Have you ever had the experience of a client getting up off the table and not being ecstatic about the work you did together? It feels like the rug got pulled out from underneath you and you’re not sure if you’re going to land on your feet or your face. It’s an experience we might want to run away from. But what if your best friend was in the room with you, encouraging you to stay with the experience, to not run from it, subtract from it, or add to it. Just to be with it. Meditation can lead to that best friend always being there.

Many things have been said about meditation. Some of them suggest that through the use of meditation one can experience exotic states, escape to some place other than where we are. It seems as though these stories suggest that the place where we are, right now, is a problem. They suggest that the experiences we are having right now are something to get away from. I don’t think that’s the real purpose of meditation.

What I am suggesting is that through the use of meditation we can learn to be present with our self and be our own best friend. Through meditation we can get to actually know ourselves and make friends with what we get to know. The natural curiosity that we apply to our relationship with our friends and Rolfing° clients can be applied to getting to know ourselves. Through this getting to know ourselves we can become comfortable with ourselves, compassionate and empathic towards ourselves and have a sense of humor, not taking ourselves too seriously. Doesn’t this seem worthwhile since we spend so much time with ourselves? Actually we spend all of our time with ourselves!

One of the great liberating aspects we have as sentient (thinking) beings is that our mind can actually see itself. Mind has the capacity to look at what is going on within it. The problem with this comes when we I start to believe that our thoughts are real; l that we are experiencing something outside t of ourselves. Like with the client example where we experience the shaky ground of not being accepted as something more r than we are. The problem happens when l a thought appears and we allow it to take possession and mistakenly believe that it is our identity. We take on the quality of the r thought and act on it as “I”; some unity t or oneness. “I’m mad, I’m sad, I’m happy, I have an un-happy client, I’m meditating, I’m thinking that I’m thinking.” This absorption in thought consumes us such that we start to believe that what we think is what we are, and we lose the freshness of experience.

Meditation allows us to experience our thoughts like a movie playing on a theater screen. There’s nothing wrong with thoughts, they’re actually quite entertaining if we learn to be playful with them. The problem occurs when we take them to be real, just like it would be a problem to take the character the actor portrays to actually be the actor.

Imagine that you are in a workshop and the instructor looks at you in a way that you “think” means you’re not the best practitioner there. You could spend the whole workshop spinning this thought into an elaborate play. Or being comfortable with yourself and your thoughts, you could let the thought just drift away and start with a fresh “beginners mind” in the workshop. This takes courage to do; this is why Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche likens meditators to warriors. This courage can come as a result of meditation and getting to know ourselves and our thought “pattern.” From having seen this movie before, we can predict the outcome and, more importantly we can just allow it to run in the background without feeling like we are missing something.

There’s a line in the “Sadhana of Mahamudra” that describes the action of thoughts:

“…Good, bad, happy and sad all thoughts vanish like the imprint of a bird in the sky…”‘

All thoughts, no matter how we classify them, are transient and will eventually disappear.

How does meditation help us? It’s simple: through meditation we train the mind to be more adaptable to thoughts. Through simply sitting and watching the thoughts show up, dwell, and go away we become familiar with our mind, our best friend. By sitting quietly watching the thoughts and not reacting to them, we become accustomed to them and can allow them to come and go without having to get caught by them. We start to see that we have more options than to become absorbed in the thought. And, like we are with our best friend, we become more relaxed with ourselves.

When we aren’t relaxed and comfortable with ourselves, we are constantly pushing things out, looking for an outside agent to take responsibility for what’s happening with us. Just this morning I was reaching up onto my refrigerator to get down a banana. As I did, I knocked over a box of cereal that was stored there, making a mess. Immediately I looked for someone else to blame for this mishap. I didn?t want to be with my anger to own it, so I had to find someone else to take the responsibility. But as the thought was taking more and more of a hold on me, I realized the responsibility was all mine. Since being mad at myself is not my pattern, I let it go and cleaned up the mess. Even though 1 don’t eat that brand of cereal!

Here’s a technique called “Calm Abiding” meditation. You can refer to Shambhala Sacred Path of the Warrior or to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s Turning the Mind Into an Ally for more detailed instructions. We start by taking our seat, either on a cushion or a chair. Your legs should be loosely crossed – a half or full lotus is not necessary, thank goodness. If you are in a chair sit up straight, with your feet flat on the ground, your bottom more towards the front of the seat. Your spine should be relaxed and at the same time straight, with your chin pulled in a little, so that the back of head where it joins the spine is open. Your eyes are gazing at the ground about four to six feet in front without trying to see anything in particular, what we call in the horse world “soft eyes”.

Your arms are at your sides with your hands resting on your thighs, palms open. Your awareness is put on your breath. You can use either the out breath, or the in breaths or both; it doesn’t matter as long as you are clear with your self what your object of awareness is. We use the breath because it’s something we always have with us and because it is said that the mind rides on the breath, or wind, of the body. As you are sitting watching your breathing, you may notice a thought has come up. When this happens simply acknowledge the thought without going with it and come back to the breath. If you find that you’ve become caught up in a thought, that’s fine, simply acknowledge it and come back to the breath. By doing this you will be able to cut the thought’s ability to take you away. You will never be able to stop thoughts, and there’s no reason to stop them as long as they are not taking you away.

I want to clarify the difference between contemplation and meditation. In meditation, as you know, you are watching your thoughts without judging or participating in them. In contemplation, you are actually generating a particular thought that is the object of your contemplation. You may drift off with other thoughts during contemplation. If this happens, just come back.

Try this meditation. The best time is when you wake up and before you go to bed. Ten minutes is plenty of time to start with.

See if you don’t start to find a friend in yourself, and the next time your client isn’t that happy or is thrilled with your work, you can just let it go. Or drive all blame into gravity, the Therapist!

1. From the public “Sadhana of Mahamudra” written by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche