Masterclass: John Kabat-Zinn Teaches Mindfulness and Meditation

 18/∞

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."

Suzuki Roshi

As I announced earlier, this review is going to be a bit of a surprise. Mainly, because it is not a book, but an on-line course (wow, mofos, the future is here!). It is not because I have fallen in disfavour with books, but because I’m currently working my way through quite long and complicated volume (Energy and civilisation: A History by Vaclav Smil). I feel like I need more time let all the information from that book to sink in, besides I think that on-line courses are the future!

How was it then? I would say great. My personal experience says that yoga and meditation shall be taught in communities. To learn how to meditate form a book sounds rather like a dumb idea to me.

...

Why I started to meditate?

Long time ago, I was at the point in my life where I was very unhappy. I was going to Czech law school (which I was not enjoying, because my Czech law school was run by dumb fucking communists, who were literally dumber than me and they wanted to teach me things, which were useless to me), I was also working in a couple of law firms. Some of them were totally emotionally sterile and boring. Some of the other law firms felt like every second client there was a fucking thief and an expert in assembling ponzi schemes. (Fucking lovely, fucking dream job… 😐😑😐😑).

I was also sort of dating a girl who cheated with me on her boyfriend and she was draining loads of my energy, because I wanted her to break up with him, but she just wouldn’t do it. So there were like three things wearing me down every fucking day and I was not happy. I was wondering how could I possibly escape this vicious cycle. Previously I experienced to be an immigrant in imperial Britain, which did not add up to my self-confidence either. 

To be honest, I felt constantly broke. There was this bad feeling in my stomach every morning I woke up. Then I had to get ready to do things I actually did not want to do. I felt constantly stressed, angry (I’m still angry, you better won’t be messing with me fuckers) and I felt like there was no way out. 

Well, in about that time, I started to think there is something wrong with me and that I really need to change something. The answer was meant to be found in mindfulness and meditation.

There were those moments when my mind was spinning like crazy. I was constantly overthinking shit, but I did not have the tools to stop it. School, did not provide me with any. As the matter of fact, as the communist teachers realised I’m getting weaker, their efforts to put me down doubled (I still hate them for that and I hope they all will eventually burn in hell😆). Back then I realised that Czech law schools are communist institutions. I realised, that Czech Rep. might have become a free country 30 ago, but that communism managed to survive like a parasite in minds of people and consequently in various Czech public institutions (ink. Government). Those people were doing me what communists did to them: they were trying to break me (literally like in 1984). Mental health is not a “thing” at Czech law schools. The general perception is that if somebody has committed a suicide, it was a weak person who cannot withstand communist pressure and others are usually going to laugh at him or her.

I know people who went mad when studying at Czech law school. I have read and heard about people who committed a suicide. Yet, nobody talks about it. Nobody wants a proper institutional change, nobody wants to get justice and put those evil communist teachers in jail. Neither nobody wants to develop a safety network for those people who are in danger.

Therefore, I had to find ways of how to cope myself. Inspired by Charles Bukowski, the greatest survival in history, I decided not to give up on myself. 

One of my very good friends recommended me meditation. The other good friend of mine recommended me (surprise!) a book! The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I started to meditate and of course at the beginning I had no idea what I’m doing. I downloaded an App called Calm. I worked my way through free version and then I then subscribed for a year. Slowly I stared to realise what it means to meditate and see the first results invisible to naked eye.

But at the beginning I thought that it will be some sort of “quick fix.” That I will meditate once or twice and everything is going to be alright again. Well, no… As with everything you want to grow (money, relationships, career) you have to put in work. At best, every single fucking day.

First “aha” moments came when my mind was in total disorder. In that moment I felt extremely anxious. But I stayed with that feeling and tried to realise where it is coming from and what it is trying to tell me. After a while, the feeling and so the anxiety were gone. I felt again whole.

This was my personal experience with meditation. To be honest, I do not meditate every single day. Mostly, I do not have time for that. I meditate when I need to. When I start to feel anxious, when I feel like I need some rest, I will just do it, because it helps me to take better care of myself.

Now, what John Kabat-Zinn add to my experience?

I liked that he said: meditation is about attending. We are not suppose to feel certain way, we just need to feel the way we are now. We should maybe realise where those feelings are coming from. By seeing it, we are becoming more and more mindful.

I also liked his comparison of stormy mind it waves. How we can drop in, dive under the waves into the peace of mind.

By no surprise, John Kabat-Zinn mentions Walden by Henry D. Thoreau, whom I consider to be a real western monk even though he did not call himself a monk. Thoreau knew something about being in the moment, oh yeah, he did.

I also enjoyed the part were John speaks about telomeres. Telomeres are part of our DNA, when we are under pressure and we feel like we cannot cope with the situation thrown at us, telomere shorten up. Which leads to faster ageing and so on. But when we say to ourselves: Hey, motherfucker, you can cope with this situation, you will eventually get though!” then our telomeres won’t get affected. In the other words, John mentions psychological resilience popularised by people like Wim Hof.

John also mentions the mountain. I really like this comparison. In this exercise you just meditate and see your thought as the clouds on the sky. There is a sunshine for a moment that brief period of darkness, but the mountain sits, no matter the weather. 

I was also immensely happy to discover that John Kabat-Zinn studied at MIT and thought that he will become a scientist (a typical lab coat to be precise) 😂. But then he went to this meditation talk and decided this it the path he wants to get on. So he did. My conclusion is that universities and education should not be seen as narrow window of traditional subjects as law, mathematics etc. It should be a spectrum. People shroud go to university to freely choose what subjects they want to study based on what interests them, what fucking drives them! I was lucky to have such experience at University of Redlands in California. “The major” was completely fluid. You were free to choose from any classes at the university. I realise that the defining moments are those, when we go to this random talk, we know nothing about, but we find it interesting so we decide to dedicate our life to it. 🙂

Conclusion:

Go for this course. I enjoyed it tremendously! 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Feel free to like, share and comment or recommend books you find inspirational yourself. I’m keen to hear about them.

Coming Up Next: Energy and civilisation: A History by Vaclav Smil

Peace 🧘‍♂️✌️🌱