Navigating the Biggest Challenges in Meditation and How to Overcome Them

Americans are becoming increasingly interested in meditation. From 2012 to 2017, for example, the number of adults who said they tried meditation rose from 4.1 percent to 14.2 percent, according to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

People who meditate regularly attest to its benefits, and numerous scientific studies back up their claims. But sometimes people who initially show an interest in meditation change their minds and decide it’s not for them. Why is that? What are some of the challenges meditators face, and how can they be overcome?

Common Barriers in Meditation

If you have begun a meditation practice, you might have noticed obstacles or challenges that arise when you’re meditating. Some of the common challenges to meditating are:

• Your mind is busy or wanders haphazardly. You’re sitting quietly, focusing on your breath, a mantra, or a body sensation. But you can’t stop the random thoughts and feelings that keep slipping into your awareness.

• You’re not getting the results you want. You feel like you’re not making progress in your meditation, and you criticize yourself for not meditating the right way.

• You’re restless, agitated, bored, or easily distracted. You find it hard to sit still, seemingly doing nothing, for 20 minutes or half an hour, when you could be doing something “useful.”

• You’re too busy to meditate. You can’t meditate because you have to work, take time to plan your spouse’s birthday party, go to your kid’s baseball game, work out at the gym, clean the house—or you’re just too tired.

The Royal Way Approach

Meditation can be so much more than a good-for-you habit. In Royal Way, meditation is a spiritual practice, a way not only to make beneficial changes in your life but to transform the way you experience yourself and the world.

Michael Menahem Gottlieb, the spiritual teacher and founder of Royal Way, has said, “Meditation is one of a very few effective ways of learning how to live fully.” Meditating regularly is key to experiencing who you really are—apart from the thoughts, concepts, judgments, and emotions you habitually think of as “you.”

And who is the real you? “The central point of my teaching is that there is a place in you that is so vast, so huge, so beautiful, so sweet, that it makes everything else seem infantile by comparison,” says Michael Gottlieb. “In that place you think differently and hear differently and see differently and behave differently and want differently.”

Royal Way teaches that what keeps us from experiencing our true self is believing what our mind tells us about ourselves. Royal Way calls this false, mind-made sense of self the ego-mind. And its main purpose is to make you feel not good enough, less than, dissatisfied with yourself and your life.

“The ego is the mainstay of one’s outer existence,” Michael Gottlieb teaches. “It rules one’s life totally. Observe your behavior with alertness and awareness and it will become obvious to you how ubiquitous the rule of the ego really is.”

The mind can perform useful functions, such as learning how to speak a new language, build a bridge, or cook a meal. Apart from that, though, the mind mostly engages in compulsive, repetitive, pointless thinking—the endless chatter that goes through your head every day.

“Drop your mind with all of its old attitudes, prejudices, criticisms, doubts, all of your projections,” Michael Gottlieb says. “Drop all that and allow something new to enter into your heart. And for the first time you will know what life is all about.”

Royal Way teaches that meditation enables us to drop the mind and experience our truth. When we sit in silence, we’re in a state of awareness, of passive alertness—but we’re not thinking. Thoughts may come in, but we don’t attach ourselves to them or judge them. We let them go by, like clouds in the sky, and we return to focusing on our breath. After a while, thoughts intrude less and less, and we begin to experience our silent selves.

“That is the meaning and goal of meditation,” Michael Gottlieb teaches, “to become hollow, to be empty inside. Then “most of the emotions, feelings, and moods that possess you disappear.”

Realizing the true nature of meditation easily dispenses with so-called challenges to meditation: We discover that they’re all creations of the ego-mind. If we know how the mind functions, for example, we realize that being busy is just what the mind does—so we ignore it and come back to awareness.

The same things are true for the other challenges. Meditation isn’t about pursuing goals or results. It’s about learning to live in a state of awareness. Similarly, feeling restless, agitated, bored, or not having enough time to meditate are the ego-mind’s tricks to keep you from changing and growing to your full potential.

Cultivating Inner Calm

Ultimately, meditation empowers you to discover who you really are—to experience the calm, silent center at your core. By detaching yourself from the stream of thinking, you become a witness, a watcher, and your life situation improves.

“When you are just a space, suddenly all misery disappears,” Michael Gottlieb teaches. “Your whole past and all its garbage disappears, because the whole burden of the past exists in thoughts.” In this state of presence, Royal Way teaches, you experience your divinity.

But if we do experience challenges or obstacles to meditation, what are some useful ways to overcome them? Three things are needed to create a beneficial meditation practice: perseverance, patience, and kindness.

First, persevere. Commit to a month of meditating every day before you decide whether or not meditation is for you. Set aside a specific time and place to meditate. For most people, it’s best to meditate first thing each morning, before the events of the world compete for your attention.

Be patient. Don’t give up on a meditation session because you feel anxious or antsy. As you continue to meditate, you’ll find that thoughts come in less and less often and that your body will relax more.

If thoughts do come in, don’t judge them. Just notice them and come back to the present moment. If it helps you stay with your meditation, be aware of the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe. If a noise distracts you, incorporate it into your meditation.

Finally, have compassion for yourself if you don’t “get it” right away. Meditation is a new, different kind of practice that takes time.

The Significance of Consistency

Experiencing the lasting benefits of meditation is only amplified with consistency. The more regularly you meditate, the more and more your stillness grows. You’ll get into a familiar rhythm, and you’ll feel the difference.

Meditating in a group setting can support and solidify your personal meditation practice. At Royal Way retreats and events at the Royal Way Spiritual Center in the high desert or at our Royal Way West location in Los Angeles, members engage in a variety of silent and active group meditations.

Meditating consistently brings a meditative quality into your life, a calmness and serenity you may not have experienced before.

Living a Meditative Life

Meditating enables you to let go of what the Buddha calls the clinging mind—identification with thoughts and emotions, likes and dislikes.

Instead of fighting life, you flow with it. “Good is no longer defined in terms of what I want or what I need or what I think ought to be, should be, could be, or might be, but rather in terms of that which is,” Michael Gottlieb teaches.

Meditating regularly is the foundation of a meditative life. You can bring yourself back to the moment by closing your eyes and taking a few conscious breaths. Eating a meal in silence is another daily meditative practice—focusing on the taste and texture of the food rather than engaging in conversation or watching TV while you eat.

Similarly, taking a walk in nature by yourself, without your phone or music to distract you, can become a rich, beautiful experience of sights and sounds you may never have noticed before.

In Royal Way, we learn to integrate meditativeness into our daily lives.

Bringing Meditativeness into Every Moment

“Meditation is not work,” Michael Gottlieb teaches. “Meditation is purest blissfulness.”

When you live in a meditative state, your life expands because you become a witness to what happens in your life. You become aware of your body, mind, and emotions without being identified with and enmeshed in them. In this state, you can bring awareness and caring to everything you do.

In Conclusion

Meditation, as Royal Way practices it, brings a new awareness and aliveness into your life, beyond the conditioned mind and the compulsive need to think. Through meditation, you experience your deeper self, your true self, your sacred self, “that self whose nature is bliss,” as Michael Gottlieb teaches.

If experiencing the benefits of spiritual growth through meditation appeals to you, we invite you to contact us. We’ll be happy to connect with you and discuss our upcoming retreats.