Frustrated with Meditation

[JadeGreen]

A little background: I have been meditating on and off for months, and recently (in the past week or so) committed myself to thorough meditation. More or less, I've stuck to a two phase meditation. In the first phase I will simply focus on clearing my head by counting down from one hundred on each breath. I will be laying down during this phase. When I reach zero, I will sometimes start over from 25 or 50 if I feel that my mind is still not clear. I will generally do this laying down. After the 'clearing my mind phase', I will often sit up and assume a proper meditation pose. I may simply choose to focus on breath, or I may focus on another matter (such as lucid dreaming.) This phase is often rather short, only a couple minutes, until I get a 'meditation ending' feeling. I generally try to preform the meditations in mid-afternoon, (roughly around 4:00pm) but I do not have a set-in-stone time-frame. But I've been having some problems and would like some advice. Problem #1: I have issues with intrusive thoughts while meditating. I wanted to start with this one because it is honestly the most irritating. Some days it is better than others, but every day it has been happening. My mind can become easily sidetracked by intrusive thoughts. I've tried jounaling them once before and they came up as utterly random. Often they were things that were not even relevant, sensical or pertinent to me at the time. (For example, once while in the 'clearing my mind phase' I got sidetracked on the thought of 'The Grim adventures of Billy and Mandy, a cartoon that I loved when I was a kid, but haven't watched in over ten years. I spent a good five minutes thinking about it the show, characters, and my favorite episodes before asking myself why I was laying on the floor and remembered that I was supposed to be meditating.) Problem #2: Meditation seems to negatively impact lucid dreaming. This one is probably the most out-of-left-feild and unexpected issue. Late last year, I made my first attempt at committing to daily meditation. I was using pretty much the same techniques and parameters that I described above, and I had pretty much the same mental approach. Some of it was just meditation for meditation's sake, but some was focused on lucid dreaming. I expected my recall and lucidity to improve in leaps and bounds, but instead I saw that my dream recall flounder into a couple of vauge fragments each morning and my lucidity was practically gone. This went on for about a week and a half until I stopped meditating. My recall and lucidity slowly returned afterwards. I can't really say too much else about this, because to be honest I don't have any idea why this happened to me. It seems to be happening (albeit less severely) in this past week as I've started meditating. Problem #3: Meditation feels like pulling teeth. This is probably because of the two problems above, but my, oh, my is it painful to meditate. Despite the fact that upon having a successful meditation I generally feel good and tell myself that I should commit to doing this more often, in the long run, (by the next day) the thought of conducting another session simply feels like a chore. It also seems to kill my motivation to do other things like write in my autosuggestion notebook, go on Dreamviews or say mantras.

[Habba]

Great post. I myself do meditation every now and then. I have noticed that most people that are new to it or don't know what it is come along to these problems you have listed. To the problem to do with the thoughts, You can never successfully clear your mind, if we could do that we would be dead. There would be nothing to process our own thoughts. Instead, The object is not to focus on clearing the mind but in-fact the objective is to focus on something that you can use to distract yourself from clearing your mind, That last part may not make sense at all so let me make it more clearer. You have your breath, Focus your breath. Breath in and out deeply and slowly, the more you focus the more your thoughts are going to drift away, Think of it was a distraction to your thoughts.

[JadeGreen]

Thanks. To some extent that's what I've been doing to combat the problem already, but it's good to know that's how others handle it too.

[MasterMind]

Hey JadeGreen Since I am having a positive experience with meditation now, I will attempt to share my journey with meditation. First of all: http://www.dreamviews.com/meditation...appy-free.html Second of all here is my experience with meditation, which was just like yours is now, PAINFUL! You hear stuff like stop the thoughts! Sit on a chair and do nothing for 20 min! And then you try it and man it is not fun at all! I actually have had another really annoying problem that made me stop meditating completely for a long time, and that was falling asleep... How did I solve the distracting thoughts? and how did I stopped being bored? And how did I stop falling asleep? Well one simple way of putting it is to say that I didn't.. I simply accepted it. I did realized though that our modern life of constant external stimulation, makes it really difficult to meditate because by then you have to generate good emotions internally. So that is one thing to keep in mind. Another thing is to not judge yourself and set low expectations! When I start to meditate I just trust that with consistent practise it will handle itself. So I sit down on my chair and I just say to myself, I am allowed to think and I am even allowed to overthink, but for now let's just focus on the breath. And when a thought pops up, instead of judging that fact I just remind myself to return to the breath, I smile and enjoy breathing. As I continue to sit and observe my thoughts like the clouds in the sky they eventually dissolve and the sun shines through. And just like the real sky is sometimes completely covered in clouds, sometimes your mind will be completely filled with thoughts, do not judge this fact just observe it, make a mental note of it and continue to breathe. So in this situation: "I spent a good five minutes thinking about it the show, characters, and my favorite episodes before asking myself why I was laying on the floor and remembered that I was supposed to be meditating" It's completely fine! Sometimes I think about lots of stuff but it's when I notice that I have been thinking that I know that I am aware again. So instead of TRYING to notice my thoughts I allow them to appear on their own and WHEN I notice them I go back to the breathing. If you really are experiencing problems with lots of thoughts, surrender to it. Most of the time the problem is just resistence. Say to yourself "OK I am allowed to THINK, my only goal is to sit here for "X" min" That is what I did with my faling asleep problem "Fine it is ok if I fall asleep!" and strangely enough I don't fall asleep as often anymore. Meditation teaches us that a problem is never really a problem in itself, it's our judgement of that problem that makes it so. As Buddha said: "Nothing is either good or bad, everything just is." And to answer your other two problems: Negatively impact lucid dreaming? Well even if that is the case, are you sure that you didn't do something else those days? Such as sleeping less, being stressed? etc. But if it truly is meditation that is disturbing your lucid dreaming, it's probably not the source of the problem because meditation is simply the act of doing nothing. And is it really possible that nothing affected your lucid dreaming? And yes meditation does feel like a chore at first because it takes willpower to go to the chair and sit doing nothing, just like working out or studying. But when you see the benefits and longterm result of the meditation you'll gett addicted. So the reason to why it kills your motivation for other things is probably because you drain yourself on willpower, but again this is not a problem, it is a lesson. Build up your prefrontal cortex of the brain and achieve a stronger mental muscle. However when you make it a habit, it is just as easy as brushing your teeth. So my advice to you would be: Read and watch stuff that motivates you to meditate. (Preferably my DJ because I am focusing on making 20 min meditation a habit right now, I am on day 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pljb...74C539D773B86C I wish you the best of luck! I hope this helps.

[Habba]

You hear stuff like stop the thoughts! Sit on a chair and do nothing for 20 min! And then you try it and man it is not fun at all! I actually have had another really annoying problem that made me stop meditating completely for a long time, and that was falling asleep... Honestly, I could not agree on this comment. How on earth are you suppose to sit there for 20 mins and do nothing? I remember when I first started teaching myself to meditate. If you ever fall asleep again you could always sit up and set the intention that you won't fall asleep. It worked well for me. How did I solve the distracting thoughts? and how did I stopped being bored? And how did I stop falling asleep? Well one simple way of putting it is to say that I didn't.. I simply accepted it. I really love your attitude towards meditation. If you don't like it then so be it, It's like eating vegetables, I don't like them but I still eat them because it's healthy food. That's exactly like meditation. It really bugs me that people try to force a Meditation technique on you. I have learned these past years that meditation is whatever you want it to be! don't let anyone change that. I walk down the street and calm myself, That's meditation for me, Other times, I set the intention to enter a deep state of mind, That's meditation to me. the whole subject is categorised so? It's subjective, make it what you want!

[DreamyBear]

The reason why meditation easily become frustrating is because we have so many ideas about meditation to begin with. That thought comes in and try to push the meditation to the "next level". The best time to doing sitting or laying down meditation sessions is when we feel like doing it. It's the same feeling you get after a long walk, when you feel like sitting down for a while, and it just feels good to sit without that thoughts need to comes in to say that I must sit because it is good for me. You just sit, and you feel the tierdness in your legs and body for a little while, and you are aware of that without thinking that you're tired. The same thing goes for sitting meditation, so if you have had your mind full of thoughts all day, then you might start to feel like that it would be nice to just sit or lay down for some time to just breath and clear your mind a bit. And if thought comes in, then you try to just watch the thought without condemn it as something you shouldnt do, because then you just thinking about not thinking anyway. Hope this clear some of your problems for you, without adding to much thought in to it. Good luck!

[JadeGreen]

Wow, thanks for the helpful guide and insightful post. . I'm gonna bookmark this so I can read through it and contemplate it more fully as time goes on. It's really well written and thought out. Straight and to the point, too. And-oh god... Spirit Science... my old enemy. My friend C tried to get me to watch these awhile ago. Despite them being enlightening and fun, the narrator's voice never sounded right to me.

[JadeGreen]

-And two more people posted in the past ten minutes... Thank you all. I think I've got the jyst of it now.

[MasterMind]

Glad that it helped you! And yeaa Spirit Science.. You can say what you want about their so called science.. But their parables summarising the teachings of Buddha are very beautiful.

[Habba]

This video really helped me when I started out. I find his voice very energising and positive +1 and you might like it.

[MasterMind]

This one is good too

[FryingMan]

I think finding a good source on meditation is critical. NOTHING I've read has come close to saying "empty your mind." Instead, you simply learn to recognize when your mind has wandered, acknowledge this, and quietly and gently bring back your attention to whatever you're concentrating on. Again and again, without judging, frustration, clenching, "trying harder," etc. Over time, your concentration will improve. You may want to read "Attention Revolution" by B. Allan Wallace (just about anything from him is *great*), and "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation For Everyday Life" by Jon-Kabbat Zinn. Both are very approachable and discuss cultivating the proper mindset.

[VinceField]

Problem #1: I have issues with intrusive thoughts while meditating. This is something that takes time and practice to resolve. A key aspect of attaining the ability to maintain a clear and calm mind is ridding the mind of the attachments that give rise to the unwelcomed intrusive thoughts, essentially clearing out the cause of the unwanted effect. A strong desire to purify the mind is also an important aspect of development in this area, as the right intention and motivation gives rise to optimal levels of alertness and energy to do the work required to pacify the mind. Problem #2: Meditation seems to negatively impact lucid dreaming. One idea is that perhaps you are exerting too much mental energy during your meditation sessions, essentially channeling the mental energy you would otherwise use for lucid dreaming to your meditations, and thus your mind is now more in "recharge" mode during sleep. However, this is not my experience. My meditation practice has increased my lucid dreaming abilities with the development of greater levels of self-awareness and mindfulness. Problem #3: Meditation feels like pulling teeth. This is generally the result of what Buddhism calls "wrong view." Right view is essentially understanding that which is wholesome and the causes of that which is wholesome, and understanding that which is unwholesome and the causes of that which is unwholesome. Or in other words, having knowledge with reference to suffering, knowledge with reference to the origination of suffering, knowledge with reference to the cessation of suffering, knowledge with reference to the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering. Understanding that proper meditation practice leads to the end of personal suffering shapes one's perspective of one's meditation practice so that it is not met with aversion, but rather with joy, energy, and motivation, as one knows the benefits of one's practice and desires these above all else.

[ThreeCat]

Hi Jade, I know you've received a lot of advice (some I agree with more than others), but I wanted to add my own perspective. #1. Chogyam Trungpa in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (truly a beautiful and profound book--I highly recommend it) says this about sitting meditation: . . . the first point is not to focus yourself too much on the awakened state of mind. The whole practice of meditation is essentially based upon the situation of this present moment, here and now, and means working with this situation, this present state of mind . . . . It does not seem you are after the awakened state of mind, but your meditation does seem to be very goal-oriented, in that you want to calm thoughts so you can be a better lucid dreamer. I think this might be some of your problem. If you are annoyed that thoughts keep arising, it means that you are not really resting in the present moment--you are concerned with seeking a future moment where thoughts may or may not be calmed. And that, unfortunately, will not lead to a calmed mind. Here is another quote a bit farther down the page: You do not have to push yourself into the practice of meditation but just let be. If you practice in this way, a feeling of space and ventilation automatically comes, the expression of the buddha nature of basic intelligence that is working its way through confusion. These are unfortunately not the exact quotes (can't find the one I want at the moment), but the essence is that Trungpa Rinpoche is recommending you simply be with your thoughts. Remain aware of the breath, continue bringing attention to the breath, but do this in a peaceful, non-aggressive manner toward your thoughts. Simply by changing your relationship to thoughts, and "giving up" on calming your mind and instead just paying attention to your breath, the mind will calm itself. That is its natural state anyway--it (paradoxically and oddly enough) is you (and me, and anyone else who "tries") who is stirring up your own mind. Just sit with it, note the thoughts, and be aware of the breath. #2. I agree with Vince here but want to go a bit further. You really shouldn't be exerting much energy to meditate. Thought (and pursuing thought by thinking about thought) is what takes energy. When you allow the mind to settle, you are suddenly not expending energy. Alan Wallace (who FryingMan mentioned and who I also highly recommend) would say you are trying too hard. Listen to his podcasts on lucid dreaming and dream yoga (in particular, where he discusses "the infimary"--perfect practice for you). Just Google Wallace and dream yoga podcasts. 13 episodes, can be found at Upaya Zen Center podcast or dharmapodcast.org. #3. This is part of the process; there will always be resistance to mind-calming meditation starting out. Keep practicing, and you will see the benefits. They are a lot more interesting (in my opinion) than simply having more lucid dreams. Wanted to mention one other thing: You can never successfully clear your mind, if we could do that we would be dead. There would be nothing to process our own thoughts. The mind's nature is not thought, and you can be alive without thought. The mind's nature is open awareness: