or: everyone sucks at meditation, that’s why it’s called practice

I’ve heard the following phrases hundreds of times in the past eight years. “I’ve tried to meditate, but I just can’t” and “I can’t clear my mind”. Here are my thoughts on that – from experience, from teachers over the years, and from negative self-talk.

Meditation, like everything else, is a practice. Surgeons don’t know how to operate without thousands of hours of practice. No one knows how to play an instrument the first time they pick it up. Meditation takes practice. I don’t know one single person who didn’t think they sucked at it the first time they sat down.

There is no such thing as clearing your mind. You mind makes thoughts, that’s its job. It gathers sensory input and attempts to organize it, make sense of it, so we know the next action to take. Sometimes when you sit, you mind may settle like a glass of muddy water as a result of stillness and breathing, but the more you try to make this happen, the more the glass gets shaken. If there was a switch to turn off your brain, I think we would have found it by now, after 2500 years.

Additionally, results from practice don’t come in a linear fashion. It’s not like the first time you sit, it’s frustrating and the 1356th time you sit, it’s nirvana. What comes when you practice is a result of how often you do so, your stress level, how much inner work you are doing off the cushion, etc. If you have a “bad day” meditating today, tomorrow’s session might be calming.

You’re doing fine. It’s all part of the practice.