Why I Stopped Meditating

Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash

This Spring I find myself in the same weeds I did last summer. The difficult episode I wrote about I’ve not fully resolved, my doctor and I are still trying to get the meds right, my relationships are still struggling, and I’m feeling a diminished sense of direction and purpose.

And until a few short weeks ago I wasn’t meditating.

I meditated for years. I wrote two books about it. My doctor, who prescribes the meds and conducts the therapy, considers simple meditation the most important part of my treatment. In my memoir, which for the last few months I posted chapter by chapter in this newsletter, it’s clear that only when meditation became an integral part of my life did I truly recover from the worst of bipolar disorder. But I fell away from meditating for a long time, and I suffered for it. Unfairly, so did the people closest to me.

In the beginning it was replaced by physical labor, mindful meaningful work, and I moved into it the way the chapters progress toward meaningful work in my book Practicing Mental Illness. I truly believe work, work that provides purpose and an opportunity for focus, can be the highest form of meditation. For me it was, as I spent a few months carving stencils on and sandblasting grave markers and tombstones. It wasn’t an exercise in the contemplation of life or mortality. It was just work, focused and physical, conducted alone and in silence every day.

At Zen monasteries I found the most profound experience to be Samu, or work practice, and I maintain all work provides an opportunity for reason and self-expression - all work done in the spirit of generosity and devotion. Too many people with mental illness, especially given the low expectations and bad advice of caregivers and society, cheat themselves of these benefits of work, and the fire of creativity and productivity that can burn very bright within us dims when we’re not working. But in some way because of my focus on work I found the fire that simmers under a regular meditation practice flicker out.

It wasn’t this way at first. The work at the monument company was pure meditation, for hours at a time, and my seated practice felt unnecessary. So I stopped. I didn’t last long at the job, the physical demands caught up with my aging body, but when I left the job I didn’t go back to my meditation practice. My next job provided some opportunity for physical labor and a little bit of clear focus, but not enough. Still, I never sat at home, and I never set a timer and just breathed.

It just seemed like too much trouble, and like everything else these days meditation, or more specifically mindfulness, has taken on political overtones and I don’t identify at all with the politics set forth by those teaching, writing about and making a big fuss about the benefits of meditation. It all kind of turns me off.

My difficult episode of tumbling moods got worse though, and when I reviewed with my doctor what was different in my life, what was missing that may be causing, or at least aggravating, this tumultuous episode, my failure to meditate stood alone as the contributing factor of all that was missing, and nearly all that was wrong, as the Summer turned to Winter, and the Winter dragged on into Spring.

Now I’ve started meditating again, sitting and trying to keep my attention on my breath for 20 minutes every day, and I’ve started to get better. Better to live with, better at work, better thoughts, and better moods. Even better at finding a bit of joy.

Spring is full of joy if you only pay attention. And meditation is all about paying attention. At the house by the bay all I trimmed a month or two ago has sprung back to life. The gulls cackle and laugh as small flowers appear in the yard, and the wind whips up waves as the tides roll in and out and the sun sets beyond the marsh on the other side of the water. I stepped outside this morning and smelled the coast, the salty marshy smell that rises from the tide grass as the weather slowly warms. Of course along the bluestone path around the house the weeds I pulled last summer have come back, taking over every crack and spreading green across the stones.

So I pulled them out. I spent most of the day yesterday hunched over, hands dirty and sticky, filling a trash can with weeds that in a few weeks will be back again, and I’ll pull them out again. And they’ll come back and I’ll keep at it.

This is what meditation is: fully feeling your body and clearing your head of weeds, aware of what’s inside and around you. This is why I’m doing it every day again and this is why I’ll continue. I don’t want to make any big statement or claims for meditation other than to say that, like good, honest work, it will make you a better person. Maybe only a slightly better person, as I’m still struggling with this episode that has held on for so long. But better nonetheless, and better able to deal with whatever life, or mental illness, can dish out.

I present a number of methods of meditation in my book Practicing Mental Illness – Meditation, Movement and Meaningful Work to Manage Challenging Moods. Order a copy here and find out which one works best for you.