The Honest Guide to Mindfulness, Part 2

The Honest Guide to Mindfulness, Part 2

By Leo Babauta

…

Mindfulness pulls the rug(rəg) out from under your feet. Let’s say you’ve been practicing meditation for a few months, and you think you’re getting the hang(haNG) of it. All of a sudden, everything you think you knew about meditation can be upended(ˌəpˈend), as you learn something new, or as a new pattern starts to come up. Now you have to adjust to that. After a few months, you might think you know a thing or two, and then you read a book or listen to a talk from a teacher, and that gets yanked(yaNGk) away from you too. Over and over, you get upended, and it can be very jarring(ˈjäriNG) each time.

Mindfulness can be jarring when you get upended. And that’s part of the magic too — feeling like we are on solid(ˈsäləd) ground is an illusion(iˈlo͞oZHən), and learning to deal with the groundlessness of not knowing is an incredible practice.

Mindfulness takes a metric(ˈmetrik) crap(krap)-ton(tôN,tən) of practice. You’ll suck at meditation (or any other mindfulness practice) when you first start. You can’t “do it right” or keep your attention on anything for very long. Don’t worry, you never really master it! It’s all continual(kənˈtinyo͞oəl) practice, without ever feeling like you know exactly what you’re doing. You practice and practice, and then practice some more. You might make some progress, only to find out that you still have so much more to learn.

It takes a crapload of practice, and that’s a beautiful thing to open up to.

You’ll think you’re doing it wrong, and fail(fāl) a lot. You’ll start out and continually(kənˈtinyo͞oəlē) feel like you’re doing it wrong, and that won’t feel very good. The good news is that no one knows what the hell(hel) they’re doing, and it often won’t feel very good. The better news is that it’s not supposed to feel good, and you learn to accept the idea that you’re never very sure of anything. This is what life is always like, but we just usually blame(blām) it on the external(ikˈstərnl) circumstances (or think there’s something wrong with us), rather than accepting this uncertainty about everything as a basic part of our lives that we can open up to and even love.

…
https://zenhabits.net/honest-mindfulness/