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From Obstacles
to Meditation & How to Overcome Them
May
2003 Daily Meditator
Thinking you
are not good at meditation is a very insidious thought, because
it may cause you to stop meditating completely. Plus, it isn't true!
You cannot measure your success as a meditator by judging a particular
meditation, or even a series of meditations. Every meditation builds
on the one before it, even if you think it wasn't a good one. What
is a good meditation anyway? One that you do! St. Teresa of Avila
said, "A meditation is well done, if all you did was fight
distraction."
The purpose of meditation techniques is to bring the mind back from
being distracted. We think we should never be distracted once we
have a meditation technique. But remember that the point of using
meditation practices is that now we do have something for the mind
to return to. This is practicing meditation correctly-each time
you realize that you are distracted, calmly return to your technique.
No matter how many times this happens during a meditation, calmly
return and never give in to discouragement.
From Concentration
is Everything
October
2003 Daily Meditator
Knowing how
important concentration is, people sometimes become discouraged
over their inability to hold their minds steady in meditation. We
need to realize, however, that completely quieting the mind is the
goal of meditation, and not something we will necessarily experience
right away. No one expects to master the guitar the first time he
plays, and this is true for meditation, whose very mastery reveals
Infinity to us.
See Also:
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