I wish I could say I understand Larry’s problem falling asleep. (There’s probably a lot about Larry I wish I could understand, especially the part about how to create a long-running hit television show.) I seem to have the opposite sleep problem. I can sleep anywhere, at any time, for any length. I sleep during takeoffs and landings, after six double espressos, doing downward-facing dog… Once, I even fell asleep getting the most fantastic --
But I’ve said too much. What I have trouble with, though, is meditating, which is something I took up a few months ago in preparation for turning 40.
Have you tried to meditate? Am I the only one who can’t do it properly? Try it yourself:
Sit comfortably. Eyes closed. Hands in a relaxed posture. Now slowly, effortlessly, begin silently repeating your mantra. Do this for 30 minutes, twice a day and you will, if the gurus and experts are correct, transform yourself into a more centered and peaceful person.
Or maybe, like me, you'll just fall asleep in your meditation chair and wake up 30 minutes later with a slight crick in the neck and a thin thread of drool leading from your lower lip to your shirt front.
Which, actually, isn't such a bad outcome, when I think of all of the other useless things I could be doing instead, like surfing the Net in slack-jawed stupor, or revising my enemies list, or staring into the middle distance while robotically eating Fritos. And anyway, meditation is a practice, not a result. It works its magic slowly, by the doing of it, not by any goal-driven attitude.
At least, that's what Deepak Chopra says. I spent a few days recently at the Chopra Institute in Carlsbad, California, on the grounds of the swank and luxurious La Costa Resort and Spa. I went there because it suddenly seemed to me that a life spent surfing the Net in slack-jawed stupor, or revising an ever-lengthening enemies list, or staring into the middle distance robotically eating deep-fried snacks, was probably a life that could use a little fine-tuning in the care-and-feeding-of-the-soul department. Plus, as I said, I was about to turn 40.
There was a lot of talk about diet, of course, and yoga, and body types, but the fundamental keystone of the Chopra philosophy is meditation, which was enormously attractive to me because it involves two of my most favorite activities: sitting, and closing the eyes.
For some reason, though, it's not so easy. The sitting, no prob. The eyes closing, check. But then, just when I'm supposed to be wordlessly reciting my mantra and emptying my mind, thoughts flood in:
OK, begin. Sitting comfortably. Arms in a relaxed posture. Mantra. Mantra. Mantra. Mantras are interesting. Sanskrit, I think. Sanskrit is a weird language, isn't it? Looks sort of like Arabic, I think. They don't really still use Sanskrit anywhere, do they? Like, in India or wherever? I like Indian food. There's a new Indian vegetarian place around here somewhere that I read about. Can't remember where. I need to get a file folder or something to save clippings from the paper about restaurants that I want to go to and . . .
Get back to the mantra! Stop thinking!
OK, OK. Mantra. Mantra. Mantra. Mantra. Mantra, Man. . ..tra. . ...m. . .ntr. . ..a. . ..mmm. . ...tr. . ..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. . .. . ..
And I’m asleep.
Chopra thinks this is OK. There are three possible experiences, he says, during meditation. The first is, you fall asleep. Not such a bad thing, according to him: if you're fatigued or exhausted, your body needs sleep and will choose it if it's offered. The second possible experience is that your mind races with thoughts and memories and associations and simply will not be stilled. OK, says Dr. Chopra, this is your mind relieving itself of its collected knots and kinks--also not such a bad outcome. The third possibility is that by reciting your mantra silently to yourself, you slip into the gap between thoughts, where time and memory melt away, and you are suspended in a place of infinite possibility and bottomless calm.
The trick is not to push it. It will come, Deepak Chopra promises, with practice. Which I'm doing, twice a day. But right now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to meditate my way: with a bag of Fritos. My mantra, for the next few minutes, will be the sound of crunching.
So, Larry, here’s a tip: if you want to fall into a deep effortless sleep, try meditating.