It was hard to believe that all of this was happening in the brain while the participant lay focusing on one negative belief. I thought back to my first ten-day courses in silence, and how my brain had hurt while spinning on similar concepts—until I strengthened my ability to observe those thoughts as moments that would always pass, just like my breath.
Goldin concluded that after two and a half months of a daily meditation practice while using any of the three strategies in stressful moments, the participants’ minds became more flexible, which Goldin coined “the WD-40 effect.” In other words, he saw that mindfulness practice made the mind more fluid and less stuck. He said it might lead to greater emotional awareness and allow people to become more emotionally flexible, which was exactly what I had witnessed for myself in my practice.
After a break, I explained to Goldin that I had experienced the same results. I told him that my boyfriend, who had practiced mindfulness meditation for almost four years and had initially benefited, ultimately had a hard time with meditation in the end. I told Goldin that I was a writer searching for answers, and that my boyfriend had taken his own life last January, and so I wondered if mindfulness meditation was really for everyone.
He spoke about skillfulness in a meditation practice, and how we needed to have the awareness to ask ourselves, “Do I have the cast iron mind space, or the ability to hold the experiences that come up when I do deeper meditation practice?” Ultimately, his answer was the one I had been searching for all along.
Later, the woman sitting next to me handed me a folded piece of paper and said to me, “This isn’t from me; it’s from another women who just left.” On the front it read, “To a writer who will write a book I will read.” I opened the note from this mystery woman and read, “I came tonight thinking I would take my life. I won’t now because of you. Thank you.” I gasped. Once again, I became reminded of how we were all interconnected. My quest for truth had taken my breath away.
