What Prompted This Question?

It's over twenty years since I attended an eight week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. It was run for people who worked in the NHS mental health trust where I was employed at the time. Service users had found it beneficial and so someone had a brainwave. Wouldn't employees find it meaningful too?

After the course I started to practice sitting meditation regularly. Sometimes I lapse but there are more days that I get around to practising than days that I miss. By now I should be a guru but, instead, I still feel rubbish at it!

I've never quite got the hang of paying attention for longer than a few seconds. My mind still wanders after all these years. Why is planning my shopping list more important than connecting with inner guidance?

Originally I was taught to focus on the breath, watching it enter and leave my body. But when that didn't bring me enlightenment(!) I tried different approaches: focusing on a word or phrase, looking at a candle, fancier breathing techniques. Yet none of them 'work'. That elusive attention still seems to evades me even after all these years..

So I thought I'd explore this subject a little further. Am I really crap at meditation? And , more importantly, what might I discover if I look beyond my assumptions about what meditation is supposed to be?

Let's Dive Deeper

One of the things that's occurred to me recently is that , even after all these years, I'm not quite sure why I'm meditating in the first place. I'm reminded that there isn't just one purpose and that there are different practices with different aims. Here's some of the ones that I've explored in the past.

Let's start of with considering 'focused attention' . Drawing from older traditions including Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Jon Kabat Zinn developed MBSR for use in healthcare settings and this is what I was taught on that course all those years ago. In this type of meditation we deliberately place our attention on something such as the breath or our steps while walking and when we notice that our mind has wandered we bring it back.

This is where the idea of developing a 'meditation muscle' comes in. The analogy is that repeatedly bringing our attention back strengthens our capacity to pay attention, much as physical exercise develops an impressive physique. If that's true, my spiritual pecs remain decidedly flabby after all this time.

Another approach is insight meditation, which has its roots in Buddhist Vipassana practice and was made accessible to Western audiences by teachers including Jack Kornfield. Here the breath can still be used as an anchor, but the practice also involves observing thoughts, feelings and reactions and becoming curious about what is happening. Using this approach my shopping list becomes something to notice rather than an interruption that proves I've lost concentration.

Then there's the type of practice that has an overt spiritual dimension, which is particularly relevant to me. I've sometimes used meditation because I want to become quiet enough to hear the voice of a Higher Power. Christian contemplative prayer has a long tradition of using stillness as a way of becoming receptive to God, but this isn't confined to Christianity. Michael Brown's The Presence Process, for example, offers a contemporary spiritual approach centred on becoming more present and opening ourselves to a deeper sense of presence.

I've just realised that what I've been trying to do is use meditation for all these purposes at once, a kind of spiritual multi-tasking! No wonder I've not been getting very far. How can I hear the voice of God, for instance if I'm intent on keeping that focus on the breath at all costs? Perhaps trying to improve my focus, find peace, understand what's going on in my mind and connect with a Divine Being all at once is rather a tall order..

Something I've Noticed

So is there any point in continuing to meditate if I don't think I'm any good at it after two decades? After all, if it was any other activity I'd have thrown in the towel long ago. Often I make the decision to quit something far more quickly if the results warrant this. Knitting and crochet spring to mind. A couple of holey, badly tensioned attempts at jumpers convinced me that these crafts were not for me.

But meditation is different.. I do attribute benefits to it even though they're not apparent at the time of navel gazing. Let me show you a couple of reasons why this is.

Very soon after I completed the MBSR course I was scheduled to give a presentation at a meeting.. I left the office in good time , only to find myself stuck in traffic about three hundred yards from the venue. The whole town was gridlocked and I was still sitting in the traffic jam ten minutes after my talk was due to start.

Now in the days before meditation this would have bothered me a lot. But instead waves of acceptance flowed over me. There was noting that I could do but maintain presence. I was shocked by this response and how powerful it was in helping me maintain my sense of peace.

And here's another thing. During lapses in practice, I seem to be more prone to anxiety and low mood. Of course I can't prove that the two things are connected, but I've noticed the pattern often enough to make me wonder. So perhaps one way of judging whether meditation is useful isn't to is to notice what happens in my life when I do it and when I don't.

What I've Found

But let's get back to seeing if I can improve the practice itself. As I'm writing this I wondered whether any of the wiser gurus out there had anything to say about whether setting an intention before I begin meditating might be helpful. And they certainly do. I found some interesting ideas when I looked at the three different approaches I've already mentioned.

1. With focused attention what we want to achieve is enhanced ability to concentrate. I was interested in what Tara Brach, a renowned and inspiring mindfulness teacher had to say. She suggests that the intention we set before practice is to awaken from habitual thinking and rest in presence, When the mind wanders from our anchor, say the breath, we simply notice and return. Perfect concentration isn't required. That noticing and returning is the practice.

Tara Brach: How To Meditate

2. When exploring this from the perspective of insight meditation I turned to Jack Kornfield's ' The Heart's Intention'. Here he encourages us to consider what we'd like to cultivate during a practice period, rather than simply trying to achieve a particular state. So I could sit with the intention of being curious about whatever arises, rather than trying to make my mind behave itself. The need to add to my shopping list becomes something to observe rather than an annoying interruption.

Jack Kornfield: The Heart's Intention

Jack Kornfield: Home Retreat: Setting Your Intention

3. And then there's that matter of becoming quiet in the hope of hearing the voice of 'another'. This is something that the 'Centering Prayer' associated with Thomas Keating addresses from a Christian perspective. It's less about concentrating on something and more about becoming quietly receptive to God's presence.

Thomas Keating: The Centering Prayer

Personally I've been drawn to Jack Kornfield's approach. I like the idea of deciding what I want to cultivate before practice and then being curious about what happens, without that judgement about whether I've meditated well or badly. It feels like I'm doing a scientific experiment - on myself!

Funnily enough my first proper experiment with setting an intention this week still incorporates breathwork. Maybe I'm comfortable sticking to what I know. Although Jack Kornfield's ideas have inspired me it seems that I've stuck to a focused attention approach. But perhaps it has an insight mediation-type twist.

My little experiment has been seeing whether I can preserve my focus for longer when I count each breath in and out. My record number of repetitions has been about thirty before daydreams take me away. That's really not that bad for someone who would have said previously that they had the concentration span of a goldfish!

The number really isn't the point. It seems easier to notice that that I've wandered and bring my attention back , however quickly I forget that I'm focusing on the breath. And although judging the quality of my practice doesn't seem to be what I'm supposed to be doing it really does feel that I might be beginning to cultivate a way of meditating that feels as if it has a little more substance.

Try This

Next time you meditate, don't just sit down and hope for the best. Before you begin, take a moment to decide what you'd like to practise and see if your experience of doing so echoes my own.

Or if you've already got it sussed be brave! Give formal meditation practice a rest for a few days and see if you notice the difference as you go about your daily life.