THE MERITS OF MEDITATION

FEATURE | Turn The Page #72 | April 2020 | Artichoke

Last summer, I took a ten-day Vipassana course, meditating ten hours per day. Vipassana is all about observing reality as objectively as possible. It brought me countless benefits. Imagine you could buy a pill at your local pharmacy which would increase your mental well-being and attention span, reduce your stress levels and anxiety, and improve your sleep quantity and quality. Meditation turns out to be that imaginary pill, though getting to all those benefits requires hard work and some discipline.

by Jorn Rigter | illustrations by Vinodha Suresh

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

In its essence, meditation is about achieving what is called enlightenment: the state of nonduality where the concepts of ‘you’ and ‘the rest of the world’ cease to exist and you’re fully aware of the objective reality as it is in every moment in time. In the West, however, people have been using the positive effects of meditation in their daily lives, without the goal of achieving a state of enlightenment, often referred to as mindfulness. By focusing the mind on a specific task, like the focus on the incoming and outgoing breath, you train the mind to become sharper and less distracted by the constant thoughts that arise in your consciousness. There is a plurality of different meditation techniques out there. The meditation tech-nique that was discovered by the first Buddha (which literally means ‘Enlightened one’) is called Vipassana.

THE VIPASSANA TECHNIQUE

In Vipassana, the goal is to observe reality as it is. You do this by doing a so-called ‘body scan’, where you scan the skin of your body, inch by inch. You get your conscious mind to speak to the unconscious mind and become equanimous (balanced and calm) with anything that happens to you. While we call it the ‘unconscious mind’, it is actually constantly conscious of everything that happens to us: it communicates through the bodily senses. For example, when you get angry, your heartbeat rises, your palms start to sweat and your body gets warmer. We only start to notice these sensory experiences when they’ve already happened. That’s when the conscious mind becomes aware of the unconscious mind. It turns out we can communicate back as well.

COMMUNICATING WITH THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

When we have a negative sensation, for example an itching sensation in the neck, the conscious mind can remain balanced. Also, when we have a positive sensation, for example a beam of sunlight hitting the skin, the conscious mind can remain equanimous. The unconscious mind has a habit of constantly reacting with craving to positive sensations and reacting with aversion to negative sensations. If the conscious mind remains equanimous in these situations, it conveys this message to the unconscious mind, telling it that whatever happens, it doesn’t have to instantly react. What happens then, I can tell from experience, is nothing short of real-world magic.

HEALING YOURSELF

I like to compare it to burning a candle under a glass bell. The candle needs a constant supply of oxygen to burn. When you cut the supply, the remaining oxygen in the bell will start burning. The same happens in the mind. When the constant supply of cravings or aversions from the conscious mind is cut off, the remaining supply starts burning. You notice this by a sudden new sensation appearing somewhere on your body. For example, during the course there were moments where I experienced very subtle, pulsating vibrations all over my body. It’s like tiny parts of my skin vibrated at a very rapid pace. Then, suddenly, a very solidified, intensified sensation appeared somewhere on my back or shoulder. At another time, my left hand was suddenly getting extremely cold. It felt like there was cold energy leaving my left arm, through the left hand, in a pulsating motion. At another time, this same cold energy was leaving through the upper back.

If you manage to remain balanced with these new sensations, you will start to burn the old supply coming from the unconscious mind, since you’re telling the unconscious mind that it is okay to have this sensation as well. Sensations like these often originate from childhood, where something might have happened which you might not even consciously remember anymore, but which is vividly stored in the unconscious mind. The unconscious created a reaction pattern, which results in an emotional reaction that appears as a sensation somewhere on the body. When the conscious mind doesn’t respond, you’re now telling the unconscious mind to remain calm as well. You’re now healing this thing that (unconsciously) had a big impact on your life.

THE BENEFITS

Personally, I noticed a big difference in the way I responded to certain situations after the course. Situations where I would have reacted strongly in the past, didn’t get to me personally anymore. I was very self-aware and had a peaceful state of mind. I was also getting lots of things done in a short amount of time. Now of course benefits differ per person, but in general it increases focus, reduces anxiety and stress, increases emotional health and enhances self-awareness, making you more able to reflect on yourself and listen to feedback. In short, meditation might seriously be worth considering, both for yourself as a human being as well as to you as a designer.

FEATURE | Turn The Page #72 | April 2020 | Artichoke