I was having a conversation with a few friends last night and we got on the topic of meditation, which it seems is inherently a challenging topic to discuss intellectually/conceptually because it is so rooted in felt experience. Many things I’m interested in are this way - inherently challenging to put into words - and that’s why I love the use of metaphor and analogy. These verbal tools help to get at the root meaning and experience of things by pointing directly at them through something they are like, and the listener can then get a sense of the feeling of the thing, since they are familiar with what it’s being compared to.

As we were discussing, I was reminded of an analogy (or is it a metaphor? I’m never totally sure) that I learned from Sam Harris in his Waking Up meditation app (which I highly recommend). He was describing the concept of meditation (the practice itself and its impact on the mind) and comparing it to one’s ability to see the stars. If you live in an area with a lot of light pollution, then you may never see the stars in detail. But when the light pollution is removed, you become aware of an incomprehensibly vast network of light and darkness. You might think now of a time when you were able to see the stars fully revealed in the sky. To witness this vastness is to 1) directly perceive an indescribable beauty and 2) gain a broadened perspective on what this life and this moment really are. To my mind, these two ingredients have major healing properties in that they shake you out of living solely in the thinking mind and move you into a fully embodied experience in which you no longer feel so separate from your surroundings.

The practice of meditation can be seen as like a shifting of your perspective into one of less “light pollution” (i.e., the fog of self-referential thought) and simultaneous revealing of the stars of This One Moment, the HolyShitness, as I sometimes think of it, the feeling of awe and appreciation that naturally emerges through a direct perception of what is actually happening Right Now. By seeing these stars more often, you become more familiar with them, and feel their presence even in the midst of light pollution. Right now in this moment, you don’t doubt that stars fill the sky, whether or not you can see them.

What
are
the Stars
of
your Mind
like?

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