{"id":5760,"date":"2017-02-13T09:34:34","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T17:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deconstructingyourself.com\/?p=5760"},"modified":"2024-07-04T16:30:17","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T23:30:17","slug":"mindfulness-reboot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deconstructingyourself.com\/mindfulness-reboot.html","title":{"rendered":"5 Reasons Your Mindfulness Practice Has Stalled & How to Reboot It"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Michael W. Taft<\/p>\n

It happened to me, and it\u2019s happened to many people I know. <\/b>You have learned to sit still and follow your breath. You can directly contact the reality of the present moment. You can go deep. The power of meditation practice has made itself manifest, you\u2019ve experienced real benefit, and it\u2019s given you a significant edge on life. But year after year, you\u2019re practice is not developing any further. You\u2019re not gaining new insights and it\u2019s not engendering new and positive behaviors anymore. The wind has gone out of your sails, and you\u2019re in the doldrums.<\/p>\n

This is the definition of being \u201cstuck in a good place.\u201d Don\u2019t get me wrong: it\u2019s much better than not having a meditation practice at all, but now you\u2019re treading water. If you don\u2019t change something at this point, you\u2019ll probably remain trapped on this plateau for a very long time, even the rest of your life. I\u2019ve seen it happen to lots of people.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve taught meditation to thousands of people, and in my experience there are five big reasons they end up in this situation, and several corresponding ways to get yourself back on track again. As your meditation trail guide, I’ll take this opportunity to point you in the right direction here. These are surefire ways to give yourself and your practice a mindfulness reboot.<\/p>\n

1. You Don\u2019t Know How to Go Deeper<\/b><\/p>\n

Most meditation teaching\u2014especially in the mindfulness field\u2014will give you competent instruction in the basics, and leave it at that. That\u2019s not a bad thing. Even the basics of mindfulness are very powerful and can take you a long way. But at some point it\u2019s necessary to go beyond the basics, and if you don\u2019t have any clue about how to do that, you\u2019ll just be doing the meditative equivalent of wheelies in the parking lot forever. I have met many people who have practiced for twenty years or more, and who are convinced that you don\u2019t need to know<\/i> anything beyond the basics. They\u2019re metaphorically stuck in grade school, and long ago realized that they\u2019re not going any deeper in their practice.<\/p>\n

[x_blockquote type=”center”]If you don\u2019t change something at this point, you\u2019ll probably remain trapped on this plateau for a very long time, even the rest of your life. I\u2019ve seen it happen to lots of people.[\/x_blockquote]<\/p>\n

The cure for this state is to graduate to metaphorical middle school. Challenge yourself to begin working with more sophisticated mindfulness techniques that require higher concentration and deeper equanimity to master\u2014you\u2019ve probably built up more than enough skill at the foundations by this point. What specific techniques am I talking about? Here are some suggestions: focusing on details of impermanence in a sensation, meditating on thought as an object, learning to deconstruct the sensations of meditative calm. There are many, many more, of course. If it\u2019s not clear to you what I mean by these techniques, then it\u2019s time for you to find out.<\/p>\n

The Internet can be very helpful with this. There are a huge number of online courses that can teach you all sorts of new techniques, different understandings and viewpoints, and other ways to go further and deeper in your work. Besides teaching you new ways to practice, these have the added advantage of getting your out of your comfort zone. One sure way to get yourself out of the metaphoric weeds is to just do something completely different with your practice. How about trying something totally verboten in the mindfulness world, like chanting songs or doing mantra practice? Some people get a lot out of going to advaita satsangs. Check out some old-school Vajrayana (i.e Tibetan Buddhism), or go sit at a Zen sesshin.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s going further in your own tradition or trying something completely new, the important thing is to start engaging again and get back into the swing of fruitful practice.<\/p>\n

2. You\u2019ve Lost  the Point<\/b><\/p>\n

Meditation is not an easy practice. It requires effort, commitment, and real discipline to get anywhere. It\u2019s worth if, of course, but as with anything similar, if you forget why you\u2019re doing it, it becomes a meaningless chore. I remember times when I had been sitting so regularly for so long that I had lost all sense of what meditation was and why I was doing it. What I needed was a good dose of inspiration, a really fiery hit of awe, wonder, and possibility to rekindle the fire under my ass. By practicing in retreat with my teacher Shinzen, I remembered why I was doing it in the first place. I got re-energized and began making progress again.<\/p>\n

People will tell you that there\u2019s nowhere to go and nothing to gain. And in one sense that is true. Practicing with an eye to \u201cgaining something\u201d can sometimes be counterproductive. But in another way of looking at it, your mindfulness practice has the power to utterly change your life. You can improve almost any behavior, and begin to see yourself growing week by week. You can even begin to contact levels of real awakening. Yes, enlightenment.<\/p>\n

For some people, enlightenment sounds like nothing but the ridiculous fantasy of religious dupes; for others it\u2019s a state of such purity and perfection that it\u2019s almost godlike. Both of these ideas just get in the way.<\/p>\n

Awakening is actually much more specific and tangible than the way it is often presented. Awakening means to see that there is no \u201cperson\u201d inside yourself that is the real, authentic \u201cyou.\u201d Instead there are simply rising and falling activities of thinking and feeling, activities which by their nature are always and forever changing. This sort of awakening comes about by deep mindfulness meditation (and other practices).<\/p>\n

When you make awakening either nonexistent or too fabulous, it becomes unattainable. With proper understanding and instruction, however, real enlightenment is available to almost anyone willing to put in the time and effort.<\/p>\n

An even worse misunderstanding of awakening, common in American Vipassana traditions, that practicing with the goal of enlightenment is negative because it\u2019s \u201cgoal-oriented.\u201d These traditions strongly discourage talking about or practicing towards awakening because, supposedly, doing so will make it harder to attain. Instead, they contend, you should maintain an attitude of practicing without trying to get anything.<\/p>\n

While there is some merit to this viewpoint, it is taking things too far. Yes, it\u2019s possible to get so obsessed with trying to \u201cget somewhere\u201d that you miss the point and even get in your own way. But to discourage practicing towards awakening altogether is a terrible misstep. It leads to people doing years and decades of practice and\u2014surprise, surprise\u2014never getting anywhere.<\/p>\n

As the traditional wisdom has it, meditation is like \u201cusing a thorn to remove a thorn.\u201d That is to say, yes, practicing with a goal orientation can be a block, but it\u2019s a block that removes all the other blocks. That\u2019s what the Buddha meant when he said that meditation was like a boat that you use to cross a river. When you get to the other side, you don\u2019t need the boat any more.<\/p>\n

So never forget that you always have the capacity to grow more awakened, to learn more, to understand more deeply, to love more completely. Remembering it will reignite your practice again.<\/p>\n

3. You’re All Alone
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

Being a serious meditator can be lonely sometimes. Your friends and family may not understand what you\u2019re doing, or may even be unsupportive or critical of it. Human beings evolved as social animals; in some ways, our community is everything. Having people who you can connect with and talk to about your meditation is crucial.<\/p>\n

Our technological and social media society can really come to the rescue here. There may be few serious practitioners in the world out there, but most of them are available online somewhere.<\/p>\n

Podcasts<\/b> – There are some amazingly helpful meditation podcasts out there. They exist for every level of experience and meditative tradition. The Deconstructing Yourself website is also a podcast<\/a>, and furthermore recommend others like Buddhist Geeks<\/a>. The conversation is one way in any podcast, it can work wonders for helping you to feel that there are others like you<\/a> out there in the world. (List your favorite in the comments.)<\/p>\n

Twitter <\/b>– Twitter is one of my favorite venues for connecting with meditation teachers of note. While they are often talking about topics other than meditation, it\u2019s surprisingly easy to engage them in a serious conversation about practice. It\u2019s also interesting and instructive, on some level, to see how they talk about other topics. My friend Kenneth Folk <\/a>(who is a highly qualified mindfulness instructor) has a Twitter feed worthy of connecting with, especially if you don\u2019t mind a lot of side commentary about Bitcoin. (List your favorite meditation teacher\u2019s Twitter feed in the comments.)<\/p>\n

Facebook Groups<\/b> – (Note: FB is a malicious site, however…) If you\u2019re already spending time on Facebook, getting involved in a serious meditation group can be extremely helpful and even fun. An active group can have hundreds or thousands of members, and if it\u2019s well moderated, the level of conversation can be very deep. Unlike podcasts or even Twitter to some extent, in a Facebook group, the conversation can be more two-way, so it\u2019s much more likely that you\u2019ll develop some genuine and heartfelt connections in this way. In a good group, you can cultivate a cyber-sangha of people who are actually supporting each other\u2019s practice. It\u2019s good to be picky, however. Many groups mainly function as an advertising vehicle for a teacher or meditation center and those don\u2019t typically work as well for connecting with others about the details of your life and practice and theirs. One that I recommend is The Eastside Mindfulness Collective<\/a> (full disclosure which is run by friends of mine, including Jessica Graham of Deconstructing Yourself). You\u2019ll find people actually talking about their practice, as well as meditation in general here. Other excellent groups are hidden\/secret, and I suggest you search around until you find something you like. If you don\u2019t know where to begin, however, you are always welcome in my Mindful Geek Group<\/a>, which is public. (List your favorite FB mindfulness group in the comments.)<\/p>\n

Reddit<\/b> – Believe it or not, Reddit hosts a couple of very active and interactive groups, which are relatively free from trolls, griefers, and marketers. They are \/r\/mindfulness<\/a> and \/r\/meditation<\/a>. Even better, these days can be \/r\/streamentry<\/a> and \/r\/themindilluminated<\/a>. You can find a lot of very good information here, and talk to people who you can actually get to know. These are both groups buzzing with energy. One of the best things about them is they are not dedicated to any one teacher or tradition, especially \/r\/mindfulness. Like any forum, you have to be on the lookout for bad information in there, but the bad is greatly outweighed by the good. Getting out of the box of whatever tradition you\u2019re in and at least reading about another form of meditation which is quite different is always challenging and refreshing.<\/p>\n

Buddy System<\/b> – Even if you live in a sparsely populated backwoods area, or perhaps on an island off the coast of Canada somewhere (lucky you!), I encourage you to make use of the buddy system. Find at least one human being somewhere who is also doing mindfulness practice and meet with them one a week to discuss both of your practices. It works! If you can\u2019t find a friend in meatspace, find one online!<\/p>\n

Go to Retreats <\/b>– Tabla (a type of drum) virtuoso Zakir Hussain was born into a family of tabla players. His father began Zakir\u2019s daily lessons when he was just three years old. Zakir continued the lessons throughout his childhood, and became very good at drumming. Daily practice had it\u2019s effect. And yet there was something more he could do. When he was 17 years old, Zakir went on a special drumming retreat. He played the tabla every minute he was awake for 45 days solid\u2014that\u2019s almost seven weeks of continuous drumming! This experience changed the way he played his instrument fundamentally. As Zakir himself said, \u201cI saw things in the music that I had never seen before, new combinations, new patterns.\u201d This retreat took Zakir from being merely a very good tabla player to being a true virtuoso of the instrument.<\/p>\n

\"Learn<\/a>Something similar is possible with meditation practice. Daily sitting is both necessary and highly effective and yet, if you\u2019re willing to put in some dedicated retreat time you can take your practice further than you ever imagined. Retreat practice can be just the thing for digging you out of your stuckness and getting yourself back into the flow of curiosity, exploration, and engagement again.<\/p>\n

Spending 45 days in a row meditating would be nice. I\u2019ve done meditation retreats as long as 92 days. There are people who do even longer retreats than that regularly. But you don\u2019t have to check out of daily life for months at a time to get the benefits of retreat practice. Even a day or two of dedicated sitting, usually in the company of other committed practitioners, can be tremendously beneficial.<\/p>\n

Most retreats of more than one day are residential\u2014i.e. you sleep at the retreat facility. By staying in the atmosphere of the meditation practice, you can dive ever-deeper into the profounder elements of your sitting. If doing a residential retreat is too much, there are even retreats which you can do in your own home via the phone. No matter how you do it, getting into retreat practice is virtually guaranteed to help you to overcome stagnation.<\/p>\n

Practice in Life – <\/b>Meditation is not just something you do to get better at meditation. The real intention is to improve your life and the lives of those around you. It\u2019s crucially important, then, that you take your meditation off the cushion and begin to do it during your everyday life\u2014or what is called \u201cpractice in life.\u201d Because mindfulness meditation is about contacting present-moment awareness, it\u2019s particularly well suited for practice in life (PIL).<\/p>\n

PIL is a fabulous thing to take up, because it forces you to bring mindfulness into all sorts of difficult, unusual, or \u201cnon-meditative\u201d situations. Think about it. It\u2019s one thing to be able to shoot baskets all alone on an empty court, and quite another to do it while the other team is trying to stop you, people in the stands are yelling, and you\u2019re moving really fast.<\/p>\n

PIL is not hard to do. Simply take whatever favorite practice you have and try to do it out in the world. Breath sensation meditation is an easy one. You can walk around all day feeling your breath. Another common one is walking meditation, where you stay in contact with the feeling in the soles of your feet as you move about.<\/p>\n

My favorite by far is to meditation on emotional sensations in the body. Staying in continuous contact with emotional sensations is a truly life-changing practice. Each situation all day long provides its own mini-banquet of tiny (and sometimes large) emotional sensations to track. Doing so increases intuition, and the ability to connect with others. Try it out!<\/p>\n

4. Spiritual Bypassing<\/b><\/p>\n

Human beings can sometimes be their own worst enemies. In meditators it often takes the form of what is known as \u201cspiritual bypassing.\u201d Spiritual bypassing means to use your meditation practice as an excuse for never digging into the difficult or uncomfortable issues in life. It is a form of escapism or checking out. Here are some examples of spiritual bypassing:<\/p>\n