One thing I sometimes say when describing the art of mindfulness meditation is that, “It’s just being ourselves – except more so”. (As an aside, I’m proud of this saying, because I think it’s pithy, and because I came up with it on my own, it’s not something I’ve ever read in a book or heard someone else say.) That phrase might sound immediately comforting and welcoming to you, or it may perhaps sound paradoxical and confusing. What do I mean when I say that?
When we first practice a new meditation technique, for a while it may feel artificial or unnatural, or like it blocks up our natural flow of our activity. However, after we have practiced a meditation technique enough to get the hang of it, we often find that it is actually simply a structure that helps our natural self to emerge in an undistorted way. It’s a way to help us to experience and express who we deeply are.
One way of looking at things is that the various emotional, social, spiritual, and physical pains that we encounter in our lives can often leave us with compensatory behaviors and inauthentic coping strategies and mental distortions designed to try to avoid or soften such pains in the future. Mindfulness aims to help us to find something deeper and more true than these compensations, and help us to live our lives from that place – more expressing ourselves from our deeper core, the way a flower grows from its own center, or the sun shines from within itself.
I often say “mindfulness meditation is just being ourselves – except more so” in the context of people telling me that they are finding meditation to be difficult, or have been avoiding it. I say it to reveal that meditation is sometimes a challenge simply because being human is sometimes a challenge. Additionally, the process of purification, releasing and working out everything that is not our true self, can also sometimes be a challenging one.
When I lead meditations on how the body feels, I sometimes say
This meditation is an opportunity for you to be fully and completely yourself, maybe even being yourself more than you usually do. This is an opportunity to feel whatever you would like, allowing your body to feel whatever it would like to feel. As long as you stay seated, you can feel anything and everything, including feelings may not usually allow yourself.
This is an example of how, ideally, we eventually find that when we practice mindfulness meditation, we are not only just ourselves – we are, indeed, “more so” ourselves.