The real reason I “bother” meditating
This is all lovely, but, really, why do you care so much?
Because my attempts to create my reality, fake positive thinking, and be something I wasn’t nearly killed me.
For nearly ten years I practiced law. I mostly excelled. I love research and writing. I loved hunting down cases no one else could find. I had great coworkers and liked to dress the part. Unfortunately, I didn’t thrive in that high-stress environment. Neither a labor relations consulting firm nor an employment law firm suited my intuitive, peace-loving, daydreamer personality.
But I didn’t know that then.
I felt ashamed that I couldn’t keep up the fast pace and especially that I did not enjoy conflict. But I sure tried. When I couldn’t shape-shift through it, I turned to “positive thinking,” “manifest your dreams,” and “create your own reality” books and audio recordings.
I continued to deliver the work, but at a huge emotional cost.
Eventually, a day came when pretending failed. Too depressed to complete a project, I failed one of my favorite clients and my partners. I had shapeshifted myself into a mental health nightmare.
But I was also learning to meditate. Soon, I saw the differences in the systems.
Meditation invited me to be present with the pain, fear, anxiety, and conflict—paradoxically, as a way to move beyond the suffering it engendered. It grew harder and harder for me to hide from the reality that I was not only in the wrong job, but possibly the wrong profession.
The “create your reality” message told me I could have whatever I thought I wanted if I just made my mind work for me. When I couldn’t make that work, I thought I was doing it wrong. That system told me to envision success, set my fears aside, think positive, align with abundance, and “just do it.” But “fake it ’til you make it” only goes so far.
As I tried to manifest a different reality and failed to accept the actual reality—that I needed professional help for long-standing mental health issues and probably a different career—I came close to ending my own life.
I thought I needed to kill myself because I wasn’t able to manifest my way into practicing law with comfort and ease.
After I got out of the mental health hospital—they saved my life—a psychologist said that me practicing law was the worst case of poor job fit she had seen in more than twenty years of practice. When I explained my attempts to think my way to success or meditate through a breakdown without help, she shook her head. She had heard it from others. An avocado can’t think its way into becoming a T-bone steak.
I also thought I had failed at meditation!
Still confused, I called Shinzen. I felt like a failure not only for being unable to practice law, but for needing medication. It seems ridiculous now, but I asked if taking mental health medications made me a lousy meditator!
First, Shinzen wisely reminded me that he is a monk, not a psychiatrist. Once I reassured him that I had mental health professionals, he shared about meditators he knew who needed medication for mental health disorders. “Mindfulness can’t fix everything,” he said. “But it can reduce the suffering.”
He reminded me that I had only been meditating a few years. A major depressive episode would challenge even a seasoned meditator. He encouraged me to continue to practice and suggested I use the thoughts and body sensations of depression as objects of meditation.
Most importantly, Shinzen affirmed that if I needed medication to stay alive, I needed medication—period. That’s all it meant. Nothing more. He suggested I let my thoughts around that become part of my practice too.
After the call, my mental health gallows humor kicked in.
“Nita. You can’t meditate if you’re dead.”
More than thirty years later, I still twitch when someone says “manifest positivity” or “attract abundance.” Later, I will discuss a beneficial alternative: cultivating helpful mind states.
I have included more than twenty “Your Turn” exercises in the book Make Every Move a Meditation.
This excerpt is from Make Every Move a Meditation by Nita Sweeney which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.
