This is how you maintain a meditation practice: give your practice a meaning

I sometimes hear people on yoga retreats say that they have problems maintaining regular meditation practice. These are generally very disciplined and organized people. You can keep a job without too many problems and take care of the families, etc. And have no problem getting to their yoga courses. But when it comes to meditation, they are a bit ... scaly. They are not a skeptic or new in meditation. They were often even on long meditation retreats and appreciate the many valuable advantages of regular meditation. But you still can't find out how you can maintain a meditation practice.

I thought about why it is so difficult for so many of us to maintain a regular practice. And what can we do about it?

I think there are many reasons why we find it so difficult to meditate regularly. The most obvious is probably that meditation requires that we enter into a completely different and unusual relationship with our thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it can feel like a fool - if you keep discovering how distracting and your mind is. And how little peace you actually experience in meditation contrary to your expectations!

I will not go into this in this post. I wanted to investigate another possible reason why, if so many of us are introduced into meditation, we do not hold on to it.

Modern mindfulness

This can have something to do with how meditation or mindfulness are taught in a modern western context.

I am a big fan of mindfulness in general and I am pleased that today they are taught in hospitals, schools, prisons and companies all over the world. In my opinion, this is a good thing and can only contribute to the general well -being of our communities. Modern life is stressful and demanding. Mindfulness offers people the opportunity to relax and escape the chaos of the whole.

is mindfulness in the western world boring?

I also believe that there was a real wish in his heart, most obviously in the early days of the modern mindfulness movement (initiated by John Kabbat-Zinn), to share the advantages of Buddha's teachings in the spirit, etc. with people who do not want to be interested in spiritual matters. The teachings were demystified with great care and attention in order to make them easy and accessible to people who had no interest in the "spiritual world". The advantages of this pioneering work are obvious. Mindfulness helps many people who have to deal with problems such as depression, eating disorders, low self -esteem, etc. Mindfulness is good for many people and it really depends on that. Nevertheless, many of us still seem to have difficulty keeping it up.

As much as I am impressed by the achievements of the modern mindfulness approach, I think that the problem that we have a regular practice may have something to do with what made it so successful and popular: pulling out every search for a search for truth or meaning. Simply put: meditation, separated from the deep truths that you can reveal about our true nature and our potential, is only a little, I dare to say ... Boring (or at least it can seem boring.)

spiritual transformation: give your meditation practice a meaning

I learned meditation from an Indian teacher in my twenties and it was related to enlightenment and the potential for profound spiritual transformation. While this approach also has his serious dangers (maybe I will respond to it in another blog post), one thing was never-was boring! Since then, meditation has never been boring for me. Challenging - certainly and occasionally even frightening - but never boring.

And this is because the practice was the basis on which a different understanding of it was built up who we are and what our place is in the overall picture. I think we benefited from a regular practice as well as modern mindfulness practitioners today - we generally felt more comfortable and less stressed, etc. But for us the sauce was the potential meditation that was revealed for a completely different way of life. The discovery of another "liberated" relationship to think and feel was not just a practical "tool" in our manual for personal life coaching. It was a dynamite tab to ignite a fire to transform us personally, even to change the way we live together.

ok, maybe we let ourselves be carried away a bit. I realize that the esoteric and mysterious spiritual traditions of the East - from gods, gurus and enlightenment, etc. - can be magical and regularly open real “seekers” and practitioners to abuse by teachers. But this context made sense for our practice. For this reason, we wanted to practice every day and found the strength when it was a challenge to lower our backs and still sit still. Meditation was very important to us and we took them seriously.

The Summit

If we learn mindfulness in a context in which this search for deeper meanings is missing, this can easily become a different technique or a "hack" to improve our lives a little. And then it is likely that our commitment doesn't really bring much. And that's a problem. Because meditation is not always easy. It's simple, but not necessarily easy. It differs so much from the way we usually refer to our experience that it takes a lot of effort (not to make an effort). We learn a completely new way of dealing with thinking and feeling, and that's a big deal.

as the man said: "The way and the goal are one."

I think maybe we sometimes have difficulty finding the discipline to practice regularly because we do not appreciate the extent and radical potential, the meditation in us and can ultimately catalyze. If you start climbing on Everest and expect a gentle walk in the park, there is hardly a chance that you will be prepared for the challenges you need to face. And no chance of reaching the summit.

before you sit down or if you only think about practicing, it may be worth thinking about the summit. Or learn something about the role that meditation plays in our great spiritual traditions. After all, as the man said: "The way and the goal are one".

My teacher once said to me: "If you want to understand what I speak of, you sit still, don't move." And that was the best advice I've ever received.