Be Kind to Yourself

What we need to experience, and what we can experience, is a saner and gentler state of mind. This experience is not found in something outside of us. . . . We must work with our own minds, with our own abilities, in order to have peaceful, rich minds.
Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche ~ Transforming Mental Afflictions and Other Selected Teachings

YOU HAVE BEEN meditating now for a few days or weeks. You think you are getting the hang of it—you relax, breathe, and focus. Suddenly you notice that your thinking is all over the place. You focus for one or two breaths, and then you are mentally in the kitchen, in the car, following your children or friends around—you are doing everything but focusing. You begin to wonder why you can't do this simple meditation thing.

Now would be a good time to congratulate yourself for meditating exactly the way you ate supposed to! Part of the practice of meditation is allowing to arise whatever wants or needs to arise. When you are busy with all your daily tasks, you don't leave much time for this to happen. You have thoughts every moment, but they are not so much coming from deep within you as just occurring one after the other in the course of problem solving.

Develop an unconditional positive regard for these thoughts that keep popping into your meditation. These are your very own thoughts. No one is putting them into your mind. These thoughts reveal a great deal about how your mind works, and as such are valuable tools for achieving deeper relaxation, clearing out old business, and making room for something new to develop. They show you the nature of your mental habits. You can't change a habit until you understand its purpose, and meditation gives you plenty of opportunities to experience your habitual thinking processes.


Another great value of random thoughts that arise in meditation is that they point to little centers or complexes of emotional and mental energy. Such complexes, when rigid or distorted, are called neuroses. Neurotic thought patterns lead to neurotic behaviors that cause friction within your personality and in relationships with others. The fact that you have thoughts arising when you meditate indicates that you are approaching a clearer understanding of the mental distortions that limit your life in some way.

All behaviors began as an initial response to a need or desire. 
While you are busy trying to resolve the mental processes you meet in meditation, remember that at some time in the past these behaviors had a positive purpose.

In fact, most of our behaviors have a positive intention behind them, or had positive value in the past. We may have outgrown the need for a particular response without discarding the habit. Examining the thoughts that lead to a particular behavior reflects your capacity to pay attention to yourself.

You honor your own choices and behaviors when you do this; you indicate unconditional positive regard for yourself. The only place you can begin, when meditating, is with your own mind. Whatever is there, you will get a chance to pay attention to it. You will "see" images, "heat" voices, experience physical sensations, and perceive emotional responses. Whatever you experience, it is you. You probably have all too few moments when you are able to simply be yourself. Now that you have the opportunity, be compassionate with yourself—even when-you are mentally criticizing your own meditation technique!