Chapter 2: How We Learn What We Can’t Describe

So how do you learn to see what you’re looking for? Let’s look at how we learn skills in general.

Think back to when you learned addition. Someone taught you that 2+2=4, and once you understood the method, it worked every time. It worked when you were counting guests for a dinner party and it worked when you were counting change for the bus. The approach was everything, and once you knew it, you were done learning basic addition.

The same pattern holds for baking a cake. You follow the recipe - two cups flour, three eggs, one cup sugar - and if you measure correctly and follow the steps, you get a cake. When something goes wrong, the explanation is usually straightforward: you didn’t follow the recipe exactly, or you had the wrong ingredients, or your oven temperature was off. The method is reliable, and failures point to execution errors.

This is how we expect learning to work. Clear instructions lead to predictable results. When things don’t work out, we look for what we did wrong.

The Meditation Mismatch

We naturally approach meditation the same way. The basic instructions seem clear enough: sit down, close your eyes, focus on your breath, notice when your mind wanders, gently return attention to breathing. Simple steps that should lead to the promised sense of calm and clarity.

But then you try it, and it doesn’t work consistently. Sometimes you can follow your breath for a few minutes. Other times your mind is so scattered you can barely complete a single breath cycle before getting lost in thought. The same instructions that worked yesterday feel impossible today.

When meditation doesn’t deliver the expected results, we do what we’ve been trained to do: we blame our execution. “My mind can’t sit still - I must be doing something wrong.” “I’m not disciplined enough.” “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.” The instructions seem clear, so the problem must be us.

But what if we’re using the wrong learning model entirely?

Two Types of Learning

It turns out not all skills work like addition or baking. There’s another type of learning that follows different rules.

Think back to when you learned to ride a bike. The instructions seemed simple: get on, pedal, steer, brake. You could understand every word. You could picture yourself doing it.

But when you actually got on that bike? You wobbled. You veered. Your body went rigid with tension as you tried to remember everything at once. The gap between understanding and doing felt impossibly wide. Then one day, something clicked - not because someone explained it better, but because your body discovered a feel that words couldn’t capture.

It’s Like Riding a Bike

There’s a reason we say “It’s like riding a bike - it’ll come back to you.”

Once you learn to ride, the knowledge lives in your body. You can go years without riding, and when you get back on, within moments you find the balance again. A little wobbly at first, maybe, but the core skill never left.

Swimming works the same way. So does playing an instrument. The learning happens in your body, not in your head. You can describe the mechanics all you want, but the feel of it - that moment when you recognize you’re doing it right - that can only be discovered through practice.

Some knowledge is explicit: write it down, pass it on, apply it consistently. Other knowledge is tacit: learned through experience, impossible to fully articulate. You can’t write down how to balance on a bike. But once you learn it? You know it.

Why This Matters for Meditation

Meditation is more like learning to ride a bike than following a recipe.

The basic meditation instructions are explicit and simple: sit, breathe, notice when your mind wanders, return attention. You can understand these instructions perfectly on your first try.

But actually navigating the never ending and gushing stream of thoughts and mental chatter mindfully - that’s tacit knowledge. It has to be discovered through practice. It can’t be thought through or executed mechanically.

Just like bike riding, you need to develop a feel for something that instructions alone can’t teach you. And just like bike riding, you learn it in your body.

The problem happens when we approach meditation instruction like it’s a recipe - expecting clear steps to lead to predictable results every single time. When it doesn’t work that way, we assume we’re doing something wrong.

But we’re not doing anything wrong. We’re trying to learn tacit knowledge using only explicit instructions. We’re trying to think our way into something that can only be discovered.

Bike Riding as a Guide

Bike riding could be a good analogy to learning meditation. Not a perfect one - no analogy is - but a good one because:

Almost everyone has learned to ride a bike or watched someone learn. You know what it’s like to wobble for a few seconds, then a few seconds longer, until what seemed impossible becomes natural. And you’re never quite done learning - you might navigate your quiet street easily, but watch someone pop a wheelie or navigate mountain trails and you remember that first wobbly ride.

Throughout the rest of this guide, we’ll keep returning to bike riding to understand meditation - how you develop feel for balance, work with wobbling, discover the right effort.

Who taught you to ride?

Think back to when you learned to ride a bike.

Do you remember who held the seat during those nerve-wracking first attempts? Was it your dad? A sibling running beside you? Can you still feel those early moments when you stayed upright as the grip on your seat eased? A few precious seconds of balance before gravity won?

For me, it was my dad. And what happened on that empty street turned out to be the perfect lens for understanding meditation.