Meditation is challenging.

It shouldn’t be—it’s physically easy. There’s no material obstacle that can prevent you from meditation. No matter how weak, tired, busy, ill, or depraved you are, as long as you are awake, you can meditate.

So why is it hard?

Meditation is challenging because Self-realization is the one skill your ego doesn’t want you to develop. Meditation threatens your mind’s status quo. Therefore, the part of you animated by survival and comfort will do anything in its power to thwart your meditative success.

Beginners get bored, confused, and distract themselves. Advanced meditators hit plateaus, make excuses, and get stuck in “special” states.

I’m Cory. I work with Bentinho Massaro, creator of the hugely popular online course Meditation Mastery and founder of Massaro University.

When I first met Bentinho, I was brand new to meditation—I thought it was tedious. But within months of studying Bentinho’s teachings, I had a meditation breakthrough, and then another, and then another.

At one point I remember laughing and crying simultaneously, saying to myself: “THIS is what I’ve been looking for! Bless my heart for wasting so much time and bandwidth before!”

Now, after years of meditating and seeing fellow students drag their feet, hit ceilings, and get stuck in common pitfalls, I have a better sense of the patterns that wreak havoc on people’s practices.

The more aware you are that your own personality is actively working to sabotage your meditation practice, the more you can preempt its next move and use every hiccup as a launchpad to take your realization further.

I polled our team to discover the 3 Greatest Meditation Pitfalls, and I have compiled the solutions to those pitfalls below.

Use this article as a resource to help you break the ego’s subversion and double down on the soul-affirming work of seeking your essential, timeless Self.

1. Unwillingness to Focus

This pitfall is the most common and universal for beginners and advanced meditators alike.

I use the word “unwillingness” and not “inability” here intentionally. Your mind might have the habit of repeating the story that “I can’t focus! I’m not good at concentrating.” But this is a clever tactic our minds use to prevent us from taking responsibility and seeing the truth, which is: If I am not focusing, it is because I am not choosing to focus.

To confirm this, ask yourself: If the stakes were high enough, could I focus?

Of course you could. And if you can in some circumstances, that means you can. Period. Taking responsibility for your attention—the one thing you can control—will empower you to own your focus; and not to outsource it or make excuses for it. 

The unwillingness to maintain a mostly steady stream of concentration derails meditation for everyone at certain phases in their journey. Not only does it interfere with your ability to meditate, it also disrupts your relationships, work, recreation, hobbies, and almost everything else you do at one point or another.

Here is how to overcome the pitfall of being unwilling to focus:

Step 1: 

The first step is to recognize your unwillingness to focus and decide to use one of the following tools. Without this first step, you will remain unfocused and continue feeling at the mercy of your own attention span. The moment you decide, “I am currently unwilling to focus, but now I am going to do what it takes to focus,” options for concentration will open up to you.

Step 2: 

Try one of the following tools. You’ll notice that one is more practical / physical, and the other is more vibrational / intuitive. Experiment with both.  

• Watch and listen. When I find myself unwilling to focus during meditation, I often use this hack to bridge the gap from distractibility into a meditative state. Instead of persisting or half-assing the practice, I bring up a guided meditation by one of my favorite teachers on YouTube, I set it up in front of me, I put in my headphones, and I watch and listen (as opposed to just listening) until my wandering focus subsides and streamlines. Watching AND listening helps to orient all your senses in a meditative direction and helps to prevent thought tangents. After about half an hour, you can likely continue meditating without guidance.

• Meta Concentration. Meta Concentration is a powerful practice to rapidly empower and strengthen your will. It is one of those secret keys not often taught that opens gateways to meditation and Self-realization faster than regular concentration can do by itself. This form of concentration is when you concentrate on concentration itself. This is something to practice as often as you can—as it directly strengthens the “concentration muscle.” Start by concentrating on the sense/image/experience of yourself concentrating. Abide there. Amp it up. What does it feel like to be totally concentrated on concentration itself?

2. Identifying with Special States

At the beginning of your meditation journey, you are likely to be identified with your body, your mind, your history, your memories, your relationships, your personality, and your life as you know it. This is common. If you meditate effectively, you will soon begin to discover that you are not any of those things. But ego identification doesn’t end there.

The ego has increasingly subtle layers and can be deceptive the further you go. Remember, it does not want to let go, so the more you awaken, the more the ego works to create new ways to keep your attention and identification.

As you start making breakthroughs into more clarity and emptiness, you might feel excited or grateful to have accessed a state of more nuance, bliss, or peace. This is a great indicator of progress, but many will be tempted to “claim” or identify with this new special state. For some people this act of claiming might only happen for a moment until they realize they have grasped onto the new state. But for others without a humble awareness of this pitfall, it can last a lifetime.

Here is how to overcome the pitfall of identifying with special states:

• Notice the claim. Again, like the previous pitfall, the first step is to notice that you have identified with a subtle or special state. Feel free to celebrate internally for a moment to encourage yourself along, but don’t indulge the temptation to “own” or identify with this new state. Whether you just claimed an experience momentarily, or you have been identified with a realization for the last 20 years, admitting it and recommitting to the practice is the solution.

• Active Inquiry. In active, penetrative self-inquiry meditation, this can be instant. You might ask: “Who is aware of this?” and then directly experience the knower for a moment, only to automatically “claim” or identify with that direct experience a second later. If you are sensitive and focused enough, you will notice that the moment you claim the knower, you will lose the direct experience of it. Drop it instantly and refocus on the question: “Who is aware of this?” and keep your answer experiential, as opposed to giving it a label.

• Give the experience zero meaning. Whether your meditation is empty and blissful or chaotic and confusing, learn to simply not interpret the content of your meditation, and keep your attention on the changeless container of all experiences: Awareness itself. 

• Develop a proper preparatory attitude. Bentinho often stresses the importance of preparing for meditation, and he teaches about the ideal preparatory attitude that will set your meditations up for success over the long haul. There are several guiding mantras that develop an ideal preparatory attitude for meditation. Two examples of such powerful preparatory mantras are: 1) “I don’t want anything from anything or anyone—at least for the duration of this meditation" and 2) “It does not matter what I’m experiencing.”

3. Lack of Confidence

A lack of confidence is a major limiter to many people’s meditations. They judge themselves for doing it wrong, tell themselves they don’t have what it takes, worry that it will just take too much time, or the very common: “Enlightenment isn’t for me.”

Like the first pitfall, this one has implications for all areas of your life. If you lack confidence in your meditation, you probably also lack confidence elsewhere. This is a broader topic, and fortunately it’s solvable.

Here is how to overcome a lack of confidence:

To become confident (in anything, but let’s stay within the context of meditation for now), you need to understand the Emotional Guidance System.

The Emotional Guidance System is a fancy description for a better way to understand and use your emotions. Most people think their emotions (whether positive or negative) are accurate interpretations of whatever they’re seeing or thinking. If someone feels insecure, they interpret that feeling to mean that something is legitimately wrong with them. If they feel angry, they believe the accompanying thought that whoever upset them is a jerk. 

Instead, start to see your emotional experience as a simple barometer that tells you how relevant (true-for-your-path and aligned with your higher self) your thoughts are.

When you understand the Emotional Guidance System, you will know that the better you feel, the more relevant your thoughts and interpretations of any given experience are. And the worse you feel, the more deluded, misguided, or off-track your thoughts and interpretations are for your own highest path.

When you think to yourself: “I’m not cut out for this. I don’t have what it takes. This kind of thing isn’t for me…” you may feel lethargic, worthless, and a little indifferent. In those moments, remember the Emotional Guidance System and ask yourself: “How does this perspective feel?” You’ll notice that it feels bad. Which means the perspective / interpretation you have must not be the best way for you to see this situation. What would be more accurate? What would feel better to think?”

If you persist down this line of reasoning, you might get to better-feeling thoughts like: “I could get better at this. I have learned new things before. There’s lots I had to learn from scratch. I enjoy meditating, and I believe I can have a breakthrough here…”

This feels better—you’re now interested, open, and willing… which is how you know it’s more relevant than your previous line of thinking. The more you trust this process, the more easily you will discredit your own insecurity, and the more confident you will become.

The Emotional Guidance System is easy to discard as “woo-woo,” non-credible, or even risky. When I first learned about it, I was skeptical. 

Instead of working to debunk it conceptually, I recommend trying it and applying it sincerely. Put it to the test in your own lived experience. Look for the merit of this teaching, give it an honest effort, and let it speak for itself. The more I committed this “rule” to memory, the faster I grew, the more confident I became, the less time I wasted, and the deeper my meditations went. This has been a key spiritual principle for my own development and learning over the years.

Finally, if you are interested in locking in your meditation practice and taking your Self-realization to a new level, join us for 31 days of consistent (and free) meditations this March:

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Clearer and clearer, truer and truer, freer and freer.

All my love,

Cory