You’re Not Bad at Meditation: 5 Meditation Myths & What to Do Instead

2. There Are Rules

When I say “meditation,” what comes to mind? 

Maybe you think of troublesome, unfathomable silence — or boredom. 

Maybe you recall, with a grimace, folding your legs into awkward geometric shapes. Maybe you think of expensive satin meditation pillows, incense, and Andean pan pipes.

Meditation carries some oddly specific and often inaccurate connotations in Western discourse on the subject. Profound spiritual practices rarely translate when appropriated, and most Westerners lack the appropriate context to discern truth from New Age fiction.

Most of us think of meditation as something that requires a specific position (lotus), environment (silent, dark), and state of mind (peaceful and empty).

As a result, we chastise ourselves when unable to meet this imaginary standard—or else we abandon the practice altogether. 

After all, we’ll never be the barefoot, patchouli-scented granola muncher who meditates three hours a day and levitates every so often. We’ll never be able to walk across a path of hot coals or respond to insults with compassion.

Thankfully, most of our wild ideas about meditation come from a handful of 19th and 20th-century thinkers who wanted to add their own zany spin to an ancient spiritual practice.

Meditation is a broad and lawless discipline. There are many different types of formal meditation and innumerable informal variations. Meditation can be whatever we want it to be.

We only resent meditation because we think we aren’t good at it when in reality, we’ve simply misunderstood the rules of the game—or because we’ve assumed there are any rules at all.

The point is not to become an expert at sitting still in lotus position or swallowing fire, or living in a cave without food. The point is to practice open awareness when presented with few distractions—so we can deploy it when presented with plenty.

We are liable to get the journey confused with the destination, to confuse becoming a zen expert with living a mindful and fulfilling life. 

But we would do well to remember that seated meditation is just the rehearsal—and life is the performance.

Besides, the entire purpose of the practice is to limit ourselves to existing in the present moment. One cannot “master” the present moment, nor should one try. There is no need to become an expert to enjoy the benefits meditation offers. One has simply to show up and pay attention.

It doesn’t matter how, when, or how much you meditate. What matters is only that you find time in your day to notice what is happening around you, this unique, unprecedented view of the universe which no one else will ever see but you. 

So look closely; take it all in. 

That’s meditation.

3. You Have to Have an Intention

Many meditation teachers ask their students to set an intention. 

Examples may include: surrendering completely, communing with my Higher Power, and forgiving my enemies.

No pressure.

While intentions can be valuable anchors, they can also create confusion around the purpose of meditation—or lead us to believe that there is a purpose at all.

I hear people say—in yoga classes, client sessions, retreats, and public transportation—that they meditate to find happiness, introduce order into their lives, or meet God. And there are meditations for all those purposes—focus, awareness, transcendence, astral projection, etc. And because the term “meditation” broadly means “inward reflection,” it can refer to just about anything.

But when we set goals for our meditations as we do in our work, we risk slipping noiselessly out of the present moment. 

We create expectations around our meditation practice, and you know what they say about expectations…

There is no ultimate objective in meditation. There is only the here, and now we hope to experience at this very moment.

Meditating one hour a day does not bestow one with the miraculous ability to forgive every transgression—but it does empower us with the awareness we need to become someone who might.

When we meditate to “do” or “get” something, we are challenging the very first foundations of meditation and what it does (and doesn’t) promise. 

The goal should never be to “make” anything happen since we are after acceptance.

The goal, ultimately, is to become aware of one’s thoughts, behaviors, surroundings, and experiences. That’s it. There is nothing to do or have—only everything to notice.

The purpose isn’t to make magic happen—it’s to notice the magic already there.

4. Meditation Tames the Ego 

Somehow, we’ve all come to believe that enlightenment comes from the destruction of the ego.

Thibault wrote: “the ego isn’t a real thing; it’s just the unexamined mind.”

As a result, we meditate to do just that: destroy the ego. 

But how did the ego get such a bad reputation to begin with? Where did we get the idea that it deserves to be destroyed? And how did we come to believe that we have the power to “get rid” of it anyway?

The short answer: Freud and Puritanical norms, but that’s an essay for another day.

The ego is a crucial component of a fully functioning human organism. We need our egos to make sense of experience, interpret the world around us, maintain boundaries…The list goes on. 

The problem is not with the ego but with our relationship to it. Back to the parenting metaphor: the ego is like a child—thoughtless, impulsive. It misbehaves only when we neglect it. It depends upon our mindlessness to entertain its drama. But we do not kill our children when they misbehave. We give them “the look,” and we teach them—with vigilance—to behave differently. So it is with ego.

When we meditate, we give the ego the attention it craves. When we pay attention to it, it miraculously ceases to disturb us. It doesn’t die or disappear. It simply gets a little quieter and less intrusive.

Busy minds are akin to dirty rooms. We don’t toss our dirty clothes and stray cups to make space. We clean up and put everything back in its rightful place. So it is with the mind.