There are so many benefits to meditation—including the resilience and steadiness required to respond to the intense needs of our times.

Yet when I first started meditating, I was convinced that I couldn’t do it.

My mind wouldn’t stop thinking. My body hurt. I felt restless and agitated. The notion of “achieving” any kind of peace felt like an impossible joke.

What I didn’t know was that my experience was completely normal. I was making the whole process harder by judging myself against an imagined idea of how it should be.

Since then, I’ve learned how to relate to my mind with more patience and skill. In the process, I’ve identified three common myths that can hinder your practice, or stop you from even starting.

Myth #1: “Meditation means not thinking.” 

Thoughts in and of themselves are not the problem. It’s one's relationship to thought that is the issue. The aim of meditation is not to stop thinking. It is to be more aware of thinking, so that thoughts don’t control us.

Myth #2: “The goal of meditation is to feel calm and peaceful.” 

If you believe meditation is about feeling calm and peaceful, then whenever you can’t produce those states you will struggle. Meditation isn’t about producing a special feeling. States of tranquility can come, but they’re not the point. They’re in service of something deeper—opening the heart, training the mind, and understanding the nature of life so we suffer less.

Myth #3: “Meditation teaches people to be comfortable with the status quo, and is thus complicit with oppression and injustice.”

This one is more complex, and requires understanding the context and meaning of instructions like “observe without judgment” and “accept things as they are.” These teachings apply to our internal relationship with momentary experience, not to the broader conditions of life. Rather than negating wise discernment, they help us to transform habits of unconscious reactivity. In the end, meditation empowers us to act decisively and to sustain engagement with complex and daunting problems.

If you’d like to know more about these assumptions and how to overcome them, check out my latest blog post, The Three Most Common Myths about Meditation.

In kindness,

Oren

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