Over the last few months I’ve had a few people enquire as to how (and if) I meditate.
As someone who has been meditating on and off for over a decade, I’ve been exposed to a handful of different styles of meditating. Some with an object, some with a mantra (a sound or idea you repeat to yourself), some to do with allowing all-that-is to exist, watching your breath, watching your thoughts, watching the space between thoughts… the list goes on.
I don’t mean to sound vague and unrelatable. I really would like to share with you how I meditate, but the fact of the matter is there is no how to it. It’s not really something I do. Rather, it’s something I let happen.
A few years ago I went to Peru and drank Ayahuasca. I’m not going to talk about the actual Ayahuasca experience, but actually what happened on the days off. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) Rose and I felt so in need of rest that we ended up cuddling in a hammock.
After having such a terrifying experience, there was such a strong desire for peace within me, and there wasn’t much to fill the space. There were no phones, no computers, no people. We had each other and the sounds of the jungle. Perhaps at another time we would have spent the time chatting about something.
But we didn’t this time. We spent the day in a hammock. We weren’t talking. We weren’t even thinking, really. We just rested in that quietness.
After spending some time in that quietness, that space of simply existing, we came up with a word for it. We called it existy vibes.
Existy vibes was just an articulation of a simple fact. Without any stimulus, without any content, the natural ground of existence is quite nice. It was our way of describing that even in the absence of busy-ness. There is just this simple feeling of being alive.
Existy vibes is like a quiet hum of a feeling of wellbeing that comes simply from the fact that you are a conscious being. This came as a kind of pleasant surprise to both of us. It’s almost as though we forgot about it and in this circumstance, we came face-to-face with it again. It was perhaps a kind of remembering to something that has always been here yet can escape awareness quite easily.
Another way of describing would be to use daily life as an example. There are activities that we do that are enjoyable, and activities that we do that are not. You might play a game with a friend, which would be enjoyable. And at another time you might feel exhausted from working overtime.
And even when we are physically doing nothing, we might still be busy in the mind. Perhaps while in line at the grocery store. We’re thinking about stuff. And then the activity is the same but in the mind. We think about things we like and feel happy, we think depressing things and we get depressed. But the activity is ongoing.
When we get tired we go to sleep, and then our dreams take over until we’re awake. But in the interim, there doesn’t seem to be much quietness or time to simply exist.
What happens in the absence of all that activity? Both physically and in the mind.
Even though I wasn’t really conscious of it until this moment, I did actually believe that in the absence of any activity there would just be a kind of void of nothing, of pure neutrality - even boredom. I was afraid of being bored. But existy-vibes was kind of a little realisation that it’s not nothing. It’s actually teeming life. It’s as if if you put your ear to the ground long enough, you can hear the entire earth humming with life. And it was full of a deep sense of wellness.
So my meditation is just that. It’s just some intentional time to allow myself to return to those existy-vibes.
My meditation is the easiest meditation possible because it requires literally nothing on my part. In fact one could say that doing nothing is the requirement. To be okay with doing nothing. With thinking nothing. Not trying to control your attention. Not trying to control your thoughts. Not thinking of things in the future, in the past, or in the present. It only requires I stop working, busying myself for a moment or two. To stop churning my mind.
It takes no work.
If I stop shovelling coal into a fire it will eventually fizzle out. It has no more fuel. That’s what my meditation is like for me. I’m not looking for an extinguisher to put out the fire, I’m just not really adding any more fuel to it.
This is a hard thing to grasp when we’ve grown up in a western culture. Most of us have been taught to be doing things all the time. It gets to the point with many that we feel unable to understand how anything can come about without us making it happen. It’s as if we need a formula to adhere to. Every goal has a how, and every how has a step by step process that one can follow.
But there are no steps in what I refer to as real meditation. But there is a requirement to give up that striving western mindset, which gets in the way of the awareness of existy vibes.
Understanding this goes hand-in-hand with understanding that our western lives are basically a constant state of shovelling fuel in the fire. We’re always doing things. All day we’re busy. Even when we’re not doing things we’re thinking things. We’re pretty much always filling the space with something. Not leaving room for life to simply be. And that’s what this meditation is. Just letting life be.
That peaceful, wholesome, happy existy-vibes is fundamental to the essence of the soul. My thoughts can sometimes throw a veil over it, making me feel upset. Sometimes my thoughts will make me believe existy vibes doesn’t exist. That underneath the noise of my mind there is nothing. I keep the charade going with all of my activities. But at some point I remember again. And when I do, I take some time to relish in that feeling.
This is what meditation has evolved into for me. It’s so natural, so easy, and so nice. As easy as floating down a river. Just letting the natural current of life bring my awareness back to this wonderful feeling by gently undoing everything I’m holding on to. I just loosen my grip of everything and it all floats away.
Rose and I making a friend in Machu Picchu
