A Skeptic's Path to Creative Enlightenment: What I Learned from 10 Years of Daily Meditation Practice

They say sitting is the new smoking. Unless you're meditating.

November 9, 2013
Reservoir, Victoria (Australia)

Every creative journey has its origin story. Mine began late in 2013, with a giggling man in white robes doing an uncanny Yoda impression¹. He’d insert a painfully long pause every few words: “Whatever we put our attention on…will grow stronger…in our life.”

I’m watching his warped image on an old television, the VHS tape so well-worn that the audio crackles and distorts his thick Indian accent. But the message cuts through: the mind is an infinite canvas, and turning your attention inward is like learning to use a new set of creative tools.

The man, I later learned, was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His photo hangs on the classroom wall next to a child’s crayon drawing of what appears to be a dog sitting in a small puddle of shit.

The classroom is tucked away in The Maharishi School in Reservoir, Victoria. Sophie and I took the 40-minute train from Melbourne, seeking something more substantial than YouTube tutorials or meditation apps. In 2013, finding actual meditation teachers in Melbourne was like finding a quiet place to take a call in Manhattan—theoretically possible but wildly difficult.

We were each given a secret Sanskrit mantra, told about the ways to practice meditation, and sent on our way. We returned a few times for check-ins, but by the third session, we had the idea. We never returned to that school on Dundee Street. (And no, not all streets in Australia are named after crocodile-hunting celebrities. But most are.)

Year 0:

July 4, 2014
Honolulu, HI

They don’t tell you about the ‘mental purge’ phase: old memories, new insights, scary ones that wake you at 4 a.m. They all bubble up as the practice flushes your mind-colon. Tonight, I woke from a nightmare featuring that grinning dog in shit. It could be jetlag or the airline food, but I definitely meditated before bed—a mistake, as it turns out.

The lesson here: meditate in the morning or early afternoon. Like coffee, it’s best avoided at night unless you want your subconscious to stage a high school play of “The Shining.”

Year 1:

November 9, 2015
Inwood, NY

Settling into New York has left little time for a daily practice. The only free block is my 20 minutes between 59th Street and 125th on the A train, where I can close my eyes and meditate (or, more often, drool) without attracting much attention.

I’m using my clarity after meditation as the protected time to complete any creative work I have for the day. Mornings are better. Sleep is good. I’m getting slightly less reflexively pissed off at the irksome gut prods of day-to-day life in New York City.

It’s around this time I notice I can’t meditate in an Uber, which is still pretty new to NYC.

Year 2:

November 16, 2016
East Village, NY

I’m reading about “Greater Orderliness of Brain Functioning” and EEG coherence. Charts from the 70s show that for a 2-week meditator, coherence increases during meditation, while a 2-year meditator maintains coherence even after meditation ends.

Reference I: The Coherence Spectral Array (COSPAR) and its application to the study of spatial ordering in the EEG, Proceedings of the San Diego Biomedical Symposium 15: 1976. Reference II: Electrophysiologic characteristics of respiratory suspension periods occurring during the practice of the Transcendental Meditation programme, Psychosomatic Medicine 46: 267-276, 1984.

This is all very… scientific. I’m still uneasy with the ‘religious’ side of the practice, looking for something more cerebral, less granola-scented.

And I still can’t meditate in an Uber.

Year 3:

November 9, 2017
Woodstock, NY

I take a car to a cabin in the woods on top of a remote mountain in the dead of winter (ooer.) I finally have time to sit and read Sam Harris’ “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion,” a book I’d purchased and left untouched on my nightstand for two years. It was like someone hacked into my brain and addressed every question I had. This book became my Sword of Gryffindor in key form, unlocking doors I’d been kicking at for years.

With it, I finally let go of Transcendental Meditation and shifted to Vipassana and Dzogchen—a shift I’d been on the brink of for months. My creative output booms for about four months while it’s cold out. For some reason, it subsides when the sun comes back.

Year 4:

June 4, 2018
Hudson, NY

My creative output is insane. I’m churning out New Yorker cartoons, illustrations for MAD, and caricature commissions— I think I’ve become more creatively productive than any year of my life. I’ve developed the ability to recognize thoughts as a modification of my condition; the unstructured and luminous clarity of awareness, where I can drop all my efforts to try and control my thoughts, and just observe them passing by. I don’t identify with any thoughts I don’t want to. The space left allows great ideas to bubble up in their place.

My mindfulness practice has cured my worst FOMO addiction. I even flirt with the idea of deleting all my social media accounts but settle for removing the apps from my phone.
(Editors note: I did end up doing this in 2021)

Year 5:

June 5, 2019
East Village, NY

Mindfulness has become the favorite buzzword of every tea and yoga brand. Yet, there’s a depth beyond the commercialized veneer. Study upon study on mindfulness show it modulates pain, mitigates anxiety and depression, and improves cognitive function, even changing gray matter density in regions linked to memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.

My mind is clearer, my thoughts more organized—almost like a brain defrag

Year 6:

September 20, 2019
East Village, NY

Sam Harris released an app called Waking Up last year. I’d already tried Headspace, Insight Timer, and Calm, but Sam’s app, especially the ‘Theory’ section, sparked a new level of understanding for me. I dove in mind-first.

I still can’t meditate in a fucking Uber. Or a Lyft.

Year 7:

March 20, 2020
East Village, NY

Let’s not talk about this year, shall we?

Year 8:

March 21, 2021
Chelsea, NY

I publish a piece for the New Yorker with my pal Ginny Hogan called “Wrong Ways to Meditate“. It goes viral. I begin to dig deeper into how to use my art to share meditation insights.

I’m designing the podcast artwork for Ricky Gervais and Sam Harris’ show “Absolutely Mental.” Then, in July, I become the official illustrator for the Conversations section of the Waking Up app. There are moments when I feel as if my work is directly intertwined with my journey into meditation. Kind of surreal to be working for Sam. I’m back to meditating every day after a… er… difficult year.

I delete all of my social media accounts.²

Read about the process of creating the portraits here.