Are you one of the millions of people who think they can't meditate? Here's how you can get started with a method that has the potential to take you all the way!
Meditation is all about the here and now, one moment at a time.
Sure, there are monks who meditate several hours at a time. Even people like you and me may say they meditate half an hour or an hour every day. While this is wonderful for them, it may sound daunting to someone who has never meditated before.
Try this: Sit comfortably, with you back straight and upright. You can sit in a chair, on a couch, on the floor, on your bed, wherever you like. Now close your eyes and breathe in once and out once. Don't try to do anything else. Just breathe.
Congratulations! You have just started your meditation practice. If you just did one breath, you can do another tomorrow. You can even do another breath right now, if you feel like it. This is genuine and beneficial meditation practice. You may not be a master (yet), but practice is what will get you there, nothing else.
How do you practice? Or to be more precise:
How do you refine your practice?
The goal is very simply to do nothing but breathe and be aware of nothing but your breath. If you just breathed in once and breathed out once and were aware of that, you are already doing very well.
All that's left to do is realize what else happened while you were breathing. Did you hear anything? Did you feel cold or warm? Were you thinking about what you had for breakfast or what you are planning to do for dinner?
Your goal is not to push any of those sounds or feelings or thoughts away, nor to cling to them. Be aware of them, acknowledge them, and then let them go right away.
If you now realize that you spent the whole time thinking about dinner, repeat the exercise. One breath in, one breath out. This time simply try to pay a little bit more attention to the breathing and a little bit less to the thoughts about dinner. How did it go? You may feel tempted to label the second attempt “better” or “worse” or “the same.” The best thing to do, however, is to realize every time is different, but that's it. The point of the practice is not a boring, constant slow grind toward improvement.
What's the goal of the practice?
The goal is to develop two particular mental skills:
You want to cultivate the ability to focus on one thing. In this case, that one thing is your breath, but the skill can transfer over to other objects of concentration.
The other skill you're developing is to be aware of what is going on in the present moment, more specifically, to be intimate with the present moment. In order for this to work, you have to learn to be okay with whatever is happening. If you try to push it away, you won't be fully aware of it. If you try to hold onto it, you won't be able to, and you'll be distracted. You'll also miss the next moment because you'll be caught up in the previous one.
So how do you actually get good at these skills?
Practice, practice, practice!
Don't force yourself to meditate a certain number of minutes, but just do one breath at a time. You can do this once a day or a hundred times a day. It's totally up to you! I do recommend, though, that you do at least one breath every single day. You want to cultivate a new habit, and consistency is the way to do it.
What's next?
Believe it or not, this technique can get you very far! For one example of where you can go with it, I highly recommend the book Mindfulness Bliss & Beyond by Ajahn Brahm.
Do keep this in mind, though: Meditation is about seeing for yourself, not reading what others have seen. Don't even think too much about what you have experienced, just experience! Be still and watch!