It was a lie. The truth was, I didn’t want my thoughts to pass. I had so much to prove to the world. I wanted to get a worldwide book deal.

2. Mindfulness meditation for
your exact life stage

4. I started mindfulness meditation in 2008, sitting
cross-legged to watch the arising and passing of my
thoughts. It was a lie. The truth was, I didn’t want
my thoughts to pass. I had so much to prove to the
world. I wanted to get a worldwide book deal. I
wanted to become a CEO.

5. I wanted to backpack around the world. For
months, I struggled until I read more and switched
to a concentration based meditation approach.
Immediately, something clicked. I’d meditate for
only 30 minutes but would feel the effects for the
rest of the day. I wasn’t checking Facebook and
Quora in the middle of work, I didn’t get up every
five minutes to get coffee, I was sharper

6. more productive, in everything. Now many years
later, my meditation practice has changed again to
mindfulness meditation. And that’s how meditation
works. Don’t get sucked into writing in gratitude
journals and burning incense sticks and repeating
“I’m complete”/”I love myself” affirmations if you
aren’t there yet. Change how you meditate based
on where you are in life as below

7. How to meditate based on your life stage
I find the most complete definition of life in The
Yoga Sutras: first, evolution, then
involution. Like an eagle, first you flap your wings
high, as high as you can flap them, then you bring
them down gracefully. How do you know which
phase you’re in?

8. Evolution (growth): You’re thirsty for
experiencing the world to the fullest: travel,
advancement, success, family, starting your own
company, meeting new people, getting new
perspectives etc.

9. Involution (silence): The world starts to lose its
pull. Something always seems missing even in
moments of great achievement. You crave a
deeper, more permanent reality, but not in a static
depressive way, more as an active quest.

10. In 2008, I wanted to be the CEO of Procter &
Gamble. Now, I want to get nowhere at all, just
dissolve myself in my work everyday, so I have no
sense of self left. Then, I took a sabbatical and
back-packed across South America and Central
Asia, hungry to see every notable place in every
country

11. Now when Kerry and I travel, you’ll have to pay us
to see a museum or a cathedral. We spent most of
2013 in forest ashrams and silent meditation
retreats. Then, I was an extrovert. Now, I have
nothing to say, no opinions to offer, and talk more
about life with Leela, our 20 month old daughter and
Coconut, our pup, than with real people

12. You change and your meditation practice
should reflect where you are. Concentration-
based meditation approaches (mantra,
image, breath) are excellent for the evolution
or growth phases of life. You learn focus,
concentration, single-mindedness, everything
you need to achieve your goals in this world
with excellence

13. Insight meditation approaches (vipassana,
mindfulness) work for the involution phase as they
help you observe how transient your obsessive
worldly thought patterns are and break free from
them.

14. Defining types: the pyramid of meditative
experience
In every ashram or meditation retreat, you meet
people who’re in neither evolution nor involution
stage. They’re stuck. They don’t like their jobs, the
credit card bills are piling, their parents didn’t love
them, their fiancée doesn’t understand them, their
pet parrot died. Learning meditation is a noble
idea but know this:

15. Meditation will not help with personal drama. The
foundation of meditation is morality or love.
Without a basic level of love for yourself (and a
result, others), you’ll never shift focus away from
yourself, the basic requisite of meditation. Over
time, your meditation practice should evolve like
this

17. Of course, it’s never as simplistic as this. Each
stage has stages within it and you keep going up
and down the ladder but a quick, broad definition
as below:

18. Morality Morality is basic self-love and love for
others so you’re approaching meditation from a
position of some mental stability. You can learn
morality by leveraging the abundant self-help
industry resources–“love yourself”, “practice
gratitude”, “follow your dreams,” kind of stuff or
skip it entirely if you don’t have any personal
drama that needs resolution

19. Concentration Based Meditation
Once you’re not obsessed with yourself, you’re
ready to start concentration-based meditation. The
basic construct here is that you’re training your
mind to go from scattered to one pointed by
concentrating on an object external to your mind,
be it your breath,

20. mantra, an image, or a deity. Within six months
times of practicing concentration based
meditation, you should see a tangible difference in
your performance in the world. In my case, I was
suddenly able to calculate numbers faster than
before among other things so I knew my focus
and attention was improving (Detailed
concentration-based meditation instructions here).

21. Insight Based Meditation or Mindfulness
Meditation With a one pointed mind, you become
mindful of reality as it is—the constant, helpless
arising and passing away of thoughts. Anger
arises, then disappears. Lust arises, then
disappears. Happiness arises, then disappears.
Now, when I sit down and meditate, here is what
happens

22. A stray thought arises: “I want my book to be a
bestseller”, I make a mental note. The thought
goes away. Then, “I should take up that job”,
noted, gone, “Jason shouldn’t have said that”,
noted, gone, “Leela’s cough medicine is in my
coat”, noted, gone

23. You’re just aware, observing this constant arising
and passing of thoughts without judgment, without
getting sucked into them and reacting to them, an
understanding that slowly creeps into every phase
of your life. (Detailed insight-based meditation
instructions here).

24. Enlightenment
Months, years, perhaps lifetimes of insight
meditation later, a deep, visceral realization arises
that all that exists is the arising and passing of
thoughts. There’s no permanent self at all. Just
selfless phenomena—happiness, anger, love,
sorrow, desire, lust,

25. everything you experience is passing phenomena.
Your sense of static self, the “I”, the experiencer,
dissolves, so that there’s no difference between
the observer and the observed. Everything is just
one

26. Fill in the blank with God, Brahman, Shunyata,
nothingness, Purusha, Tao, consciousness,
energy, awareness, whatever your mystical
tradition says. They’re all fingers pointing to the
same moon though I like Nagarjuna’s definition
the best since it acknowledges the un-
acknowledgeable nature of the ultimate reality: “it
both exists and does not exist; it neither exists nor
doesn’t exist.”

27. I meditate. Why am I still not happy?
Have you truly internalized these two realities of
the human experience?

28. Impermanence: Every thought, every emotion,
every experience that arises will pass. Are you still
trying to hold on to the pleasant ones?
Incompleteness: The relative pre-enlightenment
reality we’re living in will always be incomplete.
Are you falsely assuming a baby, a new friend, a
job, or a bestselling book will complete you?

29. Without acceptance of the limitations of the
human experience, you’ll keep chasing the infinite
in a finite world rather than looking for
completeness within. That’s why most self-help
books fail. No gratitude diary and affirmation
practice can mask the truth of our incompleteness.
Nor should they because a thoughtful inquiry
about happiness starts from accepting that
discontent.

30. In summary, what is the purpose
of life?

32. Evolution, then involution. Be in each phase
completely. Push the boundaries of experience in
the growth phase. Turn inward and experience
deep silence when going within. Meditating is your
companion in both stages. Will you join me in
maintaining a steady practice in 2016?

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