When I say, “meditation” I mean transcendental meditation (aka TM). TM is the variety where you try to keep your mind as empty as possible, banishing thoughts as they arise, refusing to engage with them.
The reason this works, I think, is that you start to free yourself from patterns of desire and aversion. Most of us live in some combination of, “here’s what I want to happen, and here’s what I don’t want to have happen.” The less enlightened a person is, the more reflexive and predominant these thoughts are. There’s almost nothing deeper going on than, “I want, I want, I want.” This is the kind of consciousness that is typical and appropriate for a young child. But of course, even healthy adults fall live out this pattern (to varying degrees).
Much of our daily lives are driven by our desire to get what we want, and to avoid what we don’t want. These feed our behaviors, which in turn create our circumstances. For circumstances to change, our behaviors have to change. Which means we need to get into some new relationship with our desires and our aversions. Otherwise we get stuck.
Take for instance the idea that everything you want is on the other side of something you don’t want. You have some fear or discomfort that you must face in order to improve your life. If you want to make new friends, you will have to talk to people you don’t already know. That’s uncomfortable, and it can bring up all kinds of fears: rejection, abandonment, inferiority, poor self-worth, you name it. These are real issues that you might have to work through if you want better friendships.
Meditation brings about subtle changes in the underlying aversions and desires. Often, these things are linked together. You desire friendship as proof that you are a worthwhile human being. And hence, failure to gain a friend, or failure to hit things off with a particular person, can feel like proof that you are not a worthwhile human being. The stakes feel very high.
But meditation strengthens your “letting go” muscle. You can learn to cling less tightly to this idea that your worth depends on the approval of others. You can learn to “need” that external validation less. You become open to the possibility that your relationship with another person isn’t totally about you. With less pressure, with less fear, you become more capable of having a real relationship, free of projection or manipulation.
Thus, you may suddenly find yourself behaving differently. You get what you want, but without so much fear, anxiety, and struggle. You float your way to the goal, you allow it to happen, rather than arm-wrestling the universe into submission.
This was the case for me after my meditation retreat last year. I suddenly had more of everything I had always wanted, but it came about naturally. Without consciously seeking it out, I found meaningful friendships. I got in better shape, had fewer injuries. My business grew, but not from fear of lack, or from straining myself, as I had grown it previously.
I still think it’s okay to want things, and to be mindful of your behaviors, and all of that. But I think there seems to be a deeper, less conscious level to existence, where the ultimate lesson is how to exist with greater peace. And when I tap into that, my life has a lot less struggle and hardship. I think maybe there’s a lot less fear and false narratives gumming up the works. When you clean out that gunk, the machine can run a lot smoother.