The Two Main Reasons People Fail At Mindfulness And Meditation

“The best meditators are the ones who meditate.”

Zen Buddhism is often characterised as being anti-intellectual because it explicitly tries to bypass the rational mind to find a place where words are obsolete. Ironically it attracted the highest type of intellectuals because people who are smart begin to realise the limitations of the mind and language to apprehend the true nature of reality. Alan Watts and Jiddu Krishnamurti were two such great intellects who would constantly warn of the dangers and traps of knowledge as a means to understand the world. Watts even coined the phrase the wisdom of not knowing thereby pointing toward a transcendent type of knowledge not bound by concepts. An often-quoted Zen master would say:
“To find the truth simply give up all your opinions.”

It’s in this way that our formal midfulness meditation session is a time to put thoughts and concepts down for a while and experience another way of being beyond the rational mind.
Buddha also knew the power of thoughts and ideas to shape people’s realities and for the beginning student would advocate for an ethical and loving perspective and said things like “it’s your thoughts that create reality” but that’s just your reality, it’s now clear that shifting your perspective can radically change your experience of the world. However these teachings were to help create a peaceful community where people could live in harmony but they were not the highest teachings about the true nature of reality albeit the fact that your own experience is so malleable starts to hint at what ultimate reality could be.

Method: Continually let go of the need to explain or judge your meditation or look for the meaning of experiences. When I asked a great meditation master about a technical point of meditation which I thought would both help my practice and show off my great understanding to the teacher, Karma Lhundrup Rinpoche surprisingly responded by singing to me. He said it’s like that Beatles song “Let it be, let it be, let it be, just let it be, whispering words of wisdom; let is be -ee.”

2) Too Much Effort
Ok, I hope you understood my point about intellectualising meditation being an obstacle to transcending words and concepts and directly gaining a taste of reality beyond ideas. The second main thing I have found why people fail at mindfulness and meditation is because of pushing too hard with effort and will-power or ego-power. Now I understand that part of this problem is teachers like me saying you're 'failing' at mindfulness and meditation because that sets up it's own type of neurosis where you never think you get it right and you never can, but stay with me.

Beginners are often told to just persevere and their meditation will get better over time, but I coach people who have been meditating for twenty years and they still struggle with the idea that their meditation should be blissful and peaceful all the time by now, and it's simply not the case.

Once again I have struggled to articulate the effortlessness of meditation when one of its most popular forms and something I also teach is mindfulness which has definite structure and technique which takes effort and discipline. However mindfulness is a movment from the effort of adjusting and coming back to rest in an effortless way. At the beginning there is a lot of adjusting and less of just resting. But even in one meditation session your mind settles down and you move toward mostly just resting calmly watching your breath not needing to adjust much at all.

Mindfulness is like the two training wheels on a bike that help you get your balance but eventually become unnecessary. The whole moment of meditation is a continuum from effort to effortlessness. It is ironic that it starts with effort to get to effortlessness but that's just how it is for most people. I say for most people because I think some can drop straight into an effortless and natural state of being right from the start, those types don't really need my help if they can continually do that, so this blog is not for them, and I would just advise to keep up the good work, or non-work.

The two training wheels are an adjustment from being off balance which require introspection at the beginning to even notice that you're off balance. The two ways to lose your balance are too much excitement or too much dullness. When your too excited and cannot leave thoughts alone you need to adjust yourself and relax and re-focus on your breath or mantra. When you get too sleepy and dull you need to straighten your posture, even open your eyes slightly and re-focus. However the thing that people get wrong here is too much effort in constantly adjusting. Once you have re-focussed and regained your balance you simply watch your breath and return to an effortless way of being.

In this way you find your mental centre of balance and learn to just be while calmly watching your breath. If you lose your balance constantly bring yourself back and let go again. Just like riding a bike you'll get the hang of it and find your balance and wonder why it was ever so hard in the first place.

Of course there are other things you can do to improve your mindfulness take a look HERE for more mindfulness teachings. But the main two adjustments are between too excited or dull.

Increasingly meditation becomes about non-interference and even when you do slightly lose your balance the adjustment is natural and instant, as soon as you notice a distraction you already have found your way back to the natural state. So even distraction are ok and need little effort to adjust or as my old Tai Chi teacher would say.

“Never wobble but when you wobble wobble well.”

I hope that’s clear, I’ve always wanted to include that sentence in a blog and I think it makes sense here, it’s also fun to say a few times.
I’ll also apologize for using the word fail in the title because the effortlessness I’m trying to point out means to not push yourself to some ideal of perfection. At the purest level of meditation there is nothing to get right and nothing to get wrong and it’s this all embracing easy going state that allows an effortless and naturalness to truly be present.

To truly be effortless we have to relinguish our normal ways of problem solving and goal setting and be able to rest in the perfection of the moment even when it doesn’t seem to be so perfect. Also this requires a goal-less and non striving attitude. When you sit, just sit like a Buddha, perfect already, nothing else to do, nowhere else to get to, so just rest as you are.

So eventually the training wheels come off and your meditation is natural and balanced even when it’s not. It becomes characterised by acceptance, non-interference and a sense of completion. In other words effortless. All those things are actually natural to your true nature of awareness. You don’t have to try to accept or allow it’s just what non-conceptual awareness does, like a mirror that makes no effort to reflect anything your awareness simply knows what’s happening without interfering or adjusting anything it’s complete and perfect just as it is.

Method: Just sit and let things be.