“Leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”
– Shunryu Suzuki
In this article, I want to debunk a common myth about meditation. I often receive comments from subscribers who are confused about their practice. They believe they’re doing something wrong because they continue to have thoughts during their sessions.
Let me assure you: you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re not making any mistakes if you continue to entertain thoughts during your meditation practice. The most important aspect of meditation is precisely bringing your attention back to the object of concentration.
The Power of Redirecting Attention During Meditation
Every time your attention wanders due to your thoughts, it’s exactly the process of constantly bringing your attention back to the object of concentration that grows your level of awareness. So don’t worry – you’re not making any particular error if your attention is distracted by your thoughts during meditation.
This process of bringing your attention back to the object of concentration is what improves your level of awareness. It makes you become more balanced and calm in everyday life. Why? Because if you’re not aware of your thoughts, you have no possibility of choice when a challenging event occurs.
Breaking Free from Automatic Reactions Through Meditation
Normally, when a problematic event happens, you tend to react always in the same identical way. Event A occurs, and you react with reaction B. Often, this reaction B is a response that only worsens the situation, perhaps because you react with anger or instinctively in a negative way.
Meditation creates the possibility of choosing differently compared to your usual reactions. Before, you always reacted to event A with reaction B, but now you’ve become more detached from your thoughts. You’ve become aware of your thoughts, and therefore you have the possibility to choose differently and react in a new way – differently from the reaction that unfortunately made you suffer in the past.
The Real Benefit of Meditation for Beginners
Often, those who start meditating have wrong expectations. The quickest and most effective improvement for those new to meditation is precisely this change – being able to change one’s harmful behaviors, behaviors that cause suffering. This is a huge change.
This opportunity arises precisely from the improvement in one’s awareness. Most people aren’t even aware of the thoughts they entertain. You can change your life only after becoming aware of your thoughts. This unawareness of one’s thoughts is exactly what leads us to relive to relive the past in the present.
Meditation as Karma Burning
When you meditate, you’re actually burning your karma. Each of us has peculiar thought tendencies, and through meditation, you can let go of these peculiar thought tendencies. Rather than facing the problems that arise due to your peculiar thought tendencies in everyday life, you face them during meditation.
By facing your thought tendencies – the thoughts that distract you, bother you, make you lose your inner balance – during meditation, you can avoid facing these inner challenges in everyday life. In a sense, you’re really burning your karma, letting go of your inner “dirt” through meditation instead of through life’s difficulties.
The mistake I see many people make is believing that their meditation practice isn’t bearing fruit because they’re invaded by continuous thoughts during meditation. Being invaded by thoughts is actually a sign that the meditative practice is working. It’s precisely through the emergence of repressed thoughts, emotions, and thought tendencies that the possibility of letting go of all this inner baggage is created.
A Better Way to Measure Progress
A better way to become aware of the progress in your meditation practice is to pay attention to changes in your daily life. For example, after 2-3 months of consistent meditation practice, you might start to discover that when you get lost in negative thoughts or useless fantasies, you’re now able to be aware of the fact that you’ve gotten lost in these thoughts.
This simple change – becoming aware of your thoughts – is not a small change. It’s an incredible change, a gigantic change because it means you have more control over your life. Moreover, another excellent way to observe progress in your meditation practice is to pay attention to events that perhaps in the past always made you react automatically and negatively, and to which you’re now able to react differently.
Embracing the Journey
In conclusion, remember that having thoughts during meditation is not only normal but also an essential part of the process. It’s through acknowledging and gently redirecting these thoughts that you develop greater awareness and control over your mind. This awareness then translates into more mindful and effective responses in your daily life.
Meditation is not about achieving a thought-free state, but rather about developing a new relationship with your thoughts. As you continue your practice, you’ll likely find that you become more aware of your thoughts and reactions, both during meditation and in your everyday life. This increased awareness is the true measure of progress in meditation.