What To Do When the Doors of Perception Are Closed—The Magic in Meditation
- Kris J. Simpson
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
“Rehab is for Quitters.” I always grin when I hear that phrase. It’s a play on words, sarcastically combining an uncompromising attitude toward life with the reality of why people end up in rehab—to quit trying to destroy themselves. Ironically, it also implies why people have such difficulty getting sober, as their pride blocks any chance of receiving help.
I couldn’t solve that riddle while I was at a detox center, my temporary residence as I awaited the start of a 21-day drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. It was day 2 of 7, and the alcohol fog had begun to dissipate, revealing stark reality.
I was informed that an acupuncturist routinely visited the detox center and provided Auriculotherapy, or ear acupuncture. It is used to treat conditions affecting a patient's physical, mental, or emotional health; in this case, the treatment was to be combined with meditation.
I had never tried acupuncture, and I wasn’t particularly fond of needles, especially those that would be inserted into my ears. Although I had attempted meditation before my arrival, one of the many self-help undertakings I attempted, I found it to be challenging, unrewarding, and rather pointless. Who has time to sit quietly for twenty minutes and despairingly try to think of nothing? But when you’re desperate, you will try anything.
The acupuncturist seated us in a quiet room and inserted needles into our ear lobes. It was a strange experience, but it didn’t involve much pain. He then played some very soothing music featuring the sounds of water, nature, and woodwind instruments. Aside from the music, there was complete silence as the acupuncturist left the room and said he would return in 15 minutes.
Sitting in the chair with my eyes closed, I began to relax, and my mind slowed down. My thoughts became clearer as I began to relax. Stubbornness and defensiveness were my mind’s default mode, but they began to weaken, allowing me to confront the truth of why I was there and the impact my insanity was having on my mind, body, and soul. More importantly, I realized the kind of hell I was creating for my family.
I began to think about my son, who was only five at the time. I started to feel a deep shame within me, right down to my bones.
My first (successful) meditation may not sound like a pleasant experience. Still, it was a breakthrough that opened the first of many doors of awareness. I likened it to the experiences of Author Aldous Huxley, described in his book The Doors of Perception, where he recounts his psychedelic experience on mescaline. Although I wasn’t under the influence of any plant medicines, I later learned that very similar changes occur in the brain with psychedelics as they do with meditation. Both are paths to self-discovery and transformation.
In his book, Huxley stated, “We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone.”
Thus, these journeys are arduous and must be undertaken alone.
Looking back, I don’t know if acupuncture helped me with my first breakthrough; often, I think it was a needed pseudo-effect since I wasn’t open to meditation, but back then, if you told me that medical needles were going to cure me, I would probably have believed you.
It wasn’t a cure for alcohol dependency by any means, but it did open the doors of self-awareness that led to many years of sobriety. You could say that meditation replaced my dependency on alcohol; I became reliant on it.
Suppose I had been born in a different time and civilization, I might not have been so resistant to meditation, which has a long history and is embedded in many ancient cultures' traditions and religions. It has also been seen globally through shamanic practices that use trance-like states to alter consciousness.
The first evidence of meditative practices appeared in the Indus Valley around 1500 BCE and later in the literature of the Vedic and Hindu traditions. Buddhism subsequently refined this in 500 BCE as the path to enlightenment, focusing on mindfulness (Vipassana) and concentration (Samatha).
At the same time, in China, Taoism emphasized stillness (wu wei) and balancing the dualities (yin and yang). Christian mystics, Jewish Kabbalists, and Sufi Muslims also use prayer or chanting as a form of meditation.
It revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, with some Indian yogis coming to America, including Paramahansa Yogananda, considered the "Father of Yoga in the West," who introduced millions of Americans to meditation and yoga. Yogananda is the author of The Autobiography of a Yogi, a favourite book of Steve Jobs and Elvis Presley.
It also entered the medical domain when Jon Kabat-Zinn developed MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), which uses techniques such as body scanning to reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. His approach was secular, removing any religious ties and helping it become mainstream.
Nowadays, in many circles, practicing some form of meditation is considered commonplace. People use it to manifest success in their domains, while many others adopt it as a health and lifestyle balancing tool. It has also been popularized by numerous celebrities endorsing it, such as Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, and the late Kobe Bryant. Meditation also has a significant presence in the digital space and is projected to become a 37 billion dollar industry by 2035.
So, how best to describe meditation?
Stillness is one way, and in our society, keeping our minds and bodies still for a few minutes is extremely challenging. It won't get any easier as we invent new technologies that insist we keep up the radical pace we have been on since the Industrial Revolution.
And what happens when we are still? Well, either we go to sleep or enter a brain state that combines being sleepy while feeling alert simultaneously, which is quite a miraculous feeling.
You might think you can achieve the same effect with a few glasses of wine and have a much more jovial time than sitting alone in a quiet room, and I can’t blame anyone for considering this method over meditation.
However, it’s a very different sensation. While both can bring you to a place of the present, you don’t feel numb or free from inhibitions during meditation, as copious amounts of alcohol will have you feeling. Sarcasm aside, meditation can make you feel incredibly alert and alive while relaxing you at the same time.
We also have the opportunity to become self-aware—aware of our thoughts and feelings, which shape our experience of being. For most of our waking hours, many of us, including myself, try to suppress our emotions and self-conscious thoughts, attempting to outthink them through rational mental processes. We know that too much self-reflection can slow us down, and nobody wants to be left behind.
To understand the changes in brain states while meditation, we can use the brain wave model, which describes five types of waves or electrical signals characterized by their frequency and measured in Hertz (HZ) through EEG (electroencephalography.
Delta waves (0.5-4 Hz):
Slowest and largest amplitude waves, often associated with deep sleep and dreamless sleep.
Theta waves (4-8 Hz):
Present during lighter sleep, meditation, and when processing memories, these waves are also linked to creativity and intuition.
Alpha waves (8-12 Hz):
Occur when you are relaxed but awake, such as when daydreaming or meditating, and are associated with a state of calmness.
Beta waves (13-30 Hz):
Found when you are actively thinking, focused, and engaged in mental activities.
Gamma waves (30-100 Hz):
Fastest brain waves, linked to cognitive processing, memory, and learning.
*Source – Google Generative AI
Meditation has been shown to increase alpha and theta brainwaves, providing a clearer mind and alleviating feelings of anxiety.
More experienced meditators can exhibit more gamma waves, resulting in a heightened sense of awareness and cognitive processing. This enables you to access your creative intuition for problem-solving and artistic endeavours.
The paradoxical feeling of sleepiness and alertness arises from a combination of brain region suppression and engagement.
The Default Mode Network (DMN) and the amygdala brain regions are suppressed during meditation. The DMN consists of brain regions that are active while you are daydreaming or in a wakeful rest state, often when you are ruminating and experiencing negative self-chatter. With this network suppressed, anxiety can decrease. The amygdala, also known as the lizard brain, is part of our ancient limbic system, which controls the fight, flight, or freeze response to situations that evoke fear. With the amygdala suppressed, we can create distance from fear-based thoughts, thereby decreasing levels of anxiety. For the record, our family tree doesn’t trace us back to any reptiles, but it is an appropriate metaphor.
Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and hippocampus are all activated, which allows for greater attention, memory, self-regulation, emotional insight, and emotional balance.
Psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist's research on brain hemispheres demonstrates how meditation can balance our left and right hemispheres, fostering greater intellect and enhancing our rational faculties and intuition. In his book, The Master and His Emissary, he emphasizes the significance of practices such as meditation, as our Western society tends to rely heavily on the left hemisphere, which focuses on acquiring and retaining material possessions while suppressing the right brain, which contains much of our intuitive faculties.
This is where the magic happens, and on average, it can take as little as 10-20 minutes.
I prefer a 20-minute meditation and mainly use a Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, which uses repetitive mantras to calm the nervous system and evoke the desired brain state. Transcendental Meditation (TM) was developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s, building upon traditional Vedic practices. It was popularized by celebrities such as the English rock band, The Beatles, who met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1967 and took courses which helped them with songwriting.
I combine TM with a gratitude practice, which I call the 4-B’s of Being Present, which was also featured in my book, Fruition—A Transformative Journey of Self-Awareness.
“Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance.” — Siddhartha Gautama
So, how long should you meditate? Well, if you are 20, 25 minutes seems to be the sweet spot for me and just happens to correlate with research done on mental focus and productivity by Francesco Cirilo, who created the Pomodoro Technique and uses 25-minute work cycles to improve productivity and performance. We do not need to be like the Buddah who according to Buddhist texts, meditated for seven weeks or 49 days under a Bodhi tree until he reached enlightenment.
For beginners, I always suggest starting with guided meditations, which you can find for free online or on apps like Headspace. It might provide a better experience for you, one that you will continue with if you are guided initially. Once you get a feel for it, you can move on to freestyle, which is what I prefer. In the past, I also participated in group meditations, which I found beneficial.
One common element found in nearly all forms of meditation is a focus on the breath. It is something we can control, and bringing your attention to it not only pulls you away from the uncomfortable feelings of sitting alone with your thoughts (while doing nothing about them) but also helps our physiology downregulate the nervous system. In my opinion, breath work has the, albeit very temporary, same effect as alcohol or medications prescribed to decrease anxiety or elevate mood. If you want to pursue this path, I would suggest Wim Hof, a hard-to-label Dutchman. He also has an app called the Wim Hof Method.
If you’re thinking of trying meditation, or trying it again, the best advice I can offer is: JUST WAIT FOR FIVE FREAKIN MINUTES!
If you’re a beginner, you will undoubtedly find it difficult to sit quietly for even ten minutes with your thoughts. As you feel the urge to jump out of your seat, I hope you hear my words ringing in your ears: “JUST WAIT FIVE FREAKIN MINUTES!”
Typically, for the first five minutes, I am very restless. My meditation usually occurs in the morning or midday, so I still have lots on my mind and many things to do. Still, if I can sit quietly with my ear protection on (which makes me look like Mickey Mouse… but that’s ok), and my eyes closed, and just barely hold on for five minutes, then I feel like a long-distance runner who, after a torturous few miles of running, gets their second wind and what was difficult now feels effortless.
Meditation isn’t hard; what’s hard is breaking behavioural patterns, silencing negative self-talk, regulating your emotions, decreasing anxiety, increasing well-being, and expressing yourself with humility—that is truly challenging. Although meditation might not be for everyone, I believe it’s something that everyone should be introduced to, since the costs are negligible for a simple practice that can be life-changing.