The Most Important Word in Meditation

Having practiced meditation for around twenty years now, the most important word I’ve learned about it is: Intuitive.

Here’s what I mean.

Trying to be mindful is a lot of work. You have to remember, all the time, to notice your body, notice what you’re saying, notice your surroundings, notice notice notice. 

What’s more, I’ve got a rebellious streak. Nothing major – I’m pretty square in a lot of ways, actually. But I don’t like being told what to do or how to behave. Trying to follow rules – even if they’re rules I believe in, like ‘treat others as you’d like to be treated’ –tends to grate on my nerves. Worse, when I fail to obey the rules successfully, I often indulge my own prodigious talent for judging myself. Ouch.

But this is why I love mindfulness and meditation: eventually, you don’t have to try, or remember to do it, or follow any rules. 

That’s because the changes that come from regular meditation eventually become intuitive. Over time, meditation changes your brain so that your gut responses, impulses, and preferences change. You change. And, over time, a more mindful and kinder attitude develops naturally.

The key is the word “intuitive.” Intuitive means, as my Yiddish-speaking grandmother would say, in your kishkes. In your guts. You really get it. You “grok” it, in the language of Robert Heinlein’s masterpiece Stranger in a Strange Land.

And once you’ve really grokked something, you don’t have to remind yourself to do it. It becomes second nature.

Now, as science nerds know, two decades of data on neuroplasticity supports this. “Intuitive” is a subjective experience; what’s happening on a physical level is that there are more neural connections in the pre-frontal cortex (and many other changes). Neurons that fire together, wire together. 

You can’t observe that process directly. But experientially, this has been known for millennia.

For example, in some Buddhist traditions, enlightenment is defined as the “intuitive knowledge of the four noble truths.” There’s that word intuitive again. What does it mean? Well, I can tell you the four noble truths right now: suffering is a thing, it’s caused by clinging to the good and pushing away the bad, but it can be helped, and there’s a well-trodden path to doing so.

Zap! Are you enlightened now? Probably not (please email us if you are), because this is just the intellectual knowledge of the four noble truths, not the intuitive knowledge. It’s not part of your wiring yet.

But when it is, the way to sustainable happiness becomes part of who you are. It’s pretty amazing to see.

Moreover, because this transformation takes place on an intuitive level, you don’t have to keep track of it all the time. Was it a “good sit” or a “bad sit”? Was today a more mindful day or a less mindful one? 

In a way, it doesn’t matter. Your only job is to show up, do the meditation, and be mindful. But you don’t have to track how well it’s going. You don’t have to will yourself to be happier; in fact, you can’t. The process happens on its own, gradually, mostly unconsciously, as long as you keep showing up. I find this fact to be very relaxing.

There is one catch, however.

Intuitive change takes time. The mind has to see the same stuff... again and again and again. You’ll notice small benefits immediately, but the bigger ones do take a while to unfold. There will be ups and downs. It takes a while.

Of course, it would be simpler if someone could wave a magic wand, say “you are okay just as you are” and all traces of imposter syndrome, self-judgment, and inner-criticism would simply vanish in a puff of smoke. But it’s just not how we’re wired. Intuitions are inherited, learned over decades, and reinforced by society. They take time to shift. 

Let me finish with a story of that happening to me.

One time, around fifteen years ago, I was leading a meditation session on a retreat. At that time, I was meditating with my eyes open, which meant that, as I sat at the front of the room, I was looking out at sixty-odd people sitting silently in meditation.

Suddenly, someone shifted their posture.

Now, if you’ve meditated in a group, you know this is Not What You’re Supposed To Do. You’re meant to sit still, both for your own benefit – mindfulness is about being with whatever comes up, not arranging the conditions for what we think will make us happy – and out of consideration for others.

So, not surprisingly, when someone audibly moves in their seat, often an instinctive reaction arises: Ugh, can’t they be quiet! How distracting. (I know, I know, in meditation, we’re training to be less judgmental and more accepting. But people are people.)

This time, though, when I saw the person shift her position, the actual first thought that popped into my head was Oh, I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s not too upset by having to move.

Whoa!

This was, as the saying goes, a game-changer. I wasn’t having these compassionate thoughts because I read a book by Sharon Salzberg and was trying to act more compassionate. I was having these compassionate thoughts because that was actually my intuitive reaction!

It was a small moment, but it’s stuck with me all these years, and it’s given me a kind of hope, even amid difficult times like these. 

I didn’t grow up warm or touchy-feely. I grew up with family arguments, the debate team at school, and the rebellious streak I mentioned earlier. In fact, a lot of my meditation practice has been about making peace with who I am, not an idealized version of how I’m supposed to be.

So, if I can actually respond with compassion, not because I ought to but because it’s actually how I feel, on a natural, intuitive level… maybe there’s hope for other folks as well. If I can do it, you can do it. 

That little insight helps me get through the day. Maybe the year.