Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

Stop beating yourself up for not being closer to meeting your goals

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The last few months have skyrocketed my anxiety above normal levels. I’ve been applying to therapy graduate programs, and the combination of not knowing the outcome and likely having three years of school ahead of me (albeit, part-time) is testing my patience.

Thank God for meditation. The mindfulness it produces loosens me up enough to notice what’s going on inside of me. To stop distracting myself and running from thoughts and emotions, which only intensifies the anxiety. To pause instead of move. To feel instead of think, think, think, do, do, do.

Within the stress and tension, gratitude has been rearing its beautiful head. At times, limitless appreciation has washed over me—for meditation and everyone who’s inspired me to practice. For those who come to my classes. For you for reading this.

But this having patience thing might be my biggest test yet. Part of me wants to fall asleep and wake up three years from now a licensed therapist—to just get it over with. Another part of me knows the journey is the point, and the whole point of life.

I once heard about a boot camp training for Navy SEALs called “the box drill.” The former SEAL Eric Davis describes it like this:

They put you in the corner of the room and say you have as much time as you need to get to a doorway across the room. There are six people guarding the door. You try to fight your way through, but you get your ass kicked over and over again. Every few minutes, one of the people leaves the room. You keep trying to fight because you want to prove you’re tough. Finally, the last person leaves, and you walk through the door and they say you passed. You’re like, ‘What? I didn’t beat anybody.’ They’re like, ‘That wasn’t what this drill was about.’ What they’re doing is producing an experience where you realize you have all the time in the world.

Meditation is like the box drill. Out of habit, the mind keeps narrowing its attention to follow thoughts into the past or future. It spins stories that stir up emotions in the body, which it tries to escape by telling even more stories.

It’s when you let go and rest as awareness—as a neutral observe witnessing what’s going on inside of you—that a little bit of spaciousness appears.

Like being a Navy SEAL, this requires courage. Into that spaciousness you create—that mindfulness—anything can appear. Anything. That childhood memory you thought was locked away forever. That gut feeling that you’ve outgrown your job. That age-old fear of love.

Whatever appears—for me recently it’s been impatience—is just the next step in the journey. It’s your edge. And the hardest thing in life is sitting still at your edge and feeling its raw sensations—the tightness, the burning, the pain, the pleasure, the whatever.

It’s much, much easier to fantasize about the future or worry about the past. To beat yourself for not being further along in your journey. To try to fight to prove your tough or however you want to be perceived by other people.

As the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa said, “Meet your edge and soften.”

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

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This short poem by Rumi explains the healing power of meditation

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The 13th century Persian poet Rumi wrote:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life is see yourself as a home—to feel okay no matter what’s happening inside of you.

If you’re like me, you’re almost always checking on yourself. Am I okay? How do they see me? Am I being “mindful?” And on and on and on.

It’s so much easier to change things externally—by losing weight, getting a new job, quitting an addiction, which are all still difficult to do. But to treat all your thoughts and emotions “honorably,” to accept and welcome them, will challenge you all the way up until your last breath.

That’s what makes mindfulness meditation so powerful. It’s a practice for welcoming the guests.

You relax your body and watch your mind. Thoughts appear. Wild thoughts. Sad thoughts. Evil thoughts. Boring thoughts. Emotions follow and show up in the body. A burning chest. A tense stomach. A scrunched face. You just watch.

You let it all be, and then you let the thoughts go and return your attention to what’s alive in the present moment. You refocus on the movement of your breath, sensations in the body, and/or the sounds around you. You come back home.

Don’t worry about someone breaking in and stealing everything, because whoever comes in is an old friend (as Rumi says, a “guide from beyond.”)

If you’re like me…

…part of you gets anxious and grabs a beer (or a cigarette, or Netflix, or Facebook, or…) for distraction.

…part of you beats you up inside, saying you’re never good enough and that only never-ending, hard work will make you happy.

…part of you wants to be worshipped by others so that you’ll finally feel the love you’ve always thought you deserved.

…part of you is terrified of being alone, so you manipulate others into wanting to be around you—often to no avail.

Just like me, you have habitual patterns that have been part of you since early in your life, which you created in an effort to protect yourself when you felt vulnerable.

Mindfulness allows you to see these patterns for what they really are. They aren’t you—they’re guests. Welcome them all. Hell, love them if you can.

When you can love the parts of you that were previously unconscious, that’s when real, deep, lasting change can happen.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

A waterfall. Hidden treasure. Here are some metaphors for understanding mindfulness.

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Mindfulness is all the rage. Corporations like Goldman Sachs and Monsanto teach it to employees. The meditation apps Calm and Headspace have both been valued at $250 million. Forbes recently profiled six “tech entrepreneurs” who “want to bring mindfulness to your sex life.”

But what exactly is it?—many people continue to ask.

To meditation teacher Hugh Byrne, it’s seeing whatever is arising in our experience like clouds moving through the sky—including sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, sounds, the breath. They come and go.

To scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, it’s “going beyond or behind our thinking,” like standing behind a waterfall. “We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent [of thoughts.]”

To Zen Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo willliams, it’s like sifting through “that drawer that collects everything in your house. We have no real way of being able to discern what is mine, what is yours, what are we holding collectively, what have I inherited, what have I taken on as a measure of protection, of a way to cope at some point in my life or past lives, that I no longer need? [Mindfulness] lets us begin to do that.”

To the Tibetan Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, it’s like inviting guests into your home. He tells a story of being a sick teenager on a bus. “I [meditated,] bringing my awareness to the sensations around my stomach, its bloating, and the nausea. I was playing host to these sensations, as well as to feelings of aversion, resistance, and reaction. The more I allowed these guests to inhabit my body, the calmer I became.”

To some Mahayana Buddhists, it’s also known as “Buddha nature,” which is like “a treasure hidden beneath the house of a poor family. The treasure is silent and so cannot announce its presence, yet when it is discovered poverty is dispelled.”

To the ancient Zen master Dogen, it’s a mirror: “The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available; how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust; why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away?”

I like to think of it as seeing a movie in a theater. Most of the time—when we’re not mindful—we’re sitting in the front row, engrossed in what’s on the screen (our thoughts). There’s no space, no gap between our thoughts and consciousness, the thinker of those thoughts. Mindfulness is walking to the back of the theater and realized that here’s a screen and an audience.

What emerges from these metaphors is a (somewhat) simple definition: mindfulness is being aware of what’s happening in the present moment, including thoughts, in a non-judgmental way.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.