One of the weird things about meditation is what you learn about yourself – like it or not. I have sometimes said that whatever other values meditation has, the things along the way are beneficial. A lot of it comes from understanding your own habits, obsessions, and mistakes.
In this case, I’d like to talk about learning the difference between doing and watching.
My meditative practice, as noted often, is informed by The Secret of the Golden Flower (Cleary Translation) among other readings. I tune my breath to be slow and even as I watch it, refining my breath and my awareness as I go. I sometimes call it the Triple Action as following, slowing, and evening is all one.
Without going into the benefits and experiences – as I and others note discussing goals often distracts from the act – it’s fascinating to see what happens when I get off track. If you’re not a meditatior and wonder “how can you get off track by just breathing evenly and slowly” then my advice is “try to do it consistently for five minutes.”
So anyway there I am meditating and tuning my breath, feeling strangely distracted and distant, and of course I continue to meditate since that continuity is part of the point. I continued and still felt like something wasn’t quite right, that I couldn’t quite focus. Then suddenly I become aware of what’s happening.
I’m not just there following my ever-refining breath, I’m watching myself do it. I’m following the watching of myself. It’s like doing something by looking in a mirror – just a lot of what we do is looking at reflections of ourselves in our own mind, our own self-image. I was so intent on the mirror I kept losing focus on the thing I wanted to pay attention to – my breath.
Now I kept up with my practice – insights can be distractions – but that stuck with me when I was done. Sometimes you’re not watching something, you’re watching watching. Sometimes you’re not thinking, you’re thinking about yourself thinking. The human mind can get into some pretty wild infinite recursion, which is immediately obvious as soon as you remember your last neurotic obsession.
This was a reminder of how we can make simple things very complex, how we over-think, over-monitor, and end up abstract from our lives. It’s pretty amazing what following your tuned breath can reveal to you.
But don’t let such realizations distract you.
- Xenofact