Why is it so hard to meditate?
We make time, put away the world, we sit, take a deep breath, close our eyes, and then we are confronted with ourselves.
In that darkness and motionlessness, we have the opportunity to practice a different state of being, to enjoy our own pure existence, our core self.
And yet, what happens? Why is it so hard to sit quietly and enjoy our very own company?
Day-to-day activities, interferences and disturbances, phones, people, visuals, sounds, tasks, responsibilities… usually all these naturally allow us to avoid a personal and quiet meeting with ourselves. We get lost in the outside world, with our people, things and all that which we need to deal with. We simply don’t get to be in silence, in the naked experience of our selves.
And when we do take the time, make the effort, what is it that we find? Who is it that we meet?
It is inevitable that when we sit we may confront our insecurities, our lack of self-control, absence of self-love, our deficiency of compassion to others and to ourselves, our anxiety and restlessness. Faced with our shadows, our unwanted memories of the past, our repetitive thought cycles that torment us again and again. And again.
We may recall all the things that disturb us, those we are ashamed of and those that for no good reason crop up in our minds, those that are not really worth our time and yet, they pop up, disturbing us. And there are of course all those things that are in fact a real problem in our lives, obstacles we must deal with, people that we hate, situations that we feel we simply have to overcome and that we can’t manage to put aside, even for five solid minutes.
We discover that we are perfectly able to be a disturbance for ourselves, no one else is needed. Usually we blame other people, sticky situations or life events as the cause and reason for our agitations and concerns. And yet here, in these few moments where we are left all alone, we find out that we simply cannot put our troubles aside, we do not know how to be calm, to be at peace.
We feel clueless, no one has ever taught us how to be happy, how to be still, how to relax. Do we even know anyone who knows how to do these miraculous things and can teach us?
How to practice being at peace, how to experience this? Maybe no one knows. What are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to think about? How to experience ourselves without thoughts? Is it even possible? What am I when I put the world aside; my relationships with the outside world and my personality? What am I left with? Did I just fall asleep?
Is there anything left once all thoughts are put away? Is there anyone left inside me? Anything there that stays and doesn’t change with my moods, feelings and age? Is there just personality, past experiences, future worries or is there more within me? How do I not know this? Why is this so ridiculously hard?
No one has ever asked us these questions or invited us to contemplate these matters. Most likely, we have never met anyone that has actually met themselves, in separation from their very own thoughts. For some odd reason we believe that this state is readily available to us for whenever we want; it’s just there, like the Earth; we just need to rip out some random weeds and we will find it solid and still. Is that so? Or is this just wishful thinking?
Perhaps the question is wrong, perhaps we should wonder why it is that we expect something we have never tried, and have not received any proper guidance for, to be easy.
For what reason do we assume it will just come naturally to us? Like a child feeling the need – for food, for love, affection and care – we too feel our need for peace of mind. Yet just like a child we have no idea how to attend to this need, and sadly, in contrast to a child almost no one really knows how to help us.
