Why is meditation so difficult?
Why can meditation feel so difficult?
When most of us sit down, close our eyes, and begin to focus on our breath, we immediately notice that it’s not as simple as it initially sounds. All we must do is feel the air entering and leaving our nose; trace it up and down. Our difficulties are largely due to the fact that this is precisely the opposite state of patience and presence that we cultivate in the rest of our lives.
We spend our days moving towards pleasure and away from pain. We seek things that make us excited and interested while moving away from uncomfortable and unenjoyable experiences. Meditation asks that we sit in the middle. We don’t seek, we don’t avoid, we just pay attention to whatever arises in our mind. Because we are not used to this feeling of simply being, we often find ourselves becoming anxious, and impatient. Urges arise moving us to seek other experiences that are more “exciting.” So when we sit down to meditate, we are brought face to face with our instinctual, egoic, conditioned mind.
Who’s in control here?
A striking realization is that we don’t have as much control as we think over our own minds. In fact, for most of our waking life, it’s actually quite the opposite. Although we feel like we have total free will over what we do, our urges, instincts, and animal nature skillfully directs our attention. We feel like we use our bodies to accomplish “our” goals, but it’s probably more accurate that our body uses “its” thinking mind to help satisfy its needs. We tend not to notice how easily influenced we are by our bodies and impulses, but that’s because we often identify with those impulses as they arise. For example, when we feel emotions of anger, fear, happiness, or even hunger arising, we don’t simply notice them the same way we would notice the feeling of someone putting their hand on our shoulder. With these feelings, we identify with them and think “I am hungry/angry/scared/happy.” We feel like we actually are those feelings and urges.
The Ego
Meditation helps us to notice how our minds easily distract us and lead our attention around by the nose. Here we sit, we’ve made a conscious decision to take some time, quiet our minds, and simply breathe. Nothing about this task is “difficult” in the sense of it requiring any strength or special knowledge. We all know how to pay attention to something, and we don’t have to “do” anything at all. But our minds pop up and intervene with our mission, even though we’ve sat down with clearly defined objectives of sitting quietly, without thought. This distracting mind, which bounces from topic to topic, has been given a wide range of names throughout history including the “monkey mind”, our sense of self, the conditioned self, or most simply: The Ego
We don’t want any thoughts to come up, but on it’s own accord, the ego brings images, ideas, stories, urges, pain, itchiness, fantasies, anxiousness, and a whole load of other baggage to our mental stage. Our conditioned mind acts like our neck and actively directs our attention without any regard for what we’ve consciously decided we would like to do.
Those thoughts that pop up to distract us during meditation, that voice in our heads, is always there. Also, as long as we can remember, it’s always been there. So it feels normal. So normal, in fact, that we are completely used to it and simply overlook it. It’s like the feeling, right now, that you are breathing, your legs are on your chair, and your feet on the ground. Because the pressure and influence of this voice, our instincts, is always there, we stopped noticing it. It became an ever-present fixture of our consciousness, and most of us stopped paying attention to it years ago. Nevertheless, it’s there influencing our behavior throughout everything we do. And it especially tries to redirect our attention whenever we aim to do something that is beneficial to us that requires work.
A practice of daily meditation can help us transform any area of our lives because it helps us to become more aware of how our own minds work. We all feel emotions, get distracted, and even find ourselves doing things that don’t align with our deepest values or long-term goals. Because these feelings have been present and influencing us for longer than we can remember, we tend not to notice them. Meditation creates a situation where we can’t help but notice the nature of our minds and it’s influence over what we do. This added awareness can help us decide more precisely when it is a good idea to exert self-control or if we are fine with the direction these urges are taking us. Whichever route we take, meditation helps us elevate our self-awareness so that we better understand why we behave the way we do. Ultimately, awareness is central to learning, growing, or making changes to any aspect of our lives and impact on the world.