Many of us believe that somehow, after we begin to meditate, our lives will turn to an uninterrupted stream of bliss and happiness.

That would be great….but for most of us, once we’ve begun the practice of meditation, we begin to realize that life and its circumstances don’t seem to change very much, at least at first.

In fact, as we begin to meditate, we may notice that not only do things not change for the better, we begin to see how out of order things seem to be. What meditation begins to do is to unravel our inattentiveness to how things really are, and we begin to see that there’s plenty of distraction and difficulty in our life and mind that we hadn’t previously noticed. Or, perhaps we noticed it but were able to ignore it or put it out of our mind. So, sometimes, when we practice meditation, it feels more like this:

…than this .

The way to really make progress in our meditation practice is to use everything that we encounter, everything that we think about, or anything that we sense, everything that we feel..as the object of our meditation. What we do is to use it all, refusing nothing!

But, how does this work? What does this look like? How do we use and not refuse meditation?

In previous posts on this site there’s been discussion about how to work with thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc. Basically, this is how we do it. Regardless of whatever arises, whatever we experience, we use that as the object of our meditation. So, for instance, if we have to spend time looking at a computer screen, doing some sort of work (because we’re not going to waste time surfing the web?!?) we can actually use the time that we spend looking at the computer or working on the internet as a time to practice. What we’ll practice is not being distracted while we’re doing whatever we’re doing.

The key point to this post, and the real power of learning to work with our mind through the practice of meditation: use everything as an opportunity to practice. Don’t make exceptions. That is, if we give certain situations or challenges “special exemption,” i.e.,  we don’t work with them as opportunities to work with our mind, then our progress will be limited. Instead, we encounter all situations as golden opportunities to practice.

When we find ourselves caught off guard, when we have reacted out of our past patterns, when we find that we’ve yelled, lost our temper, become disappointed, assumed the worst, found ourselves envying others; when we’ve done anything that seems to be based on old patterns, at that moment what we do is to return to our meditative mind. Practice. Relax. Breathe. Remind ourselves that even now, all we need to do is to not condemn ourselves, but simply appreciate that we’ve caught ourselves in our negative behavior, and bring our mind back to the moment.

The next time that you find yourself in a challenging situation, whether through your own doing or due to external circumstances beyond your control, ask yourself whether this is the time to practice your meditation. If it isn’t, why not?

Share your comments. Let me and others know what situations you find yourself in when to “just meditate” doesn’t feel like a solution to the challenge. And, as always, please feel free to contact me if you’d like to see additional content or other discussions on this site.

For more information on how to meditate, exercises in working with the breath, and other nifty stuff, please see the Related Posts below. Also, don’t forget to download the free ebook, Can Meditation Change the Way that You View Your World?, for help with getting started in you meditation practice.