Writing

Inflection Points – Key Moments of Finding Direction in Practice

This is a reflection on some of the formative moments in the earlier part of my meditation journey.

5 minute read.

I’ve been thinking recently about the moments in my own life and practice when things were not going so well and there was a small shift that put me back on a better course.

These key moments feel pivotal in finding a practice that worked for me and transforming my experience. I’m calling them inflection points because it feels like a moment in time where things could have kept tracking as they were or getting worse, but some event helped to push things in a different direction (I’m not knowledgeable in mathematics so please go easy if I’m using this term incorrectly, the best I could do is Khan Academy and it seems to support this use ^_^).

My background is that I went through an extended period of depression and anxiety and then came to practising meditation to try and shift how my mind operated so that I would not suffer so much. I remember a moment of realising, after coming out of a period of strong depression, that objectively my life was great and subjectively it was terrible. If I wrote down a list of the things in my life, it was great on paper, yet I was miserable. I realised there was something in how I was relating to these experiences, rather than the experiences themselves. I knew then I’d have to work with the mind as the thing that was turning these good things into suffering. So I had strong motivation to practice and a sense that this could work, but it took a number of key moments of support to get on track with practice.

1) Being given a copy of The Mind Illuminated.

I had grown up with Buddhism around (my Dad’s family is culturally Buddhist) and knew that meditation was a thing, I just didn’t know you could actually learn how to do it as a skill. I’d done yoga asana classes where there was a 3-minute meditation. A therapist had told me to meditate but gave me such unclear instructions that I found it basically useless. When depressed I also had an experience of reading about mindfulness, deciding to try it, found that it made things much better for a short period of time, and then being frustrated at being unable to consistently replicate that experience.

I was chatting with a friend about meditation, who knew much more about the topic than I did, and he gave me a copy of The Mind Illuminated. I started reading it and was shocked. I was amazed at the descriptions of stages and the progression of training the mind. More importantly I was glad to finally have some clear instructions on how to get started. Finally there were practical instructions around creating a space, dedicating time, motivations, and preparing for practice. There were clear instructions on how to follow the breath and cultivate stable attention. It was incredibly motivating and inspiring and helped me to first establish a practice.

2) Committing to consistent practice.

After reading The Mind Illuminated I still was only practising for short periods of time, mostly 10-15 minutes. Looking back, I think I just didn’t know any better. This is just what was around me at the time, in yoga classes, when I talked to others, in the meditation apps, etc. I probably thought the advice in TMI to sit for longer didn’t really apply to me.

Reviewing my journal from the time, I can see that I was sitting for short periods of time and judging my practice as good or bad based on whether I felt calm or if I could follow the breath the whole time. It was a frustrating process.

One day while casually cycling to go play pick up basketball, my friend asked me how meditation was going. When I said that I didn’t really feel like much was happening and that I wasn’t clear on what to do, he casually suggested that I sit longer. He said that it might just take more time for the mind to settle and that sitting longer might help to train the mind. This was just the spark I needed. I started sitting longer, although it took a while to take hold, eventually getting to 30 minutes after a couple of months, and then 45 minutes after about eight months of practice. I started noticing changes. It was like the previous meditation didn’t do enough to pass the threshold. Now I was actually seeing changes in the stability of my attention and the clarity of the mind week to week.

Looking back at my journal I can see that there was a shift from judging the practice to appreciating the awareness I was cultivating. I started approaching it more as something I could do each day to train the mind, no matter how the sits went. I started really being glad for the opportunity to practise.

3) Finding community.

It was at this point that meditation started working for me. I was practising more and finding that it helped me to at times feel better throughout the day. I was calmer and my mind was clearer. I started changing how I related to events and situations. My relationships started improving. I became more resolved to practice as I noticed how beneficial it was.

I was doing postgraduate study and decided that when I finished I’d give myself a gift of going on a 10-day retreat (I think most people would go on holiday or buy a Nintendo Switch, which might say something about me 🙃 ). The retreat was highly beneficial but was also somewhat destabilising as the insights were challenging to integrate, so I decided to start trying to learn more about meditation. I thought about getting a teacher. I read more dharma books and started following r/themindilluminated and r/streamentry. I came across Tucker Peck’s posts and found them to be clear and insightful. Perhaps more importantly, they were funny! I thought having a teacher like that would be good for me, so I reached out. I started meeting 1:1 with Tucker and found this to be incredibly helpful. It got me out of some ways that I was stuck or heading the wrong way. There were critical moments where I was practising with Wrong Effort or seeing things in a really deluded way that having a teacher helped to quickly course correct.

I also started going to eSangha (an online class for advanced meditators) regularly and have found that the community there to be totally amazing. I’m so grateful that it is today possible to form deep relationships with people halfway across the world. I made friends that I’ve talked with most weeks for years. For my practice, the friendships here have really encouraged me to be dedicated to practice and be honest with myself and others. It helped to find inspiration from hearing about how other people were practising. It helped to demystify the process and provide support and accountability. The Buddha says that the whole of the path is noble friendships and admirable companions, this seems like good advice to me!

Reflections

Looking back, I can see a number of phases in practice where it would have been easy to drop off. I also feel incredibly grateful that I have continued my practice as it has changed my life for the better in many significant ways. I’m lucky that I found something that helped me and suited my personality at the right time. I’m also super grateful that I had a friend to provide a few helpful tips. Stumbling upon these inflection points of being reoriented into a positive direction helped me to stay on track and find cumulative improvements. I can also see that the whole process would have been easier if I found community and support earlier. Reflecting on this is an encouraging reminder of why I’ve decided to teach and dedicate myself to helping others with their meditation practice.

I’m curious to put the question forward – what have your inflection points been? What moments have been valuable to orient your practice in a positive way? Feel free to write me!

If you’re looking to find ways to go further in your practice, you may be interested in the Deepening Meditation Course that I run with Upasaka Upali.

Community, Sangha, Support

Hi friends!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of community for practice.

I recently returned from spending some time in the United States practising on retreat, teaching, and spending time with the communities over there. It was an amazing trip. I spent time meditating in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona (so many cacti!). I got to meet people in person that I’d talked with for countless hours over Zoom in the last two years. I also had my brain scanned while meditating in service of building a neurofeedback device to help meditators reach deep states of samādhi (more on this later).

But the biggest thing for me was getting to be around the community. There’s something powerful about people coming together, whether that is to practise on retreat or in a local class or just hanging out in a park and eating burritos. There was also something special about seeing communities that have been built over years and have developed a pragmatic approach to supporting each participant in their own development.

In my own practice I’ve found that community has been incredibly important. I’ve made some wonderful friends through practice who help me tremendously with their kindness and encouragement. In Buddhist traditions, we might refer to this as the saṅgha. This is one of the three jewels that we can take refuge in, the others being the Buddha (others who have gone further on the path), and the Dharma (the teachings, or the practices). My understanding of taking refuge in the saṅgha is to go to the community for support, to find inspiration, and to be dedicated to supporting each other and cultivating the practice. Being able to rely on the community to assist us, to shelter us in times of need. The saṅgha gives us the courage to move forward.

Then the question to ponder is:

Do you feel supported in your practice? How could community help your practice?

Spending time with meditators overseas affirmed my goals of building a strong community of like-minded practitioners and doing what I can to support building a community.

It has been my goal to not just offer teachings but to build a sense of a connected community. This means that I will do my best to create spaces that are accessible, offer different pricing options and scholarships, and provide support for wherever you are in your practice. I want to dedicate myself to connecting people with the type of community that will be conducive to reaching their individual goals, whatever they are.

I’d also like to create networks that allow you to be able to connect with each other outside of the classes and support one another as peers.

There’s a lot of work to be done here but it seems more important than ever that we find ways to collectively work towards cultivating our minds, consciously working with the ways that we suffer, and finding new ways of relating to experience.

I hope this encourages you to find community in whatever form feels appropriate and beneficial. If there’s some particular format of class or retreat you are looking for, or some kind of community interaction you are seeking then please reply and let me know. Otherwise I hope to see you at a class or retreat soon 😀

Why Meditate?

~ 10 minute read

Why Meditate?

~ 10 minute read

People meditate for various reasons and with different motivations for what they want from practice. We could loosely put these into three levels, which roughly correspond with how much practice time: 1) mental hygiene, 2) training the mind, or 3) curiosity of what is possible.

Should You Meditate?

First, let’s contemplate how things are going right now. This isn’t meant to be an exercise in self-criticism or beating yourself up. Keep in mind that everyone experiences difficulty and that life certainly isn’t easy. See if you can consider your life, with some degree of objectivity:

How is life going for you? 

How’s your mental health? Are you happy? How do you relate to your experiences? Do you feel good about what you give your attention to? Is your mind operating as well as you’d like? Are you OK with the fact that this life is (relatively) short and will at some point end?

If your answer is less than an emphatic positive response, then let’s go into why you might meditate and what you might expect. If your answer is that you are happy, content, and satisfied with life exactly as it is, then perhaps you don’t need to meditate! But if there is even a hint of an itch to delve deeper, there is probably something here for you.

The main reasons that I see for people to meditate are to 1) improve mental hygiene, 2) train the mind to improve mental skills, and 3) explore a curiosity about what is possible with the mind.

Mental Hygiene

The most common reason that people begin practising meditation is mental health. Many people find themselves dealing with depression and anxiety. Others find that life is just a bit too stressful. They need some way to calm down, relax, settle, and gain better tools for coping with difficult situations. Sometimes this is brought on by hitting a really bad place, but other times we just have a sense that meditating would be a good thing to learn to cope with what is going on in our lives and in our heads.

It’s commonly known, and for good reason, that meditation helps with stress and anxiety. There are numerous scientific studies about this, it is now a common treatment in therapy, and there are mindfulness programs everywhere.

This is a great idea and meditation does help in this regard. You can’t argue against taking a short period of time to do less, relax, and be more aware. It’s a time to decompress, process some feelings and emotions, and to move the mind towards calm and spaciousness. Meditation provides tools for working with thoughts and emotions that can really help in the midst of difficulty. Everyone could do with doing a small amount of meditation regularly.

The goal here is relaxation and relief from difficult experiences. People who start this way are generally practising for relatively short amounts of time, such as 5 to 15 minutes per session, and might be practising a few times a week or just as an antidote or fix when things get stressful. This is where most meditation apps come in. Sometimes these are used consistently, but often it’s a form of pain relief — a useful aid that you reach for when the situation calls for it.

The downside to this approach is that it is a band-aid solution to a problem. You get stressed, so you realise you should probably meditate to relax. But this falls off easily. When you are stressed, you are also often busy, and then the first thing to drop off is practice time, even if it is probably the best thing you could be doing for yourself. It doesn’t address the root cause of the issue and only treats the symptoms, which takes more consistent practice.

Train the Mind to Change the Baseline

The next reason people meditate is because they want to improve the way their mind works. They want to change the patterns of behaviour and mental habits so that they use the mind more skilfully. They want to begin treating the cause of the problem.

While there are many reasons for this, let’s take the example of focus. It’s important to be able to choose what we pay attention to. Where attention goes determines our experience. Today there are just so many things vying for our attention. Smartphone apps and social media platforms are designed to be addictive and we are constantly bombarded by advertising. Our lives are complex in that we are expected to somehow maintain a balance of work, study, family, friends, entertainment, hobbies, learning, activism, holidays, rest time etc. We often find that our attention is caught up in things that we don’t find deeply meaningful. We also find that we are often pulled out of the current moment into the future with planning or fantasising, or into the past with remembering or ruminating. We find that we go for extended periods of time without noticing what is happening in our own experience.

Unfortunately we can’t just suddenly choose to have different attentional skills. Just deciding to be mindful might help for a short time, but it is unlikely to create a long-term shift. To shift your quality of attention requires training the mind. You do this by learning mental skills through practising meditation techniques. The skills develop through repetition. Over time this leads to changes in the mind and to a shift in the baseline of your ability to focus. The same could be applied to other mental skills, such as observation and balance (see Sit Down and Practice).

The goal here is to create transformative change through ongoing practice. This generally requires learning how to practise on your own and practising more per day. From what I’ve seen, changes often take place when people do somewhere around 30 minutes per day, every day (or close to it). This progress also often snowballs in that there are noticeable benefits in daily life that then make you want to practice more, solidifying the practice. Meditation becomes more integrated in your daily routine, then becomes a habit, and eventually requires no effort to sit down and practice. It eventually can become embedded in your life to the point it becomes part of your identity — you are a meditator!

This type of practice requires more commitment and perseverance but tends to pay off tremendously. There is the possibility to improve the way your mind works and therefore improve every area of your life. You gain the ability to get ahead of potential problems by working with the mind and how you navigate difficulty. You do the practice now, for when you need it later. You begin to learn about how your mind operates. The practice becomes a resource and something that rewards ongoing engagement. Practice also benefits those around you as you gain more capacity to be present, to help others, and to engage in what matters to you.

Curiosity and the Search for Truth

The third reason that people meditate is because they have a curiosity about what meditation can bring in terms of shifting perception, understanding reality, and making sense of what their lives and experiences mean. There is a sense of possibility, aspiration, and determination that drives people to explore what their mind is and how they are perceiving reality.

This can come from a number of different angles. Some people have tried meditation and it worked really well to increase awareness and help them in their lives, so they want to see what comes from doing more of it. Other people get into it because they have some familiarity with spiritual traditions, such as the different traditions of Buddhism, and want to see if the freedom, wisdom, and radical openings that these teachings talk about are possible for themselves. Other people who are nerdier or more pragmatic come to it wanting to see if the techniques can change their cognitive processes and update their “operating system”. There’s also people who have some kind of powerful experience — sometimes due to psychedelics, sometimes just out of the blue — that opens their eyes to a different way of seeing, but these experiences fade. Meditation becomes a way to reproduce these experiences and insights consistently. Another reason why people might get into deep practice is the sense that something doesn’t quite add up. Life has a quality of unsatisfactoriness about it, even when things are good, and this disconnect makes people look for a deeper meaning and understanding.

Other people just notice that the universe is so huge and our lives are so small, yet our existence feels so important. What does it mean?

Meditation then becomes a way to learn about the mind and to learn about how you are experiencing reality.

The goal with this approach is to see how deep the rabbit hole goes and what is possible in practice. This is where people start practising more, upwards of 45 minutes per day. They might go on retreats. They are more likely to find a teacher and seek out resources such as books, courses, and communities that help support their practice and guide them to deeper realisations.

At this level there is the possibility of radical shifts in the way life is experienced. There are openings of understanding self and world in new ways. There is the ability to work through conditioning and past trauma. There is the ability to navigate pain and difficulty gracefully. There might be less suffering and more fulfilment. There is the possibility of deep engagement with the world and being more present and loving in relationships. Actions skilfully align with values.

We will all face challenges and difficulties in our lives. Whether you are practising for mental hygiene, training the mind, or out of curiosity for what is possible, meditation becomes a way to choose how we want to show up — with more awareness, focus, and clarity.

Reigniting Meditation Practice

~ 7 minute read

I’ve been hearing a familiar story from friends, students, and peers lately. It goes something like this.

You’ve tried out meditation practice and noticed that it helps! There’s something that’s just good about taking some time out each day to practice. There’s a positive intention there towards training the mind and learning about your experience that has lasting implications throughout the day.

Some of the tangible and important benefits that you might experience while meditating and throughout the day:

  • You feel more relaxed.
  • There is more awareness and mindfulness.
  • You can see situations and events more clearly.
  • There is a bit more spaciousness in your experience.
  • Emotions feel less sticky.
  • More resilience.
  • Better able to focus your attention towards what is important to you.

These are significant and meaningful shifts in experience. This is great for some time, until….

Suddenly the practice falls off.

Sometimes it quickly goes off the rails. Other times you’ll miss a day here and there, until the practice is happening less often, and maybe even completely stopping. Occasionally there will be some conflict with daily life events and commitments that means that practice just doesn’t quite feel like it makes the cut, so you just choose other things instead.

This can feel terrible, but please know that this is completely normal.

Practice will come and go. There will be ups and downs.

Buddhist teachings tell us that nothing is permanent. Things change. Nothing persists in exactly the same way over time. Everything is dependent on causes and conditions, which are constantly changing in a never-ending dynamic tapestry.

Our practice is affected greatly by our life circumstances. Everyone that I know was (and still is) affected in some way by the global covid pandemic. Sickness is clearly something we don’t have complete control over that can drastically affect what we are able to do and what our most pressing responsibilities are. But even our day to day lives change constantly, whether we are suddenly busy and working on an important deadline, travelling, going on holiday, or even really absorbed in a good TV show (!).

Reflecting on Practice

Often we feel conflicted about how our meditation practice fits into all of this. We both really want to meditate and don’t want to (or want/need to do other things). We know that practice is good, but life gets in the way, or it’s hard to find the balance.

We could roughly place people into two camps here.

  1. People who are unable to practice right now, or other things are more meaningful and important to them at this time.
  2. People who would benefit a lot from meditation, but they just need to overcome a few obstacles to get into it.

If you fall into camp 1), then my advice is that you have permission to not meditate. You don’t need me to say it, but maybe it will help. Of course you get to make these decisions for yourself! If the situation is out of your control, or things are going really well, or you are working on something meaningful with a short-term deadline — that’s fine, don’t worry too much about practising. See yourself with kindness and self-compassion. Have meditation as a tool in your toolbox that you can use when you need it. Come back to the practice when the time is right.

If you feel like you might be in camp 2), then it’s time to assess how things are and make a plan for how to get back into it.

For me, I got into meditation after an extended period of depression and anxiety. My realisation was that I needed to regularly do things that helped me with my mental health or else I would slide back down the slope into that dark place. For me that was enough. I knew the suffering that was chasing me and knew that I had to keep going. The key for me was realising that to stay ahead of it, what I had to do was to make practice a part of my everyday routine. The key to making this an easier task was to find inspiration, motivation, and support.

Ways to Reignite Practice

If this sounds like this article could be talking about you, then here are a few suggestions on how to reignite the practice and light that spark to get practice on track again.

  1. Go on retreat.
    Find some time to go on a meditation retreat where you will temporarily pause all your other commitments and obligations. This is especially helpful if you can do this with others, but it can also be helpful to practice online, or even to do a half-day on a weekend. Putting aside everything else for a time gives you an opportunity to connect with the practice and with silence. This helps to put us back in touch with why we practice and what the benefits could be.
  2. Do a course.
    Commit to attending a course where you will be held accountable, given support, and inspired to practice. Courses can give you precise directions on what to do that takes out the questioning and replaces it with support. Courses encourage establishing a practice so that you can make the most of the time and fulfil the commitment. This is especially good if the course helps you to find community, or helps you to see the practice in a different light.
  3. Find community.
    The Buddha taught that the whole of the path is admirable friendships. When you have friends who are also practising and working on cultivating their minds, it is much more likely that you too will develop the practice. The key is to find a community that works for you and matches what you are looking for. There are many online communities filled with kind, considerate people who are keen to connect. There are local sanghas in many towns and cities. Check them out and see what might suit you.
  4. Read a book.
    There are so many great texts on Buddhism and meditation practice. I personally love asking people for recommendations. If you’re looking for an in-depth practice guide there’s The Mind Illuminated. A clear explanation of the practice of mindfulness meditation is found in Mindfulness in Plain English. If you want a guide to Buddhist thought you can check out What the Buddha Taught. For those interested in a deep dive that is both poetic and systematic you can read The Science of Enlightenment. Picking up one of these can really fire up the wholesome desire to practice.

These points could be summarised as: find inspiration, support, and community. These help to overcome obstacles to practice. They help to move past lethargy, worry, and doubt and towards confidence and strength.

Shifting to Skilful Action

What we are trying to do is to shift our view and how we are thinking about the practice. We want to move from self-criticism, internal conflict, or unmet expectations, and instead shift towards a sense of doing what is skilful in that situation. We want to clearly see how things are right now, figure out what a good next step is, and then confidently take that step.

The question here is what is skilful? Thought of this way, falling out of practice is just a macro-version of the on-cushion technique. We get caught up, we wake up to that moment and see it clearly, then we return to our intention. We appreciate any moments of awareness, any moments of knowing. This intention is what helps us move towards what is skilful and leads to happiness and benefit for ourselves and for others.

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If you are interested in courses, retreats, or personal instruction, or you have questions about how these can help you, please check out my current offerings and get in touch if I can be of help.