Obstacles to Meditation

Meditation is like a distillation of your life. Everything about you becomes part of your meditation experience. This is part of its power to transform the person practicing it. It only makes sense that the experiences that arise will reveal all aspects of our personality.

We may be “perfectionists” and put off doing meditation as a regular practice until everything is “just right”. Or having started we decide to interrupt the routine of the practice until this or that happens and so forth.

We may find that we are pleased with ourselves and how well we are doing and then find ways to sabotage ourselves. There are as many obstacles as there are self-defeating patterns. A good antidote to the poison of self-sabotage is to bring to mind your motivation that caused you to walk this path in the first place.

One of the most common things I hear people say in relation to keeping up an individual practice is that it is more fulfilling to meditate in a group. The experiences seem more “powerful” and so forth. Feeling the aloneness of a meditation carried out in solitude is one of the first obstacles to arise. We must learn to like ourselves and meditation is an excellent way to start.

Resistance is a universal problem. There is an aspect of our personality that does not appreciate changes and how the meditation practice shines too bright a spotlight on our habits, preferences, and patterns.

The thing to remember is that absolutely everything that arises is “grist for the mill”. It is useful, it represents an aspect of yourself and is therefore “spiritual”. There may be habits you want to change, behaviors, emotions and thoughts that you want to curtail or stop but suppression and self-hatred can never produce lasting, positive change. Only love can do that.

Keeping it “Real”