Why Meditation Is So Difficult (And What to Do about It)

Did you meditate today? Photo by mingwei dong

So my meditation time this morning was awful. Painful. Excruciatingly uncomfortable. Until it wasn’t. Welcome to meditating in the modern world. We pay attention to way too much most of the time and the moment you slow down, everything you’ve forgotten to attend to rises to the surface.

Here is the good news. Meditation is so difficult because it is so important. The time we spend intentionally sitting or breathing or focusing, changes our brain. I love the new research revealing that the kind of meditation you do grows your capacity in different ways. Want to feel less stressed? Use mindful meditation, where you simply notice what rises and falls in your environment, letting your awareness ride the moment like a surfer sitting on their board. Want to be better at a skill? Concentrative meditation attends to one thing, like imagining yourself playing a sport. Want to be more empathetic? Loving-kindness meditation widens our unconditional compassion for ourselves and all things. But knowing the benefits of a regular practice are very different than working through to the benefits of a regular practice.

We don’t meditate often enough, long enough, because it is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you that the bliss you can find comes without some suffering. Even after decades, I keep struggling. I have a favorite practice. Just listening. I use a set of music on random curated for lowering my heart rate. I turn on the sound, set my clock, and let whatever comes into my mind rise and then disappear. By the end, usually, I feel light. I feel buoyant. My worries don’t hold the same weight. Usually.

Not this morning. As I started, I was doing some breathing exercises as I listened. First mistake. Your brain usually wants to focus on one thing at a time. Meditation can often be difficult because we over-complicate it. Pick one form. Stick with it for weeks or months. If you are a super-ambitious meditator as opposed to someone who simply wants to feel better, do multiple forms at different times in the day. But if you want to experience more calm, focus, or love, practicing one form matters or your brain gets confused.

A confused brain triggers your alarm system. Your alarm is the amygdala, the old part of the brain that wants to keep you alert and safe. This morning, my brain was confused for other reasons as well. It turns out, and I realized this as I went back to just listening, that I have a lot on my mind. Mindful meditators have more awareness of their subconscious and mine was full like a commuter subway in Tokyo.

Second difficulty. When you have lots of things you care about and/or when you experience large amounts of change, grief, or commitments, you can’t hold it all in your head at one time. Your brain doesn’t forget what matters to you though. The changes, grief, and commitments don’t disappear because you compartmentalize them or put them aside for a few days, or years. Even more interesting is that the awareness that comes with regular mindful meditation can unearth cares, concerns, or needs you didn’t even realize you had. Meditation is difficult when you have to wait for all you were avoiding, forgetting, or unaware of to surface.

But I cannot tell you how grateful I am to realize I’m not crazy when I feel overwhelmed. It feels like new knowledge. My brain wants to keep me safe. It keeps sending me signals I have things to attend to. This is a good thing when I accept the initial noise during my practice. It doesn’t mean the noise is comfortable. And, when you commit to waiting, the awareness grows. The more you wait, the more you can wait. The more you wait, the more you know that you are waiting for something extraordinary.

Third difficulty. I really wanted to quit meditating this morning. It just hurt. I really wanted to get my coffee, start writing, and get on with the business of the day. Screw this pain and all the things I care about. I may have screamed internally, ‘Leave me alone’. And every time I quit, I have a a worse day. Every time I have a week without my practice, the backlog in my subconscious builds like a traffic jam. Which leads to more grumpiness, drinking, overeating, poor sleep, and mediocre writing. When we quit, when we give up on the meditative time, it gets harder and harder to start again.

So what do you do when the meditation is difficult because it’s overcomplicated, noisy, and painful?

First, take a surfer’s attitude. Some days, you just wait on the waves. The waiting is as good as the ride. Meditation is not a place we go; it is an opening of our inner life that offers so much to discover. You meditate for the unexpected and the relief, not for a result. And if you want the result, if you are a competitive surfer, you still have to become more skilled at waiting.

Second, do some every day. What is some? A few breaths if that’s all you can do. 10 minutes if you can. 20 like the Trappist monks advise if you can. Make room for the breathing or focusing or loving. The world needs all of you and the active, fixing, doing-it-all you is not the only version of yourself.

Finally, remember every baby step is a closer walk towards it. What’s it? Enlightenment, peace, freedom, an empty mind, better performance: we all begin the meditative path for different reasons. Some teachers judge our motivations. I only want all of us to keep trying. My frailty becomes a gift every time I sit. My mind is clearer every time I listen. Your next breath, or minute, or hour of meditation will lead you to a place where you can wait out the awful. On the other side of awful, life is better. We often have to meditate through the pain to get there.