A Sceptic’s Guide: Meditation - The Waking Up App

Starting from Less than Zero #

I had been meditating on and off for years before I received a subscription Sam Harris’ Waking Up meditation app. Up to this point my intermittent practice was frustrating and unsatisfying - a concession to mental wellness turned into yet another box to be ticked off during my day. I would sit there in my home office - eyes closed and spend the time day dreaming. It wasn’t real meditation. When a bell sounded to progress to the next stage of mindfulness (the twenty minute meditation had 4 stages) I realised I had wasted the time lost in my thoughts. I would get more frustrated making me tense up more and think increasingly frenzied thoughts thus getting even more frustrated. It was a feedback loop that left me more tense than when I began.

I had an instinctive prejudice against meditation apps. They seemed like yet another example of unnecessary technology - another app shouldering its way in and promising to be a solution to a problem nobody had known existed. Tech was ubiquitous throughout the outside world but I would be damned to let automation inside what was supposed to be a sacred contemplative practice. It felt way too much like letting the matrix win. Furthermore Luddite that I am, I felt that technology and in particular mobile apps’ unceasing demand for my attention was a huge part of the reason I needed to meditate in the first place. Could an app possibly be the solution?

Starting Out #

Eventually I decided to try a meditation app out of desperation. A potential exit from that frustration feedback loop. I needed some sort of structure to guide me through to a sustainable and positive experience.

I chose Sam Harris’ app because I trust him as an intellectual. He also rarely overstates things yet the promises he makes regarding meditation would be steep to fulfil by anyone’s measure. He describes long-term meditation allowing you to pick if you react to an emotion as a “superpower”. This sounded ridiculous to me and yet given Harris’ track record of honesty I had trouble disbelieving him. The only way was to take the plunge myself.

And so I downloaded the app and began. The Introductory Course is 50 days worth of meditation - a titanic feat for me when I began. I had been trying to do 20 minutes every other day. I now know this length of time was too long and had caused my focus to falter. Each of the introductory meditations are only 10 minutes long which was a godsend. Almost anyone could sit down for that length of time.

The first hurdle was Harris’ voice. I imagined, he would have found some Berkeley accented crunchy hippy doing the guidance rather than Harris himself. Harris’ freely admits his voice is a monotonic drone - somehow sharp and dull at the same time. When I sat down for the first practice I imagined another feedback loop when I tried desperately not to think about his voice but then could think of nothing else. Thankfully Harris’ voice turned out not to be a problem - in fact it’s blandness helps convey meaning without conjuring emotion.

The course began very gently - introducing concepts like mindfulness one at a time. I began to look at meditation not as a chore although not exactly enjoyable either - but rather as the worthy pursuit I had always hoped it would be.

The Change #

As time went on I began to subtly feel changes in the way I experienced the world. I have spent vast swathes of my life stewing on (real or imagined) slights when people have wronged me - but gradually these happened less and less frequently and when they did their importance waned. I also found that intense and dominating emotions like rage, anxiety, fear began to play a diminished part in my life. I still had frustrations and I still reacted to them in ways I was not happy with after but they were less intense - and the milder ones less likely to dominate how I felt.

This change in emotional makeup brought with it an awareness of what I was feeling at any given time. It injected space between me and my emotions allowing me to monitor them from a distance without being caught in their storm. It is difficult to overstate the power of this.

As months went on and I continued using the app I was very happy to see that meditation was no longer something I shied away from. The structure of a guided meditation kept my mind from wandering. They were varied enough so I had to pay attention. This culminated in a deepening understanding of how my mind works. Yet it was not all smooth sailing.

Frustrations #

Some aspects of the Waking Up App were challenging. A regular theme visited in the meditations is looking for the thinker. From what I can piece together from Harris’ earlier book on meditation - Waking Up - the idea is you are supposed to see nothing - that the self will vanish. Yet this eluded me for some time and the feeling that I was doing it wrong was frustrating and made me double down on striving which kicked off another feedback look. Thankfully this was defused by other meditation.

At one point a few months in there was a bug in the app itself. After about a minute the meditation would finish prematurely without warning. As any given meditation has long periods of silence it was not clear to me with my eyes closed that the meditation had ended until eventually after a long period of silence I opened my eyes to see the app sitting there - nothing playing. This bug lasted a long time - maybe a month - and almost stopped me from using the app. I raised a support ticket and eventually the bug was fixed.

Nearly A Year Later #

Today I have a deep appreciation for the benefits of meditation. I am by no means a calm and relaxed person but I am far more relaxed than I was. The benefits are:

• Socially: I am able to be present in social situations. I realised that I had spent my life being lost in my own head when talking to someone. I used to rehearse what I would say then say it. I never figured out why socialising was exhausting and why I had so much more trouble than other people. Now I am much quicker and more thoughtful in my responses and people can feel that I am listening - it makes for much more fulfilling conversations.
• More attention to detail: I have been promoted in my job to a project manager. This means keeping a lot of plates spinning at any given time. It’s all detail. I had struggled before not having adequate attention to this detail. Let me give you an example: a client sends me an email about requirements for the new project. I am busy when it arrives. I skim through - get the gist and get distracted when another, more urgent email comes after. Later when it comes time to action the requirement email - I have forgotten a vital detail. Then it gets omitted from the plan and a month later I am in trouble. Bad times. Meditating has taken out the high pitched energy I originally felt in such a high pressure situation. That means that I read through said email, I retain it because I am relaxed and focused and I retain that vital detail.
• Experience negative emotion without judgement: This is a new one for me and still needs work. The old process was - feel a negative emotion like frustration, anger, jealousy (big one) and become submerged in it. The mental pattern was either negative labelling - “Oh this sux - why would so-and-so do this…” or resistance to that emotion - drinking, blame the other person… This triggered spirals that made me feel quite bad a lot of the time. Through meditation and reading (more on that later) I have learned to experience the emotion for its entirety - not label it as “bad”. The limited shelf-life emotions have means that it exhausts itself and I can move past them. Emotions come as a steady stream now not places to get stuck.
• Finding beauty in simple things: I had spent so much of my life foot on the accelerator, eyes on the horizon that I rarely looked at what was around me. There is a lot to say for sitting quietly or going for a walk and observing. I also felt an intense pressure to be multitasking - a walk was a waste of time unless I had an audiobook for example. Taking time to be present means that I allow myself to see things I would have missed before - a flower, a cloud, a garden. It really does enrich life with what is there - something that had been obscured by so much striving.

Reading #

I have also tried therapy this year. My therapist was pleased that I was meditating but frequently recommended the author Eckart Tolle. Again I was deeply sceptical. His books had worryingly self-helpy titles like “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”. He also had been a favourite of Oprah which I had assumed meant his teachings were more commercially than spiritually motivated.

When I did read A New Earth I was blown away. It was like something fundamental and heavy fell into its right place. The book advocates becoming radically present as a solution to being lost in ego driven thoughts. I will talk more about Tolle in another post but I bring it up here because, as a text, A New Earth perfectly complemented my practise. I would definitely recommend it even over Waking Up - Harris’ book on meditation that I have since discovered he calls “Tolle for smart people” (it’s a bit dry).

It’s worth noting that Tolle has a bit of pseudo-scientific quackery amongst all the gems - but the profound insights are worth sticking around for.

In the Future #

I will continue to use Sam Harris’ app indefinitely. I have found it’s structure invaluable to sustaining a regular practise. I am very glad of its popularity amongst the community and that it is getting the praise it deserves.

A regular practice has provided so many benefits - including stoking in me an interest in consciousness and how I think. I am ready to take the next major step which is going to a meditation retreat. It would not be too much to say that my experience over the last year has been life changing. My only worry now is going on about it too much and boring other people. Still now with meditation I can even put that worry into context.