Meditation and mindfulness are all the rage right now. But before you jump in, you should know the risks. Here are 10 reasons you should never start meditating.
Meditation opens the door to inner peace. You’ve got a reservoir of untapped ease and relaxation waiting to be discovered. So if you’re the kind of person who likes to worry and fret over every last thing, don’t start meditating. You’ll be disappointed.
Ready to chill out and master the art of doing nothing? Then meditation is definitely for you.
But if you feed off stress and if you like to scream down life’s super highway like a runaway tractor trailer, slamming into the side rails and fraying your nerves, then forget meditation. It will have the opposite effect.
Do you want to be happy? If you do, you should meditate. If you like being in a good mood and seeing the light in everything, then definitely sit on the cushion and get peaceful. Meditation is a serious mood enhancer and it brightens everything.
But if you don’t want to give up your rationale and justifications for being unhappy, you should abandon your meditation aspirations right away.
Meditation is like a mirror. It reflects you to yourself. It can help you accept yourself as you are, without judgment. But if you’re not ready to get intimate with your own motivations, drives, fears, desires, obsessions, fantasies, etc., meditation is going to be a turn-off.
Do you like doubt? I doubt it very much. But if you are into that, then don’t start a meditation practice. You see, meditation gives you confidence. Every time you sit down to meditate, it restores your confidence in the goodness of life.
When you really get the hang of it, you can develop some really nasty anti-doubt habits. Let me warn you now. Before long, you’ll be convinced that life is a total miracle and positive beyond imagination.
Meditation and mindfulness is all about slowing down. If you like to eat unconsciously, you probably shouldn’t meditate. If you think of your meals as something to get through, rather than a rich moment in time, then you should not adopt a posture of mindful eating.
Mindful eating means slowing down and savoring every bite. It means you don’t rush through your food. It’s all about the rich fullness of this moment right now and how the food, the company, and the light flooding through the windows all contribute to you being awake and aware.
If you like to freak out on occasion, you shouldn’t meditate. If you like to generate anxiety, stress, and trigger adrenaline dumps to jack your nervous system, meditation isn’t for you.
Here’s the problem. If you start meditating, you’re going to end up all grounded and centered. You’ll be so immersed and undivided in the present moment, there won’t be any time to freak out. It just won’t occur to you.
Do you like to have 10 things going at once? Are you a manic multi-tasker? If so, you shouldn’t start a meditation practice.
The big issue here is that it will start to improve your focus. You’ll find that your ability to do one thing really well with great precision and subtlety will keep increasing. And with it, you’ll lose your capacity for distraction.
Becoming more conscious doesn’t always feel good. And meditation makes you more conscious.
If you prefer to react to the world like an emotional gunslinger, shooting from the hip and blissfully unaware of your motivations, you shouldn’t start meditating. Seriously, it can get pretty uncomfortable because you’ll be more responsible for your actions.
Once you get the hang of meditation, your awareness becomes more refined. You’ll develop the capacity to see and objectify emotional triggers and reactions. And then you’ll have the capacity to make a choice before you react. In the process, you’ll become more conscious. It can be a real burden.
Meditation is the opposite of noise, action, business, and things. It’s all about silence, stillness, and nothing.
If you need to be stimulated all the time, meditation will drive you crazy. If you can’t live without stimulation, don’t meditate. Meditation requires you to let go again and again until there’s nothing standing between you and the cosmos. It’s just silence and stillness and deep peace.