Meg Evans

Over the weekend, I spent a few minutes just lying down in the grass under a tree, looking up through the bright green leaves and watching the clouds go by.

That wouldn’t have been particularly notable, except that the last time I did it was so long ago, I’m not even sure how many years have gone by. When I was younger, I would often lie down in the grass and relax, not even thinking about it. Now I’m all grown up—and even though I spend time outdoors regularly when I go down to the river to row, it’s part of a regimented exercise program, so it doesn’t calm my mind in the same way as just being in nature and doing nothing.

I wasn’t even sure how to tag this post, honestly. I settled on Meditation because that seemed the closest. That left me wondering how my life had gotten so far away from simple little things I once took for granted.

I like my new Garmin tracker, which allows me to customize activities much more than my old Fitbit did. In addition to pre-set activities such as walking and running, it has a menu with other options. I added rowing, indoor rowing, and yoga.

Meditation is one of the pre-sets, but I have not used it because I never track the length of time I meditate. Although I know that many people do, for me it seems to go against the purpose of meditation, which—in large part—is to free the mind from its cluttered thoughts of plans and schedules. When meditation becomes just another scheduled task on the to-do list, with every minute precisely tracked, that feels like a counterproductive approach.

So, after taking a photo for this post, I decided to delete meditation from the list of tracked activities. If, after meditating on any particular day, I feel that my mind has not been suitably refreshed by whatever amount of time I put into it, I probably would do better to take a walk outdoors or do some yoga, rather than fixating on the tracker and judging my meditation time as inadequate.

I had a rather unsettling experience on Monday night when I tried to meditate before going to sleep. I have a favorite meditation that I’ve written about here before, in which I imagine myself turning to the four directions and asking what advice they have for me. I’ll usually see interesting scenes and picture myself walking through them while kindly voices offer guidance.

On Monday, though, I felt like I was rooted to the spot and hearing only my internal dialogue, which sounded tired and frazzled. As far as I knew, nothing in particular was causing me to feel stressed at that moment. I had been traveling more than usual this spring, a long weekend was over, and something had been irritating my sinuses, but I felt that none of those events should have bothered me much.

When I imagined myself looking to the East, where I wanted to see a refreshing springtime scene, nothing came clear. I heard myself saying “Just breathe,” as if trying to calm myself down. After another minute passed without any images coming to mind, I turned to the South; but rather than its usual comforting warmth, it felt stifling. My inner voice whined, “It’s so hot!” Then I tried to visualize birch trees with autumn foliage in the West, with a little more success, but I still couldn’t picture myself moving toward them.

I finally tried to create a mental picture of a cool northern landscape to complete the meditation, but nothing happened there either. I tried to tell myself that I was half asleep and shouldn’t worry about it, but I felt that it had all gone wrong.

After giving myself a couple of days to reflect, however, I came to the conclusion that the “failed” meditation was a perfectly valid message from my subconscious mind. It was simple enough—too much time in motion, without enough rest, had left me needing to stand still and just breathe.

Sometimes, as a meditation, I imagine myself turning to the four directions and asking each of them what it has to say to me. I always start in the East, as the direction of the dawn and new beginnings, and go clockwise from there.

When I last pictured myself facing the dawn, I was walking through a bright green meadow full of wildflowers on a clear spring day. Then I noticed that, for some reason, I had butterfly wings attached to my shoulders, like a child in a costume.

Unlike a costume, however, the wings were functional. I was holding some sort of futuristic control device that made the wings fly me high above the meadow.

“The future holds so many fun adventures to discover,” the East whispered on a joyful breeze.

Thanking the East, I turned toward the South, the direction of summer’s heat.

I was barefoot now, and the earth under my feet was pleasantly warm. Closing my eyes, I wanted to stand for a little while and enjoy the feeling.

“It’s okay to just relax sometimes,” the South told me in a comfortable, reassuring tone. “The future will find you anyway; there’s no need to be searching for it at all times.”

Although I was tempted to stay longer, I still had two more directions to visit. I opened my eyes and moved on to the West, the direction of cool winds of change.

I stood watching autumn leaves as they fell, but other than the leaves, nothing much seemed to be happening around me. I wondered what, if anything, I was supposed to be doing.

“Hold space for it,” the West kindly advised.

With my thanks, I turned away to face the North, the direction of winter’s cold and renewal. Rain was falling, and I heard a stream rushing somewhere nearby, quick with snowmelt. Then, suddenly, all was silent.

“You don’t need to listen for it, either,” the North murmured. “It will find you.”

When I was little, I enjoyed the Curious George storybooks about a pet monkey getting into mischief. My dad saw how much I liked them, and he started telling me bedtime stories about a mysterious creature named Goosey Poosey who secretly lived in our basement and got into things when we weren’t looking. Although I investigated the basement pretty thoroughly and never found anything, my dad assured me that Goosey Poosey was very good at hiding.

I recently thought about those stories in relation to the “monkey mind” that gets in the way of meditation. The monkey mind is the part of the mind that just can’t sit still and be quiet but is always full of distracting chatter, like a monkey making noise. However much we try to keep the focus on peaceful feelings, there’s a mischievous little part of the mind that keeps peeking out and wanting attention.
 

Usually people think of the monkey mind as an annoying obstacle that needs to be pushed aside through willpower. I wonder, though, if perhaps there’s a worthwhile message from the subconscious in there somewhere. Maybe our inner monkey pops up to let us know that we’re being too serious and not giving ourselves enough freedom to let our thoughts wander along creative paths.

Quieting the mind through meditation helps to set aside worries; but humans, by our nature, are a creative, storytelling species. Our brains were never designed to be in full control of every thought, but instead to make random connections and intuitive leaps, often through play. When we impose too much structure and discipline on our everyday lives, we’re likely to turn to meditation as a way to relieve the stress—but maybe, sometimes, what we need more is just to let Monkey Mind out to play.