You are an intermediate meditator. After a few months of avid meditating you experienced some very
powerful meditation sessions. However, lately it seems your meditations are not as powerful as they once were. You do
not feel the same sensations within your body and because of this you worry about your progress and your mind wanders.
Feel & Accept
You miss some of your previous experiences. You feel your practice is at a standstill as you have not
had a “breakthrough” or tangible progress while meditating in some time. This is leading to feelings of discouragement,
and your interest in your practice is waning.
Process
Upon reflection, you discover that you have attached a lot of expectations onto your meditation practice.
You expect your mind to concentrate with the same intensity day to day you expect to receive some kind of measurement of
progress within your practice, and you expect your practice to go only in an upward direction.
You are aware that these expectations are distracting you from your real practice, and because they
are ego-based are quite destructive to further spiritual development.
Discover & Accept
The reflections mentioned above lead to the discovery that your ego is interfering with your spiritual
journey/practice. Instead of placing judgment on where you think you should be within your practice, you gently accept
of your current state instead of wishing it could be different than it is.
Plan
You plan to maintain the same meditation schedule as you held during your more “interesting”
meditation periods. You vow to be gentle with yourself and accept when you do not experience mind blowing meditations,
and to gently bring your mind back to focus (without harsh self-speech) when you loose concentration.
Act & Accept
By gently sitting through this period without expectations, it eventually passes and you again
begin to enjoy deeper levels of meditation. Going forward, you always respect the space you are in whether your
practice is plateauing or if there is more measurable growth. You meditate through the highs and the lows of your
practice with the same focus and gentle heart.
