Sit. Stay. Shut up.

Where: Hampstead Heath, London, UK
When: March 15, 2009

(Piper is much better at demonstrating this concept than I am.)

A month or two ago, I had one of those days where I really, really didn't want to meditate. I also, as it happened, didn't want to meditate the day before, or the day before that, or pretty much any day that week. So I didn't. And then depression started to seep in and squish around, so I finally decided I had to do something.

When I'm in this state I need the motivation provided by social pressure, so I went to the London Buddhist Center's (LBC) lunchtime meditation. At least there, surrounded by others, my aversion to embarrassment will not allow me to stand up after five minutes, mutter something rude, and stalk out. So I sat, with a teacher to guide me, in the company of my fellow meditators. And holy crap, was it awful. My brain had what can only be described as a massive screaming-kicking-flinging-itself-about temper tantrum.

From one breath to the next, I was tossed from fantasy to nightmare to chattering to screaming, and sometimes drowning in all of them at once. Time after time I'd realize where I'd gotten to, pull out of the maelstrom, re-straighten my back and sternly insist, yet again, "I'm in charge here, and damnit we're counting breaths. Get over it."

Having carved out a (very) small space in which to breathe, I would get to "two" and have consciousness and balance yanked out from under me, my brain viciously retaliating by causing me to fall asleep and topple alarmingly to one side or the other of the mat before flinging me back into the howling chaos of my mind.

This went on and on, for eons. I finally, in the last 5 minutes of the never-ending hour, had a moment of peace, a series of 4 complete breaths where I had silence, and space. Then the teacher begins to wrap up the meditation, reminding us to come out slowly and in our own time prepare to open our eyes, and all I can think is JUST SHUT UP AND HIT THE BLOODY BOWL ALREADY! And finally he does, and I still can't leave, I have to move slowly and mindfully and not disturb others and wait for the teacher to rise and indicate it's time to put away the pillows. And then I have to stack them carefully instead of flinging them across the room with a screech of pure frustration.

Jumping forward a month, I had decided to go on another retreat, this time with the LBC, at Vajrasana. While my meditations had retreated from the total drama of that day, it hadn't been feeling like progress either, so I decided that I needed to go on another retreat, in the hopes that it would help me refocus my energies, and push past the current block. And as always happens with the Through the Looking Glass world of meditation, driving determinedly towards my goal left me further from it than when I started.

So, instead of remembering what a quiet mind feels like, I resigned myself to dealing with my fear of social interactions and of not fitting in with a group of new people, and to come to terms with the way that I always feel out of place and uncomfortable around pretty much everybody. And during free periods in the afternoon, I'd escape all that horrible awkward hard work to run around the fields surrounding Vajrasana.

As with my meditations, running has been, recently, an exercise in stodgy discipline. And it was no different in the lovely Suffolk countryside - I felt keenly with every step the difference in exertion between a running stride and a walking stride, and the runs were filled with effort and scowling determination. So on Wednesday, I was resigned to more of the same. But five minutes in, something shifted through my body, and suddenly I was having one of those runs where all the effort behind the motion lifts away, and my whole being becomes pure perpetual motion, where walking is not only not an option, it is a completely inconceivable method of locomotion.

Afterward, as I came down and remembered how to think again, the thing that stayed with me was the realization that I had forgotten the value of practice. I had forgotten that the reason we suffer in miserable and uninspiring meditations, slog through another mediocre run, groan in a stiff and unyielding yoga practice, or struggle with a weak and fear filled climbing session, is that eventually something will click. And it will stop feeling like work and start feeling like flying, and that moment is worth every slogging step.

Or at least, it had better be.