Waking up Into a Dream
Tags: Mindfulness, Buddhism, Dharma, Meditation, Spirituality

Waking up Into a Dream

You’re not paying attention. What’s the title say?

All day long, you find yourself waking up on this moving train. Over and over again, here you are, with no recollection of how you ended up here.

You later find out that your whole life, there’s been some nameless stranger following you around, anesthetizing you, and dragging your body onto this train. This is where you later wake up.

Every time it slips your mind that you’re being followed, the stranger strikes. Once you awaken, you fully embody equal parts frustration and rage. Once again, here you are. You’ve been here countless times before. And so you just do as you always do. You plan to get off at the next stop and board a train back to where you were.

Sometimes though… upon regaining consciousness, a residual torpor slowly blankets you and so you end up staying a while. Even though you had planned to get off at the next stop, you begin to take pleasure in the scenery passing you by out the window. You remember some of the sights you’re seeing from last time. You settle into this comfortable familiarity. There’s a mild warmth of nostalgia gently rocking you along. And so you keep riding the train for just a bit longer. And wasn’t there something that you ought to be getting back to? You can’t seem to remember. It must not have been that important anyway. So you ride on.

On these more prolonged journeys, you feel doubly bad once you alight. Not only had you been abrupty interrupted, but your failure to immediately turn around has taken you even further out of your way.

Who is this guy following you around and what does he want? He never harms you directly. He’s a nuisance more than anything. But the effort to get back to where you were every time this happens is wearing your patience thin. Not only is it wasting your time, but it also’s made you paranoid and doubtful of your ability to get anything meaningful done.

How best to deal with this anonymous assailant?

You could be more vigilant, always on high alert. But you’d never be able to immerse yourself in anything you’re doing.

You could see a neurologist. Inquire about experimental surgery to alter your brain in a way that will help you regain consciousness faster?

Or perhaps visit an apothecary to help you find a cure to your assailant’s anesthetic agent?

In your search for a solution, you stumble into someone. It’s not the assailant, but yet another one of his victims. She claims to have found a solution. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. She reveals that even though she hasn’t identified the assailant or been able to prevent him from targeting her, she’s found a trick to shorten the frequency and duration of these incidents — drastically. She explains to you that there is a way to return instantly to where you were every time you find yourself on the train. A way to derail any train you’re on that isn’t taking you to where you want to go. She reminds you of something that should have seemed obvious from the beginning. You didn’t board the train of your own accord. You have no obligation to stay on it a moment longer than intended. Even when the scenery is pleasant, there’s this lingering feeling that you would enjoy it more had you been the one who planned the trip in the first place. But you’ve helplessly given in to the joy of the ride over and over again. Sometimes you even find yourself trying to push the limit. You’ve come this far already, and so you wonder how far the train can go? You anticipate seeing it all the way through to its terminus. You haven’t made it quite yet… but maybe someday.

That’s the state you’re in when you’re not attending carefully to your mind. You might even find yourself reading a blog post without remembering why you clicked on it.

Your newfound ally who’s come to the rescue is describing mindfulness of course. Practicing meditation doesn’t prevent you from ever getting lost in a train of thought again, but it gives you the means to place your attention more carefully. You can become cognizant of your situation more readily and consequently less cavalier with your time. You may not think of yourself as a victim of this assailant. Unless you’re an arhat casually browsing Medium, you’re just oblivious. Even experienced meditators spend the preponderance of their time thinking without knowing they’re thinking, jerked around by conditioned thought patterns and behaviors. My objective isn’t to persuade you of that here though. This post is for people who’re already interested in the practice.

You’ve probably heard cute little analogies like this before that try to transcribe the practice of meditation into familiar concepts. If you enjoy them, wonderful, because I’ve included several more at the end here. This one, oddly enough, could apply to any form of addiction really. But here, I’m focusing solely on addiction to thinking.

Now that I have your attention.

As meditation creeps into the mainstream from its rarified provenance, a whole lot of mystery remains to unriddle.

You know how they say a person’s favorite word is their name? Well there’s an exception to every rule. And in this case, it’s quacks and charlatans. For this crowd, it’s not a moniker that entices them. Instead, the mere whisper of the word mystery brings them to climax. My aim in writing this is not simply to express derision for cheats and con artists. By my guess, they’re actually far outnumbered by the well-intentioned people who just aren’t qualified to speak on these matters.

The original title for this story was going to be What is Awakening? But as my bio suggests, I just couldn’t bear the spiritual hubris that would connote. I’m not the expert either. I’m not an arhat or a Buddhist scholar. But I like to analyze things and I can point you in the right direction.

Here’s what this article is not. This is not a piece describing what meditation is for the entirely unindoctrinated. This is also not an argumentative piece explaining the science of meditation. If that’s what you’re skeptical mind is after, I’d suggest Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson’s research, or even just start with this YouTube video). They discuss the deactivation of the posterior cingulate cortex, the default mode network more broadly, and other neural correlates of mindfulness.

Instead, this article is targeted at people much like myself who’ve been exploring contemplative practice as laymen, who are probably past the point that they’ve validated that there’s a there there, but are frankly just a bit confounded by all the conflicting guidance and seeming paradoxes. I want to demystify all the — admittedly — poetic metaphors and witty Zen stories. As an alternative, I’d like to offer you some concrete pointers in the form of a Q&A. The As I’m providing aren’t mine. I’ve outsourced them. I’ve done the heavy lifting of studying, analyzing, and testing the methods of a number of different teachers. I’ve taken the instruction that’s worked best for me and distilled it into this little guidebook. Think of it as a navigation tool to help you wade through this vast terrain, evade the charlatans, and dispel the confusion of grappling with crazymaking advice. I want to help you assure yourself that you’re headed in the right direction, or redirect you if not. If I could have gone back in time and dropped something off with myself a few years ago, it would have been this. And although I’m stealing some of your time, I have nothing to sell so please spare me your cynicism. I just want to help other rational, secular thinkers explore this first-person science of the mind.

Guidance should be simple. The instruction should be straightforward. The real feat is the commitment to accepting the inevitable insights that you’ll uncover. It’s the resolve to actualize those insights over and over again in every moment.