2 | Your Life Is Your Meditation, Total Meditation

Your Life Is Your Meditation

Meditation gives us access to higher consciousness. Higher consciousness can go by a number of names—pure consciousness, cosmic consciousness, or enlightenment. (All these names have a ring of falseness, which I will get to in a minute. Names take away magic, and there is so much magic in consciousness that we must never lose sight of it.)

Meditation has acquired a mystical reputation going back thousands of years, because the portal to higher consciousness is seemingly closed to the everyday mind. In this book, I am proposing a radical rethinking. Meditation isn’t something otherworldly. It is quite natural. In fact, we have all been meditating since birth. Each of us has experienced, one time or another, every state reachable by the techniques taught by meditation teachers. This must be true, because if meditation didn’t reflect what the mind is already doing, it couldn’t be taught. It couldn’t even exist. Higher mathematics isn’t mystical, because everyone uses numbers. Exquisite cuisine isn’t otherworldly, because (almost) everyone can boil an egg.

If you can grasp the essence of a thing, everything else is simply more complicated. The essence of math and cooking doesn’t change just because they can be raised to the level of an art. The same is true of consciousness. You and I have spent a lifetime going in and out of meditation mode, as we will call it here. Generically, meditation mode is any mental state that looks inward, and over the centuries, these mental states have acquired names:

Mindfulness

Self-inquiry

Reflection

Contemplation

Concentration

Prayer

Quiet mind

Controlled breathing

Bliss

Just as higher mathematics or haute cuisine is an art, these practices belong to the art of meditation. But, in essence, meditation mode exists in everyone to serve a basic purpose that is totally necessary. Your mind goes into meditation mode out of the need to be in balance. All meditation practices stem from this need, so we must try to understand it. The deeper our understanding, the more valid total meditation will be.

STAYING IN BALANCE

Balance is one of those words that has become exhausted through overuse. Besides all the messages we receive about balanced exercise and diet, all kinds of products, from vitamins and breakfast cereals to hair products and shoes, use “balance” as a selling point. But to a physiologist, balance is necessary for life itself.

If you push your body out of balance by shoveling snow off the driveway or jogging around the park, as soon as you stop that activity, your heart rate and blood pressure, the oxygen use in your muscles, and your digestive and immune systems will automatically return to homeostasis, the state of balance when your body is at rest. Every bodily function knows how to return to home base. The capacity to regroup and rebalance is embedded in us.

In his entertaining and hugely informative 2019 book The Body, Bill Bryson unfolds just how mysterious homeostasis is. In fact, the book rests on the premise that despite advanced medical research, almost everything about the human body remains a mystery. No one knows why, for example, we hiccup or why we sleep. Or why we are the only mammals who do not produce our own vitamin C, or who have so many allergies, or who run the risk of choking to death while eating. Our uniqueness has some strange byways. Human beings inhabit all kinds of climates from the alpine to the tropical, but we exist within a slim margin of temperature internally. Increase your body temperature by two degrees Fahrenheit and you begin to be feverish. Lower it by one and a half degrees and you begin to feel chilly, and at 95°F hypothermia begins to set in.

Your body goes to extraordinary lengths to maintain equilibrium at a core temperature of approximately 98.6°F, as Bryson illustrates through a notable experiment in which a man ran a marathon on a treadmill under controlled conditions. The temperature in the room was lowered until it was very cold, far below freezing, then steadily raised until it was very hot, well above all but the hottest desert. but in either case the subject’s body temperature didn’t vary by more than a single degree Celsius. The fact that the two processes that cool and heat the body, namely sweating and shivering, seem so basic doesn’t make our physical equilibrium any less astonishing.

Sad love songs exaggerate when they speak of being heartbroken forever. One of the most popular jukebox selections of all time is Patsy Cline’s rendition of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” which begins, “Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely.” But just wait six months and, for most people, the “craziness” will pass.

If emotions return to home base, what about the mind and all our random and sometimes wild thoughts? The notion that the mind rebalances itself is new. Sometimes we can become consumed with all the activity whirling around in our head. We rarely take a pause from thinking to notice that awareness is a constant background. This background isn’t passive. It draws us back into equilibrium, just as homeostasis draws the body back. Because consciousness is a totality, it is artificial to draw a distinction between physical and mental balance—when you calm down after a heated argument, a sudden fright, or a bout of worry, your cells are also calming down from the imbalance your emotional state created for them.

This whole discussion underlines the point that meditation wouldn’t work unless the mind already had a rebalancing mechanism. Meditation brings consciousness into view from its hiding place in the background. It’s not as if meditation is a discovery by ancient Eastern mystics. It only deepens and extends what the mind naturally does already, the way that a long, warm massage deepens the relaxed state that the body returns to in homeostasis.

By itself, the mind’s rebalancing act is astonishingly effective already. Gaze for thirty seconds at a bright light in the room or on your computer screen and close your eyes. You will see a retinal afterglow that then starts to fade. The time it takes the afterglow to go away entirely can be greater than a few minutes. The mind, however, cannot afford afterimages of thoughts: they would obscure the next thought. Consider the thousands of thoughts that run through your head in a week, or even a day, and how you are ready to receive each of them in flickering mental snapshots. The whole operation takes place literally at the speed of light—the speed of your brain’s electrical signals.

Total Meditation

Lesson 4: The Zero Point

Your mind hits a reset button the instant a thought registers. This is like the zero point of awareness. It’s almost as if the mind erases the thought so a new thought can take its place. But unlike the Delete key on a computer, the zero point of the mind is alive, dynamic, and ready for anything that will come next. Ideally the zero point is vibrant and alert. You experience this ideal state when you are fresh, alert, optimistic, and ready for the next experience.

However, there are times when the zero point of the mind isn’t at true rest. It returns instead to a state that is tired, dull, sunk in routine thoughts, and resistant to change. On a daily basis, we find ourselves somewhere in the middle of the best and worst the zero point has to offer. We don’t feel mentally sluggish and fatigued, but neither are we open, curious, and fresh.

To illustrate what I mean, here are a few ways of noticing what it feels like when the zero point of the mind is less than ideal:

Create irritating, distracting noise in your surroundings, which might mean turning up the volume on some music you dislike or setting your television to a channel with static. Sit with your eyes closed, and clear your mind. Notice how hard it is to be quiet inside. The zero point can hardly be reached, and when it is, you still feel irritated.

Now find a quiet, soothing setting where you feel relaxed. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and quiet your mind. Notice how easily you reach the zero point. Even though thoughts come and go, they are not obscured by irritability or distraction.

Experiment with how the zero point feels in various situations: in line at the post office; waiting to be seen at the doctor’s; sitting around at the airport for a delayed flight; listening to a person you find boring; attending a tedious meeting at work.

Notice how easily the zero point is thrown off. This is due to the mind’s inherent sensitivity. Your mind is trained to be attentive, picking up a wealth of information in every situation. This sensitivity is an enormous asset, but, at the same time, the piling up of information—particularly if it is unwelcome—makes it harder for the mind to return to the zero point with freshness and clarity.

Your mind wants to reset itself many times a minute to keep your thinking fresh, your attitude open, your mood optimistic. Such is Nature’s design, but modern life works against Nature all the time. Quiet mind has become more difficult to reach, and in a society dominated by countless distractions and diversions, we look on a quiet mind as a rare experience. Perversely, many people prefer to eat in a crowded, noisy restaurant because they want constant stimulation.

The mind resists constant stimulation, which would wear us out like a vinyl record running with the needle digging into it all the time. This is also why we sometimes “space out” if we find ourselves in a situation in which there is too much going on around us. Except in cases of inner distress or external stressors, your thoughts will return to the zero point without any action on your part.

GOING INTO MEDITATION MODE

The tradition of meditation arose in order to launch from the zero point into a realm beyond everyday thoughts. Therefore, quiet mind isn’t a goal in itself. It’s a launchpad. In silence, all growth in consciousness occurs.

All the major meditation techniques correspond to various natural processes your mind goes through in returning to the zero point. You are actually recovering from some kind of imbalance that has temporarily thrown you out of equilibrium. In total meditation, we take advantage of all the mind’s natural processes to address all imbalances together, not just one at a time. It helps to recognize how complete the mind’s natural meditation mode really is and how often you go into it.

MINDFULNESS is the way your mind recovers from distraction. You are brought back into the present moment. The present is naturally where every cell in your body lives already. It is also where the mind wants to live, if you allow it to.

Examples:

Your cell phone rings while you are driving. If you are mindful, you don’t answer, keeping your focus in the here and now.
You are at the doctor’s, feeling worried about a potential medical problem. As the doctor discusses things with you, you notice that your mind is still preoccupied with worry. If you are mindful, you focus on what the doctor is saying and ask pertinent questions.
You are on a date, and things aren’t ideal. You notice less than desirable features in your date, and at the same time you wonder how you are coming off in their eyes. If you are mindful, you shoo away these distractions and experience the other person naturally, without second thoughts.

SELF-INQUIRY is the way your mind recovers from habits. By asking yourself, “Why am I doing this?” you bring conscious attention to a situation in which you have usually been ruled by habit, routine, obsessive behavior, knee-jerk reactions, and stagnant beliefs. Self-inquiry occurs when you notice repeated behavior and ask yourself about it.

Examples:

You find yourself repeatedly asking your spouse or partner to help you with a household chore, only to have your request ignored or met with a lame excuse, such as “Sorry, I just forgot.” Using self-inquiry, you ask yourself why you put yourself in the position of an adult talking to a child.
You are easily tempted to order dessert at a restaurant even when you are full or are on a diet. With self-inquiry, you stop and ask yourself if this is really good for you. Since you know it isn’t, why are you repeating this behavior?
You complain about work all the time, and there are only short periods when things go right. With self-inquiry, you ask yourself why you remain in a job that makes you unhappy and whether you deserve better.

REFLECTION is the way your mind recovers from thoughtlessness. You regard your behavior, see what is self-defeating or troubling about it, and realize what is actually going on. The mind is naturally thoughtful when it reflects upon itself.

Examples:

There’s someone at work who rubs you the wrong way. You are getting fed up, but your coworkers don’t seem to have the same problem with this person. So instead of focusing on the stress this person is causing you, you reflect on whether you are creating stress for them.
You consider yourself a caring but vigilant parent. Recently your teenage daughter has become distant and secretive about what she is doing. You reflect on whether you have been hovering or whether she is acting like a normal teenager struggling to find the right boundaries.
Your spouse or partner has lost the desire to maintain the sex life you enjoyed in the past. Your friends leap to the conclusion that your partner is having an affair, while you privately worry that you are no longer as desirable or attractive as before. On reflection you drop these assumptions, deciding to initiate changes in your love life that will satisfy both of you. If that doesn’t work, you will reflect on what to do next.

CONTEMPLATION is the way your mind recovers from confusion. When faced with multiple choices, each with its pros and cons, you sort things out by contemplating the situation until you have a certain level of clarity. The mind naturally prefers clarity over confusion.

Examples:

You have become irregular about going to church or have stopped altogether. Now your son is marrying a fundamentalist who keeps pressuring you about your faith. You want to keep peace in the family, but you don’t have much lingering religious faith. So you contemplate how to convey your beliefs without making waves.
You have a new boss who has made your job much more difficult in terms of pressure, deadlines, and his behavior. Do you stay there, try to fix it, or walk away? You contemplate and weigh the options.
You are deeply moved about the problem of gun violence in this country. Everyone tells you that the gun lobby is too powerful to get sane gun regulation passed. You contemplate the value of following your conscience and pushing for new laws anyway, or whether the odds are so against you that such efforts are doomed.

CONCENTRATION IS the way your mind recovers from pointlessness. It is pointless to do a careless job, have careless opinions, or relate to other people in an unconcerned or arbitrary way. Such behaviors reflect an underlying belief that most things are pointless anyway, so why bother? By concentrating itself, the mind gets absorbed in something deeply enough that it has a point. This satisfies the mind’s natural urge to find life meaningful.

Examples:

One of your old friendships has become stale and routine, and your friend seems boring. Instead of leaving things at that, you concentrate on what you can do to rekindle your relationship.
You have gotten good at your work, so good that it no longer challenges you. There’s a risk that job will no longer be fulfilling. Before making the difficult decision to move on to a new job, you focus on how you can make your current job more meaningful and challenging.
When you get up in the morning, you aren’t eager for the day ahead. Things feel kind of blah. Instead of blaming your age, your spouse, your job, or life in general, you concentrate on inner change, asking what your life lacks and how to fill that lack through your own efforts.

PRAYER is the way your mind recovers from helplessness. By contacting a higher power, you are acknowledging a need for connection. Often we can feel isolated, alone, small, and lost. Those are the qualities of helplessness, and for centuries humans have summoned God or the gods to bring a higher power into their life. The mind naturally wants to be rid of feeling powerless.

Examples:

You have suffered a personal loss and feel depressed and lonely. To relieve this suffering you ask in prayer that it be resolved through grace or through a loving God.
You witness a natural disaster somewhere in the world that brings untold misery to a huge number of people. Giving to charity doesn’t feel like enough, so you pray to find a better way to help.
You have a family member who has become addicted to drugs. All efforts to help have failed. A period in recovery always leads to a relapse. You pray that help can be found and ask that a higher power enters the picture to change it somehow.

QUIET MIND is the way your mind recovers from overwork. The mind is constantly processing daily life and its challenges, but when mental activity becomes burdensome, there is a risk of exhaustion, anxiety, and mental agitation. The mind naturally wants to be quiet when no activity is necessary. In peace and silence lie the simple contentment of existence and a renewed appetite for the next situation that demands a response.

Examples:

At work you lash out at someone for being irresponsible. The person is upset, and afterward so are you. Before apologizing, you find a quiet place to regroup and let your mind rest.
Your family has gotten used to your carrying a heavy load, and you are proud of how competent you are at this—everything you do is out of love. But you’ve been hiding a growing weariness. Before you discuss how others can do their share, you take time to relax and be quiet until you are ready to discuss things without feeling harassed inside.
After a hard day at work, you’re used to having a cocktail or beer, and recently your consumption has gone up. You realize that you can unwind more effectively by meditating or, at the very least, by relaxing for fifteen minutes before deciding if you really need a drink.

CONTROLLED BREATHING is the way your mind recovers from stress. Stress is a blanket term for an imbalanced state of mind and body under pressure. Breathing becomes rapid and irregular under stress. By taking a few deep breaths, sighing deeply, or falling asleep (a natural state of regular, relaxed breathing), your mind and body return to balance.

Examples:

All examples come down to the same thing. When you feel stressed, check to see how you are breathing. Taking regular deep breaths for a few minutes meets the pressure with a relaxation response that clears your head and removes tension from your body.

BLISS is the way your mind recovers from suffering. The mind naturally prefers well-being to suffering, no matter how much we rationalize that certain forms of suffering are good for us. Bliss, joy, or ecstasy is a state of perfect happiness. It seems to arrive unpredictably, but we all have experienced it, and the mind wants to be there as much as possible. Bliss is a natural state. Suffering is an unnatural distortion, a kind of persistent bad vibration that destroys the mind’s good vibrations.

Examples:

Bliss is happiness beyond words, so it is different from feeling happy, which can often be described. To recognize the difference, search your memory for a time when you felt sudden joy without really knowing why. The more uncanny the feeling, the closer to bliss you came.

If it isn’t easy to recall an ecstatic moment, related feelings such as wonder and awe may be easier to grasp. See yourself before a landscape that filled you with the wonder of Nature—bliss is very close to that feeling.

Bliss can be close to tears, too. Recall how you felt at seeing a newborn baby or child innocently at play or someone rising above their suffering. When these experiences overwhelm us, if the feeling they arouse is inspirational, it is close to bliss.

Total Meditation

Lesson 5: Finding Your Center

Your mind already knows how to meditate. All you need to do is notice and take advantage. No matter what meditation practice you engage in, the process always involves centering. To be centered means to rest easily in your body, feeling quietly like yourself, with no demands or expectations. This is the departure point for everything else that can happen with total meditation. On the other hand, if you are not centered, nothing will happen in your meditation. Distraction is the hobgoblin of meditation, annoyingly pulling us away from what is most important.

It helps to recognize that centering occurs naturally outside meditation. You feel centered whenever you are serious and sincere. Speaking your own truth happens only when you are centered. An emotion expressed from the heart also comes from being centered.

Here is how to find your center anytime you want:

Find a quiet place, close your eyes, and let your attention gently go to the center of your chest, in the region of the heart. Breathe easily and do nothing. You will sense that you are centered and quiet.
Continue to do nothing, and your attention will start wandering again. Notice this and bring your attention back to your center.

Repeat the exercise as often as you like. Your aim is simply to notice the sensation of being centered. This sensation is the threshold to pure awareness, the steady state of consciousness.

To make use of what you’ve learned, go about your day, and pause if you happen to notice any of the following:

Feeling frazzled

Feeling distracted

Experiencing jumbled or racing thoughts

Feeling doubtful about making a decision

Feeling pressured

Worrying over time, money, or your health

Getting irritated or impatient

Fretting

Feeling bored

Whenever any of these very common responses begins, don’t fight it. Instead, take a quiet moment with eyes closed to center yourself. Let awareness restore you to feeling steady, calm, in a place where you are no longer reacting to outside events. Don’t force anything. If your attention wanders, gently bring it back to the center of your chest.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS “ALL OR ALL”

Some things in life are all-or-nothing propositions, like being pregnant, but most are not. You can live in the middle where “good enough” is found. Only consciousness is “all or all,” a phrase that needs explaining.

When something is total, it cannot be divided up. There is only the whole thing. Consciousness is always present in every fiber of life, without exception. Because you have free will, you can push consciousness away, which we do all the time whenever we ignore what’s good for us and instead choose to do what’s bad for us. Habits push consciousness away. Rules push consciousness away. Anything that makes life mechanical pushes consciousness away, and yet consciousness remains unaffected.

The awakened life is totally conscious, which makes it the most natural way to live. Yet it is very hard for people to accept this concept. They like living by rules, for example, and when the rules are very strict, as they are for Orthodox Brahmins in Hinduism or Orthodox Jews, it is easy to feel superior because you follow so many dictates that the ordinary person would not be able to adhere to.

Total meditation opens a path to the awakened life, but first you have to want that life. Being aware all the time in every situation sounds strange and not necessarily good. What if you are aware all the time of your weight or your partner’s shortcomings or of how little you actually know on any subject compared with a textbook writer? That’s not what the awakened life is like, however. I cannot repeat too often that total awareness is the best way to live because consciousness is total already.

The body, as always, is the prefect touchstone for reality. Your body does more than rebalance itself through homeostasis—it also heals itself, and it does this all the time, not just when you feel sick or get injured. Thousands of times a day, irregular cells, including those that might be cancerous, are destroyed, and when they reach the end of their functional life, cells voluntarily die. The body is constantly vigilant, and this fact implies constant awareness.

As with so many other processes, the healing response is extremely complicated, and describing it fills textbooks without coming to the end of the subject. For our purposes, it is important to realize that consciousness is behind the actions your body takes, right down to the cellular level. A cell’s intelligence tells it what to do. Its atoms and molecules would jiggle randomly like interstellar dust without consciousness. I think you will be convinced with an example taken from the immune system that can stand for the whole body.

One kind of white blood cell in your bloodstream, known as a phagocyte, is responsible for devouring invading micro-organisms, while a second kind, known as a lymphocyte, recognizes and remembers any invader from the past—not just your past, either, but going back thousands, if not millions of years.

A white cell can stand for your entire body, because it has a visible and an invisible component. It’s mesmerizing to watch through a microscope as a killer T cell, a type of lymphocyte, surrounds, engulfs, and devours an unwanted bacterium or virus, but it is the invisible intelligence of lymphocytes that makes the entire immune system viable. We depend on almost perfect memory from the immune system. Your ability to recognize a face is akin to a lymphocyte’s recognizing the viruses that cause measles and mumps. By remembering that you had measles and mumps as a child, the lymphocyte protects you from ever having them again.

Medical science is baffled by the occasions when one of two things goes wrong: Either a harmless particle is mistakenly recognized as an enemy, which is how allergies develop. Or immune cells begin to attack the body’s own cells, creating an autoimmune disorder (of which there are around fifty, including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis).

Allergies and autoimmune disorders have been on a sharp increase in recent decades, particularly in developed countries, and no one can explain why. This is because, to date, the immune system has been studied exclusively for its physical side, with minimal knowledge about its invisible intelligence. It’s as if we understood Einstein’s work by examining how much chalk he used on the blackboard. Naturally, we look instead at the meaning of what he wrote with his chalk, but that’s not possible with a white cell, whose intelligence is hidden. Its intelligence is known only by observing what the cell can remember.

If you delve deeper, the mystery of memory in the immune system is the same as the mystery of memory, period. In the brain, memory is spread across several regions, including the hippocampus, a part of the brain that is important for consolidating information (the name refers to the Greek for seahorse, whose shape the hippocampus was thought to resemble). In a famous surgical disaster in the 1950s, a man’s hippocampus was surgically cut away in the hope of curing his epileptic seizures, and there was some improvement. But the man completely lost his memory, making him the unique object of study for the ensuing decades until his death. A total absence of memory makes every experience new but also empty. The man had no relationships, for example. His doctor would have to introduce himself every time he walked into the room, even if he had been absent for barely a minute.

Knowing the location of memory is helpful for mapping purposes, but the structure of the hippocampus tells us about as much about memory as if you knew where your smartphone was but didn’t know how to operate it. Since the visible, or physical, side of memory offers so little understanding, we must turn to its invisible side. What do we know about memory? Tons, but it is all subjective.

We know that memories can be recalled but also arise on their own.

We know that memories, if vivid enough, bring back the emotions of the original circumstances that created the memory, often with an intense recollection of pain.

We know that some memories are accurate, while others are faulty. The mind even produces completely false memories about the past, or merges several incidents together.

This knowledge comes to us simply by using memory, but unlike the memory in a computer, which is mechanically stored as digits of 1 and 0, human memory somehow has a life of its own. We are often used by our memories instead of the other way around. By this, I mean that memories force us to relive painful experiences we would rather forget. They remind us of our past failures and limitations. They keep alive old grudges and offenses we are unable to forgive. At the most basic level, we lack a method for erasing unwanted memories, which is one reason people find it necessary to go into denial—a willful kind of forgetting.

The fact is that almost everything the body does is controlled by the background consciousness that is ever present, intelligent, and vigilant. We know some things through personal experience that science is baffled by. Memory is a glaring example, and so is healing. But there is no lesson taught in medical school that isn’t confronted by mysteries. In my own field of endocrinology, for example, it was thought as late as 1995 that hormones were secreted only by the endocrine glands like the thyroid, pancreas, and adrenal glands. Then it was discovered that fat cells secret a hormone known as leptin, which controls the sensation of satiation, or having enough to eat. If this wasn’t surprising enough, it was then discovered that endocrine hormones are secreted everywhere in the body. Your bones, for example, secrete a special hormone, and your skin is now known to be the body’s major source of hormones of every kind.

A further blow to the field came when it was discovered that each hormone has more than one function, and often the functions bear no relationship to one another. Testosterone, for example, isn’t simply the male sex hormone. It exists in women, too, and its functions include sex drive, bone mass, fat distribution, muscle size and strength, and red blood cell production. In short, our hormones, like the healing response, require total knowledge of everything the body is doing and needs to do.

MEDITATION ISN’T THE SAME AS THINKING

My shorthand for consciousness is that it is everywhere and everything. Yet our thoughts, the most obvious example of consciousness, are not always aware. You didn’t think your immune system into existence; you don’t heal a cut by thinking about it. Trying to understand consciousness by thinking, in fact, is the very worst way to understand it. Only direct experience of consciousness leads to understanding. That’s why meditation and thinking are nowhere near the same thing.

Thinking can be so wrong that it blocks the natural rebalancing the mind is designed for. Let me illustrate what I mean through a first-person account found at a personal website by Joey Lott, a man with no medical credentials who discovered, through years of trial and error, what he calls “the cure for anxiety”:

I lived for the first 32 years of my life in anxiety. It grew to the point at which I was in panic all day and all night…for many years. I felt like an electric current was going through my body, electrifying my nerves, causing me to feel unable to find any ease or okayness.

There is no consensus about what causes chronic anxiety. A natural response—fear in the face of danger—becomes free floating, no longer attached to any actual threat. In Lott’s case, the symptoms were complex and overlapping.

From the age of 11 I struggled with OCD and anorexia. In shame, I hid and avoided. I starved myself and over-exercised. I washed my hands dozens of times a day.…I tried to blank out unwanted thoughts and images. I tried to do social things only to find myself running back to the relative safety of my home. But even my home wasn’t safe. I would lie awake at night in terror, imagining all kinds of things that might be happening.

In frustration Lott sought professional help, along with a wide range of self-remedies, none of which was a cure.

I failed so completely to make things better (even after years of therapy, meditation, yoga, affirmations, breathwork, prayer, hundreds of self-help books, countless workshops, and on and on) that eventually I grew hopeless. Nothing could help me, I believed. I thought I was broken.

The cure he ultimately discovered is a form of “not doing,” to use a Buddhist term. However, it was the experience, not the terminology, that was key. Lott realized that his anxiety was rooted in thought itself, in the mind’s constant attempt to attack anxiety in self-defeating ways. The cure, he declares,

is completely counterintuitive, because it is not about getting rid of unwanted symptoms. It is not about getting rid of anxiety. It is not about defeating anxiety or breaking free of anxiety.

It is about actually discovering directly what anxiety is and welcoming it home.

The method Lott has in mind is to stop resisting anxiety in any way. He maintains that resistance—along with every attempt to get rid of anxiety—is the cause of anxiety. Instead of getting entangled in so much mental activity, Lott decided to bypass all of it:

The essential cure for anxiety is…the direct meeting of the experience. Not trying to get rid of it, calm it, change it, fix it, solve it, or anything else.

How does one go about direct meeting?

Simple. Do nothing.

Words can easily get in the way, and few who suffer from anxiety, whether in mild, moderate, or severe form, would accept that to do nothing is a cure. I think what has happened here is due to the mind’s ability to heal and rebalance itself. Lott found a way to allow this process to unfold, and for him the secret was to confront his anxiety directly. Other people might find this too frightening to consider. But, as a general principle, healing is fostered when we learn to get out of the way as much as possible. Picking at a wound will only make it worse. Refusing to rest when you have the flu will prolong the symptoms.

Lott is conscientious about telling his readers that the various methods he tried, such as mindfulness and meditation, can help with anxiety. With the fervor of someone who has healed himself, he believes he has found the real cure. Needless to say, there is no accepted medical model for it, and, as a physician, I must add that I am not endorsing such a cure. Lott found, with himself and other people he was later in contact with, that it is possible to “do nothing”—that is, to simply be aware of what was happening. It worked for him.

Even to recognize a fleeting experience of this kind might require a coach, as Lott freely admits. The mind is habituated to pay attention to its thoughts, and it is all but impossible to not pay attention. Anxiety grows the more you think about it. To break this vicious circle, one can start by paying less attention to the symptoms, not dwelling on them. If you get used to not obsessing over any experience, however painful or distracting, in time your attention gets attracted to self-awareness instead. Eventually the mind returns to a state of normal balance, which is where healing comes from.

There’s an important lesson here about the difference between thinking and meditating. Meditating aligns the mind with balance and healing. Total consciousness is allowed to do its work without the interference of worry, doubt, self-pity, hopelessness, and helplessness. Even when we don’t give in to these detriments, they nibble around the edges of any chronic condition. A “condition” can be medical, but a bad relationship or a boring job are also conditions that throw us out of balance. The longer the condition persists, the worse it becomes.

Lott gained access to a hidden ability in his own awareness. That’s what meditation does—not the partial meditation that failed him, but a process that becomes second nature in daily life. True meditation is simply a reminder by the mind of its role as healer. We remember something crucial that should never be forgotten again.

Total Meditation

Lesson 6: Expanded Awareness

You can experiment with the mind’s healing abilities through a simple exercise in self-awareness.

Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for 5 or 10 minutes.

Close your eyes and let your attention freely go to a place of discomfort in your body. If you have mental pain instead—a worry, for example, or any persistent feeling that is bothering you—let it come to mind.

Focus lightly on the bodily discomfort or painful thought for a few seconds, then take your attention away from it. Focus on the outline of your body instead. Feel the air around you, the temperature on your skin, and the sensation of your whole body.

Return to your discomfort or painful thought, then once again expand your awareness away from that sensation to your whole body. Repeat several times.

Now expand a little farther. Feel your discomfort or painful thought, then expand your awareness to the room around you. Listen to any sounds, then visualize your awareness expanding like a balloon to fill the room. Repeat several times.

Finally, expand your awareness everywhere. Feel your discomfort or painful thought, then sense your awareness going beyond the walls of the room, out of the building, and steadily growing until it has expanded beyond all boundaries.

Sit quietly for a moment, then open your eyes.

For most people, the bodily discomfort or painful thought they began with will have diminished, sometimes remarkably. Extreme, persistent pain and anguish can vanish. One session isn’t a permanent cure, naturally, but this exercise is really about learning not to pay attention.

Any kind of pain demands attention. It is up to you whether to passively give in. If you do, you will aggravate the pain, like the way your tongue will worry about a sore tooth or cold sore by constantly touching it over and over.

To get out of this automatic reaction, you can consciously move your awareness wherever you want it to go. That’s what you are learning to do in this exercise. It’s a perfect example of how to free yourself from a stuck response simply by taking control over your awareness.