Meditation.
I’ve done it for years and prescribe it to every client I coach counsel, and guide. Although many of them have some experience with it, most look at me with a bit of trepidation at first, not the women, of course, but invariably it’s one of my guys.
Look, you can’t blame them. The “spiritual industry” has been co-opted by people who use words like yummy and juicy and drink coconut-infused, electrolyte, Zen water, talking about hydration like they’re stranded in the desert. Just call it “warm yoga” and turn down the damn heat!
Seriously, why is it that we have a name for too much masculinity called “toxic masculinity,” but “toxic femininity” isn’t a thing?
It is. And if we don’t reclaim spirituality from people like my 22-year-old yoga teacher, we’re gonna keep losing a lot of would-be spiritual dudes.
In her last class, she shared her doctoral dissertation on theodicy (why bad things happen to good people – like me being stuck in her hot-ass-class). She lost her phone on an airplane, that’s right, it was like Viktor Frankl’s Holocaust experience, just a bit different.
Don’t worry, she didn’t panic. Nope, not this time. In times past, yes, but now she had meditation. So, she decided to “ground down so she could rise up,” read some Glennon Doyle, then something about “breathe to believe, and manifest through her third eye a ride home that didn’t involve fossil fuels, all of which she was ready to receive.” I don’t know, I lost track when she started dropping Sanskrit phrases sounding about as natural as Kamala Harris describing to a bunch of school kids how we’re sending a rocket ship to the moon (no really, you have to watch it). All I remember her saying, “and that’s why I meditate.”
Um, no. That’s not meditation. That’s spiritual commercialization, or spiritual bastardization, or perhaps just spiritual masturbation.
Whatever you call it, that ain’t my meditation. OK, fine, maybe it is if you strip it down of all that noise and fluff and just get back to the raw and real essentials. If not, we’re gonna keep losing out on a lot of would-be spiritual fellas.
You want a real meditation, one that detoxifies that toxic masculinity everyone seems to decry.
Then look no further than a few nights ago to the NCAA Football Championship game.
Look, I don’t follow many sports, but I love college football. Although, as a Nebraska Cornhusker, these have been some pretty lean years, it doesn’t matter. This is the Super Bowl of college football.
Seriously, I won’t go so far as saying that watching college football is a spiritual experience, although I’m sure there are some celebrating Wolverines who would disagree. I will say that watching J.J. McCarthy, the Michigan quarterback, nearly brought tears to my eyes.
No, I’m not talking about the game. It was mediocre, a bit lackluster if you ask me. Although McCarthy delivered a solid performance on the field, it wasn’t what happened on the field, but off, which I found so spiritually touching.
With millions of people watching, just before the first snap, J.J. McCarthy found his way to the goalposts, where he sat cross-legged in silence. That’s it.
Wait, that’s it? I can hear you saying. Yes, and that’s a lot.
This is the young quarterback’s pre-game ritual, where he meditates for ten minutes. Millions of people are watching, mind you, and this guy sits and meditates? In front of them!
Look, I’ve been meditating forever and rarely do so publicly. It’s hard to be that exposed and vulnerable with all those eyes on you. When I was a rabbi in front of a few thousand people on the High Holy Days, I couldn’t do it. And I was paid to pray!
Try it sometime. I dare you.
Plop your ass down in a full lotus in the lobby of your office building and tell me how that feels.
Ask your buddies to join you in some alternate nostril breathing while chanting “om shanti, shanti” before your tee time, and let me know how that plays out.
What this dude did is bold, defiant, and, yes, courageous.
Sure, it takes balls to walk onto that field as QB1, knowing you will get pummeled all day. However, I’d argue that it takes even more courage to sit in meditation before the kickoff of the pinnacle game of the year. Moreover, this wasn’t the championship volleyball game (no offense; I know you volleyball players are badass). Rather, it’s football, arguably one of the most hyper-macho and toxic-masculine cultures known to man.
McCarthy meditating in this environment would like wearing a MAGA hat into my yoga studio. It just doesn’t happen (not without consequences).
To sit there and breathe. To sit there and be still. To sit there and be vulnerable, not caring what anyone says or thinks, knowing that thousands of video cameras are trained on you and if you pick your nose, even for a moment, that booger will be the most watched moment since Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. That’s brave.
Yes, we can discuss dozens of other aspects of what he was doing, how he was doing it, and why meditation works – and we will. But we’re starting here for a reason.
Meditation isn’t about what you wear. It doesn’t require any fancy mat. You don’t need instruction or the right mantra or any of that crap.
Meditation is what my teacher and mentor, Dr. Viktor Frankl, calls “the space between stimulus and response.”
“Between stimulus and response there is a space,” writes Frankl. “In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”
Meditation is finding that space between stimulus – shit happening and choosing how we will or will not respond. It’s easy to say when you’re alone, in a room, with Enya and incense and sixty-five spiritual tchotchkes dangling from every damn place and orifice.
However, it ain’t easy when the world is staring at you, literally staring at you. And it ain’t easy when you’re headed out to that football field knowing that eleven enormous, sweaty dudes with no necks amped up on Red Bull only have one goal over the next four hours – to destroy you.
And it ain’t easy when you are heading into your house to tell your wife you’ve been laid off.
And it ain’t easy when she tells you she wants a divorce.
And it ain’t easy when you are 90 days sober, and there you are, at the bar, in a stare-off with a drink.
And it ain’t easy when you get the diagnosis, or learn about your friend’s death, or when half-time’s over, yours, not the game, and you feel like you are falling behind in the score with time running out.
No, that ain’t easy, but that’s exactly when we need to find that space, make that space, and sit our ass down, and not move from that space.
No matter how uncomfortable, noisy, chaotic, terrifying or suffering-filled that space may be..
We need to sit there and breathe.
We need to sit there until we expand that space.
We need to sit there and be like J.J. McCarthy
And then, when the game’s begun, we need to rise up and respond – just like QB1
Though I’m not a Wolverine fan, I’m a fan of this newfound Wolverine-spirituality. There ain’t nothing toxic about it, and it’s a game I think many of my brothers are ready to play with me.
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Dr. Baruch “B” HaLevi is the founder of The Defiant Spirit: Counseling, Coaching, & Consulting and is launching his newest program, Man UPrising: Rising Up In The Second Half Of Life.
Contact him at B@defiantspirit.org if you are ready to play this game.
You can learn more at www.defiantspirit.org
