Category — your questions

I often try to explain that one of the biggest misconceptions about meditation practice is that it is a form of self-improvement. It is not. In fact, it is a way of stepping off the (often vicious) self-improvement treadmill most of us run on 24/7 to instead accept ourselves exactly as we are. It is a time to give up all agendas and just be.

Hang out with yourself, exactly as you are. Make friends with yourself. Doing so with an agenda is the same as befriending another with an agenda. They can tell that something is fishy. Plus, we lose the magic and possibility of the interaction and it simply becomes a task. No one falls in love with a task, and, in a sense, meditation is a way of falling in love with yourself, warts and all, wisdom and all. After all, you are extremely love-worthy. Treating yourself as a work project tends to obscure all that.

So, quite naturally, such a view provokes a question like this one, from a reader [Read more →]

I wasn’t able to get to all your (excellent) questions during our two conference calls last week, so i’ll be answering them here.

Q. My question:  I sometimes get carried away with my fantasies and discursive thoughts during meditation.  I am aware of the fact that I am getting carried away, and then I sabotage my practice by making a conscious choice that I need to process this particular issue right now, or that I find this fantasy so pleasurable that I am going to continue with it, instead of going back to the boring breath.  Then I later beat myself up for my weakness.  Do you have any suggestions for being more disciplined with my practice?   Again—this particular problem is not that I am unaware that my attention has strayed; rather, I am aware but unwilling or unable to come back to the breath. It is like a contest of wills and often the weaker one wins out. [Read more →]