Meditation and The Art of Silencing the Internal Scream

Writing in my good coffee shop today. @thetincupcafe on Instagram. I generally stop at DD. That’s Dunkin Donuts for those not in the know. I had time before teaching a voice lesson and so I stopped in to write a bit.

Each Saturday morning there is a zazen ‘sit’ at The Brooklyn Zen Center. It lingers on my Google calendar in the form of a recurring weekly meeting, part of the phantom life I’d like to live, and I do make it there sometimes. It is a half-hour sit, which means they ring this little chime, the sound of which I love, and as the sound waves emanating from it reduce in amplitude, the vibrations that my ear can perceive lessen until I only think I can still hear it. Then, there’s just me. Rather, there’s me, and the me I think I am most of the time. Anyone who has fallen into the sensation, even for a few seconds, must know the what it is to observe oneself. All of the anxiety about past and future dissolve and with it, the need to BE anything. Then there is just the true and beautiful me. The God part that I learned about during my Catholic upbringing. I feel a knee-jerk reaction to mention that I am not religious. I am not even a believer, but I am not an atheist either. My faith lies in sitting with the unknowing and being comfortable there.

God, if we must use the word, is the universe and the laws of physics. It is the unseen force or energy that weaves its way through each aspect of our lives. If it is true then, that God is in everything and each of us, then the me who is uncovered while I sit and close my eyes and focus on my breath, is God.

There’s this one little problem though. That other, egoistic self is never too far away. He resurfaces again and again and by the end of thirty minutes of meditation is screaming bloody murder for that beautiful little bell to ring again, signifying the end of this sit. Mostly he’s concerned with the sounds in the room or outside on the street. The annoying noise that the lady next to me makes when she clears her throat. He turns up the inner monologue and invents unavoidable itches which must be scratched. He highlights any aches or pains lingering in my body and basically fuels any thought that might get me out of being the true me and back to being him.

and

Breathe in…. Breathe out….

Since I discovered public radio, while driving the mean streets of Pittsburgh in my car at the age of about 18, I've been interested in the tenets of Buddhism. The recordings of Alan Wattes, a great interpreter of Eastern philosophy to the west through the 60’s and 70’s, would be played on NPR ,and I listened intently. Everything he said made so much sense to me, and it has fueled an interest and worldview that continues to grow and mature.

But meditation was not a part of my practice then. I had no practice then. It wasn't until much later that I came to that.

At these Saturdays I attend, after the zazen portion, there is a talk given by either one of the members of the center or a visiting guest. This time it the was the senior-most student, who'd been there for many years. His topic was, “What brought you to the cushion.” - or chair in my case, as I've give up on tying my legs into a pretzel and trying to Zen out. I couldn't help but tear up.

What brought me there, and more importantly has continued to bring me back to the proverbial cushion, even if I don't always visit this physical place in Brooklyn to sit with others, was a deep and persistent pain that I tried to tackle and struggle my way through in every possible way I could. I may discuss it in more detail in another post, but suffice to say, it was a matter of the heart.

I couldn't shake the obsessive thoughts and was stuck in what felt like an endless loop, replaying past events, and reimagining different outcomes if only I’d…

But I couldn’t. There was nothing for me to do. No way to solve this equation, and that’s all my mind desperately needed to do, for dammit, it would fix things!

Regular talk therapy and adjustment in medication didn't do it. In group therapy, something I highly recommend, I was the a broken record each week. How frustrating it must have been for the group to hear me be bothered by the same things week in and ‘weak’ out. Reading books didn't do it. Hypnotherapy was not equipped to the task. No, the only thing that provided consistent, while not always complete, relief for me was this time with myself.

What meditation does is allow you to watch those painful thoughts and feel their accompanying feelings from a place removed. It became more of an “oh, isn't it interesting that I'm thinking about that again? Hmm, oh well”

Breathe in…. Breathe out….

More helpful was that it allowed me the short distance between thought/emotion and continuing down the wormhole of suffering to ask the question why. Why is this thought happening now? What else is going on in my life today that could be prompting this, and what helpful thing am I getting from it. It seems counterintuitive, but our suffering often does benefit us. It can be great evidence of victimhood. The stronger we cling, the more entitled we feel to wear the moniker of Downtrodden Soul. For me as well, it made me feel real. Feel something. When the rest of my life was just humdrum, this could be my 2 hour Oscar winning drama, and I was always ready for my close up. Without it, what would I have?

I now know, after a lot of time and hard work, that when my thoughts linger here, it tends to coincide with a day that I'm not feeling as much self-esteem. It signifies that something in my life is unbalanced, and I can begin to focus on what that might be, instead of putting all my sad broken eggs in one very porous and leaky basket.

None of this has freed me permanently from my struggles, but I certainly am in a better place, and this is one of the tools in my bag of magic spells which allow me to remain there.

I would urge you to try it if you never have. Also, if you tried it and it didn’t work. If you think you can’t do it properly. If you think it requires sitting on the floor for an hour and you just ain’t got time for that. You can do it on the train, at your desk, after you put your shoes on, but before you head out the door. Just quiet down and for some prescribed amount of time, starting with as little as a minute a day, try to be aware of thought rather than being the thought. If you have troubles with that, as you 100% inevitably and beyond a shadow of a doubt will. Focus on your breathing.

Breathe in…. Breathe out….

Breathe in…. Breathe out…