Oakville Zen Meditation

#252 Meditation practice: difficulty, hesitation & doubt Dec 2nd 18

Meditation: difficulties, hesitation and doubts about our practice  Dec. 2nd 18

Maybe we have the will and good reasons such as dealing with our current issues to start meditation and keep doing it. Unfortunately, it does not work that way:

We simply are too busy with zillions of things on your plate to meditate.

We are lacking energy and discipline to sit still even for few min. every day and for many months.

We are struggling because our mind is constantly racing and we cannot control it as you wish and as

We have been told. Our mind is very talkative (~200,000 thoughts/day) and they cannot be stopped.

We doubt about meditation because you do not sense any immediate benefits from your ongoing

practice   and we don’t have the patience to wait for results.

We are finding many excuses to skip your group and solo practice and even decided to quit like 90%

of new comers after 3 months everywhere.

We don’t understand very well how meditation works or, even, we don’t believe in this Oriental practice.

Finally, we are, automatically judging negatively the quality of our meditation and its progress.

Negative judgment, lack of discipline & lack of patience for results are the main reasons for quitting.

What keeps a lot of people from starting meditation and also quitting is the belief that their meditation must follow very strict rules with a rigid practice and that this practice requires unique physical and mental skill

Our doubts are also grounded on the belief that, once you decide to meditate, you believe that your meditation must be perfect, easy, enjoyable and expecting to reap its benefits quickly.

Our doubts, hesitation and difficulties to meditate are common to everyone including “the pros”.

They are created by our mind, which hates meditation because he is loosing control on us.

All of these are simply not true. Meditation does not have to be perfect. No one meditates perfectly well every day. After 81 years of daily meditation the Dalai Lama said: “ If I am not struggling during meditation, I am not meditating properly”

So, what to do?

Like in life, you must create a practice that is right and comfortable for you and your life style.

It does not have to be perfect but you can work on it and improve it little to little.

Meditation means to reflect, contemplate and pay attention. To what? .....To whatever you decide

(breathing is the best to anchor our restless mind ).

Meditation is not limited to sitting absolutely still like a statute in a faultless lotus position, with hands in Mudra.

You can meditate in many ways as long as you impose your mind to focus on something so you can learn to be aware on your incoming thoughts and control them. We’ll talk about this in few min.

Meditation is the practice of mental awareness or, better, intense attention / focusing on something in a mindful way that is w/o an analytic approach. In few words: controlling the mind rather than the opposite.

Don’t need to be a guru and no special gifts are required except discipline patience, trust and a teacher as booster

It can be done in 3 ways:

1) Formal weekly group/ daily solo sitting with anchoring the mind on breathing

2) On-the go short mindfulness exercises such as your walk on the street, your breathing, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling the taste of the food, the sound of the wind, the outside temperature, the space around you, what you are thinking about and where your mind is and does.

3) Finally once a while, ask yourself the following questions:

Is my mind constantly swirling with thoughts, feelings regrets and high expectations?

      Is my mind always in others space-times such as past & future which are just virtual realities since the former is dead and the later not born.

    What my body is doing right now? Is my mind and body are in the same space-time??

In fact you can meditate anytime, anywhere and regardless what you are currently doing as long it does not interfere negatively on your current task.

You may say it can be boring but whatever the experience, the practice is always cumulative and the benefits of mindfulness meditation practice are priceless. You will not find them in the quality of your meditation always perceived being difficult (mind trick), but on the quality of your life, how you control your feelings and view the world with a different and more positive way. You will become less ego-centered that is more serene.