Being Bad at Meditation is Good for Self-Control (a salve for "meditation guilt" and devaluing the practice)

H

HowToBe

The Living Force
So I've started reading The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, and realized that I really might have benefitted from reading this segment 5 years ago or more. Because: while I understood the idea that one "shouldn't" feel bad about the mind wandering during meditation, just bring the attention back... I didn't realize that that return is a core part of the exercise.

Dr. McGonigal does the best job of anyone I've ever read at shattering any stress about what your attention is doing as you try to meditate.
Taken from pages 27-28:

Andrew felt like a terrible meditator. The fifty-year-old electrical engineer was convinced that the goal of meditation was to get rid of all thoughts and empty the mind. Even when he was focosed on his breath, other thoughts sneaked in. He was ready to give up the practice becausehe wasn't getting better as fast as he'd hoped, and figured he was wasting his time if he wasn't able to focus perfectly on the breath.

Most new meditators make this mistake, but the truth is that being "bad" at meditation is exactly what makes the practice effective. I encouraged Andrew -- and all the other frustrated medutators in class -- to pay attention not just to how well they were focusing during the meditation, but how it was affecting their focus and choices during the rest of the day.

Andrew found that even when his meditation felt distracted, he was more focused after practicing than when he skipped it. He also realized that what he was doing in meditation was exactly what he needed to do in real life: catch himself moving away from a goal and then point himself back at the goal (in this case, focusing on the breath). The meditation was perfect practice for when he was just about to order something salty and deep-fried for lunch, and needed to stop and order something healthier. And it was perfect practice for when he had a sarcastic comment on his lips and needed to pause and hold his tongue. And it was perfect practice for noticing when he was wasting time at work and needed to get back on track. All say long, self-control was a process of noticing that he was off-goal and redirecting himself to the goal. With this realization, Andrew no longer cared if his whole ten-minute meditation was spent getting distracted and coming back to the breath. The "worse" the meditation, the better the practice for real life, as long as he was able to notice when his mind was wandering.

Meditation is not about getting rid of all of your thoughts, it's learning not to get so lost in them that you forget what your goal is. [...]
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Also, it bears mentioning that, like exercise, and particularly for the self-regulation aspects, meditation is "front-loaded". This is my understanding, at least.

What this means is that meditating for as short a period as you can actually get yourself to do regularly is better than nothing, by a substantial margin.

i.e. 5 minutes of meditation a day might have a more potent impact on your life than 20 minutes once a week. Better yet, having meditated for 5 minutes each day (or less if that's what you can manage) might give you the little extra boost of self-regulation, improving situations and your responses throughout the week in tiny ways that save you enough energy that you can commit yourself to that 20 minutes once a week. Maybe it might take a few weeks to get there.


When I learned about EE and convinced myself well enough that it was "a good idea", that wasn't enough. I haven't really done EE regularly for years (until recently) because it was just an "I SHOULD do what is good for me and others" thing. That might sound like a healthy thought to some, but it was a road to absolute ineffective paralysis around the practice for me, seemingly due to hidden issues. I couldn't generate the internal drive. Powering through and doing the practice a bunch of times despite my internal resistance was not enough. While it would calm me and grant me clarity to some degree, when I thought about doing it again I'd have an even stronger resistance. An actual gut anxiety response.

Now, one might speculate I was just resisting healing and relaxation. It's possible. But I didn't experience any negative reactions to the practice itself, aside perhaps from a bit of boredom or restlessness sometimes, and only at times when I was really only doing it because I forced myself to. And those reactions also meant I wasn't able to get very deep into the practice during those sessions. I think the anxiety more likely came from the fact itself that I was just doing what I thought I "should" do, and that "should-ing" was a motivation coming from programs, not myself, so the self-denial perhaps was the anxiety source.

I tried to force it for some time, suspecting maybe it was just some unhealthy internal resistance I needed to power through. But the end result seemed to be that I just ruptured willpower and became unable to approach doing the full program very often, if at all. I did keep pipe breath with me as a daily tool, and did the full program rarely in the last 3 years or so, though, so it wasn't a 100% loss.

So part of the lesson here might be that you can betray yourself, even by trying to do what seems right. And if you do this another part of you may fight back, and that battle might not be ready to be won right now.

Forcing. "Should-ing". Short-cutting. Anticipating. Lying to yourself. A good way to stay where you are while pretending you're moving. but sometimes you have to stay where you are for a while, until you can see something. Just be ready to make use of the inevitable shocks.

It's a tricky thing, because at the same time that shouldn't become an excuse for not challenging yourself. But that's why you do a little. As much as you can accept. A little hurdle you can actually hop on a daily basis and not run out of the steam you need for the rest of your life. Do this in 5 little ways, and keep it up, and you start to have the potential for multiplication of potentials and a phase-shift. It might take time, and there may be things you can remove from your life too.
 
I agree @HowToBe

I think what many people try to do is force concentration when meditating. I knew a young lass who sent herself on a weekend long meditation retreat, and left in tears after the first day of absolute frustration. After talking with her about it, I found she had basically been forcing herself to concentrate, and it became more and more difficult for her. Obviously she had really bad teachers, or no guidance at all.

The key I believe is developing your ability of Noticing when your mind drifts, and carefully bring it back to the task at hand - practicing being aware of what your mind is doing.

I think many people conflate concentration and meditation. I think meditation should be considered as a mode of relaxation

Any skill takes practice - the more you practice the better you get. But you have to be patient with yourself. If you get frustrated with yourself it will just get harder. I think frustration and impatience is the big enemy of meditation.

I really enjoy how Mingyur Rinpoche decribes how to approach meditation - being a Bhuddist monk, he refers to the "Monkey Brain" part of the human consciousness.

Here's a clip :

 
BlueKiwi said:
I think many people conflate concentration and meditation. I think meditation should be considered as a mode of relaxation
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And, perhaps directing without forcing. i.e. without wasting valuable willpower. In fact, from McGonigal's book, it sounds like it's even better than that! Directing while recovering!

And part of the consequence seems to be that you learn to direct your mind without the need for willpower "forcing" in daily life more and more, too! Maybe. Sounds good at the moment, at least.
 
I think this is a good realization. I am reminded of a quote from Jean deSalzmann's Reality of Being. To paraphrase it, there is a time to pay attention, and a time to see and know our inattention. How I teach meditation is that it's 10% paying attention to the seed and 90% seeing and knowing our inattention once we've wandered away from the seed.
 
Meditation isn't exactly for everybody. First you need to understand which polarity you are on. If you are service to other then this is essential. If sts with desire to control, enslave or manipulate other then it is useless. If you are neutral/undecided you just want acceptance/ to get along with other, or impressing them then this is also almost useless.
The path for service to other begin with cleansing and surrendering. Minding your negative behavior/emotion is also consider a waking meditation. Surrendering/ meditation is useful to get connection to the source naturally if you are attracted to separation then this is counterproductive. Think of the garden metaphor. An idea is like a plant seed. by meditating you are watering/ weeding it so it can grow beautifully. Service to other is for growing like a bee, by being in contact with other you spread your light around. You can tell an adept soul is patience and lack of desire (low vibration is the opposite plenty of desire with no patience). You can tell your meditation is successful if the heart is flexible, full of joy, kindness and forgiveness like the soul essence. There isn't exactly a perfect way to meditate as any method can still achieve the same desire the most important thing is the desire for love. Even if you are surrounded with wise words and love by others it won't work if you don't desire love. Love will be rooted in your heart only if you desire it and nurture it with meditation. So decide first if love is for you. I mean majority of people in the forum is quite hostile to the idea of light/love like a vampire and sunlight. I explained it before in metaphysic your emotion if pure/ high enable you to create high/positive creation. Low level frequency will produce negative logic/ wisdom only for negative creations. Sure you can mimic/imitate others but the law of attraction will always give you negative things if you are low frequency soul.
 
Curious Beagle said:
Meditation isn't exactly for everybody. First you need to understand which polarity you are on. If you are service to other then this is essential. If sts with desire to control, enslave or manipulate other then it is useless. If you are neutral/undecided you just want acceptance/ to get along with other, or impressing them then this is also almost useless.
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It might not be so simple. If an STS person wants to get better at screwing people over, a practice that helps them to keep noticing when they have strayed and bring their attention back to the goal would be helpful to them, imo.

Furthermore, meditation repeatedly shows many benefits in scientific studies involving random people, and we know most of them are random levels of aimless. So that seems to contradict your claim. But at the same time it's a very hopeful finding!

So I don't think benefiting from meditation demonstrates any special STO qualities in a person. That sounds like a risky road to feeling "better" than others (but calling it something other than "better", like "low frequency soul"), to me, which isn't love or light at all, imo.

I'd dispute the idea that the forum is hostile to the idea of light/love, rather, many people on the forum have had the experience of having people who talked all day about light and love reveal themselves to be very selfish, people using "positive only" philosophies to hide their real desires from others and themselves. Worse yet, some of us have caught ourselves behaving selfishly and using love/light philosophies to comfort ourselves about it and hide it from our awareness.

Therefore, many of us have had to redefine and question what real love and light mean. And part of what I have arrived at is:

If one has faith in the Universe and wants to be of service to the Truth, the All, STO, then one's attention will naturally be attracted to those things one has been selfishly avoiding and shielding oneself from. Then, once one begins to see the contradictions between one's words and actions, one becomes attracted to begin carefully studying oneself and the world, and doing that which will reduce the level of self-deception and self-service in one's actions. And the funny thing is, that though that is hard work, it attracts balance to one's life. Hard work becomes balanced with true healing rest, for instance, including meditation.

Those are my thoughts, at least. Best wishes!
 
HowToBe said:
while I understood the idea that one "shouldn't" feel bad about the mind wandering during meditation, just bring the attention back... I didn't realize that that return is a core part of the exercise.
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This I think is the most important aspect of meditation 🧘‍♂️

I think it's almost like training yourself on how to react to when you make a "mistake" - in this case when you realize you mind has wandered. And this will help you with how you respond to the same in day to day things - Good for self control.

Reacting with frustration and applying more concentration and force to me feels kinda like an STS response, whereas accepting your slip in focus with patience, and carefully directing your mind back feels more like an STO kind of response.

With this approach, being bad at meditation, with the mindset of "just bring the attention back" will definitely expedite things I would think.

Also - aren't the most successful people the ones who make the most mistakes - but choose to learn from them ?

The second most important aspect of meditation I think is the intent for doing so, osit.
 
I agree with the OP. For me, the act of noticing that my mind had wandered and just pulling it back on track over and over and over (you get the idea) again was the "exercising" of the "mind muscle" I guess that eventually led to deeper practice. But if that's all a person can do, it's good enough!
 
Yeah, very possibly... it's possible that as far as trance/higher states and the ultimate possibilities of practice go, it depends on the individual, their potential (i.e. current learning state), and what else they are doing in their life.

Your average Joe might not transcend any terribly remarkable boundaries with the practice as long as they're hung up on their six-packs and getting angry at the TV, but that doesn't mean it might not benefit them (and those around them, if they're at least basically well-meaning) to just exercise the muscle of "catching themself".

It's like martial arts for the awareness, instead of catching punches, you're catching yourself. Sounds fun to put it that way, at least. :-P
 
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