When we take up the practice of meditation, we begin to become acutely aware of our habits, the content of our thoughts, and where we spend our time and effort in daily life. Meditation becomes unpalatable for many of us when the light of awareness shines upon the innumerable things that keep us stuck in suffering. In fact, many people quit practicing because it is far easier to stay stuck than to put in the effort to change our ways. It is a universal human tendency to want to remain in status quo rather than to rise above our limitations, especially when the effort required to change seems almost herculean. The reason for such overwhelm is that our lives and minds are often cluttered.
Driven by the likes and dislikes that make up our neurohormonal superhighways, we become adept at hoarding things in our physical and mental environments. This cluttering of our minds and lives may make meditation difficult, if not impossible, since it is when we are trying to meditate that thoughts of cleaning up arise. We struggle with those thoughts during meditation, but as soon as we get up and go about our day, we are overcome with inertia to clean up!
While many of us focus entirely on the technique of meditation to make progress, the secret to success is to declutter our lives and minds. Think about it. What happens when you post something on social media? Not only might you eagerly await to see how many likes or comments your post gets, but then you also feel obligated to respond to them. When you are trying to meditate is when the drama comes up, where instead of favoring the mantra, your mind is forming an emotional response to comments or calculating how to word your response without sounding one way or the other. If you have an unfinished project, it will come up in meditation as not only the anxiety of meeting a deadline but also why you hate it or wish you didn’t have to do it. If you have a disagreement with someone, guess where the argument will continue? Yes, in your mind while you’re trying to meditate. The remedy for these issues is to begin and sustain a serious cleanup project encompassing all areas of your life.
Areas That Need Decluttering
The beauty of this cleanup process is that working on one area spills over into the others. They are interconnected, arising from our minds and projecting to the outside. How we see the world is entirely dependent on our state of mind. When I’m lonely and depressed, the world appears threatening and dangerous. When I’m light and happy, the world appears bright and beautiful. Our state of mind changes our perception. On the other hand, when our environment is clean and beautiful, our state of mind reflects the harmony. Thus, radical decluttering pans across many areas, as described below.
Physical Space
There is something quite magical about a clean, uncluttered space. When we get rid of unwanted stuff there is a shift within that enables us to let go of nonserving thoughts and habits more easily. Before we look at how to deal with the stuff we have, let’s examine how we got here. Consumerism is a disease of affluent societies that leads us to acquire things that we don’t really need and is driven by the advertisement industry. We are taught to want more and never be content with what we have. One change in a car model is enough to make the previous one undesirable, which is exactly what the car industry is aiming for—to keep you dissatisfied. It is the same story with appliances, gadgets, clothing, cosmetics, and so on. As soon as you buy something, it loses not only its monetary value but also its emotional appeal. You remain dissatisfied and continue to seek contentment in an endless cycle.
Decluttering our homes and physical spaces can become daunting and overwhelming when we don’t understand the futility of seeking happiness from elsewhere. This keeps us attached to things that are way past their utility and value, paralyzing us in their hold. Decluttering is a losing proposition when we begin the task of, say, cleaning a drawer and moving the contents to another space. The stuff never leaves; it merely gets rearranged. Since our outer world reflects our inner state, it also indicates our inability to let go of the past and our half-hearted efforts to work on ourselves.
As daunting as it may seem, it helps to declutter your physical space differently. I highly recommend Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, where the author lays out a simple and effective plan to get rid of unwanted stuff, respect the things you have, and discover the joy and lightness that comes with living and working in a neat, uncluttered space.
Discard or give away everything that isn’t useful or doesn’t bring you joy. Organize by categories rather than by rooms when decluttering your home so that you are not merely moving stuff from one room to the other. I’ve found that it is easy to get caught up in sentimentality; I would save every piece of art that my children made and clothing that they had grown out of. Pretty soon we were inundated with their old belongings. When forced to declutter, I had only a few hours and had to make decisions quickly. Moving through the stuff rapidly was the key to effective decluttering, where there was simply no time to ruminate over the baby booties that one child wore just once or a piece of paper with scribbled lines of color from a kindergarten class! With the availability of digital photography, we can now take pictures of the things that are of sentimental value before sending them on their journey elsewhere. Of course, then we are left with the task of organizing photos!
Mind
This is the area where housekeeping can have the biggest impact. Here are the following ways to work on ourselves “off the cushion” so that our meditation practice becomes increasingly effortless and fruitful.
Develop one-pointedness. In a world that is driven by fast-paced multitasking, unlearning the habit of doing more than one thing at once is a challenge, but the rewards become amply evident during meditation. Give your complete attention to one task at a time, moving to the next only after it is done to satisfaction. Apply one-pointedness to all areas—turn off the radio and drive in silence, cook in silence, put away the phone while working, pay attention to the conversation when talking with someone, eat in silence and solitude. Make one-pointedness the center of every waking moment; this results in increased efficiency, higher quality of work, greater mental calm, and enhanced creativity.
Complete tasks. Annoyingly enough, it is especially during meditation that thoughts about that incomplete project or the unanswered email surface. Clean up your life’s flow by prioritizing and completing daily tasks. Respond to emails and phone calls as soon as possible. Flag or note communications that need to be followed up on. Make technology your obedient servant. If it helps, write down follow-up items and timelines so these details don’t clutter the mind. Make it a point to leave no loose ends.
Slow down. Hectic lives such as rushing from one task or appointment to another cannot be particularly conducive to meditation. Wake up earlier and organize your day with enough buffer time between tasks and appointments. At the end of each day, make time to read some inspirational material, even if only for 10–20 minutes.
Cultivate discipline. It is difficult to cultivate a habit for the disciplined practice of meditation if it doesn’t extend to other areas of life. Cultivate punctuality, honesty, cleanliness of body and mind, freedom from addictions, and regulated diet, sleep, and exercise habits. Make it a point to sit for meditation every day; forgo a meal (or equivalent) if needed to build discipline. Note that discipline is not the same as obsession, although the line between them can be quite thin. The goal of building a disciplined practice is to test your limits and apply yourself but not to obsess over it. Ultimately, each of us must find a balance between obsession and laxity for all activities, including the discipline and practice of meditation.
Cultivate moderation. Meditation is most conducive when we are neither too full nor famished, when we have had enough sleep (neither too much nor too little), and when we are alert but not agitated. Eat at least 2–3 hours before sitting (which necessarily takes discipline and planning) and practice sleep hygiene.
Let go of likes and dislikes. Our suffering is the result of our attractions and aversions, which form the basis of our neurohormonal superhighways. When we give in to our likes and dislikes, we become enslaved to them, allowing them to dictate how we need to act. Karma Yoga teaches us to do our duty without being swayed by whether we like it or not, and to not get attached to any specific outcome. Think about it—wouldn’t our lives be simpler if we just did what we are supposed to do and not do what we are not supposed to do at any given moment?
The challenge, of course, is to know what we are supposed to do and not do at all times. For this, we can call upon our commitments and roles. If you are a parent, you are probably already adept at putting aside your feelings as you do things for your children. You can apply the same attitude toward everything you do, focusing entirely on what needs to be done. Say you have a job that requires you to make decisions about hiring new staff or letting go of some workers. You might hate to be the one to tell someone that their services are no longer required. You might feel guilty about it. However, if you remember what your job calls for, you can focus entirely on what needs to be done. This ability to disengage from the turmoil of emotions is called dispassion, a critical element for progress along the path to bliss.
Dispassion is in direct contradiction to the passion that is so highly prized in the default model. We are taught to be passionate about our goals, which may also include expecting a certain outcome. However, life shows us time and again that the only thing we can be responsible for is our action. The outcome of our effort is never up to us. When we learn to act dispassionately, meditation becomes smoother and deeper as we gain access to unfathomable realms within. Once we give up our likes and dislikes, we step out of their slavery to see everything that lies beyond the box they had created.
Control your senses. Recall that our likes and dislikes are created and propagated through our five senses. Since we take in the world through sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste, what we take in spurs us into what we put out through the five organs of action—hands in work, legs in motion, speaking apparatus in speech, excretory organs to discard waste, and reproductive organs to produce progeny. If what we take in changes, our actions also change. If we remain enslaved to our senses, we remain entrapped in the neurohormonal pathways that will determine how we behave, which in turn shape our habits, health, and happiness. Examine what you bring in through your senses—what do you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch? What kinds of tastes are you addicted to? Movies, magazines, books, websites? Music, talks, discussions? Are the sense objects that you are chasing serving your purpose of making progress in meditation? If you are a slave to your taste buds and cannot change your eating habits, how can you rewire your pathways? If you are addicted to violent images, how can your actions be nonviolent?
What we take in through the senses comes up not only during meditation but also forms the images of our dreams. It gradually seeps into our subtle and causal bodies, becoming incorporated into our very identities. For Karma Yoga and meditation to be effective, controlling our senses is of paramount importance. Our senses are like wild horses that run amok, wanting this or that, with no ability to decide if it is helpful to our purpose or not. Instead of becoming slaves of our senses, we must regain our mastery over them by holding in the reins and telling them where to go. When we thus control our senses, meditation becomes increasingly effortless.
Learn to surrender. Our minds are such that when we take something away from it, we need to give it something else to hang on to. It is like climbing up a ladder: you let go of the previous rung only when you have a secure footing on the next. When we are learning to let go of our attachment to particular outcomes, it helps to dedicate our actions and their outcomes to a higher ideal. This is called Bhakti Yoga (bhakti is love and devotion for a higher ideal).
Devotion is the most essential ingredient for success in any path, but particularly on the journey to bliss. What is devotion? Once again, take the example of parenting where we are utterly devoted to our children. Devotion is guileless love mixed with deep respect, the fuel for commitment. It is devotion to your path that makes you want to continue to tread it.
We can utilize the energy of devotion to cultivate dispassion. Instead of taking ownership for our actions or its results, we devote them to our ideal. An ideal is the image of one who represents perfection to you and can be a religious icon, space, or your own blissful nature, which is absolutely perfect and whole. We are passionate about our actions because we think we are the doer and the enjoyer of their consequences, which is the default model way of thinking. If we get what we want, we feel good, and if we don’t, we feel bad. Since we never get what we want every single time, it is a zero-sum game.
In the bliss model, everything in creation moves as a whole and there is no individual doer or enjoyer. Actions are being performed through us, each of us driven by our neurohormonal pathways formed by previous actions. The interaction between you and me is nothing but that of our past actions coming together to create another action. This goes on in an endless cascade of actions and reactions. As we will see in Find Bliss in the Body, the sense of “I did that” is added on after an action is already in motion.
When we learn to dedicate our actions and their results to our ideal, we stop taking ourselves to be the doer or the enjoyer. This doesn’t mean we don’t act or don’t do a good job. On the contrary, if I am dedicating my action to my ideal, it must be of the highest quality. I humbly offer up my best work as well as whatever comes of it. I stop taking things personally. Detaching from the things of the world is furthered by attaching to our ideal. This approach simplifies our lives in a profound way. When we stop taking things personally, they have nowhere in the subtle or causal bodies to cling to and the neurohormonal superhighways begin to change course. Our meditation practice is strengthened.
Time
Whenever someone says they have no time to meditate, I ask them to list everything they do from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep. Invariably, we find various periods of time during the day where they are being unproductive. Now, unproductive is very different from relaxation or recreation. As we have seen in the previous chapters, relaxation and sleep are critical for our circadian rhythms and to balance agni. Unproductive time refers to time spent in activities that come back to haunt us during meditation. These include time spent browsing the internet; watching the news; discussing politics or current events; posting, commenting, or liking posts on social media; gossiping; attending social functions that are not entirely necessary; talking or texting for no reason; dedication to TV shows or sports channels; and so on. When we cut out unnecessary activities, we suddenly find ourselves with an abundance of time!
Take Jeremy’s case, for instance. At sixty-two, he had been meditating for nearly twenty years when he came to see me for a slew of health problems. He had a heart rhythm problem, periodic gout, high blood pressure, and a whole lot of anger. He enrolled in the Heal Your Heart program and found the recommendation for decluttering time to be particularly hard. He was addicted to reading and watching the news and creating stories of catastrophe and doom in his mind. He hung out on the internet with like-minded people that lived in the same shared sense of perpetual threat.
Recall that mirror neurons that enable empathy are also the ones that make us band together in gloom and doom (The Stress Cauldron). Add to this the fact that our brains are wired to respond more strongly to negative situations than positive ones—whether they are real or imagined—and we become adept at anticipating the worst in every circumstance. Paradoxically, banding together in gloom harbors attachment (remember oxytocin, the hormone that promotes that yummy feeling of belonging), which is so desirable that it is hard to step out of it.
If progress in meditation is what we desire, we must learn to give up things that do not serve this purpose. Trust that whatever you need to know about current events will make its way to you. Avoid indulging in the news and discussing what is not absolutely needed. Avoid gossip and needless talk. Learn to become quiet inside and out, using the principles of Karma Yoga to speak only when necessary by asking yourself what is needed of your role and commitment at this moment. When Jeremy began to gradually disengage from his way of living, he found himself having a surplus of time to indulge in meaningful activities that didn’t cause constant aggravation.
Just as attaching to a higher ideal helps with giving up attachments to our nonserving habits, it is useful to find like-minded people on the same path in order to let go of our need for validation in toxic groups and discussions. However, eventually we will need to stand alone. The path to bliss must be traversed alone, particularly in the advanced stages where the only thing we can rely on is our own wisdom and knowledge. By then, we would have rewired our neurohormonal superhighways and will not require validation from others to feel good about ourselves, and we will have the courage, strength, and beauty to stand in our own blinding light. Until then, judicious use of our precious time is critical, particularly to enable our meditation practice.
Relationships
As you get established in your meditation practice, you will notice that your relationship troubles come up quite frequently to distract you from the mantra in deep meditation. We know now that we are social creatures and thrive on relationships. Close and intimate relationships become our identity, where we start confusing our roles with who we are (seeFind Bliss in the Body). Although relationships enrich our life and bring great beauty and purpose to it, they can become obstructions on our journey to bliss merely because of how we deal with them. Conflict in relationships causes great despair, as each of us knows firsthand. When we don’t let go of past hurts, they gnaw at us and come up sooner or later in meditation when the mantra starts shaking stuff out of the causal and subtle bodies. Inner silence cultivated in meditation does heal such wounds. However, it is helpful to facilitate the healing consciously so that meditation becomes more effective.
Make a list of all your relationships, dividing them into essential and nonessential ones. Essential relationships are the ones you have committed to, such as immediate and extended family, those at work and in the community. Essential relationships are ones that mutually nourish each other and keep us grounded. Nonessential ones are those that do not contribute to our lives in any meaningful way, such as those online or on social media (although some of these can be essential), acquaintances, and so on. Which relationships get most of your time and energy? Disentangle emotionally from nonessential relationships by devoting less of your time and energy, not getting involved in the drama, minimizing interaction, and withdrawing from the need for validation.
Resolve conflicts in essential relationships if possible. Take responsibility for your part in the conflict. If the other person doesn’t acknowledge it or doesn’t take responsibility of their part, understand that this is something they need to work on at their own time and in their own way. Move on. Avoid conflicts in the first place by remaining rooted in your own purpose and path, focusing on any given moment on what you need to do, regardless of whether you like it or not (Karma Yoga). Develop a relationship with a higher ideal and renounce conflicts by surrendering to this wholesome relationship (Bhakti Yoga). Stop taking things personally and see that people behave the way they do because, just like us, they are driven by the neurohormonal pathways they forged in childhood. Perhaps you would have behaved the same way had you formed the same pathways. Who is to say?
As you progress in meditation, the inner silence will work its magic on your perceptions. When this happens, relationships become vehicles of joy and freedom. When it comes to healing from conflicts in relationships and gaining an increasingly blissful perspective, there is no greater tool than self-inquiry, which you will learn in Find Bliss in the Body.
Self-Doubt and Self-Pity:
Saboteurs of Change
As we go about changing our habits, it is not unusual to be plagued by self-doubt and self-pity. In general, there are two conflicting voices that try to sabotage our efforts: the “naysayer” and the “baby me.” You might recognize them when you hear about them. The naysayer is the voice of doubt that wants to keep you entrenched in your old ways. It is the one that wonders if all this is hocus-pocus, if there is really such a thing as bliss, if it is worth all the effort, or if you will ever succeed. You will notice the power of this voice in the following situations:
- Your alarm goes off to indicate that it is time for you to wake up and meditate, and you tell yourself that you’ll skip it today.
- You are at a restaurant and can choose between an entrée that you like but know is not conducive to balancing your agni and another that you dislike but know is good for your goal. You pick the first anyway.
- You come face-to-face with someone you’ve had an undercurrent of conflict with for years. He or she looks at you as if they are about to say hello. You turn around and walk away, allowing the conflict to continue unresolved.
- You are in a work meeting and tasks are assigned for each team member. You dislike your assignment, even though you can carry it out well, and try desperately to switch with someone else.
- You have just quit smoking two weeks ago and meet up with some friends. One of them offers you a cigarette and you think that just one won’t hurt, so you accept it.
In each of the above examples, your naysayer voice was hindering your ability to form new habits by instilling you with doubt, laziness, or inertia, where you chose to remain entrapped in your neurohormonal pathways.
The baby me voice works a tad differently but to achieve the same goal. It works through the tactic of self-pity, where you mistake indulgence for self-compassion and self-love. Self-love is not necessarily soft since it stems from wanting the best for ourselves. Think of your children—don’t you toughen up and discipline them with the vision of wanting them to fulfill their highest potential? Self-pity, on the other hand, stems from neediness and the sense that you are owed something. It is an overwhelming need to be validated by others and by ourselves. You will notice the power of this voice in the following examples:
- Your alarm goes off in the morning, and instead of waking up to meditate, you tell yourself that you need more sleep since you stayed up watching your favorite show until 1 a.m.
- You are home on a Friday evening and pour yourself a third glass of wine, feeling that you deserve it since you worked so hard all week.
- You are at the water cooler at work when a coworker begins to tell you a juicy story about a mutual colleague. You know you don’t want to indulge in gossip but tell yourself you’ll do it just this once because you’re tired of the office environment and need a break.
- You run into an old flame at a party and find every opportunity to subtly insult him. After all, he deserves it after what he did to you.
In these examples, you can recognize the baby me voice that is trying to keep you glued to your old habits by instilling self-pity, vindictiveness, or a sense of being wronged.
Both the naysayer and the baby me are hurdles to progress, and both beginners and experienced meditation practitioners must learn to deal with them. It helps tremendously to journal extensively, particularly in the beginning. Putting down your thoughts on paper allows you to see what you are dealing with. Once you learn to recognize these voices, you can see that they are simply trying to do their job of keeping you entrapped in your old habits. In fact, these voices arise from the pathways themselves that fear their own annihilation. The identification with the limited body-mind is kept alive by these pathways. Fear of its own demise makes the body-mind churn up stories and strategies to keep you from changing your ways. If you learn to recognize these voices, you will gain mastery over them by learning to ignore them and doing what you are supposed to do to keep you on the path of bliss.
In addition to decluttering our lives, minds, time, and relationships, we can work directly on the subtle body to free up the flow of prana, which can strengthen our meditation practice and enable the cultivation of inner silence. In the next chapter we will see how to do this.
Summary
- The cluttering of our minds and lives makes meditation difficult, if not impossible, since it is when we are trying to meditate that thoughts to clean up arise.
- Declutter your physical space by discarding or giving away everything that doesn’t bring you joy or is of absolute use. Organize by categories rather than by rooms when decluttering your home so that you are not merely moving stuff from one room to the other.
- Declutter your mind by developing one-pointedness by completing tasks, slowing down, cultivating discipline and moderation, practicing Karma Yoga through letting go of likes and dislikes and controlling your senses, and practicing Bhakti Yoga by learning to surrender to your higher ideal. Avoid multitasking.
- Use your time judiciously by not engaging in activities that don’t serve your purpose.
- Heal your relationships by focusing on essential relationships, resolving and avoiding conflict, and learning to move on.
- Recognize the voices of self-doubt and self-pity that work hard to keep you entrenched in your old nonserving habits.
- Journaling helps tremendously to recognize these voices and gain mastery over them.