As a meditation instructor who has been meditating for greater than twenty years, it’s honest to say that I’ve discovered an important deal concerning the follow. I’ve discovered what does and doesn’t work. I’ve discovered the pitfalls that maintain folks again from progressing in meditation. And I’ve discovered certainly one of most elementary errors folks make. It’s a mistake I personally made for greater than 5 years. That mistake is Utilizing mindfulness and meditation as escapism.
It’s a mistake that’s all too straightforward to make. Inevitably all of us undergo struggling, as Buddha stated. All of us face stress, anxiousness, worries… Certainly, proper now, as I write this, two of my closest associates are in hospital, and I’m most actually frightened. At instances like this, it may be all too straightforward to show to meditation as a type of avoidance, closing your eyes and pretending that actuality doesn’t exist so that you don’t need to face the challenges. And in the event you’re not cautious, this could turn out to be a lifestyle. That’s exactly what occurred to me.
My Expertise Utilizing Meditation As Escapism
About fifteen years in the past I made the choice to to migrate from England to Canada to be with the girl I really like. Earlier than I left, I had in thoughts the thought of a fairytale voyage throughout the Atlantic, imagining that every part could be excellent and straightforward. That didn’t occur. Leaving my household and starting a brand new life in a brand new nation was in actual fact extraordinarily anxious for me. And, as an avid meditator, I turned to my meditation follow for assist. I meditated for hours day by day beneath the pretense that I used to be “searching for enlightenment”, all of the whereas refusing to face actuality. Meditation took over my life. The extra I meditated, the additional I escaped from actuality. However the additional I escaped from actuality, the more severe my actuality grew to become as I uncared for my wants and obligations.
This charade of “meditating within the search of enlightenment” precipitated me to spend 5 entire years of my life disengaged from my real-world state of affairs. As I ignored actuality, actuality received worse. As actuality received worse, I felt increasingly reliant on meditation as a solution to escape from every part… it grew to become a vicious cycle.
Finally, I did be taught to cease escaping. I made elementary modifications in the best way I meditate. Certainly, as we speak I meditate particularly to assist myself to have interaction with life in significant methods. And thru my non-public meditation classes, I assist others to do exactly the identical factor. However maybe you aren’t ready to have the ability to take non-public classes. And that’s why I’d wish to share my insights right here.
So, let’s take a look at the connection between meditation and escapism, and the steps we will take to make it possible for we use meditation to interact with life fairly than escaping from it.
Are Mindfulness And Meditation Escapism?
Mindfulness and meditation can generally be a type of escapism in the event you select to make use of them to disengage from challenges in your life, fairly than as a way for self-awareness, self-regulation, and private development.
Should you’re utilizing meditation as escapism, you may discover these indicators:
- Avoidance: Utilizing meditation to keep away from going through tough feelings or conditions.
- Disengagement: Disengaging from totally different features of your life, particularly difficult features
- Emotional Suppression: Utilizing meditation to forestall your self from experiencing feelings
- Lack of integration: Studying classes and gaining perception from meditation however not utilizing these insights in the true world.
Why We Escape And Why We Shouldn’t
The temptation to flee stems from the need to keep away from ache. It’s one thing most of us can establish with, as a result of, in fact, we’ve got all been via ache. For example, let’s say that somebody we love passes away. We all know that we’ve got a painful street forward of us as we must overcome grief and different sophisticated feelings, however we turn out to be overwhelmed and shut down emotionally. Or maybe we face divorce and the thought of filling out the paperwork and maybe transferring out appears an excessive amount of to bear. At these instances, we’re prone to be tempted to show away from actuality and to flee, resembling by sitting on the ground for hours on finish day by day meditating as an alternative of really doing what must be executed.
The issue with escapism is each sensible and psychological. On the one hand, escapism prevents us from taking essential steps to beat challenges in order that we will transfer ahead in life. Neglecting these challenges can typically make them worse as effectively, as an illustration refusing to just accept that mortgage you took out and thereby not paying it would solely make your debt improve because the curiosity racks up. As for the psychological aspect, avoiding difficult feelings tends to make issues worse, so in the event you fail to face a painful emotion when it occurs, it would steadily develop inside you, changing into worse and worse.
As an alternative of Escaping, ENGAGE
We’ve the selection of utilizing meditation to flee or to have interaction with life. Escaping will solely ever make our state of affairs worse as we fail to fulfill our wants and obligations. Partaking, however, means residing life with objective, accepting no matter comes alongside, and dealing with painful feelings fairly than operating away from them.
Some methods to cease escaping and begin participating embrace:
Determine your private values: To dwell a lifetime of worth, you first must determine what values matter to you. Get a pen and paper and write three private values that matter to you and why. Examples of private values embrace: Compassion, Spirituality, Household, Authenticity, and Environmental Consciousness.
Set significant targets: Now write an inventory of targets that relate to the private values you wrote down above. For example, if certainly one of your private values is household maybe a purpose might be to spend X quantity of high quality time with a sure member of your loved ones every week. Make your targets difficult however achievable.
Embrace challenges: As an alternative of escaping from challenges, see them as a possibility for private development, and create a plan to beat the problem.
Apply gratitude: As an alternative of specializing in what you don’t have, follow gratitude for what you do have.
Be conscious of escapism: Search for instances when you’re escaping and discover methods to have interaction as an alternative. Merely being conscious of escapist conduct will assist you to to alter it.
Meditate like this: There’s a particular manner to make use of meditation to have interaction fairly than escape. I’ll talk about this under.
Utilizing Meditation To Interact, Not Escape
In my non-public meditation classes I typically work with shoppers who’ve unintentionally been utilizing meditation as escapism, and I assist them to reengage with life by making key modifications to their meditation follow. I’d wish to share certainly one of my principal ideas for doing this.
On the finish of every day, write a journal entry (or simply make a remark) of essentially the most difficult ideas and feelings that you just confronted throughout that day and the real-world state of affairs that they regard. For example, possibly you had a nasty argument together with your partner and so the difficult emotion right here would doubtless be anger and the state of affairs could be arguing together with your partner. Or you will have an enormous presentation arising at work and also you’re very nervous about it. On this occasion, you’d write in your journal Anxiety about work presentation.
Now, you need to use your meditation session the following day that will help you to face the problem you wrote down in your journal. For instance, in case your problem was anger/arguing you may wish to follow compassion (Loving Kindness). Or in case your problem is Nervousness/Work Presentation you may love to do Aware Respiratory (to cut back anxiousness) mixed with a visualization of the presentation going effectively. Mainly, you’re utilizing your meditation follow to treatment the problem that you just wrote down in your journal.
Please notice that doing this does require good information of the totally different meditation methods and their results. You are able to do this working with me in my meditation remedy classes, and I’ve additionally created a free useful resource on this web site that exhibits you all of the totally different meditation methods and their results (see our principal menu).
Closing Ideas
We will use meditation for escapism or to have interaction with life, and naturally, to profit from life, we need to interact. The largest drawback, and my concern, is that it’s all too straightforward to unintentionally use meditation for escapism, and this could have critical detrimental results. It occurred to me. And as a meditation instructor, I do know that it has occurred to many different folks too. Fortunately, we’ve got the volition to alter our meditation follow and to begin utilizing meditation to have interaction. Making that change might be the most important step to discovering success and contentment, and objective via meditation.