Why can’t you meditate? – Part I

We all want to incorporate mindfulness practice in our daily life, but all of us who at some point in our life have engaged with meditation will know that there is often a gap between the aspiration to do it and the reality of trying to practice mindfulness each day.

Each one of us knows the importance of mindfulness practices, but there seems to be a barrier that stops us from doing it. On ProKensho, in a very skillful way, we will bring the human side to this conundrum.

But first, it’s very important for us to get a gentle reminder that it’s very natural to find mindfulness practices to be very challenging or facing troubles while practicing mindfulness because it deliberately points us toward the awkward and painful truths, the contradictions of our very existence.

When we commit to a daily practice we find many moments when we waver in between doing our chores or taking a bath or having a glass of coffee, hanging out with loved ones, or choosing the seemingly crazy and counterintuitive option of sitting on our meditation cushion and settling into sensing the immediacy of our sometimes painful experience.

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Our human nature is to feel attraction towards comfort and to avoid what is painful, raw, and tender. Yet through a mindful engagement with our experiences, we can learn the deep relief that comes from learning to live in the chord that way things really are.

The deep intrinsic sanity process of the mindfulness practice returns us to what is really true about ourselves and the world around us.

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The real territory of our practice-

The hesitations and challenges are the heart of our mindfulness practice. Not wanting to meditate is not something outside of the practice, but a natural way to embrace what our practice essentially is. The real purpose of mindfulness practices is to mindfully include all our feelings, all our uncertainties, our reluctance to really engage and settle into our practice day to day with curiosity.

This experience is true for all including those who teach us mindfulness. Mindfulness practisers have the external junction of the mindfulness practice guidance which requires us to daily personal mindfulness practice.

The mindfulness practice gives us the patterns and behaviors within us, it’s a process of collaborating with our own suffering to understand it better. We see ourselves all the time: when we are self-critical or doubtful, and angry.

“The understandings and insights that emerge through these exercises become the part of the fabric of our being.”

Embodying mindfulness isn’t that an effortful of a conscious process but rather a natural expression of our being. Moment by moment an implicit orientation within us that becomes explicit through the visible and tangible expression of what mindfulness looks feels, and sounds like. Knowing this and embodying it within our life, we are able to learn mindfulness authentically.

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Let’s look into our own real world in a fresh and curious way-

Our intrinsic world is full of emotional contradiction and conflicts which is hidden from us and often harshly judged when seen. Mindfulness practice helps us form a sense of purpose, a clear intention, and direction so that when reality comes, you can let it be just the way it is. It also helps us to come again and again, to find the words for our intrinsic thoughts and feelings.

Mindfulness practice is an ongoing process, not a one-time process. The purpose of this post is to provide motivation to continue with your mindfulness process.

A lot of us often don’t adopt the mindfulness habit, which is why it becomes more and more difficult to engage in meditation. Keeping the meditation going is tough and despite really wanting to continue many people don’t continue.

A lot of people have their individual ideas about what meditation is and how it works. But no one can really tell until they have experienced it for a long period of time continuously. There is often a bridge between what people think mediation is what it actually is. But yes, there is something about meditation that can be deeply unsettling, perhaps threatening in some way, and that even if we are not consciously aware of it, we can sense it.

There is an element to meditation that is somehow alarming and can tell give us a sense of who we are. So yes, Mediation can help us relax. Yes, it is also great for catching thoughts that made us depressed in the first sitting. Yes, it also gives us choices. But at a certain point, if we kept on doing it, it brought us into a more honest and intimate relationship with ourselves and this was not always the relationship we wanted.

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SO THAT’S WHERE WE STOP, AND CAN’T MEDITATE.

The struggles that mindfulness practices give us are full of insights. Traditionally, mindfulness is something that meditators were not meant to talk about, but thankfully this taboo now seems to be fading away.

Just remember you are not alone in this struggle, and each of us has experienced some kind of mediation problem. But however challenging the things have been on our meditation seats and cushions, we can all overcome them with time and practice.