The Junior Cult Leader's Guide to Beginner Meditation + 11-Minute Meditation
How to make meditation maximally accessible, without a whiff of pretension
Click above for this week’s guided meditation
Jeff: [creepy spiritual voice] “My friend. Open your heart, and let us venture together into the landscape of profound inner transformation.”
Friend: “What are you, my white sha-manh? Did you just get back from Peru? Is this the part where you take all my money and try to have Tantric sex with me?”
Jeff: [shaking head sadly] “Your ego is strong today. But you are not your thoughts. It is time to silence your mind, and learn who you really are.”
Friend: “Wait – is this the junior cult leader’s guide to beginner meditation?”
My friends: Welcome to the Junior Cult Leader’s Guide to Beginner Meditation! Also welcome to our new Substack publication day – Thursdays – some midweek practice support to balance Sunday night’s Do Nothing Project broadcast.
The background for today’s post is a friend who’s currently having a hard time. My friend is the best. He’s got a booming laugh and a bouncy, bigger-than-life personality – like Tigger from Winnie-the-Poo, if Winnie-the-Poo had a background in degenerate dance-floor shenanigans.
Except now his bigger-than-life personality is being crushed. All these pressures – job, family, home, illness – are landing all at once, and he can’t seem to get out from under any of it. Friends have rallied around, but he still feels stuck and hopeless and increasingly isolated. I’ve been worried about him.
A few weeks ago I offered to teach him meditation. He’s never really meditated. He always figured he was “too ADHD” to do it. Plus, you know, meditation vibes can be gross. That whiff of knowing superiority that pervades so many spiritual scenes, the measured self-importance — I have to admit, he has a point. “Wait, aren’t you supposed to have less ego?” he laughs. It’s all so ridiculous that he can’t stop cracking up long enough to try the actual practice. (You see why I love him.)
Once I convinced him that I was the cult leader he’d been waiting for, we meditated together. He liked it. He says it’s helping. I made him a recording of my golden voice, imparting wisdom like nectar dripping onto his forehead. He gave me all his money, and I no longer return his calls. (Just kidding.)
All of it got me thinking about my favorite subject: accessibility. Is there a way to present meditation that is so grounded, so not a big deal, that people’s natural skepticism and/or lofty expectations are immediately disarmed, and they find themselves just going ahead and trying the damn practice – and maybe even benefiting from it?
I have no idea! But I made a meditation about this anyway – the same one I made for my friend – that you can share with would-be meditators in your life, and / or use for your own junior culty purposes. I am also sharing here some of my own common-sense principles for keeping practice accessible. Here they are:
Before Meditation - Manage Expectations
1. A Realistic Why. Many possible reasons to meditate. I like starting with something grounded: a training to help us find more sanity and okayness in the moment.
2. Don’t Make It a Big Deal. You already know how to sit and exist. You’ve done it before – on park benches and fire escapes and wharfs and that one time outside your high school formal when you sat and smoked a cigarette on the cement stoop and nothing needed to be any different than it was. Anytime you’ve found yourself sitting somewhere, not doing much, but also not wanting to be anywhere else. That’s the beginning of it (and some would say the end of it, too). No need to make it into a thing that you have to get “right.” Most of it is just sitting, existing and being a body.
3. Expect the Mind to Still Churn. You’re not trying to stop the mind. Instead, all you’re doing is choosing a simple thing in the present moment to hang out with that isn’t your worries. It can be imperfect. You can drift away and come back. My old teacher Shinzen says, “There is only so much real estate in consciousness.” By paying more attention to this one thing, you have less attention for anything else, a.k.a. the usual mental chatterbox. These small ratio-changes shift the sum total of your experience. They can give you a feeling of more space, of comparative relief. Thinking itself is not a problem; noticing that thinking is happening is actually another way to make room in the mind, because now you’re no longer embedded in one all-consuming thought pattern. Again, these small ratio-changes can make a palpable difference.
4. It Doesn’t Have to Be Long. Five minutes can help. So can one-minute! Start small and work your way up if you’re into it. Many benefit from 10 minutes a day, and others find 15–30 is their sweet spot.
During Meditation - A Few Simple Instructions
5. Set a Timer, or Use a Guided Practice. An intentional period of time that’s already pre-set, so you can press start and not have to think about it until the dinger goes.
6. Get Comfortable. You want to be relaxed, but also alert. Tension in the body leads to tension in the mind, so it’s worth it taking a minute to organize yourself accordingly. You can be on a couch, a chair, even lying on the ground (so long as you don’t fall asleep; sit up if you feel yourself dozing), or slowly moving. Eyes can be open or closed – again, whatever’s comfortable.
7. Choose Something to Notice. A basic sensation or sound to hang out with for a bit. You’ll notice plenty of other stuff too – again, not a problem.
8. Pretend Not Doing Anything is Lowkey Enjoyable. Maybe you’re getting absorbed by the sound or sensation, or maybe you’re not. Regardless, pretend there’s something kind of satisfying about noticing your breath, or sound, or simply … not doing anything. In fact, instead of being impatient with it, or bored with it, pretend not doing anything is exactly what you want to be doing. Remind yourself: “Oh wait, this is actually the point right here!” Not to get anywhere special, but to relate to this moment (of not much happening) as being fine all on its own. Find something pleasurable in your delinquency.
9. Pretend You’re a Statue in a Forest. This is optional. Or maybe you’re a big tree. Or a mountain. Pretend you’re 5,000 years old. Sunshine, rain, snow. Still you sit. Bird droppings, the screeches of monkeys. Still you sit.
10. Finish with Gratitude. Also optional, but good for cultivating those healthy prosocial vibes. Near the end, take a minute to find some simple thing to appreciate. Doesn’t have to be dramatic. Could be a sense of settledness, or the thought of someone you love, or the feeling of sun on your arm.
And that’s it!
Now go venture into the landscape of profound inner transformation.
Love,
Jeff
PS- If you’re a beginner and want more short, no-nonsense meditations, check out “I Don’t Have Time To Meditate Toolkit (Vol. 1)”, and also this list of relatively easy meditations.
A few quick notes—
The next Do Nothing Project (DNP) is Sunday, April 19 at 8pm EDT. Link here. *NOTE: This DNP is only for paid subscribers. We are experimenting with having the DNP be for paid subscribers three times a month, and free for everyone the first Sunday of the month. Full scholarships are available for anyone who asks – email info@jeffwarren.org. For those who miss it, replays of the latest DNP are available from Monday morning onward, in the “Community Sits” section of the site.
New to Home Base? We have over 70 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 60 extended meditations, over 365 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. New writing, new audio meditations, and new DNP live community practice sessions happen every week. Keep in mind: by far the best way to experience Home Base is on your laptop browser, NOT the Substack app.
Did you find me on Calm or Happier? While the meditations I recorded for the apps live on in perpetuity, I no longer record new meditations for them. My latest work happens here; becoming a paid subscriber is the best way to support that work. If you found this meditation and post helpful, but becoming a paid subscriber isn’t an option, you can also …
Many thanks!
I really love these principles - so clearly expressed and so accessible to newcomers.
Have always been such a huge fan of yours - your course on Calm was the first I ever followed and really opened up the world. First time it clicked. Thank you.
The title of this really spoke to me because I am 100 hours into a 1,000 hour experiment. I am trying to persuade London commuters to lay down their phone with the help of a high vis vest and a sense of humour. Definite junior cult leader vibes.
Any tips for this very particular environment very gratefully received!
After 100 hours I'm beginning to get a sense of what meditation here looks like - the space is so bustley that the breath is barely noticeable, but there's so much bustle to listen to and watch.
And because phone use is everywhere, the meditation is defined by being opposite to that - essentially one just watches the mind again and again think of reasons to use the phone! It's more anti-phone training than anything.
The reward from commute meditation is huge though - you arrive home so much more available to your loved ones.
Jeff- this is such a fabulous essay, even for a long-time meditator! The explicit (and humorous) written guidance about what to expect and how to approach meditation is great for me to share with friends who are still skeptical about practice. Thank you!