In GQ's lengthy piece "The Totally Stressed-Out Man's Guide to Meditation", magazine writer Josh Dean takes us through his initiation into the practice of Transcendental Meditation and the personal transformation that comes out of this daily practice.

The thing everyone asks you, when you share the news you've taken up meditating, is: Does it work? My wife in particular liked to ask me this, and I tended to tell her one of these things: I think. I'm not sure. I can't tell. The honest truth is that this is a very hard question to answer. (She also laughs at me—still!—every time I tell her I'm going to meditate.)

The question I was asking two months after my first session, when I went for a follow-up, was about the mixed quality of my meditations. Sometimes, when my mind is most at ease, and not preoccupied by thoughts—especially the annoying meta-thoughts, such as "I wonder how much time is left?"—the time flies by. TM can be like a tour through your subconscious, and in twenty minutes you can cover a lot of ground traipsing past the various things agitating your psyche. It can also be trippy, and I am sometimes startled to find myself a few minutes into a lucid dream.

Tip: See also my post "Transcendental Meditation and the Alternatives".

Featured image: Illustration by Brian Cronin.