Well that was interesting.
I’m back from a 9-day concentration meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre, Massachusetts. The first I’ve attended as a participant in six years, since before becoming a parent.
Taught by Winnie Nazarko and Tara Mulay, we had one basic meditation instruction the whole time: “center the breath in awareness.” Mind wanders, you come back. That’s it.
The point of a concentration retreat is to develop a clear and settled and unified mind. You lock into the breath and it starts to fill up more and more of your awareness. The mind gets very stable and powerful, it’s fascinating. Whatever you want to pay attention to, you can more or less stay there. It’s an incredible environment for learning anything.
On our retreat, we focused on reinforcing healthy intentions: the intention to be kind to yourself, to come back to the present, to not feed your thoughts. After several days, you can really feel these things take root, so they’re more likely to influence the environment of the mind in the future.
Of course, to get there, I had to survive the off-gassing of seemingly every neurotic thought in my brain. First the superficial worries, then the addled convictions about my uselessness as a meditator, then the weird social tics (even in a retreat full of silent meditators not looking at each other). Finally I got down into the sub-basement of my mind, with all the old stories and traumas, whose themes often shaped my surface preoccupations.
That’s when I realized: oh, my stories are concentration objects. I’m actually meditating all the time in life; I’m just meditating on things that make me miserable! These stories keep coming around and around, and I keep reinforcing them by paying more attention to them. Welcome to the world’s worst meditation strategy— one we all do, all the time.
Here’s a personal example from the retreat:
Before I left I texted
and asked what she thought was the most important thing I should bring. She responded immediately: “Ancestor photos.”Ancestor photos? OK. I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own, but I liked the idea. So I brought a picture of my parents and of course, my kids and my partner. At the very last second, I also grabbed an old mechanical wristwatch that belonged to my mom’s father, my grandpa Bill.
Now the funny thing about this is I have this whole story that I didn’t really know my grandparents. They died when I was young, and always seem kind of remote to me. I don’t remember them ever asking me about my challenges and interests, or having a real conversation with me. So even though I loved them, I kind of wrote them off.
Then, during a sit on this retreat, I started in on some loving kindness, and decided to include my grandparents. Completely unexpectedly, wave after wave of intimate sensory memories of each grandparent started flooding through me. The feeling of my grandpa Bill’s scratchy stubble on my face when I kissed him; my granddad Lewis’ bristly mustache and the way he’d make his biceps bob up and down, to my delight. The thin, silk-smooth skin of my grandmother Helen’s hands, the way my grandma Aileen would hug me and then laugh as her one fake boob (cancer) got pushed to the side.
Of course I knew my grandparents. My body knew them. And they were still in my body. I sat there bawling, because I realized I’d been telling this bullshit story about my relationship to my grandparents my whole life, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with what was real.
I saw other stories too, looping in my head like a deranged mixtape. A few greatest hits:
“Why Do You (Keep Forgetting About Me?)” by Simple Minds
“I Think I’m Cracking Up” by Green Day
“I Get Knocked Down, And I Can’t Get Up Again!” by Chumbawamba
What do we do when we notice stories like these?
We can start by practicing telling a different story. Stories of caring and resilience, of choosing life, of belonging. These healthier stories can lock in too, although it may require more than meditation. Thank you, therapy. Thank you, zillion other healing practices.
Everyone likes a happy ending, so here’s a modest one. In every meditation I’ve done since the retreat, I’ve connected to those same memories of my grandparents, and felt them with me. It’s led to some conversations with my parents about who their parents were, what they cared about and how they struggled. Not only do I know my grandparents, I’m still getting to know them. And this has made me feel closer to my own parents as they move into their final years.
For today’s meditation, we’re going to get concentrated. A concentrated mind is a stable and powerful mind. From there, we’ll get curious about any stories that may be circling around, and explore what it might mean to tell a different story.
I’m grateful to my partner Sarah for holding it down while I went on retreat. And I’m grateful to my fine teachers. Going on retreat is a rare and precious opportunity. So is encountering these teachings at all in life – and to get to share them.
Happy to be here with all of you.
Jeff
Introducing Home Base Hangout—a new monthly community gathering!
We're thrilled to launch Home Base Hangout, a virtual gathering for our paid subscribers, happening on the 4th Thursday of every month. First one will be on Thursday, August 22 at 12pm ET. We’ve tried to make the timing work for the maximum number of time zones.
Home Base Hangout is a chance to connect directly with Jeff and fellow subscribers. Each session will start with a 25 or 30 minute guided meditation led by Jeff, followed by open discussion and ridiculousness, with possible weeping (Jeff wrote that last part).
It’s a chance to deepen your practice, share experiences, and connect with fellow meditation enthusiasts in a laid-back adventurous way. Hope to see you there!
(If you happened to register already, please make sure to click on the button below to register again. There was a mistake with the link last week. Thanks!)
THIS WEEK ON THE MIND BOD ADVENTURE POD
Frank is an “Infinite Brah” – a true bodybuilder of consciousness who shares his “journey, insights and practices for accessing the highest states of consciousness, awakening and beyond” to quote his fresh and wildly kinetic YouTube channel.
So, there’s lots of talk about the experience (and health benefits!) of non-duality and awakening, whether it shows up in different ways for people in different cultures, the value and traps of using a map to find your way, the primordial mistake of separation (what Tasha’s teacher Lama Lena calls “the original oops”), and other excellent topics for consciousness nerds.
UPCOMING RETREAT WITH JEFF: Being Human Takes Practice
DATE: Aug 16 - 18, 2024
LOCATION: Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York (In-Person Only)
This retreat explores what meditation teaches us about being human. It teaches us about healing stuck emotions and expanding stuck views. It teaches us mercy and forgiveness, majesty and humility. It teaches us how we relate to other people and to ourselves. All this and more happens when we sit. It’s mind-blowing and makes me want to weep. Maybe you will weep too. Or laugh uproariously. Or pass out in a patch of drool. Who can say? We go deep, we go home – we go nowhere! – and none of it can be captured in words.
Have a meditation request?
Great – please fill out this form. Write (brief) context about you and your situation, including what’s helped in the past, or where your curiosity comes from. Although I can’t respond to all requests, the act of simply stating a situation – and naming what’s already been supportive – can be clarifying and helpful.
Once a month, I choose one question, and write both a response and a meditation. These make up Hey Jeff, a column available to paid subscribers.
Thank you.
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