One of the most impactful books for me has been Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” as it got me interested the basics of meditation (and was my way into his eventual app of the same name, which is full of excellent lectures and meditation courses).
Often when people encounter meditation today it is in a “meditation for X” context, such as “meditation for performance” or “meditation for better sleep” or “meditation for stress,” but from a more fundamental perspective, the main reason to meditate is because it presents a chance to make an inquiry into the nature of consciousness and the illusory nature of self.
These might sound metaphysical or like woo-woo nonsense on the surface, but they are actually very experiential questions that can be considered even by very young children. Let’s take each of these two concepts one at a time.
What is the nature of consciousness?
It seems a safe assumption to say that most people spend most of their days lost in thought. What’s more, they don’t even realize it. Although we do not author or summon our thoughts, we treat them differently from other appearances in consciousness like a sight, sound, or sensation. The difference is that because they are occurring inside our heads, we tend to identify with them. And yet despite our habit of fusing with our thoughts, the truth is that they, like all appearances in consciousness, appear in the same space of open awareness.
I think it is vitally important to be able to (a) recognize the transitory nature of thoughts and (b) create space between these appearances in consciousness and our behavior. Thoughts can influence feelings which can influence behaviors. Or behaviors can influence feelings which can influence thoughts. Or feelings can influence behaviors which influence thoughts.
As such, it seems like the more we can bring awareness to our thoughts and when we are swept up in them the more we can live a more sane and equanimous life. Beyond that, being able to “get off the ride” more quickly allows you to not spend your life mired in anger, frustration or any other negative (or hyper positive) state. Whether we are concerned about the future or regretting the past, we are being hooked by illusions. Being able to recognize this allows us to be present for the people and things in our life right now. And being able to properly engage with worthwhile people/activites/pursuits in the present is the best path to a good life.
There’s a whole other rabbit hole on how much of this points to a deterministic model of behavior, which would invalidate free will, but I’ll save that for another day as telling people “you do not author your thoughts” usually ends a conversation quickly.
The illusory nature of self
Building on this concept of thoughts, we turn to the nature of self. One of my favorite “experiments” comes from Douglas Harding and his Headless Way concept. Basically you point at something in your environment and ask yourself, “as a matter of experience, what are you pointing at?” Maybe it’s a car or a tree or your dog. There is something experiential happening and you can easily describe just what it is you’re pointing at.
Where things get interesting is when you point back in the direction from which you’re gazing out at the world and ask yourself the same question.
Most people will of course say, “I’m pointing at me.” But when pressed to describe the experiential nature of the whatever it is they’re pointing at, they will instead offer a concept because there is nothing to experience in this next step.
It’s not really a “gotcha” experiment, but instead it is designed to help you realize that most of what you call “yourself” is really a constellation of static concepts that you are applying to a dynamic situation of awareness (consciousness). If we can acknowledge much of our “self” for the illusion that it is, we can begin to live with more openness and freedom.
This isn’t to say that you don’t exist, but instead to help you relax the grip you keep on this idea of yourself that you drag around from place to place, year after year. With practice, you will find that sometimes when you are sitting in meditation, you might experience moments where you are no longer having a sense of looking out at the world from this tiny perch inside your head, and instead are just identical to the experience you are having. That is, there is not “the thing” and “you” there is just the consciousness that you embody in the flow of a situation. To quote Big Steve Parish, alongside whom I briefly worked this past fall, “the situation is the boss, man.”
Again, this is a very deep well and I’ve presented just a very shallow introduction to some of the basic concepts, but if any of this has intrigued you, I recommend any of the resources I’ve mentioned above. The Waking Up app has a very useful introductory course that I think is a great place to start. (And if anyone is interested, message me and I can send you a free month of the app. One of the nicer features of the app is that it is designed to be shared easily and for free.)
At the end of the day, meditation is one of the most meaningful things I’ve learned to do in my life, as it reveals a much deeper truth to our existence. I hope you can have a similar experience with it.