Have you ever noticed how the thoughts that torture you most aren’t even yours?
They’re hand-me-downs. Scripts you inherited from parents who inherited them from their parents. Cultural programming that told you productivity equals worth. That rest is laziness. That your value comes from how much you can do for everyone else. You’ve been running on these thoughts for so long you forgot they’re just thoughts. Not truth. Just noise.
Most people think meditation is about becoming calm. It’s not. It’s about seeing the machinery. The way your brain spins the same stories on repeat. The way it reaches for distraction the second discomfort shows up. The way it convinces you that scrolling Instagram or buying another thing or staying busy will make you feel better when really you’re just running from yourself.
I spent years doing that. Chasing experiences. MDMA, plant medicine, skydiving. Anything to feel something other than the hollow ache of not knowing who I was underneath all the performance. Those experiences cracked me open. But they didn’t teach me how to stay open. That’s what meditation did. It taught me that the version of me chasing dopamine hits wasn’t broken. She was just afraid to sit still long enough to meet herself.
“My practice evolved to be able to observe my body wanting to run away, observe my body wanting to do all of these things and just be like, okay, well that’s happening too. Just like the thoughts are happening, the body’s having stuff. We can see it happening and then we can bring our attention elsewhere. We can see it happening, feel it happening and not follow it. Doing that brought incredible sense of stability and stillness and strength and capability in my life that I don’t need to be pulled by my thoughts and feelings.”
The Vedic traditions figured this out 3,000 years ago. Your brain is plastic. The grooves that make you anxious, scattered, unable to focus? They’re not permanent. Every time you notice your mind wandering and bring it back, you’re literally rewiring neural pathways. You’re strengthening your prefrontal cortex. The part of your brain responsible for impulse control, organization, emotional regulation. The part that lets you choose where your attention goes instead of being dragged around by every urge and thought.
But most people quit before they get there because sitting with yourself is uncomfortable as hell. Your brain will throw every excuse at you. This isn’t working. You’re doing it wrong. You should be doing something productive. And if you believe those thoughts, you’ll never get to the other side. The side where you realize those thoughts have been running your life. And you can just let them go.
Studies show meditation reduces anxiety and depression as effectively as SSRIs for many people. It improves focus, slows cognitive decline, even changes the structure of your brain. But the real shift isn’t in the data. It’s in what happens when you stop needing external validation to feel okay. When you stop filling every second with noise because silence doesn’t scare you anymore. When you realize fulfillment isn’t something you find out there. It’s what’s left when you stop running from yourself.
The Gnostic text Gospel of Thomas says, “If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom.” That’s what meditation is. Fasting from the constant noise. The dopamine addiction. The performance. And what you find underneath isn’t some perfect enlightened self. It’s just you. The version that existed before life told you who to be. And she’s been waiting for you to stop long enough to notice.
Today our guest is Ariel Garten, neuroscientist, psychotherapist, and founder of Muse, the brain-sensing meditation headband. She’s lived with undiagnosed ADD her whole life and used meditation and neuroscience to literally rewire her brain.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
• Whether mystical states are just neurons firing or something science can’t explain yet
• Why human morality keeps evolving and what that means for the stories we call truth
• How to use technology to train your focus without losing the magic of transcendence
Links from the episode:
• Show Notes: mindlove.com/422
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• https://choosemuse.com/mindlove
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