I've taught thousands of people how to meditate, and when I asked them what problems they're having with meditation, I only hear three answers over and over.

The most common problem with meditation that people report is that they can't still their mind.  They say this in different ways, like "I have a monkey mind", or "My thoughts never stop."  Or they have "negative self talk" or unpleasant thoughts that they can't make go away.

The second problem I hear is that they don't have enough time.  Maybe they're busy with their family, or busy with their jobs, or already doing so many things during the day to improve themselves — like going to the health club or taking evening classes — that they just can't find a spare 20 or 30 or 60 minutes a day (depending on the amount of time their teacher said they should meditate every day).

The third problem people report is that they can't seem to integrate their meditation practice into their daily life.  In other words, they might have pleasant times when they're meditating, but then they get behind the wheel of a car and someone cuts them off… and all of that calmness and peace of mind has instantly vanished and been replaced with a feeling that can only be communicated with one finger.

Sometimes people report that they just don't know what meditation practice to do or how to do it.  They hear meditation teachers giving conflicting advice.  One teacher says you have to meditate with your eyes open another teacher says yes to meditate with your eyes closed. One teacher says you have to hold your hands in this particular way, another says that you can hold your hands in some other particular way.  Some teachers say you focus on your breathing as it goes in and out, other teachers say only focus on the out-breath. All of this can lead to confusion.

What I discovered after 30 years of meditating is that many of these problems are not actually meditation problems.  These seeming problems show up, but with a bigger picture, a bigger understanding of meditation, the solutions to these problems are obvious.

One thing I discovered is that there are essentially two types of meditation practice.  All of the problems mentioned above come up when discussing one particular type, the type of meditation that most people are familiar with, which is typically a practice about developing concentration, or what I refer to as the "Path of Purification." In the Path of Purification, you need to do something to change some aspect of yourself, to make it better, or improve it.  In this case you're trying to using concentration practices to change or temporarily affect the natural way to your mind works.  In other words, it's your mind's job to think. That's what the mind does. Trying to get your mind to do some other kind of job — based on the theory that this will improve your life — can lead to people reporting the kind of problems mentioned above.

There's another branch of meditation that I refer to as the "Path of Recognition."  Literally re-cognition. To rethink, or see things in a new way.  In this path, those kinds of problems aren't relevant.  For example, having thoughts is not a problem in the meditation techniques that come from the Path of Recognition.  In fact, thoughts can actually be helpful to your practice.  There's no need, or even desire, to try to make them go away.  Now, paradoxically, once that's understood and experienced, thoughts may either seem like they go away or they might continue to come up, but not be a problem or a bother.  Sort of like background noise, thoughts can become something you don't even notice, let alone pay attention to.

In a similar vein, the meditation practices from the Path of Purification take time and effort.  Sometimes it can take 20 or 30 or 60 minutes just to get to have a moment where your mind slows down or relaxes. But the techniques from the Path of Recognition don't have that same time requirement.  It's like they short-circuit the time by simply pointing your attention to a "place" where you're already clear and relaxed. In the same way that if I ask you to pay attention to your feet, your awareness instantly jumps to the sensations that you weren't noticing before, when you learn the meditation techniques from the Path of Recognition you can put your attention on something that has already been and is always relaxed and open and spacious.

So you don't need to spend time to have an experience that, once you know where to look for it, is always present and available to be experienced.

It's the same thing with the question of integrating. In the Path of Purification it's as if we've gone to the mountaintop and had some experience that we hope we can drag back with us when we return to the marketplace.  That's actually a very difficult thing to do.  Sometimes in this Path, we get the idea that the way we're supposed to function in the world is by moving very slowly or doing only one thing at a time or in some other way changing the way we behave, because we think that is what a meditative life looks like. But as anyone who's ever tried to set and keep a New Year's resolution knows, making a dramatic change in the way you behave and function is very difficult.

The meditation techniques from the Path of Recognition can be done at almost any time, in almost any situation.  And so it's not a question of integrating something into your daily life, but discovering that your daily life already has built into it — without having to change it in any way — exactly what you need to find peace of mind and clarity.

I'll say more about the meditation techniques from the Path of Recognition in other posts… maybe your questions will help me craft those posts… anybody? Anything?

(BTW, the techniques in Instant Advanced Meditation Course are Path of Recognition techniques.)

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