A personal theory on why meditation is so refreshing

I've been meditating for about 20 years.

I've practiced in lots of contexts. I've worked with a trusted spiritual development teacher and meditation instructor for some months. I've practiced in groups of friends and groups of strangers. I've meditated at big events like concerts and festivals, in small church basements and in office conference rooms. Indoors, outdoors, in the light, in the dark, eyes open, eyes closed. And of course, I sit solo every day in the morning.

I'm no guru. I'm not even an expert. I've just practiced for a long time, in a lot of different circumstances, with a curious, experimental view throughout. So I've learned some things about my own practice.

This is not to speak on meditation for anyone else. It works differently for different people, and I've heard simply doesn't work at all for some. I can't speak to any of that. This is just a cataloguing of what it has done for me. I bring it to you for three main reasons: firstly, so you can learn about it if you're curious; secondly, because it has made such a big difference in my life that it would feel irresponsible not to; and thirdly, because I got curious about it myself and wanted to write it down.

What is meditation, really? What does it do for me? Why does it "work"?

Meditation is really, really refreshing. I kind of feel like a new person afterward a sit. Clean slate, aches gone, worries gone. Full of love and peace, effortlessly in touch with profound safety and confidence. I'm more open to connecting with people; I'm less besieged by old, gnarly defense mechanisms, past conditioning, unwanted reflexive responses. I am free and easy. I love easily, listen easily; I'm present for the people around me. I'm present with the emptiness from which all new things are created: "God" in many religions, "sunyata" if you like; I'm sure there are tons of others. The main thing is I'm creative, full of life, and feel profoundly, serenely connected to the world.

So what's going on here? Why is meditation so refreshing anyway?

I think one of the reasons is that it returns us to being everything again.

What I mean is this: The human brain is, more than anything else, an information filtering tool. We are constantly taking in "11 million bits per second" of information, but the conscious mind only processes 50 bits per second.

Do you realize what this means? This means we actively process only 1 bit out of every 220,000 that bombard us every second.

This means the only way we can function in the world is to actively filter out tons of data, constantly. If we didn't, we'd quickly devolve into a useless blob of inert bewilderment.

Spare a moment of sympathy for the Sisyphean burden our brain bears: every second, it must choose the 0.00045% of data it will consciously process, and block out the other 99.99955% of data coming at us. Every second! It does this every second!

Think about it: Choosing which of those 220,000 bits of data to intentionally focus on - and closing the gates to the other 219,999 things it could be focusing on - is a lot of work! Just imagine if you had 220,000 things flying at you every second and you needed to decide which single 1 you would focus on, repeatedly, forever. Oh, and don't forget that as far as your brian knows, every single second is a life or death decision.

Sheesh. Excuse me while I pause to catch my breath just thinking about it.

But here's the thing: this work goes overlooked and underapprecaited. We don't realize how much work is actually happening, thanks to the grace of evolution. Thanks to the dictates of evolution, we mercifully don't feel this work happening. It feels near automatic to us, creating the illusion it is effortless. If you did feel how much work this is, you'd again be rendered unable to function in any way to survive or procreate, which are the things your DNA really want you to do. But make no mistake, that work is happening, and it is affecting you.

Once you start meditating, you begin to appreciate how much work this is, and how it insidiously increases your irritability and anxiety while leaving you none the wiser.

Another cool thing about meditating is that it goes beyond revealing this truth to you: it also gives you the remedy at the same time! All in one neat little package. Blissfully cool, dude.

Meditation is your brain's hot tub (or nap, if you prefer)

Meditation is your reprieve from that filtering work. When you meditate, you tell your brain, "hey, it's cool. You can clock off from do this work for a bit. Put down your efforts. Lay down and rest. Just allow absolutely everything, no matter what it is, without any need to choose one thing over the other or respond in any way. Don't filter anything out. Just rest. Trust me, I got your back. I've cleared us a space where no tigers are coming; we are safe, and you can rest without risk. I'll take care of you, I promise you'll be alright. Just log off and allow everything. Everything is going to be okay."

It's like a hot tub for your brain. Your brain can finally rest. It can finally stop scrunching itself up and furrowing its folds to "Attenuate this!" "Enhance that!" "Reject this!" "Amplify that!" "Ignore this!" "Lock in on that!" Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth - like when you had to do line drills in basketball practice. Remember how fun those were?

"You have no idea the physical toll that three [attention filtering swaps] have on a person."

Yes, this is profoundly restful and refreshing for your brain. Yes, this pledge of security makes your brain feel calm and relaxed. Yes, your brain gains a certain confidence that everything will be alright as it learns it can lean on you for its safety, like a good friend.

Aside all that, it makes you better at thinking and living in ... well, all the ways. It turns out that the most complex and powerful object in the universe doesn't just "do nothing" even while it's resting; it simply can't help itself. It ends up putting its talents to better, more novel uses.

With this luxuriously peaceful, unstressed chilling time, your brain starts connecting things you never would have connected otherwise. It helps you connect ideas, resulting in more unique ones. It helps you connect to events and people from your past, recontextualizing them with love and enabling you to build a more integrated life story. Random memories will come flooding in from 25 years ago, reminding you of joys, sorrows, connections long past. It helps you connect to current relationships in your life: that one friend you loved dearly in college but now lives in Chicago will suddenly pop up in your mind, and you will internally glow at her surprising presence with you in this moment.

Meditating is basically defragmenting your brain. Meditation is finally allowing your file system to organize itself. It's allowing your brain to look into some of the hundreds (thousands? millions?) of internal browser tabs you've made it open in your daily goings-on, which it never got to actually look into because you pulled it off into the next one so fast. Meditation is your brain saying "whew, thank you. I finally have space to make sense of things. I finally have space to integrate my life into a more coherent narrative."

Herein lies the gorgeous paradox of meditation: it makes you more uniquely you by removing the borders of "your self" and returning you to swim in the "everything" that always simply is.

No, it's not for everyone. But if you're curious, it's worth giving it a try. Based on my own testing, I can say with certainty that my life, my work, my relationships - everything I am - would be much worse without it.