Muscle Of Meditation
By: Pretheesh Presannan
Tags: Pain, Meditation, Inner Peace, Transformation, Spiritual Secrets

These are just my thoughts on meditation and why it is difficult. Everyone is free to have their own understanding and opinions on meditation.

Is there a muscle that we intend to develop through the practice of meditation, and if so what would it be. Are we strengthening the muscle of relaxation or are we strengthening the muscle that enables us to bear the unrelaxed state?

Most of us get into the practice of meditation as a means to find some relaxation or peace of mind. But striving for an end goal, be it relaxation or calmness, can corrupt the process. If anything, peace of mind can only be a side effect, and that too not guaranteed.

Meditation, if nothing else, must give us a possibility to come back to the reality of our internal state of mind as it is. In this sense, it is essentially a self-confrontation process. The shadows — the negative aspects of oneself — are welcomed.

Meditation can be said as a voluntary activity we engage in to face the inner demons. And this feels like a counterproductive thing to do. Our mind can only see it that way: I am supposed to find relaxation and not welcome those demons.

But suffering does not come with welcoming negative aspects, instead, suffering is our compulsion to avoid them. It is the strenuous effort of needing to keep them (shadows/inner-demons) away at a distance that drains us. They demand attention purely because it is a natural law to first deal with the blockage than to avoid it or to quickly fight with it.

Sure enough, to welcome the darker aspects of oneself is discomforting, but what we avoid in ourselves will inevitably affect our lives — no matter how well we manage to suppress them.

Meditation as a self-confrontation process would include tensions, anxieties, pain, etc. And what is required of us is not an irritable reaching towards a better state, but to be with ‘what-is’ as it is. That is there is no avoidance in any form.

We include everything as it is without any disrespect towards them, just like holding a loved one or holding the pain of a loved one. We do not throw it away and say I love you but instead bear it as our own. Do we wish our loved ones to suffer the pain of avoidance and remain stuck or wish them the strength to hold it and thereby transmute it at its own pace? It takes as long as it takes, and hence patience is naturally required of us to be cultivated along with the process.

… If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation — J Krishnamurti

When we are striving or secretly hoping for a better — relaxed, calmed — state, there is no motivation to develop the strength to stay with whatever arises; we can never wholeheartedly stay with the discomforting states and hence we never cultivate the inner strength.

We can even say that we are strengthening the muscle of avoidance when we are secretly hoping for a way out of whatever that disturbs us internally.

And if we are to meditate (self-confronting)it is important to develop the muscle— the muscle to stay with the pain of disturbing mental states (if any). This is a kind of Negative Capability.

… I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. — John Keats

Just like, in physical exercise, we are required to undergo the legitimate pain in the process, here in meditation we develop the strength to undergo the psychological discomforts in a gentle manner, and thereby strengthening our Negative Capability.

And this is not easy because of our habitual tendency to always look for a way to avoid psychological discomforts. Thoughts demand a quick fix or avoidance. The mind fights with all its available weapons to pull us into the old(conditioned reactions). We cannot force this habitual tendency to end and then hope to start meditation, all we could do is to take notice of it (if such strong reactions are there). We might even get to see how little control we have of our internal state and that we are run over by habitual reactions — like a programmed robot.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”― Viktor E. Frankl

Initially, we are only required to aim for that level of inner strength — to notice our avoidance mechanisms. And with patience and consistent showing up we organically develop more strength.

When we gain the strength to stay then we aren’t so easily driven into habitual reactions — aimed at avoidance — but we get a space to stay and look.

Difficulties (internally and externally) aren’t a choice; being born is good enough to have discomforts and pain, so might as well develop the muscle of meditation.