Meg Evans

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.

I don’t ordinarily attach long subtitles to my blog posts; but if I did, this one would be subtitled “How to Manage Your Brain like a Kindle.” I’ve often thought that what we encounter in our everyday lives goes a long way toward shaping the world as we perceive it. Though we may not think much about what’s in and around our homes and workplaces, often the small details have more subconscious impact than we might expect. Clearing away physical clutter can leave us feeling that life in general has fewer obstacles and is easier to navigate.

The same principle holds true for the clutter in our minds. We’d rather not have useless old worries and bad memories taking up space in our brains, but somehow we end up mentally tripping over them anyway. In meditation, we might picture ourselves calmly breathing out the stale negative energy, disposing of mental garbage in an imaginary bin, or something similar. Those are tried and true methods handed down for many generations. In the modern world we also have plenty of computer metaphors available—an imaginary Delete key, a data dump, and so forth. It’s often said that the computer age is changing how our brains work, and I am curious as to how computer-inspired meditations compare to the old-fashioned variety.

My latest exploration along those lines is to picture my brain as a Kindle. Rather than having all the books in view like an actual bookshelf, a Kindle (or other ebook reader) generally contains only the items that are currently being read, while everything else in the owner’s library is stored in the cloud. That way, the Kindle’s home screen does not get cluttered. After reading a book or other item, it’s quick and easy to take it off the Kindle by selecting “remove from device.”
 

Recently I’ve been making an effort to do the same with unwanted thoughts—when I notice them popping up, I do an imaginary “remove from device” and send them back to the “cloud” of whatever does not need my attention in the moment. This approach seems well suited to dealing with past drama such as rehashing old arguments. I remind myself that I’ve been finished with this story for a long time, and then I reinforce that message by picturing its removal. Maybe I’ll find a worthwhile lesson in it someday, but for now it can just go back to the cloud with everything else that’s not currently useful.

Meditating on emptiness can be unsettling. Because our busy modern-day culture associates emptiness with lack, loss, and not getting things done, the idea of voluntarily inviting emptiness to pay a visit—even if it’s only for a few minutes of meditation—can get scary. Sometimes it feels like walking out into the desert alone, with nothing but sand dunes and clear sky in every direction, and having no landmarks to find the way back.
 

All those busy thoughts flitting about in our minds have become so much a part of our identity, how can we possibly just set them aside and then reassemble ourselves later? Won’t all those balls we’ve so carefully kept in the air come crashing down? Meditating on an imaginary scene, such as a quiet bike ride or a walk in the woods, seems easier. That gives the mind a peaceful focus, but the background mental chatter still goes along for the ride, if more quietly than usual.

Although contemplating emptiness can be scary at times, I suspect that’s when it is most needed. Today’s world is so full of noise and random stuff everywhere, we might believe that is the normal way of things if we don’t pause to reflect. Emptying the mind of clamoring thoughts and worries doesn’t really mean nothing is left; rather, it makes space for awareness of life’s smaller details—such as what breathing feels like.

Even in the desert, it’s not really empty. A hiker would notice such things as gentle breezes, insect sounds, a hawk soaring far aloft, sand shifting with every step, a snake sunning itself on a rock, and a cactus at the edge of a dry gully. The world is full of spaces that only seem empty until we take the time to look more closely at them.

If peace could be held in the palm of one’s hand, what would it feel like? I sometimes meditate on this question, imagining that I am holding peace in my left hand (because it’s nearest to the heart). This is a stream-of-consciousness exercise focusing on the sensations, images, and words that come to mind, however randomly.

It might go something like this: Peace feels soft. Although peace fills the hand, there’s almost no weight to it. Like a handful of fluffy little cotton balls—or maybe cotton candy. Pink cotton candy, like soft pink clouds at sunrise. Or blue like the sky.
 

But peace is not sticky like cotton candy. It shapes itself to the hand and stays in place naturally, so there’s no need to keep a tight grasp. Peace won’t run away either. Like a friendly puppy, it wants to cuddle up and stay close—best not to squeeze too tightly!

Peace glows with a happy light, giving a pleasant warmth that travels all through the body and radiates out to the Universe. Peace is for sharing—it doesn’t need to be hoarded because there’s always more where it came from! Sometimes it dances too, just for the joy of existing—like the Snoopy Dance, maybe, with that cheerful piano music playing.

Even after ending the meditation and letting the images fade, peace is still there invisibly, as though it evaporated into the surrounding air while leaving a fresh, natural scent—like a summer afternoon when a gentle, cleansing rain is about to fall.