Meditation is unlike normal business or worldly activity because it is not goal-oriented and does not involve linear or directed thinking.  It begins as a process of allowing the busy day-to-day mind with all its agitation, aggression, anger, fear, anxiety and so on, to slow down and come to rest of its own accord.  Most people don’t know what causes the slowing down and coming to rest, so they cannot set out to achieve it as a goal.

What counts most in meditation is attitude.

If you have an attitude of wanting to achieve something, or change something within the mind, this will prevent meditation and result instead in mental conflict and tension.  For example, many people think that the purpose of meditation is to make the mind go blank, or to stop thought, or in some way control or manipulate inner mental or emotional processes.  They thus sit down expecting to be able to do this rather like King Canute sitting enthroned on the seashore ordering the tides back.  The result is the same – instead of leading to inner peace, this attitude will cause a build-up of tension and suppressed emotional energy which will eventually burst upon consciousness and cause confusion.

Another important thing in meditation is an attitude of self-acceptance.  This begins with the mind;  learning to accept everything that is happening within the mind – all the thoughts, all the feelings, whatever – and coming to terms with it.  Any attitude of wanting to change or manipulate the mind, or enforce a different mind state constitutes non-acceptance and will lead to trouble.  This makes sense if you think about it.

People often misunderstand acceptance and think it implies approval or endorsement of  negative mind states.  We grow up thinking that these states are unacceptable or dangerous.  Normally the solution to this quandary is to ignore them and pretend they are not there, even to the point of denying their very existence.  We do this with all our negative “unacceptable” thoughts and feelings, following some irrational belief that if we do this long enough, hard enough, they will go away. 

That is not the way things happen.  This attitude produces nothing but inner conflict, chronic tension, anxiety, fear, neurosis, physical illness and eventually insanity.  These negative states will not go away until we do something about them.

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