4 Damaging Meditation Myths

Let’s talk about the four biggest myths surrounding meditation. This might seem like an innocent, fun article, but hearing this stuff could be the difference between you developing a solid meditation practice and you stuttering along, feeling frustrated with it.

So let’s get right into these four myths. 

Myth 1: Meditation = Relaxation

Myth number one is that meditation means being calm and relaxed. In fact, I would even say people equate meditation with an attempt to generate calm and relaxation.

The thing is that people need a way to feel calm and relaxed. We need ways to unwind and disconnect from life, because life is pretty full on sometimes. And apps like Headspace and Calm, even the names, have happily fulfilled the need for relaxation and calm, under the name “meditation”. 

What I’ve found though is that these apps, what they’re really offering are techniques for relaxation, calming down, and going to sleep better. They have sort of meditative undertones, but in essence they are not meditation.

It’s a good marketing ploy because it allows us to hit a button on our phone, have this moment of disconnection, and give it a fancy name like meditation. We can tell our friends, share it on social media, and let everyone know how great our meditation was. When in reality, you’ve not done meditation at all.

There are caveats here. Relaxation meaning non-reaction, poise, equanimity, we certainly want to develop that. That’s actually a core part of all meditation practice. You might call it non-reactiveness.

But relaxation, as in that the meditation session should be like a spa day, this is not what we’re looking for here, and if this is your goal I suggest you look for relaxation practices that are designed to be soothing rather than meditation. 

Meditation is not relaxation spelled differently.

John Kabat-Zinn

The thing is that life is not calm and relaxing. It actually gets really painful and difficult, as we all know. Think of breakups, deaths, life crises, and times of illness. 

Consider that one of the great gifts of meditation, which you will discover if you stick with it for a long time, is being able to experience those difficult times in an optimal way. You don’t do this by practicing relaxation, but by paying exquisite attention to your body and mind as they are in every moment. 

With practice what you’ll realise is that a few moments of relaxation is actually a really small goal and it just pales in comparison to what true meditation can give you. Sometimes meditation is difficult and you’ll have bad days. It’s like weightlifting for your attention skills. It’s not always easy.

And like when you practice a musical instrument or play a sport or speak a foreign language, some days it just doesn’t happen.  Your skills elude you. This is part of the deal with meditation. If you’re going to practice it for days, months, years and decades, there’s going to be days where it’s just not going to happen. If you create this idea that you need to be relaxed, you’re going to think that not being relaxed is an issue, and it’s definitely not an issue. 

In fact, it’s probably the biggest opportunity you can have. Those moments of difficulty are when we grow most in meditation.

There’s a small caveat to that too, because there are meditation techniques that you can use to induce relaxation, but the goal is not relaxation per se.  It’s about your attention skills and using the relaxation as an object of focus or as a means to a different end.

So this topic is not black and white, but in meditation we’re definitely not sitting there just looking to chill out for five minutes.

We should distinguish between relaxation techniques and meditation. I mean both teachers and students. We shouldn’t really look at relaxation, in terms of meditation being a spa day, as a goal in meditation and then measure our progress based on that. If we do that, we’re just going to really get frustrated with it.

Great on to myth two. This is kind of tongue-in-cheek. Myth two is that meditation is for bohemians and hippies. 

Myth 2: Meditation is for Bohemians and Hippies

When I first came across meditation, I was very skeptical. I thought it was the stuff of hippies, monks, bohemians, and weirdos. Now I know better, yet this belief remains very prevalent in society.

The fact is that meditation is actually really simple in the sense that the instructions are very simple, and there doesn’t need to be a lot of paraphernalia.

It’s not about the exterior, the clothes you wear, the groups you identify with. It’s not about wearing Indian clothes, and it’s not about lighting candles and incense.  It’s about inner transformation.

Besides, gold standard science is proving that meditation works. For short-term and medium-term practitioners of meditation there are objective, measurable effects in areas as diverse as stress resilience, compassion, focus, self-obsessed rumination, and so on. 

In fact, scientists have discovered things about monks and Olympic-level meditators that leave the hard-nosed scientists completely bamboozled. Things that have never been measured in a lab before.

Science has proven, for example, that highly trained meditators have radically different brain wave signatures at rest than normal people, which proves permanent transformation through meditative practice.

To reach those levels, you don’t need to believe anything. You don’t have to be a hippy or a bohemian. It’s not about being vegetarian. It’s not about being or a Marxist. It’s not about belief and faith and ritual. It’s about practice.

The way around this myth is to focus on the inner transformation and forget about the social and cultural rigmarole. Focus on the inner transformation. 

Myth 3 is perhaps the biggest myth, in competition with 1. This is not just an innocent myth but an enormously damaging belief that can negatively impact your practice for years. It still occasionally impacts me, and I’m not quite sure where I picked it up.

Myth 3: Meditation = Quiet Mind

What is this myth? This myth is that meditation is about silencing the mind. Let me be clear: you should never make this the goal of your meditation. If you do, you’ll soon believe that meditation isn’t for you.

I’ve spent years learning one meditation system and not once has my teacher, who’s been doing this for 50 years, ever told me that I need to silence the mind. Those words have never been uttered in all the time I’ve been studying with them, and no good advanced practitioner will ever tell you this.

One thing you’re going to quickly realise through meditation is just how much mental activity you have, and how your entire sense of reality is influenced and obscured by what’s going on in your mind. The mind is non-stop.

You’ll also realise that you can’t control your thoughts. You can’t command them to be quiet. There is no tap or switch. 

In fact, the key with meditation is to develop acute attention skills in spite of all the thoughts you’re having. And eventually we want to include all our thinking within the process of paying attention.

This might sound abstract but once you taste that for yourself it won’t seem abstract at all.

In fact, attempting to control thinking is really the antithesis of meditation.

Myth 4: Meditation = Cross Legged

Myth number four is that you need to be sitting cross-legged while alone in a quiet room to do meditation.

Often the image we have of meditation is someone sitting on the floor with their eyes closed looking withdrawn from the world.

This kind of meditation, done in a low-stimulation environment for a specific period of time, is what I’ll call formal practice. 

Think of this as driving in a car park when you’re learning to drive. As a newbie driver, you can’t operate the car properly. So the best thing to do is to drive in an empty car park where there’s no distractions.

This gives you a chance to work on the core skills that you need just to move the car, steer, stop, get in gear, change gears, and so on. You won’t bump into things, and you won’t be distracted by anything around you.

This analogy applies to meditation. When you start out in meditation, it’s best to restrict your practice to this form of meditation. This enables you to develop your skills to a certain level.

Once you have, it remains an ongoing part of meditation practice. But you also realise that you need to drive on busy roads, to bring meditation into your life and into everything you do. Only being on busy roads will suffice, so the quiet sitting becomes just one part of your practice.

Eventually, the difference between meditation time and non-meditation time dissolves, and you get to the point where there is no difference between your life and meditation.

As Shinzen Young says, “to begin with, meditation is a part of your day, but there comes a point when your day is part of your meditation.”

So you can walk around with your eyes open in a city, a flurry of activity around you, but your meditation skills are waiting for you, and you can be in a meditative state of awareness in the midst of all that.

Another facet of this is that you ought to be able to drop into a meditation technique or a meditative state whenever you want or need to. 

In this way, your meditation skills start to inform your entire life. You become a monk in the world, bringing it into every activity, every moment that you possibly can. Even in the darkest moments, like breakups, divorces, illnesses, life crises, your meditation will be waiting for you. In fact, in those moments it might be the only thing that you have.

The key to avoiding all of these myths, which tend to come from people who actually haven’t done a lot of meditation, is to simply practice long term. That way you’ll see what it really does, for yourself.