Sometimes the meditation just doesn’t work. Okay, it doesn’t work. Recognize that it’s not going well and pose some questions in your mind. Is there something wrong with the breath, something wrong with the body?

"You’re ready to learn from the meditation regardless of how well or how poorly it may go. You’re not so neurotic or brittle that you have to pretend that there is no such thing as poor meditation. Sometimes the meditation just doesn’t work. Okay, it doesn’t work. Recognize that it’s not going well and pose some questions in your mind. Exactly what’s going wrong? Tease things out. Is there something wrong with the breath, something wrong with the body? Is it the state of mind you’re bringing? The beliefs you’re bringing? Something that happened today and got you all stirred up?

Learn how to separate these things out, so that regardless of how well or poorly the meditation goes, you know how to learn from it, to learn how to benefit from it. The lessons you learn, the benefits you get, may not be the ones you planned, but you’ve got to learn how to appreciate them so that your sense of conviction stays strong and gets more and more reliable. You learn to appreciate the results that you do get, regardless of whether they’re what you wanted in terms of the bliss, the rapture, whatever. There are a lot of other important things to learn from meditation, you know. And when you learn how to recognize them, they’re all good."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Conviction & Confidence" (Meditations6)

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