me that are very fearful, and there are parts of me that feel like a victim, like the whole world is doing something to me, and there's nothing I can do about it and that sucks. And then I feel sorry for myself. 

We have all these parts that are constantly coming in and convincing the master of the house that they should be in charge right now, that they should get to run outside and tell the world what should be happening next. But the problem with that is, then we don't have this thing called integrity. Integrity is the unimpaired driver. Integrity means there’s an ability to be accountable and follow through on your goals, your purpose, on what it is you want to serve.

There needs to be a master plan and someone who can keep it in sight, so that what actually gets taken action upon, and the words that actually come out of our mouth, and the things that we actually put into motion are furthering our growth, our confidence, our goals and values, our purpose.

There needs to be someone who's paying attention to all the parts and can sit back and understand that all these parts have value, but only in the right place or time. 

Meditation is not about getting rid of the parts of ourselves we don’t like or we disapprove of. If I'm the master and I can call upon these parts when I need them, then each of those parts has a useful function in my life. Sometimes I need that part of me who could just stand tall and go out and get shit done and conquer a task and reach a goal. Sometimes I need that part of me which is quiet and more relational. When brought in at the right moment, that’s the part that can really be in relationship with other people and see them and hear them and receive them fully. 

That is the essence of leadership. The leader is constantly referring to the vision which is in front, which is the overall vision, the purpose of the human being. In my case, the vision that I'm holding right now is that I want to help people to follow through successfully with what's most important to them. There's no way I can help people do that if I'm not aware of all the different parts of me that might diminish or draw away from that effort.

It is the true deepest joy of being a human to develop enough self-mastery that you can feel a very strong purpose in your life, something that you want to serve, and be able to follow through. When you have this inner integrity, this capacity to be with whatever shows up, then yes, many benefits follow. Instead of constantly stopping and starting, two steps forward and three steps back, moving left and then moving right, and then wondering if you're going in the right direction and so on, you can refer all those disparate impulses back to the one vision and purpose. When we bring some discipline to the practice of presence, we can get beyond the kind of erratic stop and start experience of life that we all have, which is the essence of suffering. 

So, meditation is deeply important to me. I've never really spoken this way about meditation with this kind of conviction, out loud. I want to teach people what meditation actually is and how they could use that practice to develop the kind of integrity and the ability to follow through on purpose that I'm talking about. 

The whole purpose of meditation is that you are so aware of who you are and what all your parts are that you become an effective force for positive service in the world. That's the whole purpose of meditation, that you become someone who can actually respond to life as it is in an effective and creative and delightful way. 

In the process of learning to meditate, yes, there could be an experience of rootedness and feeling calm and centered and at peace with yourself. But that peace comes from the integrity that's created by fully inhabiting your life. It doesn't come from some outside force that descends on you like an angel and showers relaxation pixie dust all over your body, and you get to have this wonderful experience. That's just not what it is. 

Meditation allows you to become the greatest point of service that you can be. 

Meditation is to clear the way and clarify the field of your psyche in a way that it can line up with one important thing. It's a sacred act. It's a sacred space where we learn to start honoring who we are, as we are, without the need to run from that or turn away or deny the thoughts that appear in our mind or the feelings that appear in our body. We can have all sorts of things come up that we might feel ashamed about or alarmed about: violent thoughts, aggressive thoughts, greedy thoughts, parts of us that are just deeply, deeply selfish and self-serving. They have to be seen for what they are. And it's not until we see them fully and can accept them that we can step in and hold space, a sense of inner authority, when those other parts are on the verge of acting in a way that's harmful. 

If we are not in charge of our own attention and our presence we’re completely at the effect of warring inner parts as well as outer forces that will just keep leading us in different directions all day long, and at the end of the day our head hits the pillow and we wonder, “What happened today? Why didn't I get anything done? Why don't I feel like I really served today?” We have to establish presence in our life if we want to build confidence, manage anxiety, engage meaningful personal growth, increase our productivity and accountability, in short, to live in a fulfilled and meaningful fashion.

Basic mindfulness meditation is one of the most tried and true ways to practice disciplining your attention so you can be more present with yourself as you are. 

I've actually created and written a document called How to Begin a Mindfulness Meditation Practice that you can access here.  It's a very basic approach that incorporates a lot of traditions that use meditation so that you can get solid grounding for how to self-observe, for how to just be with yourself. It comes originally from something called Vipassana, which involves being deeply rooted in the body, staying in constant contact with the physical body, and using that as the anchor point to develop the kind of presence that I've been describing in this podcast. The style that I trained in was founded by a man named Satya Narayan Goenka. He was the root teacher of the type of meditation that I learned, and I can't imagine who I would be today if I didn't have this dedicated meditation practice that I use all the time and I've been doing for years. 

I added it up one day, and I think I have a total of about 12,000 hours of time I've spent in meditation. You may subscribe to the argument that, “I don't have time for meditation.” But if you look back and you begin to observe and watch your thoughts and watch your moods and how much we work against ourselves when our thoughts and moods and actions are not aligned, what you’ll see is that we waste so much time and so much energy by not having this inner integrity. 

The time spent in meditation has actually made me so much more effective in my personal and professional life. I'm one of the hardest working people I know and one of the most productive people I know. And yet I spend this time each and every day doing nothing.

It just so happens that productivity and effectiveness are a side effect of understanding and observing who you actually are. It's one of many side effects that arise from meditation practice. But those side-benefits aren't the core benefit. When you see a list of benefits such as feeling more calm and peaceful, lowering your blood pressure, reducing stress, living longer, a better sex life, making more money at work, and all the other millions of benefits that people are always documenting and touting as the reason you should meditate, then each of those many parts inside begin feverishly saying, “Let's go, meditate! Let's go meditate because that's gonna benefit me!” and there you go again in the same old round. Chasing benefits is the opposite of being with yourself as you are.

The reason to meditate is because you are already a complete manifestation of the natural world, and to live firmly rooted in that natural organic expression of reality, as it is, is the greatest joy imaginable. 

You don't have to do anything for that to be the case. You just have to be present and honest with yourself about what's there for you in any given moment. And when you can come from that place and speak from that place and live from that place, all sorts of wonderful things will happen as a result of that.

Well, I had no idea this is what you were gonna get today. But there you go. 

Thank you for listening. Thank you for being you. And I hope that what's in store for you in your life is that you get to meet the real you in a more and more profound way each and every day, and that the rest of the world gets the benefit of the real you. That is my deepest wish for you and for what this project might help to produce. I'll be back tomorrow.