Is "meditation" code for sleep?

Is it considered inappropriate to bring a snack to a meditation class?

— Briony Gaffer (@brionygaffer) February 25, 2014

Last night I went to a meditation class. Pause for obligatory 'say wha!?' reaction. Yes, a meditation class and no, I do not consider tofu an acceptable meal, tie dye is not my go-to choice of print and I do not own a yoga mat. I have to admit I was not the one bearing an umbrella, holding it high and leading my troops into Exhibit Center where the class was held. I was in fact the supportive friend because; just as girls cannot pee alone they cannot mediate alone either.

Meditation is the act of chilling the fuck out. I'm sorry. Meditation is the practice of chilling the fuck out. You simply imagine something neutral, preferably something beige, and try your absolute hardest to prevent your brain from initiating a slide show of all the garbage that’s contained inside your skull. The key, spoken like a true expert, is to breathe. Which is a relief cause if we ain't breathing, we dead. And, as far as I am aware you cannot meditate when deceased, unless being deceased is actually one gigantic meditation which I guess...it is. The oxygen input you get from breathing, which has been used by the airline industry to tranquilize the most hysterical passengers, serves as a drug freeing the mind from all bad thoughts and negativity. Well, so it intends. The moment you will open your eyes will be the moment you will look at the world and say "Damn, I really don't give 2 pence about anything" and this, my friend, is called Nirvana.

This all seems a little easier said than done. A bit like knitting. Rid 'all bad thoughts and negativity'? I'm 23, that would take me years.

The problem I have with meditation is that we avoid confronting the very reason we have been coxed into meditating*. We shove and shun our problems to one side; a temporary and in my humble opinion, cowardly duck and dive from the reality of our lives.

Rather than confronting our inner most feelings, we leave them to simmer on the hot plate that is our conscience. Tell me, who are we parring off our problems to? As far as I can see it not one solitary being can claim any degree of ownership over another. It is as simple as that. We ultimately belong to ourselves, and even that is debatable. The problem with this is that we are consequently the sole proprietor for the business that is our own happiness.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't invest in other people, or shun a leap of faith into the world of loving and being loved. We should, as often as possible. Occasionally we will connect with someone who not only likes what we initially allow them to see but the inner core, the one you've have been searching so desperately for in those Pilates classes. They will like it so much that they would feel extreme pain if they no longer had access to it. They will want it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and there will come a time that they will want no one else to have it either. That is when two becomes one. Sorry, 90's kid problems. This springs all sorts of confusion, we are thrust into a world where even we cannot trust our own opinions or our own happiness. So much so, that we run to the nearest meditation class just to seek some means of escaping our own thoughts.

It is this notion of escape that leaves me quivering in my boots, the notion that in order to feel better we must not feel at all.

I am calling a stop to this form of self harm. We are enough. We know ourselves better than anyone. It is the mass misunderstanding that we are incapable of exercising our own opinions, solving our own problems and dictating our own happiness without them being signed off by someone else that has sent us packing to the nearest meditation class in the first place. Instead, I intend choose to trust myself because well, I have done pretty well so far. I have been in a relationship with myself for the last 23years, the longest relationship I have ever been in and we, me, myself and I are very happy together. Why? Because there is no other way. Sometimes, we need to stand alone just to see if we can still stand at all. If more people were to take responsibility for their own happiness the world would be a much happier place. People would smile on tubes, high five in the street...hell, life would be one gigantic Pharell video on acid.

That shall be all,
B xx

*I feel that a declaration may be called upon here: I know nothing about meditation, and I may well be missing the point entirely but this is the opinion I walked away with. Without honesty, I would be well, just another blogger on the highway for an easy publication.