What's my motivation (or, why should I bother meditating at all?)

Mindfulness is everywhere. It's the buzz word in the fields of health, business, coaching and increasingly varied aspects of life, including sport, and creativity. In many ways this interest in mindfulness is fantastic. Awareness of the subject and its possibilities to help with the way we relate to our life and the world we find ourselves in is extremely important. It is true that mindfulness can help with our stresses and anxieties, our concentration and myriad other concerns, but understanding what motivates us to practice meditation is key in ensuring our continued engagement as practitioners.

Mindfulness is often (mis)sold as a cure all to all the modern world's ills. Stressed? Try Mindfulness. Anxious? Try mindfulness? Low morale at work? Try mindfulness. Want to increase personal motivation? Well here's a novel though, try mindfulness. Your cakes won't rise? Have you tired mindfulness?

The inherent problem in all this is that we set a clear goal to begin with – be it the removal of stress or anxiety through to better performance at work – and this becomes our sole reason to practice meditation. Once you have set a goal like this then you have also set yourself the possibility of failing. This is contrary to the whole process of mindfulness, which has no inherent goals or states to achieve, and can have serious consequences. Once meditation starts to throw up difficulties or challenges (as it will – we are getting to know the parts of our mind that we often suppress) then we can easily see ourselves as “failing” to achieve a set goal. This quickly leads to disenchantment and giving up.

Mindfulness meditation is not about fixing or changing anything. It is not about achievement or failure. It is teaching us to simply allow what ever arises to exist without suppression and without denial. It is a subtle shift in perspective that enables us to react skilfully rather than automatically.

The paradox here though is that there does have to be some motivation, otherwise why would we give up our time to sit on a cushion in silence and face our inner reality? Furthermore, the motivation has to be constantly reassessed otherwise, like the examples I gave above, we can become fixed on a simple cognitive reason for practicing wherein we can either be put off by not “achieving” a goal, or we can stop practicing because we have done what we set out to do.

The need to reassess was brought home to me recently whilst I was on a week long meditation retreat in Scotland. Five years ago I was drawn to mindfulness because of issues of stress and anxiety that were blighting my life. As much as I told myself I was not setting myself the goal of being “better” there was an underlying goal of reducing my suffering – this was the end in itself. After prolonged periods of practice I found that I did feel much happier, much more placid and the anxieties, while still there, seemed to have been turned down to a much lower volume. I had “won”. I had “achieved” my goal.

So here I was at a retreat centre in Scotland, ready for a blissful week of relaxation. But in this assumption I had set myself up for a fall. When I sat down to meditate I became aware of the well know signs of agitation, discomfort and even anger. Why am I stressed? I’m on retreat. There’s no pressure. Why am I tense? Why is my torso squeezing? I notice subtle striving in wanting a “relaxed” session. The physical response is a slight increase of tension. I try harder to “meditate properly” so I can loosen the knots that are forming in my stomach muscles. But it's not happening. The frustration grows. “But I've beaten this” I say to myself internally.

By pure chance, we were doing a practice on personal motivation so I tried to steer my mind away from fixing the difficulties and to motivate on why I practice. This is a subtle practice because we are not looking for a cognitive answer and this can be frustrating – as it was for me that day. I got up at the end of the meditation without an answer and still feeling stressed.

However, later that day I became aware of the physical sensations again, and I was just immediately aware that this is why I practice. I realised that whilst my outward and cognitive reactions to stress had lessened, they had not gone. I had merely pushed them down to a more subtle level. My body was screaming out in alarm physically, but cognitively I was all Zen and batting the messages of stress away. And then it came to me. The realisation isteslf is the reason I meditate. It's not about fixing but an awareness of how skilfully my mind maintains the very things that cause difficulty and how I can become aware of this and act accordingly. I keep coming back to the cushion, not because of something that clearly forms itself during the meditation, but because of a slow realisation that grows from awareness.

Strangely, this little bit of insight allowed me to take the pressure of myself for not having a clear, cognitive reason for practicing. I even felt less stressed. I realised I was influenced by a subtle goal of having a relaxed and peaceful practice and I was using this to ignore the messages my body was sending me. Stress is part of everybody's life and my goal of overcoming it for ever had merely created a suppression of natural periods of difficulty. It was only through reassessing and letting go that I was able to come to this realisation. For seasoned practitioners through to beginners, this constant assessment of WHY we practice is important and may just keep us going in the difficult times.