• Let go of meditation goals. Keep your meditation simple.
• Conversely, run with your goals until you see other reasons to meditate.

One of the myths around mediation is that is has certain goals and purposes. Meditators talk about becoming more self aware, more at one with the universe, more peaceful, all kinds of things. These are all very nice, but they are not the purpose of meditation.

The purpose of meditation is to do meditation.

Once you've decided you have a goal to your meditation practice, you will be more likely to stumble over many of the stones I'm talking about in this article. But even that's OK, because it's all part of the journey. One thing is for sure, mediation increases our awareness of ourselves and you've just learned something about yourself - that sometimes you are results oriented.

That said, you can assign any goal or purpose you like to your meditation practice, with the knowledge that having the goal itself might become a problem later. Depending on what your goal is, is what kind of meditation you chose. I've written about that in other articles. You will know it's time to let go of goal-oriented meditation when you encounter one of these next few pitfalls..

• Am I doing it right?
• How am I doing?
• I don't think I am doing this right.

• Keep your meditation simple, like following your breath as it comes and goes.
• Keep up your practice even if you feel it's not going well.

There's only one way to do meditation 'wrong' - and that's by not meditating at all! There are many ways to meditate. They are each helpful for various reasons, and in time, you can learn what meditations work best for what situations. But, in the end, there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to meditate. These feelings are telling you that you are a goal oriented person or someone who needs external affirmation. Maybe you just need more feedback. And that's all fine. Remembering that mediation increases our awareness of ourselves, the thing you've just learned about yourself is that you like a lot of guidance and validation.

There are three meditation strategies to work through this: Keep meditations simple, like simply focus on the flow of your breath in and out, and keep it up, even if you think you are doing it badly. Follow the flow of your thoughts as they come and go. Trace them back to their originating thoughts. You might soon see where the thoughts come from, or notice patterns that lead to them.

If all else fails, take a meditation class with an instructor who is very specific about how the meditation is to be done. Get them to show you exactly how to meditate. Do it that way until you realize that you don't have to. :D

Your Thoughts

• I really should be doing (any number of chores);
• I need sleep, (or food, etc)

• Sit. Stay!
• Follow your breath as it comes and goes.
• Count the rhythm of your breath.
• If you really can't doff the thoughts, do the chore and then come back to your meditation.
• Take a nap, if you really need it!

• Let them come and go.
• Don't specifically entertain them.
• Don't try to push them away.

You've gotten past some of the early hurdles and you're actually doing your mediation each day. One thing that starts bringing you to the meditation mat is the possibility of going to delightful mental and emotional places as you meditate. It's all so delicious! This includes thinking of how your life will be, now that you're meditating regularly; imagining the new you; sexual fantasies; building delightful alternative worlds for yourself where your problems are fewer, your needs are fulfilled and you are happy.

That's all well and good. It's nice to have nice thoughts and live in a nicer place to be. You can stay in that place if you like and never move on. That's OK. You don't have to achieve anything special in your meditation. You need not go anywhere further with your life.

The fantasies can become addictive and can mask what you need to look at to truly make your life more wonderful. These moments, in all their deliciousness, are often a pleasant way of not thinking about things that we have buried. They keep us from feeling bored with our meditation, help us enjoy it, and we feel a certain amount of happiness from them. It something like looking into the Mirror of Erised. They can absorb you to the point that they consume your whole life. You miss experiencing everything else.

No matter how much you like them, your fantasies will not turn into reality. Just sayin …

Meditations that can help with this phase include:

• Just noticing your breath as it comes and goes.
• Noticing sounds as they touch your ear, simply as vibrations against your ear. Do not analyse them or think about what they mean. When the sound is gone, the vibration is done and you wait for the next sound.
• Notice your thoughts as they come and go. Notice where each thought comes from, what initiates it, any patterns in your thinking.

If you're enjoying this phase a little too much, just know that, with enough meditation, the next phase will soon take care of the fantasizing. The next phase is the exact opposite. ...

• This is boring.
• This is annoying.
• This is pointless.
• You fall asleep.

• Sit. Stay! Do more meditation.
• At least go through the motions of sitting & breathing in and out.
• If you're falling asleep, be sure to sit up for meditation.

This is a sign that buried thoughts and feelings are about to come up. You've buried them for a reason - you don't want to have them, look at them, experience them. Continue your meditation session. Continue to have meditation sessions. This is an important time and an important sign. You are about to make breakthroughs.

If you're really having difficulty staying put, a good meditation to use is 'counting the breath', where you count how long it takes you to breathe in and take twice as long for each breath out. Mantra meditations and meditations where you have to visualize things are also helpful during these stages.

• Stay in meditation.
• Keep your session going. Continue to have more sessions.
• Give yourself more time in your day to process feelings.
• Give yourself a pleasant way to 'break' meditation when you're done your session.

Meditation is going to make you more aware of yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, where they come from. So, naturally, there will be times in your meditation practice where buried thoughts and feelings will come up. This means you're going to experience feelings and thoughts that you didn't want to have. But, even buried, or especially because they're buried, these things are tripping you up in life and cause a lot of havoc. I would say, especially if buried. They will stay buried and continue to mess with you until you let them surface and take a look at them.

If you're going to get past this, you're going to need to re-commit yourself to your practice and your individual session. You stay put and your sit through the experiences. Pushing them away will only make them come back stronger next time. Sit and breath in and out and let the thoughts and feelings come and go. You simply watch them, like a spectator.

During this phase of meditation practice, the feelings can linger throughout your day. So it's helpful if you have ways to put them behind you until your next meditation session. Some good strategies include: breaking your meditation with some gentle music. Sitting for a while reading a contemplative, inspiring book, going for a walk along busy streets. Doing a chore that requires mental attention. Etc. Basically, you are finding ways to shift what you're thinking about, but in a way that is kind to yourself. It's also helpful, during this phase, to have counselling or a friend to talk to about the issues that come up.

Meditations that help with this phase include:

• Just noticing your breath as it comes and goes.
• Noticing sounds as they touch your ear, simply as vibrations against your ear. Do not analyse them or think about what they mean. When the sound is gone, the vibration is done and you wait for the next sound.
• If the feelings get too overwhelming and you are about to get up and leave your meditation because of it, you might like to try continuing but with 'counting the duration of your breath' as your meditation, or The Sponge.

There is more peace of mind on the other side of this hurdle.

• I want to do more of this.
• I want to do only this.

• Self examination. Are you escaping? Avoiding?
• Chanting & Breathing Meditations.
• Having a life!

This is when people start meditating for large parts of the day or week. Their life is now fit around the meditation, rather than the other way around. They will often take up practices that support meditation, like yoga, long nature walks, seeing out certain books and music, changing who their friends are etc. They explore various forms of meditation. They go on meditation retreats.

This is a double-edged sword. Enhancing your practice will take you to very deep levels. The hazard is 'retreating into meditation' where you are escaping out of your life into the comforts of meditating.

This phase can often be a reaction to the previous one. You've worked through thoughts and feelings and found more peace on the other end. So let's stay here! Why go back into the real world where there is only suffering? But this escape is a kind of stifling of feelings. Now you're pushing away feelings before you have them, rather than holding down ones you already have.

At this phase, it's important to ask yourself: Am I avoiding feeling something? If I am, what would it feel like?

Meditations that help this practice include:

• Chanting, seeing where the chants get 'stuck'.
• Breathing meditations, also seeing where the breath gets stuck or what thoughts make your breath get stuck.

These chanting and breathing meditations will help you unlock emotions that you're hiding from yourself.

• Going out in the real world and having a life!

• These experiences are juicy!
• More of these experiences, please!
• I must be getting very good if I'm having these experiences.

Sometimes, wonderful and interesting things will happen because you are meditating: Kundalini experiences, feeling one with the universe, experiencing the divine, having psychic experiences. This is all so interesting, and helpful!

Yes it is. It can also be a distraction, one that leads to Monkey Mind, (see the next pitfall). It can further remove you from experiencing the world as it is, from experiencing your life in all its juiciness, from accepting thoughts and feelings, from seeing yourself as you really are.

While these moments are amazing and you learn incredible things from them, you need to tread this line with a sense of balance, or else you fall into traps much as beginners do when they slip into fantasies, or intermediates do when they retreat into meditation.

Aren't these experiences what meditation is supposed to be about? Yes and no. Getting caught up in any experience is a distraction, much like processing emotions can muddle up your meditation practice. Enjoy them. Learn from them. Immerse yourself in them as they happen, then let them go. Just be aware that if you get caught up in the feelings around this phase, you'll be back at square one. Also, recognize that, in seeking out these wonderful experiences, you are getting goal oriented, a distraction from your earlier phases of meditation.

Meditations that Help during This Phase
This phase is an advanced variation on the times that thoughts and feelings distracted you as a beginning meditator. So the meditations that helped with those hurdles can help here.

• Just notice your breath as it comes and goes.
• Notice sounds as they touch your ear, simply as vibrations against your ear. Do not analyse them or think about what they mean. When the sound is gone, the vibration is done and you wait for the next sound.
• Let the experiences come and go. Notice them and then let them be on their way. Later in your day, you can consider their meaning to you, integrate them and decide how you want to incorporate their lessons into your life.

• This is it!
• I've arrived!
• I've gotten very good at this.
• I've reached enlightenment.
• I'm more enlightened than others.

• Sit and meditate, then sit and meditate some more.
• Choose a simple meditation, like following the flow of your breath.
• Go on a retreat.

I've reached enlightenment!

That's nice, now go to the bathroom, get to work, pay some bills, and do some good in the world. The 'I've reached enlightenment' moments are another variation of emotional distraction. They usually precede having even more difficult feelings come up. Didn't you just spent years on the mat working through your difficult feelings? Well, there are some more, and they're hiding underneath the Monkey Mind. This is the time to go on retreat. …

Now it is helpful to go on retreats, because the stuff that is buried under Monkey Mind is deep and fundamental. These are the trap doors that you set up long ago and have not been responding to your personal work so far. You've kept yourself nicely distracted with other personal work and with using tools that have come more easily. We always tackle the 'easy' stuff first. Now there's that yucky stuff left that wouldn't budge by earlier means.

You will need to give yourself plenty of time and breathing room to let these thoughts out, examine them, and process them. If you get past Monkey Mind to this next phase, you will be strongly preoccupied as you process your issues, so it's helpful to do that in a focused atmosphere. It's like birthing, while you're doing it it's really all you have on your mind.

Meditations that help include any that have helped you with previous phases. By now, you will have many tools on hand. Try them all. Then try ones you haven't been using and ones you haven't used much. It's the ones you're not using that might be the most helpful, because you're going need fresh ways to leverage your personal trap doors open.

Throughout your meditation practice, you'll find yourself coming back to square one, over and over again. You'll think you've left earlier phases behind you as you tackle a fresh phase. What is common, though, is a feeling of coming back to square one after each breakthrough, or during each breakthrough. It's like rounding third base and finding yourself back at home plate.

It can be helpful to think of your meditation practice as a spiral upward. It can seem like you're going in circles, but each time you come back round to the 'beginning' you've actually spiralled up. You can see the beginning point in new and fresh ways, and that, in turns, helps your upward climb.

In the end, it's all good.

Sit.

Stay!

... Just do it. :D