One way to deepen a meditation practice is to share it. I don’t mean tell someone about it. I mean guide them.
We may panic at the thought. Get all up in our heads, wonder if we’re doing it right, imagine we’re not worthy, as though guiding meditation were an esoteric mystery that required years of yogic cave-dwelling: “Only once I have purified the golden reaches of my True Self and defeated the demons of Mara can I come down from this mountain and share my wisdom with regular mortals.”
But you don’t need to be an expert meditation teacher to share a simple practice, any more than you need to be an expert cook to show someone how to boil an egg.
“In a light way, pay attention to X. If your mind wanders, come back.”
Most of the skill involved in guiding this instruction is not the skill of an expert, although an expert will also possess it. It’s mostly the skill of being present.
That’s the accessible end of it. There’s a creative end too. I host workshops and retreats that empower people not just to share practice, but also to invent them. In groups of two or three, people take turns guiding each other in simple ten-minute practices of their own invention. I’m always moved by the personality and originality of what emerges in the room.
Practice can be reconfigured in so many different ways, across so many different forms. It’s one of the most direct and explicit creative mediums, because it works directly on our in-the-moment experience of reality. Some practices involve a lot of instruction. Others very little. Each practice is a mystery, in the sense that you never quite know how it will land. Also, it’s never about you. Understanding how it is never about you is the guide’s primary learning, and part of the mystery! Because who or what the heck is it about??
As we get more experience with the core skills of practice, we develop more confidence around how to customize practice in a way that works for us. This naturally leads to more curiosity about others: what does this person need? What is the context here? What specific challenges have I personally encountered, what have I done about it, and how can I integrate that learning into both the way I guide and the way I share?
I get very choked watching people take turns caring for each other. Seeing their unique gifts and personalities and hard-won truths start to come through.
Sharing practice really can change you. You can’t believe you get to do this; the trust of your fellow humans, their sincerity … it’s humbling. It can give rise to a powerful sense of responsibility and love, the privilege of being there at all. Giving is getting.
Separation falls away.
At this point, I honestly can’t even tell where the creativity ends, and the healing begins. It’s like a wave around the room, a wave around the world. Each new guide a lineage in waiting.
Does this mean we don’t need experienced teachers?
Of course not. As we navigate specific challenges and techniques and traditions, we need them more than ever. Thank you teachers, thank you certification programs – we want more of you. We want all levels of professional. And, when it comes to connection and love and the capacity to be present with each other, we want everyone else too.
Healing and growth, self-regulation and self-understanding — these are too idiosyncratic, too personal, too fundamental to depend on specialists-only. We also need to depend on ourselves and one another.
In my mind, nothing will accelerate this more than recasting “teaching” as a creative social activity that any informed person can engage in. This is the democratization of mental health.
Release the amateurs!
FURTHER ACTION – How do we make mental health practices and support structures more accessible? One way is to start your own practice group with a few friends, and then guide and learn from each other. To that end, download my free Community Activation Kit, right here .
A life of practice has incalculable benefits. We can help each other get started.