I’ve written about meditation a few times for this blog. Er-hum, I should say I’ve written about wanting to meditate. The pie in the sky.
I’ve never attempted formal courses, but instead I’ve participated in the standard 10 minute meditation sessions at the end of yoga class.
And I’ve also downed a lot of reading about ‘mindfulness’ meditation: I can rattle off all the health benefits of regular meditation as well as the next cat… better sleep, better concentration, more energy, lower blood pressure, less stress . And that ain’t the half of it!
Like many of you, dear readers, acing meditation and reaping those promised wellbeing pay-offs are something I crave. I don’t sleep well, I have a stressful job, I’m too connected to electronic devices, and my mind is a racetrack for most of the day. Achieving calm is a challenge.
Oh, I’ve tried. And maybe I’ve succeeded for a handful of consecutive days. But I’ve never made it a true habit.
I put down my years of failing to this: trying to practice someone else’s style of meditation – not one I create myself – as well as seeing meditation as a chore. Make these minutes pass so I can feel peaceful, dammit!
To be honest, I’d half given up trying. And then something happened.
I got a new flatmate. She’s into film in a big way, and has a particular soft spot for the mega creative director David Lynch.
Jemma left a book by David Lynch on our coffee table one day called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. I started reading it. I found I couldn’t stop.
His idea is that meditation expands your net – your ability to catch good ideas, the kind that will improve your world and that of others.
Here’s what I wrote in my diary one day whilst reading it:
“Jemma’s David Lynch book has loads of cool ideas about transcendental meditation. He says you can expand your happiness and creativity – ‘Catching the Big Fish’ (Ideas) – by entering a meditative ‘bliss state’, a white room where you drop down into happiness through your subconscious.”
And here’s what Lynch himself writes:
“Meditation is not a selfish thing. Even though you’re diving in and experiencing the self, you’re not closing yourself off from the world. You’re strengthening yourself, so that you can be more effective when you go back into the world.
“It’s like they say on airplanes: ‘First put your mask on, and then help those next to you put theirs on’.”.
Call me odd, but there was something about being encouraged to meditate by a film director, rather than a health professional, that really did for me.
I want to be more creative and have better ideas… not to mention being kinder and more compassionate. And I care about this stuff more than my blood pressure, if I’m honest.
This was the spark that lit my meditation fire.
Meditation no longer seemed like a chore. Quite the opposite in fact- it seemed to be about possibilities.
“If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful… The more your consciousness – your awareness – is expanded, the deeper you go toward the source, and the bigger fish you can catch.”
-David Lynch, Director of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive
Part 2– how I came up with my own style of meditation
References available on request