Dan Harris - 10% Happier - How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story

I think I know what’s going on here. This is something called “choiceless awareness.” I’d heard the teachers talk about it. It’s some serious behind-the-waterfall action. Once you’ve built up enough concentration, they say, you can drop your obsessive focus on the breath and just “open up” to whatever is there. And that’s what’s happening right now. Each “object” that “arises” in my mind, I focus on with what feels like total ease and clarity until it’s replaced by something else. I’m not trying; it’s just happening. It’s so easy it feels like I’m cheating. Everything’s coming at me and I’m playing it all like jazz. And I don’t even like jazz.

Back pain.

Funny lights you see behind your eyes when they’re closed real tight.

Murderous itch on my calf.

Knee. Knee, knee, knee.

Itch, knee, back, itch, itch, itch, knee, airplane, tree rustling, breeze on skin, knee, knee, itch, knee, lights, back.

Then I hear a loud rumble approaching. It’s getting closer.

Now it’s super loud, like the fleet of choppers coming over the horizon in that scene from Apocalypse Now.

Now it’s right in front of me.

I open my eyes. There’s a hummingbird hovering just a few feet away.

No shit.

The next sitting is even more exhilarating. I’m back in the meditation hall now, and I’m really doing it. Whatever comes up in my mind, it feels like I’m right there with it. At times, I still find myself looking forward to the session ending. But when those thoughts come up, I just note them and move on.

It’s like a curtain has been lifted. It’s not that anything in the passing show is so amazing in itself; it’s the sheer rapidity of it all, the objects arising and passing, ricocheting off one another with such speed. And there’s something about the act of being present and awake in this way that produces a gigantic blast of serotonin.

Hands feel stiff.

Bird.

Feet numb.

Images of all those creepy baby faces in Renaissance art.

Heart pounding.

Back. Bird. Hands. Feet. Heart. Back, back, bird, feet, bird, bird, bird. Feet, hands, feet, feet, feet.

Hands. Hands. Back, back, back. Heart, bird, feet. Feet. Bird.

Feetbirdfeetbirdbackfeetfeetfeetheart.

Bird .

Bird .

Bird .

Old lady in the front row produces an epic burp.

It’s like I’d spent the past five days being dragged by my head behind a motorboat and now, all of a sudden, I’m up on water skis. This is an experience of my own mind I’ve never had before—a front-row seat to watch the machinery of consciousness. It’s thrilling, but it also produces some very practical insights. I get a real sense of how a few slippery little thoughts I might have in, say, the morning before I go to work—maybe after a quarrel with Bianca, a story I read in the paper, or an imagined dialogue with my boss—can weasel their way into the stream of my mind and pool in unseen eddies, from which they hector and haunt me throughout the day. Thoughts calcify into opinions, little seeds of discontent blossom into bad moods, unnoticed back pain makes me inexplicably irritable with anyone who happens to cross my path.

I’m remembering that time when my friend Kaiama stumped me by asking how anyone can be in the present moment when it’s always slipping away. It’s so obvious to me now: the slipping away is the whole point. Once you’ve achieved choiceless awareness, you see so clearly how fleeting everything is. Impermanence is no longer theoretical. Tempus fugit isn’t just something you inscribe in books and clocks. And that, I realize, is what this retreat is designed to do.

Having been dragged kicking and screaming into the present, I’m finally awake enough to see what I could never see in my regular life. Apparently there’s no other way to get here than to engage in the tedious work of watching your breath for days. In a way, it makes sense. How do you learn a sport? You do drills. A language? Conjugate endless verbs. A musical instrument? Scales. All the misery of repetition, the horror of sitting here in this hall with these zombies suddenly seems totally worth it.

Walking meditation is starting to click for me as well. I’m out on the patio in front of the retreat hall, deconstructing every step. Lift, move, place. My feet feel nice on the warm stones. Midway through one of the endless round-trips to nowhere, even though it’s technically a violation of Goldstein’s rule against using walking meditation as “recess,” I stop and stare at three baby birds perched on the ledge overlooking the courtyard, screeching their heads off as their mom zips to and fro, popping food into their mouths. I’m transfixed. A few other people have joined me, gaping at this little show. I feel incredibly happy—and I keep telling myself not to cling to it.

When I walk back into the hall for the next sit, I see Spring up at the altar. Right, it’s metta time. I lie down, and we start in, directing the four phrases at ourselves.

May you be happy. May you be safe. Etc.

Then Spring tells us to pick our benefactor. I pick my mother. I summon a mental picture of her from a few weeks ago, when she and I were taking care of my two-year-old niece, Campbell. We had just given Campbell a bath, and all three of us were lying on the bed. My mom started singing Campbell’s favorite song, M. Ward’s “For Beginners,” which Campbell referred to as “the uh-huh song,” because the chorus includes a lot of “uh-huhs.” I’m able to generate a real felt-sense of my mom. I’m enjoying the sweet absurdity of a grandmother having memorized the words to an indie rock song. As I picture her, with her neatly coiffed, short gray hair, and her smart, casual clothing, something entirely unexpected overcomes me: a silent sob wells up in my chest—with all the inevitability of a sneeze.

There’s no stopping this. Tears rush down the sides of my recumbent face, streaming down my temples in hot streams that get thicker with each successive wave of emotion. The water is pooling behind my ears.

“Now pick a dear friend,” says Spring. She’s back to using her funny voice but it’s not bothering me at all.

I go with Campbell. It couldn’t be more convenient; she’s already right here in this scene I’m conjuring in such vivid detail. She’s propped up against the pillow on the bed. I have one of her little feet in my hand and am looking at her sweet face with her mischievous eyes, which are eagerly lapping up all the attention my mom and I are giving her.

I’m crying even harder now. It’s not an out-loud sobbing, but there’s no way the people around me aren’t noticing this, because I’m sniffling and breathing choppily.

The blubbering lasts right up until when the bell rings. As I walk out of the hall, I’m grateful for the rule against eye contact; otherwise, this would be very embarrassing. I emerge into the daylight, walk down the hill a ways, and stand in the scrub grass under the warm afternoon sun. Amid the crashing waves of bliss, I feel a gentle undertow of doubt. Is this bullshit, or the real deal? Maybe it’s just the result of five days of unbroken agony finally relieved? Like that joke where the guy is banging his head against the wall—when asked why he’s doing it, he says, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

But no, the waves of happiness just keep coming. Everything is so bright, so crisp. I feel great. Not just great—unprecedentedly great. I’m aware of the urge to cling to this feeling, to wring out every last bit of flavor, like with a tangy piece of gum, or a tab of ecstasy. But this is not the synthetic, always-just-about-to-end buzz of drugs. This is roughly a thousand times better. It’s the best high of my life.