Q: Many people have the discipline to run marathons and do all kinds of things that seem like very difficult practices. And yet, for many, meditation seems so impossible. Why is it?
Because people want results they can measure. They think, if I meditate, I’ll get something from it, like peace, calm, enlightenment. And then I’ll know when it’s working. What’s unspoken is that I’ll get those results in this time frame. They set expectations, and those expectations set them up to fail.
Meditation belongs to the ephemeral. It doesn’t fit into the world of quantifiable progress. And for most adults, the preparation to make it easy and natural never happened. If children were taught meditation from the age of three, we’d live in a very different world.
Q: I hear you, and I think I speak for a lot of people. I find meditation to be a drag.
One of the biggest obstacles is that meditation can trigger a subtle panic. The body mistakes stillness for danger. It is an unconscious sensation that cessation means death. Cessation of breathing means death. Cessation of the heart beating means death. Cessation of thoughts means death.
If this were better understood, there would be less fear and restlessness around meditation.
It usually goes something like this: “I wish to stop thinking. I’m afraid to stop thinking. I must stop thinking. I don’t know how to stop thinking. So, I have more thoughts about thinking, and then I forget that I’m meditating.” At that point, the response should be, “Oh, that river wants to keep flowing. Okay, go flow over there, I’m going to sit here quietly for a while.”
You’re not telling the brain to die by having no thoughts. You’re asking it to take its thinking elsewhere for a moment. That simple reframe can remove a lot of the unconscious panic that shows up as restlessness in meditation.
Q: So meditation isn’t really about control?
Right. It requires practice and discipline. But it also requires connecting to a sense of joy and hope rather than “I must do something I don’t think I know how to do, and I don’t really want to do, but I’m being told I should do. And I’m being told there are benefits that I have no idea what they mean because I’ve never not thought.”
Let’s go back to why people can do something difficult, like run a marathon. It’s because there are measurable results. They can see and experience progress. They can determine where they are on the path: “I am at mile 14, I have 12 more miles to go.” There is a sense of understanding of where they are in time and space.
Meditation offers no such markers. When it deepens, time and space disappear. That’s disorienting at first, but liberating once understood. So, expectations need to be understood and set up in a way that doesn’t work against the individual.
So, yeah, your response to meditation is not uncommon. Too many people see meditation as excruciating and not enjoyable. Why would that individual want to continue? They wouldn’t. It cannot be done through willpower. It has to be done through understanding. You cannot fight the brain. You cannot fight thoughts. You need to learn to coexist with them so they can do what they need to do, and you can also sit in quiet, undisturbed. It is not mutually exclusive.
The key is enjoyment. If meditation feels like punishment, no one will stick with it. When taught playfully and early in life, it becomes something the mind wants to return to.
Q: What does meditation feel like when it finally clicks?
Everyone knows what it feels like to fall asleep. Focus on that instant between wakefulness and sleep—the moment when there are no thoughts, no sounds, no images. There is no fear or anxiety. There is just peace.