[MaaikeMember]

From your wording it sounds like you are being really hard on yourself.

“Losing lots of progress due to injury/illness/a shitty week following a night out (all of which make sitting impossible or dramatically increase dullness, and finding motivation to continue again after regressing is difficult).”

Regressing is inevitable. Culadasa writes that progress through the stages is not linear, and that one can expect to go up and down stages on different days and even within the same session. Instead of looking for success in the “achievement” of a stage, I try and look the benefits the practice has brought me in daily life.

Look at “losing progress” (I would say there is no such thing!) as a learning opportunity. Illness and injury, as well as other kinds of life events, impact the stage one practices at – this is inevitable, and a good lesson to learn: I do not OWN my meditation practice, it’s not even MY practice, strictly speaking; all I can bring is right intention, right effort and a lot of kindness. I do not have control over these conditions, and these conditions will impact my practice – both ways, by the way: sometimes conditions come together in such a way that practice is really easy, and one will shoot up a couple of stages – but getting frustrated because conditions change and one “loses progress” is not helpful. It will give one valuable information about the kind of attitude one is (maybe subconsciously) bringing to practice though.

“Losing progress” after a night out is also a learning opportunity: it shows what sleep deprivation and possibly alcohol consumption do to practice. I used to drink quite a lot and have a very erratic sleeping schedule; meditation has shown me more clearly than anything else the impact these things have and conqesuently, I have greatly modified my behaviour.

“I have heard that metta can help to pacify the mental discomfort or anger that comes with confusion, dashed expectations and all manner of negative critical thoughts, but I have tried metta and not have had much success with it, as it seems very contrived and (ironically) frustrating.”

Metta might seem contrived – at first. It’s really, really, REALLY worth it, especially if one is very much striving for “success” and being full of self-judgment. For me, Rob Burbea’s metta instructions were very helpful (to be found here: https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1265/ and here: https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1084/ , this one is a bit simpler and probably more immediately helpful), as well as the book “The mindful path to self-compassion” by Christopher D. Germer. Other people have had succes with TWIM metta meditation.

The thing I found helpful in Burbea’s approach is that he emphasizes intention and not so much “the feeling of metta” as I too was struggling to generate any warm metta feelings, and ofcourse trying to force metta feelings is not helpful, because then metta just becomes another thing “one must succeed at”.

I think in the TWIM approach if one is unable to get the feeling going, one is supposed to do forgiveness meditation until the heart softens a bit – there’s a guided meditation on this on Insight Timer.

Good luck 🙂

[MaaikeMember]

I think it is not a good idea to force any posture. More specifically, I think a lot of westerners are not used to sitting on the ground, because we sit in chairs from an early age. Lotus posture is a nice idea, but I suspect most people need to do quite a bit of prep work for this, months or even years of yoga and/or stretching, before doing full lotus is feasible. It might be easier after physical pliancy.

Risks of forcing lotus posture would be:
(1) Permanent damage to the knees.
(2) Aversion to meditation.

Working with pain is worthwhile, but personally, pain from Burmese position, or pain from sitting seiza, was quite enough to work with. So personally I really don’t see the point in creating extra obstacles for practice by forcing myself to endure too much pain.

[MaaikeMember]

I want to jump in and thank you all for this thread, I have been referring back to it quite a number of times. It’s very reassuring that other have the same kind of stuff coming up and it keeps me motivated.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Maaike.

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