Bored and on the search for a flashy hobby, I stumble across the Headspace app several years ago, letting Andy Puddicomb caress my mind for a few minutes each day. Back then, meditation was pursued for no extrinsic purpose; I only knew that it was somehow related to better emotional regulation and would enhance my daily experience in subtle ways.
It’s been over two years and I have since moved on to Waking Up which provides a deeper version of mindfulness meditation than Headspace, the latter being more accessible to those otherwise unfamiliar and sometimes averse to this traditional eastern practice. As a companion to his book Waking Up, Sam Harris takes the listener on a journey into the nature of consciousness, directing them to dispel the conventional sense of self and experience the open space of awareness.
Waking Up
meditation is simply the ability to stop suffering in many of the usual ways, if only for a few moments at a time
Sam Harris, Waking Up
When I transitioned into my freshman year of college, much of my anxieties and insecurities that lay dormant in the stability of high school resurfaced. I finally pursued spirituality and specifically meditation as a panacea to this underlying unease. Growing more serious about my practice, I incorporated mindfulness exercises into my morning routine, my walks to and from campus, and to excruciating cold showers. It was working to some degree - I felt this sense of being a driver behind the shell of my body gradually dissolve and began noticing thoughts as transitory appearances in consciousness.
However, motivation is fleeting. Soon, I was back on the usual patterns of negative self-talk that only made me more socially incapacitated.
I simply wanted to stop feeling like I’m not enough.
It’s not a failing of the app or Sam Harris’ version of meditation. In fact, he warns against attaining a false sense of enlightenment in the book, contending that such false confidence is a grave impediment to truly being present. Moreover, spiritual enlightenment isn’t assured for all practitioners, at least in the near future, and this must be acknowledged should one commit themselves to daily practice in hopes of this illusory construct. In Harris’ view, simply being able to recognizing pernicious thoughts as mere appearance in the midst of the tumult of western life is sufficient to escape imagined sources of suffering.
Maybe I was at least on the right path.
Awareness
You’re always getting something out of everything you do, until you wake up.
Anthony de Mello, Awareness
Tim Ferris, the maestro of recommendations, put me on this book in one of his drunk chats with Kevin Rose, deeming it a fit companion to the Waking Up app.
A few chapters into it, de Mello’s style is reminiscent of the likes of Sadhguru, using witty storytelling to expound insights in an obvious manner. The foreword recounts this story of an eagle raised by a flock of chicken, never taking flight and living out its life indoctrinated in the belief that it too is a chicken.
In a recent interview, Emmanuel Acho declared his greatest fear as being complacency - not breaking through the bounds of the box of possibilities that individuals are seemingly limited to. Waking up in the sense of attaining some semblance of mindfulness in ordinary states of consciousness offers a glimpse beyond the confines of the superficial desires that society wants us to pursue.
Anthony de Mello takes this further, proclaiming that these desires are ingrained to the point that no act of charity is done selflessly; there is always something to gain in return. The soldier who volunteers his body as a shield to a grenade does so in hopes of heavenly ascendance. The exhausted priest who decides to hear out another distraught follower does so to ease his conscience of the guilt of saying no. Even the anxious eighteen-year-old with confidence issues pursues meditation to sooth their neuroticism.
The truth is that nobody wants to be enlightened. Everyone wants to take the path of least resistance to relieve their worries. Enlightenment is painful. It requires facing harsh realities about the presumptions and convictions embedded by an inherently material upbringing, and relinquishing that which serves them no more.
Yet, it can also be beautiful as Harris depicts in his book. There is beauty to be found in the familiar and the conventional once one cedes all beliefs, judgements, and fears, leaving forth reality in its raw form - that is, the open space of consciousness, not perturbed by thought, but aware of that which arises as mere appearances.
For a brief period, I sought that beauty as a perpetual mental state that would effectively put a halt to my mental suffering. Reading Awareness has illuminated this inherent shortfall in my approach. I can’t see thoughts as appearances in consciousness if the underlying motivation is the vision of the same superficial diversions minus the discursive thoughts. I’m drawn to extreme action so anything short of an absolute commitment to a spiritual way of life, transcending the shallow path destined for Americans, would be substandard.
Facing uncomfortable truths about myself is a necessary precursor to abandoning the ego.