How Guided Meditation Can Become a Distraction

Reprinted from April 2013

I come from a long line of seekers, my mother’s side of the family known for trying on various spiritual traditions in a search for truth.  My mother herself has been experimenting with meditation recently, and has tried several forms of guided meditation.  The one that has worked best for her is Oprah Winfrey's and Deepak Chopra’s 21-day meditation challenge on the computer.

Last week she wanted to share with me a meditation she finds beneficial.  It was a busy day at her house, with much of the family in and out, so we escaped to her office to follow the guided instructions.  While I am glad so many people are following this program and finding relaxation in meditation, I found it too distracting to be truly mindful.

Challenge Yourself

In my last post I mentioned a contemplative practice based on Lectio Divina, the meditative practice of “divine reading.”  It can yield creative insight into challenges that confront us, and help us work out where we sit in relation to key questions or ideas that influence our lives.  I’d like to present it here.

Rejecting or Embracing the Sacred

I recently taught a class in creative contemplation that was based on Lectio Divina, or divine reading.  It is a practice undertaken by contemplative Christians and monks in which one completely surrenders to the voice of God as inspired by a line of scripture.  I have no real allegiance to Christianity, other than my upbringing, and presented the practice in a completely secular course.  Much modern meditative and contemplative forms are presented this way.  Centuries old sacred traditions stripped of theology and much underlying philosophy as a means of adapting each to a stressful, material world.  Sort of like insisting that prayer without an object or spirit to pray to will bring about a miracle.  The act, not the deity, holds the influence.  In my busy life in the city this means poses no problems.  But I spent the weekend at my parents’ house in the mountains, very quiet, and found the entire secularization of sacred traditions troubling.

I'd Rather Shock Myself

A much cited study from researchers at the University of Virginia and Harvard (actually a survey of 11 studies) has found that most people, across all age groups, would rather not sit alone in quiet with their thoughts.  The majority would opt for some distraction or point of focus outside of their own mind over six to fifteen minutes of silent contemplation.  In one of the studies, two-thirds of the men and one quarter of the women preferred to give themselves a mild electric shock over sitting alone in silence, even in their own homes, for a few minutes.

Another study has found that 56% of people in the United States cannot simply sit and watch TV without engaging with other digital media.

It as also been found that an ambient noise level of about 70 decibels (the hum of the neighborhood coffee shop) boosts creative thinking more than silence does.

The Dark Night

I've received many benefits from my meditation practice.  Yet, as I've written in some of my most often read posts, I'm skeptical about the vast positive claims the proponents of mindfulness meditation make.  It truly can't be this good for everyone who undertakes it.

Today many teachers with little depth of understanding of the challenges meditators can face are leading students into practices that, while often very positive and relaxing, can lead a troubled mind to very dangerous places.

Meditation on a Friend's Suicide

A very close friend of my wife recently killed herself.  The experience has been gut-wrenching.  I wrote a post the day after we received the news.  It has been published on PsychCentral.

You can read it here.

It's Not That I've Stopped Thinking

I’ve often attributed my success in managing bipolar disorder to the meditation practice I added to my treatment regimen years ago.  While there’s no doubt that the noticing involved in meditation has helped me head off major episodes of mania and depression, I changed something else in my life at about the same time I began to practice.  This adaptation may have equal weight in my wellness.  What did I change?  I stopped reading fiction.