on meditation and morning pages

i took this picture & still pretty proud of it

After five years of practice, July 19, 2023 was the day I suddenly quit meditating. 

I first began meditating in early 2019 after I read 10% Happier by Dan Harris. I downloaded his conveniently referenced 10% Happier app and started to follow guided sessions. 

I’d sit on the cold linoleum floor of my student dorm, back leaned against my bed, and scroll through the free sessions, find one on anxiety or stress or relaxation that was long but not too long, close my eyes and start. In the beginning, it was impossible. My mind felt more like an untrained dog tearing up the living room couch than a waterfall. Similar to starting to workout at the gym, it was exciting but my muscles were weak and clumsy and returning each day required a lot of discipline. 

After two weeks, I started to feel calmer, less impulsive, more selective of which thoughts I verbalized and which I let fizzle out. Like I was a kid presented with a silver platter of lollipops and instead grabbing a fistful, looking diligently, pointing, and saying “That one”.

I was consistent for a few more weeks, but eventually forgot one morning and fell off. 

This on-and-off pattern continued for 4 years. I tended to return to meditation reactively, during a stressful exam period or intense internship or when I wanted to strangle one of my professors.

When I was tearing at the seams, I fell back into meditation’s embrace. But, once I regulated my emotions, I stopped.

I saw how meditation made my mental state a bit brighter, how I felt more in control and less at the mercy of my brain, but I didn’t see any transformations in consciousness ahead.

At some point, I graduated from 10% Happier and moved on to Sam Harris’ Waking Up which the serious meditators all used. I even paid for the premium version for a year to finagle myself into practicing more. 

But, I didn’t settle into a consistent meditation practice (aka lasting more than a month or two) until life grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me into one.

~~~

In September of 2022, I was living in Pamplona, Spain for a four-month exchange and dealing with more anxiety than I had ever experienced before. 

I moved halfway across the world, started classes at a new university where little English was spoken, but most of all, after spending my entire summer prepping, I was in the midst of a terribly coordinated case interview process with a prestigious consulting firm (not going to say who, except that my brother joked I would have to brainstorm ideas to take over Gotham to get the job). 

There were a few days I just paced the city’s cobblestone streets for hours, tearing apart used Kleenexes piece by piece in my pockets. I look back at those days and shudder. 

I needed a salve, some way to cope with the emotions that were suffocating me. 

So I returned to Waking Up and Sam Harris’ silky smooth voice. I started the 30-day introductory course (for the third time). Like before, after a few weeks of consistent practice, I felt myself regain control. The clouds began to part. 

I texted my brother “I can’t believe I ever stopped meditating. I’m less impulsive and so much more in control of my emotions… I see the light!” Okay, I made up that last part but you get the point.

Maybe I learned my lesson because this time I didn’t stop. I continued to meditate every day. I finished the introductory course and moved onto Zen Koans. I started to pick 15 minute guided sessions. 

After a few more weeks, meditating became ingrained in my morning routine. I didn’t have to convince myself to practice. Within minutes of waking up, I would meditate. It was just something I did. 

At some point, I graduated from Waking Up to unguided meditation. I would just set a timer on my iPhone for 15 minutes, close my eyes, clear my mind, and focus on my breath. “In… Out…”

Most of these sessions, I didn’t try that hard to bring myself back to my breath. I like thinking a lot, so I would just sit there and think and that’s not really meditating, just undistracted-close-eyed-thinking but “apparently” you can’t be bad at meditating so I kept on rolling. 

~~~

Early this year, I fell into a pretty dark mental place. 

I was still meditating. 15-20 minutes every morning. But I was trapped in my own head, tangled in toxic thoughts, disassociated from the world.

I remember going for a run in February at 7am in the middle of a blizzard and taking my shirt off to run the last 4km bare-chested. To feel the cold. To see if it helped more than just cold showers.

My girlfriend at the time thought I was depressed. I didn’t disagree. 

In March, I went up to a friend’s ski chalet for a weekend getaway. He’s a few years older, a world traveler, an experienced hiker, and one of the most peaceful & present people I know. 

We drove up Friday evening. Saturday morning I woke early, rolled out of bed, set a timer, and meditated for 25 minutes (I must’ve been feeling particularly inspired that day). Then, I went to the living room. He was already awake. 

After chatting for a few minutes he asked, “Do you want to meditate?” Of course I do. “I usually do an hour, is that cool?” Of course it is. “You can stop at the halfway bell if you’d like”. Of course I won’t.

So I did my first hour-long meditation session. It was like a 20 minute session, but with an extra 40 minutes of hip pain from sitting cross-legged for that long. Before dinner, we did another hour. Just like that, I meditated for 2 ½ hours in a single day.

But, by the end of the weekend, I felt buried by how much I didn’t know. He’d been meditating two hours a day. I hadn’t. He’d done nearly all of the Waking Up courses. I hadn’t. He’d done several 10 day silent retreats with illuminating, life-defining revelation. I hadn’t. 

I was a novice all over again. Playing catch up. I decided I needed to up my intensity. 

I returned home and increased my meditation sessions to 30 minutes. I found a vipassana center near my house and booked a 10-day silent retreat. My family was worried because they heard how people had psychotic breaks and told me to start small with a 3 day retreat instead but I thought they “just didn’t get it”. 

~~~

But, despite my diligence, I had not evaded the struggle bus. 

The dark periods still came in waves. Meditation didn’t keep them away, didn’t elevate me to some plane of ease and grace. I was upside down buried in an avalanche of confusion and meditation wasn’t pulling me out.

On especially bad days, it was more of an invitation to loneliness, alienation, and devastating introspection than a calming ritual. I was alone in my head with buzzing thoughts that wouldn’t go away. 

My struggle to find serenity led me to the realization I must be the one person in the world who sucks at meditation and after months of practice I'm even further behind than I thought and I’m wasting my time.

But, I stuck with it. More meditation must be the answer. I continued to up the intensity. 

In June, I began to add in a 15 minute session in the evenings, totaling 45 minutes every day. It was a happy and calm and stable month, perhaps the first all year, but I was also living at my cottage. Swimming in the lake every morning, running an hour a day past rolling fields and stoic cows and old barns, swinging kettlebells, walking in nature, soaking up the sunshine, reading plenty of Tolkien.

~~~

I had to cancel my 10-day retreat but settled for an at-home meditation retreat instead. 

The day before, I planned my whole schedule and shared it on Twitter.

That day, I woke at sunrise in my cottage. Alone. Opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck, breathing in the crisp morning air and the cedar hedges, listening to the shrill bird calls above, admiring how placid the lake looked. I went for a 10km run, stretched, swam. 

At 8:30am I sat cross-legged in front of our wood-burning stove for my first session. 

In total, I meditated for 5 hours sitting and 3 hours walking, with 30 minutes of yoga and a 2 hour dharma talk as breaks. I couldn’t read. I wasn’t on my phone. I didn’t utter a single word. 

Sitting to meditate for the fifth hour felt like starting a HIIT workout I know is gonna suck. My hips were screaming in pain and I started switching legs every 10 minutes, but I stuck with it.

The retreat was a good experience, but it also scared the hell out of me.

During my afternoon nap that day (because all that breathing is tiring) in a semi-conscious haze, I was struck by a revelation: at the heart of all my suffering was fear. I felt like a small, terrified child again. Scared to live, scared to die. Perhaps more on that another day. 

After the retreat, I continued to meditate for 30-45 minutes every day. 

Until July 19, when my two and a half year relationship ended. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to meditate. I still haven’t. 

~~~

The morning of July 20, my mind was reeling, thoughts flying around like deranged dementors. I needed to get them out of me.

Sitting at my Dad’s kitchen island, I cracked open my Morning Pages journal and wrote for three hours without lifting my pen off the page. The next day, I woke up and did it again. By the end of July, Morning Pages had become a ritual.

I first heard of Morning Pages a few years ago from Tim Ferriss. 

They are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream of consciousness. No filter, no judgment. Moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind. Letting words flow, tumble out. 

Julia Cameron, who invented the practice, said Morning Pages are her meditation. Her channel with God. A cornerstone of her creativity. A ritual she couldn’t live without.

Now normally, I’m very skeptical, even cynical, of anyone who casually claims “Oh running is my meditation” cause I think they’re fakers and want to respond “No… meditation is meditation”. But I tried to not be so judgy and considered Cameron may be onto something. 

I bought the journal on Amazon, dug out some Muji pens, and gave it a whirl.

Similar to meditation, my relationship with Morning Pages was on and off. I enjoyed the practice but it never became a habit.

That is, until now.

Every morning I get up, drink two glasses of water, make a cup of coffee, and sit down at my desk for 45 minutes to journal. It’s been three months and I’ve only missed a few days.

After five years of trying every sort of morning routine hack or habit, from 5am alarms to scribbling affirmations to banging out 10 push-ups, nothing has come close to the impact Morning Pages has for me in terms of creativity, joy, and peace of mind (more accurately, peace from mind). 

My journal has become my companion. It’s helped me work through dark thoughts, difficult problems, and painful truths. The page is a mirror I stare at myself in. A mirror that’s brutally honest. I confront myself on those three pages, including all the parts I don’t want to face. 

The practice doesn’t try to tame my mind, which makes it clear it definitely doesn’t want to be tamed, it tires it. 

Writing is embodied emptying.

Instead of trying to zoom out and observe my thoughts, I just write and write and write. All my fears, all my complaints, all my ruminating. All on the page. Trapped, so I can get on with my day. The thoughts, those that would never truly dissipate in meditation, tend to leave me alone.

Many of my biggest breakthroughs and best ideas have emerged from MP. 

It is my way of tuning in. Tuning in to inner signal, seeing my intuition emerge.

And it is my way of opening out. Opening out to external signs, cues from the universe. 

I’m not going to say switching from meditation to Morning Pages made things better. Although things are better. There are way too many variables at play and causation and correlation cannot be reliably separated. 

But, what I have noticed is that I enjoy Morning Pages more. 

Yet despite my growing love for quality time with my Japanese leatherbound journal, I still felt guilty for abandoning meditation, which felt like the pinnacle of spirituality. I still thought I MUST MEDITATE.

“You’re just not disciplined enough, not strong enough, not spiritual enough to see Truth,” inner Tommy says, who’s also kind of an asshole.

~~~

In August, I remember returning home from a meetup of young, curious, ambitious people. But instead of being energized, I was heavy. All these people had these rituals they raved about with near-religious fervor. I felt like I had to start meditating again for an hour a day, learn to balance my pH levels with breathwork, go to Bali, and drop acid every Saturday afternoon. 

The final puzzle piece didn’t click into place until I was sitting in The Three Baker’s Cafe in Rio de Janeiro with my brother reading ‘A Joseph Campbell Companion’.

I almost spat out my cappuccino.

Joseph Cambell, who lived through the 60’s and was an avid student of Buddhism and Hinduism, said he never meditated. Not once.

“I haven’t meditated, and I know I have been afraid that meditation might open up lots of things that could delay the passage of this craft I’m rowing. It is an intentional limitation in order to go in a direction and get there. And I have gotten there, and I know it…

Each of us has individual capacities. The real trick is knowing the machinery of the boat in which you are crossing the channel.”

Campbell knew what his boat was: books. His pathway to the transcendent, to the realization of the wonder of life and the radiance of being, was through reading. He surrendered to his nature. 

Since opening to this idea, I’ve started to see people who have very happy and calm and fulfilled lives who don’t meditate. I’ve noticed more boats. Nature, exercise, love & connection, creativity, animals, and God, to name a few.

I still admire, even envy, intense meditators who are present and calm and have incredible insights about the nature of reality and the human experience. But so did Campbell.

~~~

Spirituality must be an intensely intuitive practice.

I must balance the courage to open to new things with the conviction I know what is for me and what isn’t. 

There are many boats to cross the channel. Meditation is one of those boats but not the only boat. If I don’t build my own and instead try to board someone else’s, it just won’t work. I’ll be lost. 

I will almost certainly return to meditation at some point in my life. But I know I don’t have to meditate. I know there are other boats.

I must build my own and row. 

---

Thank you so much for reading. This is the longest piece I’ve ever shared and kinda tore me up for a week. But, I hope you felt heard and it made your day a little more beautiful.

You may also enjoy my essay on desire & overwhelm.

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BIG thank you to James Vermillion,

Jeff Sullivan's Three Pointers

,

Miche Priest

, and especially the wise

Chris Coffman

for your time and feedback on this one.