It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a spiritual practice for many years, or if you are just starting out—chances are that you have your list of reasons why you just can’t meditate. Chances are also good, though, that the reason you’ve been hitting the proverbial wall is a deep-rooted misunderstanding about what meditation actually is.
First, if meditation were truly easy, the payoff would not be nearly as great. The effort that you put in is as much part of the experience as the reward. In spirituality, it’s the simplest things that tend to be the most difficult.
There is also the idea that meditation might not be part of your tradition. In truth, every spiritual tradition incorporates a process of meditation. The vocabulary might just be a bit different. For example, the Christian tradition calls this practice contemplation. Same thing, different words. So chill out, and embrace the process in the way that feels right to you!
Image © Andressa Voltolini/Unsplash
The biggest misconception…
The absolute biggest misunderstanding about meditation is that you have to make your mind blank. If you tell your mind to clear itself, the exact opposite is going to happen. Your mind is designed to think. In fact, that is its sole purpose. When we first sit down to meditate and attempt to get quiet, the mind sort of freaks out because it has never had the experience of being silent for an extended period of time. So what do you do?
You do the exact opposite, and you give your mind one single thing to focus on—you give it a job.
One thought.
And every time it strays, you bring it back to that one thought with the love and patience of a parent dealing with a toddler. (And not in the “this is why Mommy drinks” kind of way.) Understanding the design of your mind should help you to have more compassion, and much less self-judgement.
Now, what is that one thought?
It can be anything that resonates for you—a word, a mantra, scripture, poetry, music, a candle, an image, your breath. The important thing is that you keep your attention on it long enough for your mind to relax and focus. Once all of your energy is moving in the same direction, it’s like a switch goes off or a door opens and suddenly you are in pure consciousness and Love and connected to everyone and everything everywhere.
El diablo
I don’t know about you, but I grew up hearing the saying “an idle mind is the devil's workshop,” over and over. It was even thrown out in incongruous situations just to be scary!
This concept has created tension and stress, sometimes subconsciously, when you want to incorporate a practice of meditation. (Trust me on this, every muscle in my body used to tense up from fear when I first started to meditate, but I worked through it!)
If you’ve ever felt that if you meditation you will be opening yourself up to things that you have no control over, you’ve been in fear, which (for good reason), has made you avoid the process. Once you understand that the mind is never to be idle, it opens up a whole new world that you are free to explore.
I recommend building up a tolerance. Start by setting a timer for a couple of minutes. As you feel more secure, you can increase the time. Once your body and mind see that you are ok, you will become more open to the experience. It’s not unlike the process of building muscle. The more you practice, the easier it becomes and the more you can lift.
You might only experience true meditation for one second in your entire lifetime, but that will be enough to have touched you so deeply that you are willing to spend the rest of your life seeking your way back to that place. It’s beautiful.
A couple of notes:
• Sitting? For some people, sitting isn't the way to meditation. It might be walking in nature, or something else entirely. That’s ok! In fact, how you get there is not important and might change depending on what season of life you are in. Your practice will evolve along with you and show you the way, if you let it.
• You. WILL. Shift. Even if you sit for 5 minutes every day with intention and follow the instructions given, you will see dramatic shifts in your life. You’ll become calmer, clearer, more focused, healthier, happier, and more productive—just to name a few observable benefits.
• Consistency. Meditating at the same time every day helps to clear obstacles to the process. Your system will grow to know that “this is the time” and be ready. In fact, you will even start to crave that time—especially if you miss it.
Ultimately, meditation is simply single-pointed focus. The goal is to become fully present in every moment, which is the way you know that you’ve taken your meditation practice from being something you sit for and have expanded it into a way of living.
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