Empty the Mind, to Fill it

I’ve been here once before.

In 2011, I was 2 terms away from graduating from Embry-Riddle with a Bachelor’s in Aeronautics. I’ve talked about parts of this story in other places, but obviously, that degree didn’t happen. I ended up salvaging something by wrapping the credits up into a 2nd Associate’s degree, just so that I could have something to show for my time with ERAU.

I’m now two terms away again. This time, it’s a far different experience, and nothing’s going to stop me.

I’m at Webster, and all things considered, I’m enjoying it. The program is up my alley, and they’ve actually been working with me pretty hard to try to make the 200+ credits I’ve collected mean something. This past week, I worked with my academic counselor, and verified that I will be graduating on 14 May, 2022.

For those keeping tabs, that will be 12 days shy of 20 years, on the dot, since graduating high school.

I’m still working through exactly how to feel about that.

But, in the spirit of working through it, I thought I’d share the contents of a paper that I just finished for one of my classes. It was Ethics 1000, Mindfulness Meditation and Ethics.

I took it, knowing it was going to be an easy A, and potentially relaxing to boot.

I ended getting more out of it than I anticipated:

First, some transparency: I initially took this class for two main reasons:

1) because I thought it would be relatively easy

2) because I thought it would be relaxing, during an intensely busy season of my life.

As with a few of my other college classes that have stuck with me long after they had any right to, I ended up being surprised on several counts with this course. For one, my initial ambivalence quickly turned into a motivated introspection. I’ve missed something like a “spiritual” practice in my life, but I didn’t take the time to explore a framework that would even allow such a thing. Even the word, “spiritual”, is still uncomfortable, and has some baggage for me.

I feel like this class gave me some language to unpack that a bit. Specifically, labeling, without judgement. To not pass judgement on your experience turns out to be quite the challenge. I really appreciated that framing. It’s fascinating, because for any of our basic impulses (breathing, hunger, fatigue, thirst, etc.) we sort of intuitively know that those are fundamental, universal needs. But when it comes to our brain’s interaction with those needs, we begin to ascribe moral judgements to them. How we go about fulfilling those needs becomes a way to evaluate our worth, whether we mean to or not.

I’ve found that, at least for me, meditation seems to be a very effective gateway for putting the body back into right context. It’s a reminder that we’re an organic being, with very real needs and processes, to include our thoughts. Recognizing that our thoughts emerge from a related biological processes like (for example) hunger, is incredibly powerful.

On a deeper level, I really love that meditation doesn’t need to be anything More™. One of the pieces of baggage from my upbringing was a worldview that constantly emphasized a need to recognize oneself at the center of a cosmic struggle/dualism. There was an ever present need to identify the “spiritual warfare” happening all around us at any given time. It’s kind of ironic that in requiring all interactions to be cosmically important, it actually breaks your ability to recognize nuance in a variety of contexts. It prevents you from recognizing something profound in the mundane. Additionally, it’s exhausting, and weirdly egotistical.

With meditation, the observational focus on something as mundane as breath, is paradoxically profound. It puts all of my thought habits into full relief as the habits that they are. One idea that found footing in describing the difference is seeing my “centers of gravity.” Rather than my habit being a “success” or a “failure”, it seems significantly more honest to identify my habit as a center of gravity. It’s just where I have happened to have my time and attention.

If having that center of gravity hasn’t been helpful, then I can shift my center of gravity elsewhere. Having my center of gravity in the unhelpful place wasn’t intentional, so there’s no need for guilt unless it harmed someone. And either way, the only thing I can now control is: that I shift my center of gravity.

That flow of responsibility, for my behavior right now, is very therapeutic. It’s almost as if the best way to plan for the future is to be imminently in control of your impulses, right now. And if you can exercise some kind of consistency in that domain, you are also stepping forward into the spirit of what most people mean when they say “plan for the future.”

The final thing that this class has made me chew on, is just how much some of my issues with anger stem from a lack of impulse control. I don’t get angry often. But when I do get angry, I do not like the behavioral habits that I’ve left unaddressed for too long. Meditation practice has made me realize that a generally calm demeanor isn’t the same thing as having control over my responses in the moment.

I have confused a behavioral aptitude, for actual discipline. I’ve realized that through a consistent meditation practice, I’m experiencing something along the lines of preventative medicine for anger management. The active habit of choosing to regulate my thoughts and emotions, is precisely the skill that I lacked in the moments where a calm demeanor doesn’t cut it.

I think it’s beautifully poetic that all of this insight comes from a process whose explicit goal is to empty the mind.