Lighten Up Meditation

The Buddha talked plenty about suffering, and liberation from it.

Meditation is a key tool, perhaps a mandatory one (at least in my experience), to change perception and be able to experience life differently. Beyond suffering.

But boy, emotions sure get in the way of peace, don’t they?

If you’re in California and are interested in the possibility of exploring the limitations of emotions and how internalized processes create obstacles in life, then I invite you to find me at theworkiswithin.com.

It’s been awhile since this site was active.

A lot has happened in the world.

A lot has happened for me.

In becoming more aware of the realities of racism in America, through the long-overdue consciousness-raising that rippled through America in the Summer of 2020 after George Floyd was murdered (and Breonna, and Ahmaud, and there have been so many) and my own education, I also became more aware of the messages sent by and through this site. “Lighten Up” was originally intended to describe the visceral experience of light that comes about from meditation. However, there are subtle and not-so-subtle overtones with the phrase.

Is meditation only for those who are “light”?

Is it only for those who want to be more “light”?

If the goal is to “lighten up” then that’s implicitly saying that there is a higher value on those who are “lighter” and to not be “light” is not a desirable state. It’s colorism. It does not matter that it was unintentional on my part so many years ago when looking for a name to brand my meditation classes around.

I apologize for any harm from the microaggression caused by the name of this site or its contents.

I am unsure what I will be doing with this site, and the domain.

In the interim, I wanted to post this public acknowledgement.

Justice and equity are important to me. As a white woman, I am only beginning the process of understanding the mechanisms of systemic and of internal racism.

For aeons, religious traditions have said that only women could be Enlightened.

Apparently I’ve been promulgating the idea that for this Westernized version of Enlightenment, only white people are welcome. I am sorry.

image credit: This author. From a #BLM demonstration in June 2020.

When you go to the movies, do you always get popcorn?

It’s hard not to. Because popcorn!

If you’ve decided to try a low-carb diet or a low-fat one or you just recognize that popcorn is only empty calories with zero nutritional value, then going to the movies can be the worst thing ever.

You walk into the lobby and…. POPCORN!

You’re assaulted with the yummiest smell. (Assuming you’re human, and you like popcorn.)

What’s even more a factor though is that every time you’ve gone to the movies over the past, what, 20 years of your life? 30? 40? Whatever.

Every single time, you’ve walked in, and you’ve bought popcorn.

Or someone has, and they’ve been smart enough to share it with you, so that a full-blown relationship fight does not erupt due to someone being stingy.

So movies = popcorn

It’s absolutely brilliant and completely intentional on the part of the movie houses.

They don’t make money on you paying your ticket price.

They make money on POPCORN.

So what do you do? Do you decide not to go to the movies? Forego all those fun summertime smash hits? Bow out when your friends invite you?

Or do you change the pattern?

I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy. After all: POPCORN!!!

But if you plan it, and think about it, and importantly, reflect on it…. BEFORE YOU WALK IN THE DOOR, then you too can be victorious over popcorn.

This needs to be deliberate. What you do is imagine yourself walking into that theater, and in your mind, before you get there, you decide what you’ll do. Anticipate what that will be like. Visualize yourself in the lobby, with the popcorn machine right there pop-pop-popping out its salty buttery temptations. See what you do in that moment.

This is one implementation of what’s called setting your intent.

Now, when you go to the movies, you may or may not resist the siren call of the popcorn! If you don’t, then this is another opportunity: PAY ATTENTION, CONSCIOUSLY, AS YOU GO THROUGH THE PROCESS OF BUYING IT or sitting next to whomever is eating it.

If you can’t do that in the moment, if you stuff down your feelings of loser-ish-ness because you were unable to maintain the integrity of your prior decision and you caved, and all you are capable of doing is stuffing massive handfuls of drippy buttery popcorn into your mouth and it’s gone before the trailers even roll, no worries. Just make sure you come back to this later. You’ll want to analyze what happened, in a calm and non-judgmental way (to the extent that’s possible, when it’s so easy to assume the victim-bashing stance upon your own self whenever something like this goes sideways).

Ask yourself:

What caused you to waver?

Did you go to the movies hungry?

Did your movie-going partner flaunt her ability to eat popcorn with no remorse, and no understanding for your plight? (Pro Tip: Pick another partner to go to the movies with next time!!)

What convinced you, in the moment right before you changed course, that eating popcorn was more important?

There was some factor that convinced you. Can you find what it is?

That may prove to be a key to future success as you try to make these types of changes.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t manage this switch the first time or even the first ten times you try it. What matters is a) nurturing an awareness of it, and b) starting to debug the WHYs. Why did you indulge in the popcorn, why were you so willing to let your prior self’s decision fly out the door? There must be a reason. It may be solely that you are IN THE HABIT OF EATING POPCORN AT THE MOVIES and you have an underappreciation of the power of habit.

That means, you just need more practice. More practice being intentional. More practice evaluating situations in advance. More practice, potentially, in re-examining them when they’re over, to drill down into the core of it.

But recognize too that places have power. We are literally changed by our environment. There are decades of conditioning built up in you that movies = popcorn, and it may not be realistic to expect that you can fight all of that off in one moment. Sometimes you will; other times maybe you won’t. It’s okay, either way, as long as you are nurturing the awareness.

Here’s another way to establish this change in behavior: Go to the movies by yourself. That way, you aren’t tripped up by the people you’re actually with; it’s only the strangers around you and the overall environment. If you do this explicitly as part of a practice of changing your patterns, then you may even want to go at a time when the theater will be deserted. Avoid going at peak times, not just because all the other mindstreams walking through the lobby simultaneous to you will also be mentally screaming “POPCORN! POPCORN! MUST HAVE POPCORN!” like veritable popcornzombies that we are, but also because the peak times are when the theater pops more popcorn, intentionally scenting the air like a dope dealer waving a baggie in the drug addict’s face.

Once you become aware of WHY you act a certain way that you later regret — and also that you become conscious of the power of patterns, and how places can trigger certain behaviors only because that’s what we’ve always done in that situation before — then you start to have a fighting chance. It’s not you against the world; it’s you against the conditioning, or more precisely, you becoming aware of the conditioning, which is the first step required for it to be changed.

Conditioning is like patterns or grooves in the mind (some might say “ruts”!). Counterconditioning requires that you first recognize the pattern. Then, once you see it, you have options. Until you recognize it — whether it’s conditioning around popcorn at the movies, or getting irritated when your Starbucks order is delayed, or skipping your yoga class tonight because you’re too tired and don’t feel like it — whatever it is, these patterns will continue to play out until you consciously (not forcefully; just consciously) see them for what they are, and consciously introduce new ways of being instead.

You don’t need to change your whole life today. Just do one thing.

If you feel like you can’t handle the world and you’re an utter failure in life, just do one thing.

One thing done today can make a dent in that seemingly-permanent state of helplessness you feel. One thing done today is how you change.

Every thought, word and action affects your state of mind. Every single thing you do either increases or decreases your energy. The reason we feel in a funk is we’ve been making choices that do not sustain us.

Sometimes you can lose tremendous energy all in one fell swoop. Someone cut you off on the freeway and you go into a road rage incident? That’ll cost you. That’ll drain all your good deeds of the day straight away. It’ll take awhile to recover from that, to get back just to the status quo you were in — and obviously that status quo was not such a great place if it was so easy to trigger the road rage in the first place.

We are the product of our habits. The way we think about the world reinforces the world. It creates it. Makes it stronger — and not necessarily in a self-positive way. When we’re thinking thoughts about how we’re a loser and a failure and never going to amount to anything special, then it’s that much easier to stay that way. How? By sitting back on the couch with a beer, or grabbing that bag of Doritoes and clicking around on Reddit for another three hours. Nothing wrong with those things per se, but they tend to leave you unsatisfied. Or in other words, drained.

And when you’re drained, and that becomes the habitual state that you live in, it can feel overwhelming or impossible to change.

It can even feel impossible to change when you’re on balance doing well. If your life is cruising and you’re doing great in your job and you’ve got a nice partner and everything is hunky dory… That’s when you may be in most danger of all. It can be tremendously difficult to find motivation to go to the next level when everything seems to be working out.

So what do you do in that situation?

Just do one thing.

Instead of trying to wholesale change everything in your life at once, or get overambitious in all the new initiatives and self-improvement tasks you will tackle, focus today on just one thing.

If you’ve not been exercising lately (or ever): Just do one thing.

Go for a walk, even if that means only around the block and back home. Literally, it does not have to be much.

The value of this is that you are doing something different. Doing something different breaks you free of the rut. Doing something healthy will make you feel proud of yourself, that yes, you actually can change from being a total schmuck.

Just do one thing.

One very simple, easily accomplished thing.

It might be as basic as cleaning off your desk. You know, that desk where you don’t even remember what color it is. That desk that’s literally covered with papers and unopened bills and empty bags of Doritoes. And that stack of brochures you picked up at that expo three years ago, and the Christmas card sent by your dentist.

Start there.

Go through the brochures.

Through stuff away.

Find the surface of the desk once again.

Just do one thing.

It literally can be anything. Do one thing to change. Make it as insignificant as you can think of if you want.

Wash the car.

Wash the dog.

Sweep the deck.

Replace the lightbulb on the front porch that’s been out for a month.

Post your bike that you’ve been meaning to sell on Craigslist.

Sign up for a gym membership.

If you’ve ever meditated before, and you’re not actively meditating now, your one thing should be meditation.

Do one thing today, and do it now.

If when you’re done you feel inspired to do another, don’t do it. Save that one for tomorrow. Or maybe you do do it. It’s up to you. But the point is, do just one thing.

The hardest thing to do in life is to change — but doing one thing is easy. You’re reading this right now. You’re about to come to the end. Put your phone down, get up from your computer, go do one thing.

Do one thing that’s easy and accessible and achievable, that’s outside the pattern you’ve had for yourself in the most recent weeks and months.

Do that, and you’ll get a boost of self-confidence.

Do that, and tomorrow, come back and read this again.

You may not feel that it matters, but do one thing.

They say one day at a time. It’s really one thing that will make change.