I want to cover this right off the bat because it is vitally important. People when they meditate often think its about having a nice feeling. They sit down to meditate, drift off into a nice dreaming state and wake up 30 minutes later and go “Wow, I feel so good I had a great meditation”. This is bad meditation and will not improve your state of being or long term happiness and peace. Essentially you’ve just day dreamt or slept for 30 minutes and feel refreshed because of this, not because of good meditation.
When you are meditating you should be aware of what is going on and be aware that you are meditating, you should be alert and conscious. You should be aware like this in the moment. The mind should be crisp and fresh. If you drift off or go fuzzy and can’t remember the last 20 seconds, then you weren’t being mindful. Mindfulness is vitally important to meditation and is the key to meditating successfully.
As much as we like meditation to be nice, sometimes when we sit we come up against challenges or feelings we don’t like. Meditation is like a microcosm for your own life, so you’ll experience the exact same things you do in life. How you experience and deal with things in meditation will reflect how you deal with them in real life. Eventually as you develop and your mind quietens down you’ll start to experience nicer meditations but don’t always expect it to be like this. Some days will be better and easier then others, and some not. Its kind of like the weather, some days there is good weather some days are not. Don’t worry if its one or the other. So it is important to remember, for your meditation to develop make sure you stay aware and mindful during your meditation sessions.
