Why I Almost Quit Meditating After 500 Hours of Practice

I started meditating because I felt like my brain was a muscle that was never "not flexed". I was always thinking, always lost in thought about the goals and deadlines I had to meet as a high tech executive, achieving my priorities as a husband and father, or ruminating on past decisions and whether or not I had done the right thing.  Days, nights, mornings, evenings.

It was exhausting and debilitating and led to a period of burnout that quite directly forced me into meditation.

I started with the Headspace app, because it was the only app I found that allowed me to set a two minute meditation session.  Just two minutes. Andy Puddicombe taught me about noting -- a simple concept of becoming aware of thoughts and emotions, and naming them as such. This is a thought. This is an emotion.

This was something I could do.  I could take 2 minutes, often not even sitting, but instead lying down in a regular state of exhaustion, and identifying and distinguishing thoughts and emotions.  

It was a small step. Yet, like the butterfly that flaps its wings off the coast of Japan that results in a tornado touching down in Kansas, it would lead to some profound and inexplicable experiences. 

Two minutes led to five. Five led to fifteen. The relief from the tendency of my brain to always be firing, led me to periods of respite lasting forty-five minutes, often twice a day. Sometimes three.

I saw massive swaths of white light beaming down into my parents' house while my sister received hospice care for terminal cancer at an age much too young to die. I went to another dimension where I could fly, and visited an empty yet pristine provincial French village. To this day that village is as every bit real to me as the memories I have of visiting Europe as a young college graduate. I felt a shower of electric sparks -- it felt identical to a physical experience as any other -- rain down on me when my good friend and personal coach advised me, "if you're in a slump, put yourself on the bench."

And yet, my life still seemed to be unsorted. With 500 hours under my belt, I found myself asking "So what?" So what if I could get to a state of relaxation and detachment if my life still felt like a mess. Was I just escaping? Was I just going to a place that felt good, so that I could avoid the responsibilities and hard work required to live my modern life? Pay my mortgage? Feed my kids? 

It's been a complicated journey, but I am not, in fact, going to quit.  I kept at it, and at around 500 hours, I started carrying my practice away from the five or fifteen or forty-five minutes when I was sitting, and into my life as I walked around, as I interacted with people, and I sat down to do my work.

And it has helped. I am more productive. I get in my own way less. I speak to my wife, kids, family, friends, and colleagues in a more relaxed way, even when I'm frustrated, confused, or angry.

So, I'll stick with it. It seems that perhaps this is another occurrence of a butterfly flapping its wings. Or perhaps not. But there's only one way to find out.