This week, the Blue Suit tried to interest Josh Resnek in the powers of meditation. Yes. Meditation. He and Josh are pretty close. Josh told him he had been experiencing a bit of anxiety of late and he asked the Blue Suit what he does when he feels that way.
The Blue Suit started out like this: “I don’t ever feel anxiety, Josh. When your life has been as complicated and difficult as mine, anxiety doesn’t enter much into the picture,” he said to Josh.
As usual, they were driving around Everett on Tuesday afternoon in Josh’s Lexus, just kind of looking around and checking things out as they tend to do.
The Blue Suit was chipper and upbeat. He said he was interested to know what was bothering Josh. “So explain to me what’s going on,” he asked Josh.
“I’m not really sure,” Josh answered.
He thought for a few moments. Then he answered the Blue Suit.
“Everything about life seems complex to me these days. You know what I mean? Family is complex. Business is complex. Whatever we do with our lives, it has all become more complicated and expensive,’ Josh told the Blue Suit.
“I think I know what you’re going through,” the Blue Suit replied.
“Here’s what you need to do. It’s called meditation,” he added.
Are you kidding me?” Josh asked the Blue Suit.
“I can barely concentrate let alone meditate,” he said.
They both laughed.
“Here’s what you do. You get on your computer and go to a site that offers guided meditation. My favorite is Tara Brach. Just put her name into Google and check her out.”
Josh did just that when he returned home later Tuesday afternoon. He sat down in an easy chair in front of his computer. He Goo- gled Brach.
He came to the right file. He turned up his sound.
He pressed the start symbol…Brach began: She instructed Josh to sit in the chair but keep his back erect, and then to begin the meditation exercise by shutting his eyes – which he did – and by trying to tune out everything else in his life but the instructions now forthcoming.
Josh tried doing this.
Brach instructed Josh to breath in slowly, and then to breath out slowly, to try to pay attention to the breathing only – and to relax his forehead and to allow his shoulders to slouch just a but away from the tension caused by being connected to muscles in the neck.
Josh tried doing this, too.
“Now take a deeper inhale and pay attention to the inhale and the process and then let out the deeper inhale more slowly and pay attention to the process of exhaling,” Brach instructed Josh.
He did this too.
“Get lost inside your thoughts,” she instructed.
“When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being,” Brach instructed Josh.
“Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always widening rings of being,” she suggested to Josh.
As Josh told about this experience to the Blue Suit he said: “That’s when I started thinking…what the hell is this stuff all about!”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” the Blue Suit replied.
“Why?” Josh asked.
“Because if you claimed to understand all of this I’d say you were putting me on, that’s why!”
Anyway, Josh did the meditation thing for ten minutes.
When he opened his eyes and came back to the world, he said he felt more comfortable and less uptight.
“You do this twice daily for about ten minutes and it is the very best thing you can do for yourself, Josh,” the Blue Suit said to him.
“Take it from me…meditation is the right way to go if you want to ease up on anxiety.”