Mental Garbage Collection

I used to compulsively fill out Proust questionnaires as a teenager. It was like capturing a mental firefly. My journal shelved the jars and every so often I would peer into the past, the ease of hindsight feigning as wisdom. It helped me feel in control.

I would think back to the moment I recorded my answers, usually with cheeks stinging from dried salty tears, and then replay all the events that ensued since then — ”Don’t worry, it all turned out okay,” I would whisper to my previous self. It was like a small simulation of age, where the sage Kendall 4 months into the future could counsel her ignorant predecessor.

I was manufacturing a feeling of perspective. It was practices like these that made everyone say, “You seem much older,” which was strange to hear but felt accurate. Those echoes made me feel somewhat invincible, like I already had ‘it’ all figured out.

I am now feeling my age more and more each day. That once contrived perspective is now weightier, pulling my gravitational center, tightening a once-wide orbit into something observable, with more frequent revolutions around some semblance of a middle ground.

I greet this genuine awareness of passing years not with dread but with a deep, loving gratitude. Finally, the big waves have subsided, or perhaps my ability to dive underneath them has improved. When I can, I swim out to a calmer sandbar from which I can stand, see through the water, find a cracked sand dollar.

When I was younger, routinely sitting to meditate felt impossible. Even with the best intentions, I would always fall off the wagon. I now wake up and yearn for the quietness of it — that great expansion of the breath. It makes my body feel diagonal, beyond Newton’s reproach. I drift into liminal amorphism, my pelvic bones stamp into a cork block; my blood, marrow, plasma ooze into the air, as oil in water.

This is the first time in my life I’ve actually sustained a meditation practice. I’m talking day in and day out sitting down with my coffee, sleepy or nervous or hungover. I observe the parade of thoughts, a daily state of the union for my mental congress. As of late the party divisions are something like 30% trusting loving positivity, 60% apocalyptic doom ‘you might as well give up now’ anxiety, 10% gloating confidence.

Throughout the years I’ve tried many different types of meditation — transcendental, vipassana, dynamic, zazen, body scan. There’s merit to all of them. Instead of subscribing to one single approach, I enjoy incorporating different aspects of each depending on my mental state. Some days I need the support of a mantra to get me through the waves, or when I can’t bear to hear my own thoughts. On others, I need to move, dance wildly, shake my body crying then feel the vacuous aftershocks.

Most of the time I do a mix, starting with a body scan: “Where’s the pain? Where’s the tension?,” breathing into those spaces, just noticing. Then I’ll move to the mind: “How are we doing today? Who is present? What are the voices sharing?,’ I give them room to bitch, complain, moan in fear, or get distracted. I try to give thanks to each voice, mentally validating its presence. I find that if I don’t listen to all the aspects of myself, the negative voices just get louder.

After getting a good sense for my ‘current state,’ without any attempt at altering or adjusting, I move in to the breath. I start by just noticing how I am breathing: “Is it shallow in my chest or deep in my belly? Is it twinged with tension? Is it choppy?” I start taking deeper, fuller breaths: 4 counts in, hold for 4, 8 counts out.

This is a pranayama similar to nadi shodhana, but with both nostrils open. It kicks off the parasympathetic nervous system — the great calming pathway of our bodies. The retention of the breath after the inhale allows oxygen to fully circulate throughout the body. The long exhale fully releases all the CO2. Beyond the particulars, this focus on breathing intentionally, deeply, to a count, is a surefire way to clear the mind.

I know I’ve had enough pranayama when I feel little tingles all throughout my body — from my toes to behind my eyebrows, there’s a glistening of energy, an effervescence. When I feel this, I let my breath go back to a normal, natural flow, and now I sit.

This is the zazen-esque portion of the meditation. I sit, observe, let thoughts and emotions float through me and away, while I ride the ocean of breath. It is in this state that time slips away, I lose sense of my body. I don’t expect fireworks, but sometimes they happen — a hallucinogenic deluge of connection with some primal energy source. Most of the time I just feel whole, alive, and grateful. I am renewed with a sense of trust, or perhaps a neutrality towards the anxieties at bay.

I float, not away, but just here, in this spot. On this little slice of linoleum where I wrestle with the echoes of my previous decisions. The ego stomps or feels glorious replaying some little achievement, envisioning the ‘self’ being perceived in some way or another. The replays flood and drain with the tide, what’s left is the sharp igneous skeleton of my mind. From these recesses, globular desires emerge like pink elephants from Fantasia, marching and with trumpets. I have identified clear divisions between them.

Some are desires for stimulation, a yearning to passively receive some neurotropic hit — this is the shopping, the day dreaming, the boozing, the netflix binges. The ‘once I have this I will be happy and never want for anything else’ type desires. These desires compulsively surge, a byproduct of anxious combustion, like rising fumes I can’t notice their effect until I’m intoxicated.

The other is a deeper sort, an intrinsic yearning if you will. This is a desire that must be actively sought. These desires take work, you can’t typically satisfy them with money or privilege: to climb a mountain, train your dog, grow a tomato, master the guitar, write a memoir. These are of a deeper tier of fulfillment and they take work. I try to turn up the volume on these types of desires; I believe fulfilling these goals does lead to a sense of purpose and content.

In my somewhat cursory study of the great spiritual texts, they all speak of desire and various methods for mitigating them. Our entire life pans out in a mostly subconscious quest to fulfill an infinite, recursive track of desires. It is an odd bio-sociological cocktail: 1 part evolutionary impulses, 2 parts conscious awareness, a dash of groupthink, garnished with consumerism.

I think the great task of humans is learning how to lessen or eliminate the chokehold these desires have on our behavior and experience of life. There’s a reason that desire is a cornerstone of all major religions; this is not a new task for humanity.

I don’t think it’s a manner of bullying them. I don’t appreciate or find helpful a self-flagellating approach. This isn’t a matter of inner-will to keep quiet those dormant beasts below. That’s not true change but just a type of rebranding. The base matter does not shift.

It’s not magic. It’s not glamorous. It takes patience and humility and a gentle, mothering approach. In simply coming back to observe, without judgement, the raucous grottos, we can gain a sort of clarity as to how they were carved out in the first place.

By continually recognizing our desires, flaws, and motivations, the strength or length of the signal diminishes with time. And even when they overcome us, we can more quickly recognize, “Hey I know you. I see you. I understand that you’re scared. Let’s see if we can find some other way to calm both of us down that is slightly less destructive.” Dealing with them evolves into more of a choice, as opposed to a blind reaction, cued by conditioning.

It seems as though when we are young we gravitate towards actions that cause us pain — drinking, drugs, eating disorders, dysfunctional relationships. Perhaps it’s not a matter of age but a matter of germinating that seed of self-loving awareness. With time and consistency, it grows into a lush garden where we can seek refuge.

Gaining access to this space is an unremitting practice of shedding — stimulation, distraction, substances. Each time I come back I have to peel layers, siphon through junk, quell the burning trash pile of trauma within.

Meditation is my small and quiet attempt at mental garbage collection. I pray that I may make clearer choices and be gentler about my misgivings; that I may more easily tap into that deep gratitude, a buoy lifting the string of quotidian moments that, collectively, is the substance of life. It is an abstracted way to store and contemplate my collection of fireflies, the amalgamation of experiences one could call perspective.