The Door Was Never Locked
I tried to meditate in college and just could not sit still. A couple of years later, I was in New York City, in the back room of the Caravan of Dreams in the East Village, and I walked out after 15 minutes. Everything I read told me the same thing. Quiet your mind, sit still, try harder. So I decided meditation just was not for me.
For years that was the whole story. I was the person who could not do it. If you have ever thought the same about yourself, hear this from someone who once believed it completely: the problem was never you.
The day it finally opened was the day I stopped forcing stillness and came in through the body instead. Through movement, through breath, through the felt sense of being alive. The door that had been locked all those years was never actually locked. I had just been standing at the wrong one.
Most people who think they cannot meditate have only ever been shown one door, the one that says empty your mind and hold still. When that door will not open, they conclude the fault is theirs. It is not. There are simply other ways in. So when we practice, we do not battle with the mind's thoughts. We come back to how good it feels to be breathed by the breath, and to feel the body's sensations. When we are feeling, we are not thinking. When we are thinking, we are not feeling. You do not have to argue the mind into silence. You come into the body, and the settling happens on its own.
If you are struggling with how to begin, or if meditation does not feel like the refuge it used to anymore, then perhaps there is a new door to knock on.
I wrote the full piece, including the small skills we teach for coming in through the body, over on our Effortless Meditation site.