You Really Need to Upset Yourself

I think that it was Jon Kabat Zinn - UMass Medical School and "father" of mindfulness-based stress management - who said "If meditation is making you feel uncomfortable, then it's working!".

Change is uncomfortable - we inherently resist it - and meditation brings about major change in how we perceive our world and ourselves. And that is about the most fundamental change can get. At its most fundamental, meditation disturbs the equilibrium of the mind - a subtle balancing act that, during our adult lives, ensures that our "conceptual self" is massaged, cajoled, placated and nurtured. Ultimately, meditation starves the conceptual self (or personality or ego - whatever label you prefer) but, long before that happens, this thought-constructed self begins to realize that it is under threat - and responds in kind.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there are two of you - you could be forgiven because you'd be right! There's you and the conceptual you. The conceptual you keeps you going on automatic and enables you make it through the day largely unscathed. The real you is something completely different - but these two yous end up in an argument, at the very least, if not all-out war. If you think that's strange, consider this: when someone says to me "I don't feel good about myself" - who is doing the feeling and who is being felt?!! If there weren't two of you, there would only be a monologue in your head - but you and I know that there's a dialogue!

Meditation puts the conceptual self's nose out of joint. We begin to be aware of our own thought patterns and what they're doing to us and this only further threatens the status quo. Ultimately, meditation will enable you ignore the noise in your head that fooled you into thinking it was you - all those thoughts that have been squating in your head for donkey's years! This process is unsettling but change always is. This change, of course, is not just for the best but for the extraordinary best. So, if you're not feeling unsettled yet, you need to up the ante and meditate a little more consistently. Only then will the real you start emerging... and that's a journey we all deserve to travel.