Am I a bad meditator?

Many people think that they are useless at meditation because their minds are busy as they meditate. They may have been practicing for several years and feel hopeless about their practice. 

In my view meditation practice should be enjoyable, but if we think we are getting it wrong all the time, because our minds are busy, then this can take the joy out of practicing. 

Firstly, our minds are busy because we are modern humans. We live in a world making constant demands for the mind to think and to be distracted. So, a busy mind is to be expected…..nothing wrong!

Often after a practice people tell me, I was distracted through the whole of that practice, with a sense of dismay. But then when I enquire into their experience it becomes clear that they were experiencing a busy mind. However, they were aware that the mind was busy and were aware of what the mind was thinking about. This is not distraction!

Distraction is when we get so caught up in thinking, that we are unaware of what the mind is thinking about and we are out of touch with the present moment. 

Rob Nairn’s working definition of mindfulness is:

Knowing what is happening, while it is happening, without preference.

On consideration of this definition, it becomes clear that it doesn’t matter what is happening in the mind. What matters is that we know what is happening in the mind and we are ok about it (without preference). Therefore, it doesn’t matter if the mind is busy when we practice, so long as we know that it is busy, what it is busy about and we are ok about it. 

In fact, if we can be aware of a busy mind and be ok about it, then we are probably a very good meditator. Being present and ok with our experience is relatively easy when the mind is settled, but can get trickier when the mind is busy. 

I have had many of these conversations over the years, when people believe themselves to be terrible meditators because their mind is busy. When I point out to them that they were present with and aware of the content of that business and that is mindfulness, they experience a great relief. They are not bad meditators after all. This then opens the door to being ok with a busy mind. 

Being ok with a busy mind creates the conditions for it to settle. 

Meditation is non-doing. Most likely there will still be plenty of mental activity happening in the mind. The point is not to ‘do’ anything to or with that activity. Meditation is surrendering the mental activity to unfold itself effortlessly of its own accord and trusting that our presence is sufficient for awareness to effortlessly know all that it needs to know about that activity. 

In my view, meditation is the most important thing we can do to make our lives happier and to face challenges with resilience. The most important thing for our physical and metal wellbeing…….maybe I am biased. So it is a deadly serious business to get our bum on the seat on a daily basis to practice. 

However, once the bum is on the seat and we are there practicing, there is no need to take the practice or ourselves so seriously. Take what Rob Nairn called an ‘easy-osy’ approach. Mind is sometimes busy, sometimes settled. This does not matter. What matters is that we know what is happening and don’t have a preference about what is happening. Easy-osy helps with this. 

For regular instruction on meditation, to create the conditions for your practice to become more enjoyable, please join us.