The Meditation That Finally Made Sense

Sascha Kuhlmann
7 hours ago
4 min read

A 16-minute practice that cuts through the noise. Literally.

I’ve tried meditation. Many times. Sat on cushions, downloaded apps, followed guided sessions where someone with a calm voice told me to “find my center.” Most of the time I ended up thinking about groceries or replaying arguments from three days ago.

Then this week, in my men’s group, someone played a track from Boreta featuring Alan Watts. Sixteen minutes. No gongs, no incense, no “namaste.” Just a dead philosopher talking over ambient electronic music, walking you through something that actually clicks.

I want to break down why this one works, especially for men doing integration work.

What Watts Actually Says

The meditation has three layers, and none of them ask you to “clear your mind.” That’s important. Because telling a man to clear his mind is like telling him not to think about a white bear. Doesn’t work.

Layer 1: Listen Without Labeling

Close your eyes. Hear everything around you. Traffic, birds, the hum of your fridge, someone coughing. Don’t name any of it. Don’t categorize it as “good” or “bad” sounds. Just let your ears take in whatever they want.

This sounds simple. It’s not. Your brain immediately starts tagging things. That’s a truck. That’s the AC. Watts says: fine. Don’t fight it. Let those thoughts be just more noise, the same as any other sound going on around you.

This is the first move. You stop being the manager of your experience and start being the witness.

Layer 2: Inside Becomes Outside

Here’s where it gets interesting. As you practice letting sounds just be sounds, including your own thoughts, something shifts. Watts describes it like this:

“The so-called outside world and the so-called inside world come together. They are a happening.”

Your thoughts aren’t yours anymore, not in the possessive sense. They’re events. Like clouds passing. Like traffic noise. You’re not generating them any more than you’re generating the birds chirping outside.

If you’ve ever experienced genuine ego dissolution (in deep meditation, in ceremony, in a moment of total awe) this will feel familiar. That boundary between “me in here” and “the world out there” gets very thin. Then it disappears.

Layer 3: The Breath Bridge

The last piece is breathing. Not “breathwork” in the sense of forcing patterns. Watts asks you to just watch your breath. Notice something odd about it: you can breathe deliberately, or you can forget about it and it breathes itself.

Is breathing something you do? Or something that happens to you?

Both. That’s the point. That question (am I the doer or the experiencer?) is the central riddle of consciousness. The breath is where you feel both answers at once.

Watts walks you through letting the breath “fall out” on each exhale. No forcing. Just letting gravity do its thing. The inhale comes back on its own. Over time, the breath naturally deepens, slower and more powerful, without you making it happen.

Why This Matters for Integration

Here’s why I played this in my men’s group, and why I’m writing about it now.

If you’ve had a full-blown psychedelic experience, especially with something as powerful as 5-MeO-DMT, you’ve tasted non-duality. You’ve been in a place where the separation between self and everything else dissolved completely. For a few minutes, there was no “you” watching the show. There was just the show.

The problem is, you come back. The ego reassembles. Daily life fills in around you. And that taste of unity starts to feel like a dream.

This meditation is a way back.

Not all the way. A seated practice isn’t a ceremony. But Watts is describing the exact same territory. The dissolution of inside and outside. The recognition that “you” and “the world” are one happening. The direct experience that you’re not the thinker, you’re the awareness in which thinking occurs.

For men doing integration work, this kind of daily practice is the difference between “I had an amazing experience once” and “I live differently now.” Integration isn’t about chasing the peak. It’s about building a daily relationship with what you found there.

What I Like About This Specific Version

Alan Watts died in 1973. This isn’t some wellness influencer trying to sell you a course. The man was a philosopher, a translator of Eastern thought for Western minds, and he was remarkably good at making complex ideas land in plain language.

Boreta’s production adds something too. The ambient electronic textures give your ears something to work with during the listening exercise. It’s not silence (which can feel confrontational when you’re starting out). It’s a bed of sound that makes the practice feel natural.

Sixteen minutes is also the right length. Long enough to actually settle in. Short enough that you can’t use “I don’t have time” as an excuse.

Try It

Here’s the track. Put on headphones. Close your eyes. Don’t try to get anywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rOIjEhhgNA

If you’re doing integration work (processing a ceremony, rebuilding your relationship with your own mind, trying to keep what you found in those peak moments) make this part of your morning. Or evening. Or whenever you have sixteen minutes and a pair of headphones.

You don’t need to be good at it. You just need to do it.

Music: “The Ceremony” by Boreta, featuring a lecture by Alan Watts. Boreta is an electronic music producer and one-third of The Glitch Mob, known for weaving philosophy and mindfulness into immersive soundscapes. You can find more of his work at boreta.com.