I'm Merritating In A Lack Of Mindfulness

How your mind may be an activity, not a thing

Dec 01, 2022

Here’s A New Word, An Idea, and A Question.

singing bowl, a red candle on a tapestry — Photo by Magic Bowls on Unsplash

A New Word

This is where I share a word that really should exist, one that should be in the dictionary.

Merritating

: when you begin meditating (with the best of intentions), but your mind is focused on making merry instead. It’s an irritating situation of non-meditation.

// I wasn’t focused and ended up merritating instead of building mindfulness.

An Idea

Who Am I?

If I believe that I am my job, my family, my relationships, my circumstances, or my body, I can’t resolve this age-old question.

We identify many items as a thing. We’ve created names for them and decided they are things.

We make things up.

That’s what we do as humans.

The body, the mind, and the universe are three ideas we‘ve made up and named. We did that to try and make sense of them.

We‘ve’ decided these 3 ideas are things.

But they’re really not.

Your Body

A body is an activity.

It’s an activity that doesn’t cease. Your body is constantly changing.
You experience your own body using your senses. Your body today is not the same experience as the body you experienced when you were a toddler. It’s not the same experience as your teenage body, and it won’t be the same when you are older, no matter how much you wish it would stay the same.
When you take your attention away from your body, it continues as an activity. It still changes, even if we don’t want it to. We can’t make it static. No matter what treatment, botox, or health food, our body keeps changing.

Your Mind

The mind is also an activity.

Your thoughts are constantly changing.
The thoughts and ideas you had when you were young are not the thoughts you have today. Yesterday’s thoughts are not the same as today’s. Thinking is an activity, and it doesn’t stop.
You don’t store your thoughts in your mind; they’re in your consciousness. If you bring up a memory of a holiday, where is that memory coming from? Does it come out of your physical body?
Is it possible to stop your thoughts? Perhaps in the deepest meditation, you can reach a point where your mind is not chattering away. But where are you then? You aren’t in your mind; you are outside of your mind. You are in your consciousness.

The Universe

The universe or the world is a process or activity.

It’s an activity that doesn’t stop. It’s always changing. It can’t be a thing because it’s an activity.
When you were young, the universe was different than it is now, and it will be different when you are older.
When you take your attention away from the universe, it keeps changing.

If these three ideas are activities, where do they exist?

Can an activity exist on its own? Take running, for example. As an activity, it doesn’t exist unless it is experienced.

Your body, your mind, and the universe are activities. You aren’t in them; they are in you.

Because your body is an experience, you can’t be in your body. Your body is in you. It’s an activity in you.

Your mind isn’t in your body. There’s no scientific evidence of a physical thing called a mind that lives in your body. The activity of thinking exists within your consciousness.

Here’s the one I grapple with the most:

The universe is an activity. It’s a process. You aren’t in the universe; the universe is in you.

“All experience is happening now.” Deepak

This article was inspired by listening to Deepak Chopra’s podcasts and Facebook live recordings. He’s very generous with his work, and you can find more online at DeepakChopra.com.