Challenges with Meditation

During regular meditation for a period of time, you may find that there are certain emotional stress or states of mind that keep coming back in your awareness to disturb or thoughts that try to draw your attention away from your practice. These thoughts can be a sexual fantasy, sad thoughts, fearful thoughts or even painful memories that may keep playing in your mind like a CD stuck in the same old groove. It could also trigger unresolved resentment or rage within sometimes referred to as the ‘turbulent waters’ of your inner experience.

At first, you may be surprised, dismayed, or even frightened by what you encounter, and you may conclude that you’re doing something wrong. You may even find yourself resisting or pushing away this feeling but as the saying goes, “whatever you resist, persists”! So resist not and have no fear!
The truth is, your meditation has actually begun to deepen, and through the process the body-mind is naturally releasing stress and toxin from the body and mind. You’re ready to expand your range of meditation techniques to help you navigate and ground yourself in this new terrain.
At this point, you may find it helpful to extend your practice of mindfulness from your breathing and your bodily sensations to your thoughts and emotions. The goal is to keep going at it and eventually you can start to penetrate and even unravel some old habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns that have been causing you pain, suffering and stress.

5 steps to be mindful when facing a challenge:

1)    Embracing your thoughts and feelings

All thoughts and feelings are allowed to naturally move through your awareness without the need to judge it. You explore a thought or feeling when it becomes so strong that it draws your attention to it. When it no longer predominates in your field of awareness, gently return to your breath.
In other words, instead of viewing these issues of your inward experience as a distraction, you’re going to include it in your meditation with mindful awareness and when you find your attention wandering off into a thought or feeling, be aware of what you’re experiencing until it loses its intensity; then gently return to your primary focus.

2)    Welcoming whatever arises

All objective and subjective experiences are allowed and welcomed. There is no resistance to what is happening externally as well as within. A saying that fits this context would be to “watch the dance of the mind, but don’t dance with it”.
You don’t have to control your attention in any way; just allow it to naturally wander where it will, from thoughts to sensations to feelings and gently bring it back again. What you will notice is that these thoughts will lose its intensity and soon enough move out of the system.

3)    Expanding your awareness

Consciousness never changes, only your expanded awareness of the experience of consciousness that expands and contracts. There is an ocean of Consciousness that sits under the frenetic movements of the mind. This Consciousness is Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent. The experience of this Consciousness is Perfect Peace. The more we experience this Consciousness, the more permanent this Peace becomes until it engulfs our whole life. When this happens, the duality of subject and object is erased and a fundamental Unity is experienced. This is living in the world, but not off it. This is Enlightenment.

4)    Feeling your feelings

Feelings are visceral and it is not to be confused with emotions, which is energy in motion. Feelings and emotions can be overwhelming for all of us. No matter how experienced you are with your emotions, we all need help sometimes to know how to deal with them. It is natural in the early stages to resist unwanted feelings and hold on to feelings that are pleasurable Feeling your feelings doesn’t make them bigger or worse — at least not in the long run. It actually allows them to move through and release!

5)    Noticing your resistance and attachment

Attachment and aversions are two side of the same coin that is the root of all human suffering. The mind in its quest for greater happiness continues to seek pleasure and avert or avoid pain. These two forces if not recognize can have a detrimental effect on your well-being. You are driven to seek a momentary satisfaction before the craving/desire cycle drives you on, as it inflames your attachments to pleasure. These then become a vicious cycle that perpetuates.

6)    Seeking Wisdom Vs Knowledge

Knowledge is intellectual but Wisdom is divine. Never mistaken knowledge for wisdom, you can read to attain knowledge but Wisdom is born with the use of knowledge. All of life’s wisdom can be found within by cultivating through meditation. In some spiritual circles, this is said to be the highest form of Wisdom.