Honor Thy Inner Rebel

You never know where your spiritual part is hidden. Because this is meditation, and not the Army, your impulse to rebel against discipline is as important as your desire to change yourself for the better. You may have noticed in the past that when you try to get yourself to do a self-help program, you wind up tyrannizing yourself. Then you rebel against the tyranny. The rebel becomes a saboteur of your program because you left her out. The way through this is to embrace the rebel right from the start.

Welcoming the rebel may mean listening to the feeling, "I don’t want to meditate today,” and finding out what it wants. To honor such a feeling means taking it so seriously that you would be willing not to meditate, and watch TV instead, or watch the sunset. But you are also willing to enter the feeling, explore it, let it teach you. Welcome the rebellion, then listen to it. The rebel is there to make sure you do not become enslaved in an external system that takes away your inner authority, your inner freedom, or oppresses you in any way.

Meditating the rebel’s way may seem very strange. Once I was working with a schoolteacher, and she was getting restless, just a few minutes into the first session. I asked her, “What are your impulses?” She said, “I just want to be outside.” We went outside, and since we were on a mountain in northern New Mexico we could see vast horizons. She breathed a sigh of relief. It turns out that she prefers to be outside as much as possible, even in winter. She dresses warmly, and sits in the snow, and has a great time meditating. The rebel in her is her spiritual part. For another woman, her rebel insists she stay in bed and be cozy to meditate on certain days.

The rebel in you is probably more useful, smarter, and healthier than your “spiritual” impulse to practice meditation. Many people, when they imagine meditating, conceive of it as some sort of inner prison. Your inner rebel will immediately alert you if you start making up Odious Rules, such as, “You can’t think, you can’t feel, you can’t scratch if you itch. “ The rebel will have none of this. The way in which you rebel is your individuality.

So honor your inner rebel. As you do the meditations, be alert for the voice of skepticism in you, the voice that says, “Hey, wait a minute, this is bull!” The rebel looks out for your individuality. Invite it in, no matter how much trouble it seems.

As you read and explore meditation notice anything you hate or don’t want to do. Always take your own side. Be willing to hunt to find your own particular way.

-- selection from Meditation Made Easy