29/05/2020
This is just a reflection of what meditation is like for me, which I wrote earlier this week. I was thinking that it might be of interest to some of you:
I was meditating at my favourite spot on the university campus today. It is a little hill, close to some fountains. While meditating, I realised that my form of meditation seems very much in line with person-centred theory. Those of you who know person-centred theory might laugh now, while the following description of the foundation of person-centred theory is for those of you who do not know about it. The person-centred approach was developed by a highly underrated psychologist and psychotherapists by the name of Carl Ransom (Yes! Ransom! An unusual middle name for sure!) Rogers. The foundation of his theory was that there are six necessary conditions, which on their own, are enough to support another person’s growth. The first one is that one needs to be in psychological contact with the other person. The second condition is that the other person is vulnerable and/ or anxious. The third is that the therapist is honest in the relationship and does not try to maintain a façade. The fourth condition is that the therapist feels unconditional positive regard for the client. The therapist deeply cares for the client and feels a warm acceptance of all the different sides of the client’s personality. The fifth condition is that the therapist tries their best to understand what the client is talking about, or not talking about, what they are feeling, experiencing, and what is generally happening in their world. The sixth and last condition is that the client receives the empathic understanding, unconditional positive regard (and Rogers did not write it, but I think it is equally important that the client can see that the therapists tries their best to be honest and authentic.).
Now, how does Rogers’ theory relate to my meditation? When I meditate, I start by concentrating on my breathing. For the whole duration of my meditation, I try let my breathing be my centre of attention. At the beginning, this is very easy. However, as time passes, my mind starts wandering. I start thinking about what I need to do, what I am feeling, that I am hungry, or cold, I start wondering if my legs is uncomfortable, I start listening to the sounds around me, just enjoy the warm sunshine, or the cool air, or I start thinking that I want to stop meditating now. And even this writing is a product of my mind wandering during meditation. All these thoughts, feelings, and experiences come and go, come and go, over and over, and over, again. Some are pleasant, some unpleasant. Some seem wise, other foolish. They come and go like waves on a beach. And just sometimes in between, very briefly, are the moments when I reach a state when I am not thinking and feeling, when I am just in a beautiful state of serenity. In these serendipitous moments, I connect with a different side of me. It is difficult to describe that part of me, but it feels like watching over a calm sea, without movement. I feel a deep peace as well as great love for myself, all these thoughts, feelings, and experiences, my surrounding, and dare I write, the universe. I think it is the same part of me that I show when I am my best as a therapist, when I show a great accepting and understanding appreciation, (dare I write the dangerous word love?) for my client. I am fully accepting them as they are in that moment, caring for them, just being with them, no matter how turbulent their feelings, how distressing their thoughts are, or how erratic their behaviour is. I just try to be with them and understand them. Likewise, in my meditation, my seemingly eternally calm self stays with my “surface”-self, which is carried away by every thought, feeling, and experience. In meditation my deeper self is in psychological contact with my surface-self, and staying with it. In the commotion that is everyday life, I often forget this deeper self, and I am carried away by the immediate experience. My surface self is definitely often anxious and vulnerable, just as the client is in Rogers’ second condition. There is no façade with my deeper self. It is just as when I am with my clients. There is definitely unconditional positive regard. It feels like a still ocean of love and peace for everything, even when my surface self is deeply annoyed by a fly running across my face, the side I meet in my meditation seems very accepting of the fly, as well as annoyance and irritation of my surface-self. There is also definitely understanding. When meditating, even the irritating moments, the moments when one part of me is absolutely annoyed that my mind drifted once again away from concentrating on my breath, my other side seems to understand and I feel it’s peace for the experience. Feeling that there is a side of me that can be so full of love, acceptance, and understanding, even when my everyday self can not feel this way, does paradoxically gift me some of the peace, understanding, and love of my deeper self. I guess meditation is for me a person-centred encounter between two different sides of me, and just like person-centred psychotherapy, it is about being with the other, instead of doing something to the other. As Rogers wrote in On Becoming A Person: “One brief way of describing the change which has taken place in me is to say that in my early professional years I was asking the question, How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relation-ship which this person may use for his own personal growth? It is as I have come to put the question in this second way that I realize that whatever I have learned is applicable to all of my human relationships, not just to working with clients with problems. It is for this reason that I feel it is possible that the learnings which have had meaning for me in my experience may have some meaning for you in your experience, since all of us are involved in human rela-tionships.
Perhaps I should start with a negative learning. It has gradually been driven home to me that I cannot be of help to this troubled person by means of any intellectual or training procedure. No ap-proach which relies upon knowledge, upon training, upon the ac-ceptance of something that is taught, is of any use. These approaches seem so tempting and direct that I have, in the past, tried a great many of them. It is possible to explain a person to humself, to pre-scribe steps which should lead him forward, to train him in knowl-edge about a more satisfying mode of life. But such methods are, in my experience, futile and inconsequential. The most they can ac-complish is some temporary change, which soon disappears, leaving the individual more than ever convinced of his inadequacy.
The failure of any such approach through the intellect has forced me to recognize that change appears to come about through experi-ence in a relationship. So I am going to try to state very briefly and informally, some of the essential hypotheses regarding a helping relationship which have seemed to gain increasing confirmation both from experience and research.
I can state the overall hypothesis in one sentence, as follows, If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur.” (Rogers, On Becoming a Person, 1961, p. 32f).
I guess for me meditation facilitates such a relationship between the different configurations of my self. It helps me to find acceptance of my otherwise often unaccepted character sides, and allows me to be kinder to myself and others.
Anyway, thank you for reading through of all this! I am curious if you have any thoughts or feelings around the matter, or what meditation is like for you. I would be very happy to hear about your experience! So, please, write me under this post, or write me a private message!
Be well!
लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनोभवंतु
