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Go
Deeper into
Meditation
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Obstacles
to Meditation & How to Overcome Them
Paramhansa Yogananda
said, "The soul loves to meditate!" The ego, however,
because of its basic restlessness, finds it difficult to meditate.
But we can learn to work with ourselves and make adjustments to
help our practice. Once we realize the benefits of meditation, we
relax more into its flow. Try to bring to your efforts in meditation
common sense, patience, and self-compassion. Here are the most common
obstacles to meditation, and what we can do to resolve them.
1) Not Wanting
to Meditate — When we don't feel like meditating, and we
give in to this feeling, we can quickly go into a downward spiral.
Yogananda said, "The less you meditate, the less you want to
meditate. The more you meditate, the more you want to meditate."
When you don't want to meditate, the best thing to do is a shorter
meditation. Create the habit of meditation by doing it every day,
even if it is only for 3-5 minutes! Remember that a short focused
meditation is much more beneficial than a long, unfocused one.
2) Restlessness
— Sitting still might seem easy, but it actually makes a tremendous
demand on the body and mind. Most of the time our bodies are in
motion, so much so that we hardly notice it. When we try to become
still we can find it quite a challenge. So we should be easy on
ourselves and accept the fact that it takes time to go from motion
to stillness, from outwardness to inwardness. This is true on every
level of our being. Every moment of our lives we are usually active,
unless we are asleep, and even then there is a certain level or
movement of body and mind. Meditation is being, not doing. Think
of a lake, turbulent on the surface, but the depths are still and
calm. To get to the depths you must dive through the restless surface.
Allow time to get comfortable, to scratch and to wriggle, then gently
and firmly insist on physical stillness.
3) Physical
Discomfort — Being physically comfortable is very important
part of meditation practice. Exercise always helps. Stretching,
or a few yoga postures before you begin to meditate will help greatly.
Use pillows, pads, benches, a chair or whatever you need to support
your upright posture. Find a position that your body can maintain
comfortably and still have the spine upright.
4) No Time
— When you're short on time, cut down on the length of meditation,
rather than skipping it altogether. Go for quality rather than quantity.
Learn to manage your time a little more wisely. Remember that if
you meditate your energy and concentration powers grow, and you
will use all your time more efficiently.
5) Feeling
That You Are Not a Good Meditator — This is a very insidious
thought, because it may cause you to stop meditating completely.
Plus, it isn't true! You cannot measure your success as a meditator
by judging a particular meditation, or even a series of meditations.
Every meditation builds on the one before it, even if you think
it wasn't a good one. What is a good meditation anyway? One that
you do! St. Teresa of Avila said, "A meditation is well done,
if all you did was fight distraction."
The purpose
of meditation techniques is to bring the mind back from being distracted.
We think we should never be distracted once we have a meditation
technique. But remember that the point of using meditation practices
is that now we do have something for the mind to return to.
This is practicing meditation correctly—each time you realize
that you are distracted, calmly return to your technique. No matter
how many times this happens during a meditation, calmly return and
never give in to discouragement.
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