Those who are at first sceptical that the benefits of meditation find their scepticism relieved when they find out that when you meditate it changes the brain. While there are areas of the brain that appear to physically change size in response to meditation. New connections are made and other diminished. In addition to structural changes, there are functional ones. There does appear to be a linear relationship between changes of this kind and the amount of time spent practicing.
Now, this information is interesting and I will certainly discuss this further at various times, but the truth is virtually anything you do changes you brain.
The fact that you had breakfast this morning, and that you can remember it, changed your brain. Of course, learning any complex skill requires you to physically change your brain’s structure. That is essentially what learning is at the level of the brain.
Saying that meditation changes the brain is not to say that it is special or that is good for you. Most things that are bad for you, also change your brain.
There is a growing literature on the benefits of meditation, and I will talk about it from time to time, but I want to suggest that there is nothing that appears in that literature that represents the deepest reason why you want to meditate.
For instance, there are studies that suggest that meditation improves immune function, or reduces stress, or it is associated with less age related thinning of the cerebral cortex. While having a good immune system or less stress or not suffering neuro degeneration are good things, these studies may fail to replicate tomorrow.
Should that happen, my recommendation to meditate would not change at all. There really are deeper reasons why one should meditate and to live an examined life in general.
Meditation is a skill that opens doors that you might not otherwise know exist.
To say that you should do this because it reduces stress or confers any other ancillary benefit is really to miss the point.
Consider an analogy of reading: is reading good for you? Does it reduce stress?
Do you see what is peculiar about that framing; given how profound the difference is between being a profound reader and being illiterate? These are strange questions. It sort of depends on what you read, right?
Is it good for you? I think we can all imagine scenarios where it is not good for someone in any kind of straight forward way.
But, reading is one of the most important skills that our species had ever acquired. Almost everything we care about depends on it.
Of course, mindfulness is a very different sort of skill but it also has sweeping implications.
Another way to think about this is that you are always meditating on something. You are always paying attention to something. We have largely become what we pay attention to.
We are always building our minds. We’re building our minds and desires and worries and expectations and prejudices and insights.
Mindfulness is just the ability to notice this process with clarity, and to then prioritise what we pay attention to. Why not pay attention to those things that make you a better person? Why not free your attention from all the trivial things that are clamouring for it.
Lets say that you pick up you phone to check your email and, at that moment, your 5 years old daughter starts to tell you a story. At this point, several things are possible.
You could be so lost in your thoughts about your email and you could find the urge to respond to it so compelling that you do not even notice that your daughter is talking to you, or you could notice it only in a way to rebuff her that makes her feel terrible.
You could be so entranced that, five minutes later, you wouldn’t even recall that this episode occurred. That is how most people live their lives!
In fact, this is how most of us live most of our lives, even after we learn to meditate. But, the more you train in this practice, the more degrees of freedom you will find in situations like this.
You will notice that your daughter is trying to get your attention given her your attention and that giving her your attention is in competition with this urge to check your email.
When actual mindfulness comes online, you can feel this urge to check your email as a pattern of energy in your body and simply ‘Let It Go’. That is, you you can actually break the link between the feeling and the behavioural imperative it seems to communicate.
It is true that one way to get rid of this feeling is to check your email but another way is to simply get rid of it. Only mindfulness allows you to do the latter.
Then you can direct you attention to the five years old who is standing in front of you. It might be the only story that she tells you that day. You can be aware of this fact, in that moment.
You can feel the poignancy of that. In that moment, you can further ingrain that new habit.
You can become that kind of person who is fully present in moments like that. Can you become the kind of person, not only for yourself by changing your brain but, in this case, for your daughter by changing her brain. This is just a thirty second slice of life. ,
When you learn to meditate, there are literally hundreds, even thousands of moments like this throughout the day. These are choice points that would not otherwise exist. These are paths taken and not taken, for good reason.
Without free attention, there is no place for good reasons to land.
As you grow in mindfulness, you begin to notice the lies you can no longer tell. You begin to have insights into your true motives in various situations that are sometimes not flattering but you want these insights all the same because how else could you become a better person?
That is what it is to live an examined life.
Don’t meditate just because it is good for you, it is more important than that!
Yours optimally,
Scott
Source: https://dynamic.wakingup.com/course/764c26?share_id=3A54751A&source=content%20share
