It’s my humble opinion that as in any other pursuit, meditation progress is guaranteed so long as you have the right method and are persistent with it.
Unfortunately, many people who come to me to learn meditation report not making progress with it, even people who’ve been meditating for a long time.
So let’s look at the most important points for making meditation progress.
1: Know What Meditation Progress Is
The first reason you’re not making progress is that your idea of progress is flawed. I cover this idea in my Mindfulness for Beginners Online Course.
Imagine you wanted to learn how to drive a car, but your vision of the ideal good driver, and your instructor’s vision of it, were both flawed. Well, chances are you’ll never learn to drive properly. The target is wrong, and any subsequent action will only lead you to that incorrect target.
I’ve found that meditators often have the wrong target. To crudely summarise my own findings, I’ll say that newbies believe that making meditation progress means on-demand bliss, mental calm, joy… and, unfortunately, all the popular apps do nothing but reinforce it.
If this is your idea of progress, it’s no wonder you’re not making any! Sure, these qualities tend to appear in long-term meditators, but perhaps not for the reason you think, and they undertake a lot of hard work to break through to their state of peace.
Hold the belief that meditation should be pleasant and blissful, and you’ll end up grasping for results and striving for certain experiences rather than cultivating presence, which is one of the fundamental aims of this work. Avoid seeking states. Seek skills.
Meditation won’t feel life-changing right away, perhaps even for a few years. You’ll likely have glimpses of its power, and these are small signs of your meditation progress.
As a first approximation, and since the practices I do are heavily influenced by mindfulness, Vipassana, Dzogchen and Mahamudra, a good milestone for newbies is the ability to sit with whatever comes up, without needing to change it in any way, with relatively stable attention, and greater clarity into your mind, body and senses. These will deepen over time, spill over into your daily life, and eventually lead you to the deep territory of meditation.
2: Do Real Meditation
If you want to make meditation progress, you need to do real meditation work. This might seem crude, but it’s true.
Most people think that it’s about cooling off, winding down, feeling peaceful, almost like taking a shower or a bath.
This is the kind you’ll find on all the apps. I won’t name any, but you probably know which ones I’m talking about.
Let me tell you: if this is the meditation you’re doing, and nothing else, you’re selling yourself way short.
This work is really more like weightlifting. It’s not about perfection. It’s not about reaching a certain state during a given
session. It’s not about feeling good. It’s not about any short-term state. It’s about putting the effort in over the months and years and watching the results accumulate and skyrocket.
Can real meditation be soothing and bring you peace? Yes, but in a much deeper way than what you’ll find on these apps. It brings it through real transformation, not through temporary states of mind.
How can you practice real meditation? An accessible place to start is mindfulness, which is the main system I use with beginners, and which informs all of my work and practice. My online course Mindfulness for Beginners helps you learn all the core techniques.
On this note, reading about meditation isn’t the same as doing it. Don’t be the person who reads 100 books on it but never sustains a habit over the months and years. You don’t want to know a lot of theory and have little practice. Practice comes first.
3: Bring it into Daily Life
When you begin meditation, it’s just another task you do during the day. But the more you do it, the more your day becomes enveloped by it. Luckily I was encouraged from early on to bring it into daily life, and now it feels second nature to do so. It’s there, waiting for me, whenever I want or need it.
I’ve written articles and recorded episodes on this topic, but essentially the idea is that, along with your daily practice while stationary, you want to practice your techniques as you’re going about your life: during simple tasks, walking, and spare moments like waiting in a queue or for the train.
4: Be Consistent
I’ve noticed that my most dedicated students are the ones who reap the most benefit. Those who aren’t dedicated like to moan about the fact meditation isn’t doing anything for them, even though I make it clear that regular practice is essential.
The truth is that if you don’t practice, it won’t do anything. You can’t substitute reading books, listening to podcasts and talking about meditation for actual practice. It’s no wonder you’re not making meditation progress if you’re not consistent.
Yes, you’ll go through peaks and troughs of motivation. You’ll have times when you get fed up doing it every day. And it’s no problem if you have spells when you don’t meditate. But overall, you want 5, 10, 15, 20 years of regular practice if you really want to see what this does.
I’ve written an entire article on how to make meditation a habit, which you might like to check it out.
Tip 5 for Meditation Progress: Be Patient
Impatience is a huge obstacle to meditation progress. This is not only because it takes a while to get permanent change through meditation, but because it’s antithetical to the entire endeavour.
Impatience with meditation means…
- you won’t stick with it long enough to reap the rewards,
- you’re not willing to be with things as they are, which is the opposite of our goal,
- you’re looking for short-term hits rather than long-term growth.
Conceptually, the solution is quite simple. You must change your perspective on this path. Think long-term, do the practice, and trust in the process. It takes time for a reason. This is not a quick fix, or a fast-action pill, or a dopamine hit. It is powerful, transformative, life-changing, but usually in the long term. Have the foresight to envision the long term and the forbearance to continue when you feel demotivated.
I hope this guide helps you make meditation progress. Do check out my course Online Mindfulness for Beginners to master the essential techniques of mindfulness and build a solid habit that over time will bring huge meditation progress.
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