The feeling of discouragement

(…) one of the difficulties and challenges that anyone who is learning to meditate has to face, is the idea of failure and discouragement. Somebody was asking this exact question, ‘I feel I’m maybe wasting my time, because every time I sit down to meditate my mind is full of thoughts and disstractions and daydreaming the whole time.’ And then he said, ‘Is there any technique in addition to the mantra, any technique I could use to overcome this?’ It’s a very common experience, the feeling of discouragement. And that feeling of discouragement is often associated with the feeling, ‘what kind of experience should I be having?’ That’s also a question that many people have in the early stages of meditation. But I would say that we are all learning to meditate in the initial elementary stage until we make meditation a twice daily practice in our daily life. At that elementary stage we can still receive benefits, we can still enjoy the journey, but that’s the first phase, to get to the point where you can say ‘these two sessions of meditation every day are simply, naturally part of my life. 

Enlightenment by Laurence Freeman OSB