Dealing with Fright

Q: "I used to enjoy meditation, but I don't have time for it anymore. My life is just too busy. Occasionally I try it again, but I can't reach that stillness that I had once, and then I run out of time. Any ideas?"

A: Most people who have tried meditation have stopped it. Though the usual excuse is not enough time, I suspect the real reason is that meditation has become frightening. No one is prepared for this. You remember when it was relaxing, comforting and enjoyable. So what happened to scare you away from an experience that once gave such solace and bliss?

The meditative state is the ideal condition, in which one feels no loneliness or isolation, and very little limitation. It improves one's health, relationships and accomplishments. It can bring a paradise into any home or situation. So why would anyone who knows this find that other activities are more worthwhile? And who's in change of your scheduling who doesn't allow 15 minutes for a highly-enjoyable activity that costs nothing? Is it because meditation stopped working?

The problem is really that meditation works too well -- it brings up old, painful wounds, it confronts us with the fact that we have made our own reality, and it scares us with the power available in that state. Meditation brings up old, historical traumas and wounds that have been lying in the heart waiting for the moment when they could be released. We all have these things that happened at a time when we were not able to process them, to forgive them and to integrate them.

They fall generally into three classes of events: guilt (things we did), resentment (things others did to us) and the unacceptable (events that cannot fit into our world view). These things can only be integrated if they become conscious, and that has to wait for the moment when we are able to handle them. Meditation greatly increases your capacity to deal with these wounds, so they surface when you meditate.

If you have disquieting memories and troubling emotions when meditating, consider them as signs of progress. You don't need to seek them; they will come by themselves. If they seem to be distractions to the peace you seek, be glad to have found the very things that disturb you. More peace will follow this encounter. If meditation seems to be too much work, consider the effort as an investment that will pay dividends for the rest of your life. The sooner you can address the needs of your heart, the better. The alternative is to become bitter, disagreeable, reclusive, unfriendly, rigid or inconsolable, with no interest or energy for helping others or contributing to the world.

Fortunately, there is a period when you're first learning to meditate that is incredibly beautiful, to remind you what life can be like. Then come the difficulties. The early joy that meditation produces is a preview of the real thing. To sustain that joy, which is your nature, you have to find the causes of your pain and sorrow that remove you from it. The causes are not external, they are internal -- guilty feelings from ignorant behaviors, resentments from failed expectations, insecurities from lack of self-knowledge, outrage from selfish attitudes, and so on. Your meditation will loosen these thorns in your heart until they drop away. The heart heals its own pain, but only with the help of the mind's attention.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
© 1998 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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