📿 The Most Important Thing

Getting frustrated and leaning into simplicity

Adreanna and I led a meditation retreat last weekend. We had a participant, a local community member, who could only attend the Saturday morning. I wrote her a nice email after the fact thanking her for joining us. She replied, “I did enjoy the meditation session…although Buddhist meditation can be challenging!”

I nodded, knowingly. It made sense. She was relatively new to meditation, and plunging into a retreat means practicing for long stretches at a time. This can be extremely rewarding — but it is a deep pool to start in.

I also wondered what type of meditation she had been doing that wasn’t challenging - maybe a guided meditation where you visualize only positive things? There’s so much content in the world that’s called “meditation” that one never knows with these things. I can’t assume that when you say meditation and I say meditation that we’re speaking the same language. 

In any case, I get that she found what we did challenging because mindfulness meditation is not easy. If we’re not habituated to being present, the mind can feel like a dangerous place to be. Sometimes people meditate and feel like the practice has made them crazier than before. It’s always hard news to break: you’ve always been this crazy - you’re just realizing it now. Crazy, of course, is not the best word for the situation but it is the one I hear most frequently from students. “Busy-minded” is likely more accurate.

However, I would argue that mindfulness meditation is simple. We sit in a relaxed and uplifted posture, notice how we’re breathing, and when we get distracted from that we return our focus to the breath. That’s simple enough, right?

Last night Adreanna wanted to change our bed sheets right before bed. I was exhausted and already under the covers when she came in with fresh sheets. I got up and helped. As part of our marriage vows I had told her I would always handle switching out the duvet, because that is the frustrating part. So I took the duvet cover and right before I put it on the comforter I noticed something: it was inside out.