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The Meditator’s Dilemma: An Innovative Approach to Overcoming Obstacles and Revitalizing Your Practice
When practiced regularly, meditation naturally deepens self-awareness and leads to spiritual insight. In our hyper, instant-gratification culture, however, most people miss out on those powerful outcomes because it’s hard to commit to a long-term practice. Despite the increasing popularity of mindfulness and its documented mental health benefits, the silent majority of meditators struggle to maintain a regular practice. In fact, research indicates that more than fifty percent of meditators give up on the practice. Through time-tested teachings and exercises, The Meditator’s Dilemma shows you how to deepen your meditation practice while cultivating ease and delight—for both beginners and longtime practitioners.
The Meditator’s Dilemma, written by a psychologist with forty years’ experience practicing and teaching meditation, confronts this problem and its causes and provides specific, accessible techniques and exercises that greatly enhance everyday meditation practice. Bill Morgan’s teachings and guided meditation exercises are designed to generate the all-too-often missing delight and enjoyment in meditation.
The Meditator’s Dilemma, written by a psychologist with forty years’ experience practicing and teaching meditation, confronts this problem and its causes and provides specific, accessible techniques and exercises that greatly enhance everyday meditation practice. Bill Morgan’s teachings and guided meditation exercises are designed to generate the all-too-often missing delight and enjoyment in meditation.
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 22, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 22, 2016
Two very worthwhile aspects of this book: first, it addresses the discouraging fact that many, many of the people who start a meditation practice do not persist and, second, it proposes a remedy. The description and analysis of the problem is, I think, better than the proposal for a solution.
As to the problem, it is straightforward to describe. Much like the act of joining a gym and beginning an exercise program, the beginning of a meditation practice is easy, but sustaining it is difficult, especially when done solo or on one's own, and even when undertaken in a group setting or with friends. The evidence and the personal experience of most (all?) meditation teachers tends to indicate that most people start with a good amount of enthusiasm, but sooner or later (usually, sooner), they drop out.
An exploration of the reasons for this high drop-out rate yields the usual culprits, especially those related to inaccurate expectations from the outset derived from pop culture depictions of meditation as relaxing, blissful, and a quick cure for all one's problems. But the truth is that meditation, like a running or weight-lifting program, takes work and discipline. Meditation is a work-out for the mind, and most people do not find it a source of bliss. Like a physical work-out program, it yields various benefits --but only for those who put in the time and effort.
As to the solution, the author proposes something that he brings from the world of psychotherapy: the development of a "holding environment" for the practice of meditation. It would work like this: In the same way that the psychotherapist and client work together to build and maintain a safe and comfortable relationship within which the client feels free to bring anything and everything to the table without fear of being misunderstood, criticized, or ridiculed, the meditator learns to create a sense of comfort during his/her own mind at the outset of each meditation session. For example, one might invoke the memory or the feeling of the presence of a comforting figure from one's life (past or present), or another memory of a time during which one felt safe, attuned with one's environment, happy, etc. This method is foreign to the usual meditation practices used in Zen, Vipassana, and secular mindfulness traditions, but it may share some features with Tibetan practices that include evoking, visualizing, and communicating with a deity as part of one's meditation practice.
I have mixed feelings about this recommendation for meditators. On the one hand, it may indeed create for the practitioner a sense of comfort at least at the outset of each meditation session, and -- perhaps more importantly -- it may be helpful simply in that it teaches the meditator to actually engage in the practice of invoking a sense of being in a mental space that is calming and comforting. This may be useful in everyday-life situations.
On the other hand, with this technique used as a part of meditation practice, there is the sense that, instead of engaging in compassionate/kind acceptance of whatever the world presents to us -- and this is central to Vipassana, Zen, and secular mindfulness practice -- there is with this method an attempt to manipulate one's emotional environment to create a certain type of feeling. This is something that may be much more helpful in the psychotherapeutic setting than in the setting of meditation practice. The practice of meditation teaches us to face all of our emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences as they are, without trying to manipulate them or turn them into something else. In doing so, we learn that these phenomena are all ephemeral and transient, that they need not be feared, and that it is counter-productive to struggle with them.
As to the problem, it is straightforward to describe. Much like the act of joining a gym and beginning an exercise program, the beginning of a meditation practice is easy, but sustaining it is difficult, especially when done solo or on one's own, and even when undertaken in a group setting or with friends. The evidence and the personal experience of most (all?) meditation teachers tends to indicate that most people start with a good amount of enthusiasm, but sooner or later (usually, sooner), they drop out.
An exploration of the reasons for this high drop-out rate yields the usual culprits, especially those related to inaccurate expectations from the outset derived from pop culture depictions of meditation as relaxing, blissful, and a quick cure for all one's problems. But the truth is that meditation, like a running or weight-lifting program, takes work and discipline. Meditation is a work-out for the mind, and most people do not find it a source of bliss. Like a physical work-out program, it yields various benefits --but only for those who put in the time and effort.
As to the solution, the author proposes something that he brings from the world of psychotherapy: the development of a "holding environment" for the practice of meditation. It would work like this: In the same way that the psychotherapist and client work together to build and maintain a safe and comfortable relationship within which the client feels free to bring anything and everything to the table without fear of being misunderstood, criticized, or ridiculed, the meditator learns to create a sense of comfort during his/her own mind at the outset of each meditation session. For example, one might invoke the memory or the feeling of the presence of a comforting figure from one's life (past or present), or another memory of a time during which one felt safe, attuned with one's environment, happy, etc. This method is foreign to the usual meditation practices used in Zen, Vipassana, and secular mindfulness traditions, but it may share some features with Tibetan practices that include evoking, visualizing, and communicating with a deity as part of one's meditation practice.
I have mixed feelings about this recommendation for meditators. On the one hand, it may indeed create for the practitioner a sense of comfort at least at the outset of each meditation session, and -- perhaps more importantly -- it may be helpful simply in that it teaches the meditator to actually engage in the practice of invoking a sense of being in a mental space that is calming and comforting. This may be useful in everyday-life situations.
On the other hand, with this technique used as a part of meditation practice, there is the sense that, instead of engaging in compassionate/kind acceptance of whatever the world presents to us -- and this is central to Vipassana, Zen, and secular mindfulness practice -- there is with this method an attempt to manipulate one's emotional environment to create a certain type of feeling. This is something that may be much more helpful in the psychotherapeutic setting than in the setting of meditation practice. The practice of meditation teaches us to face all of our emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences as they are, without trying to manipulate them or turn them into something else. In doing so, we learn that these phenomena are all ephemeral and transient, that they need not be feared, and that it is counter-productive to struggle with them.
June 21, 2016
Without any exaggeration this is the best book i ever read about meditation. Not that the other many books i consumed were bad, but this one really stands out! I am a meditator myself for many years and Bill Morgan captures the right angle, the right wave to tell us of why Westerners like me are hooked in a certain way of attitude. He shows us the way, the better path to leave that 'zero ground bastion of wanting to know the content of it all' and make us ready to visit pastures that gives us scenes and waves to approach a new a more liberating ground to practice meditation! I say it in two words: "Highly Recommended"
January 3, 2024
Bill has opened the path for me in many ways. Here I want to particularly highlight his compassion for the day-to-day obstacles that practitioners like myself encounter and his permissive, but not indulgent, approach. Allowing is perhaps a could description of his response to those trying to develop their practice while living a typical, in my case, Western, lifestyle. This has kept me open hearted and able to take another step towards living more compassionately, mostly by quieting my typically judgmental, not-good-enough inner voice. In gratitude to his and his partner's, Susan, work.
July 5, 2017
I won a copy of this book during a Goodreads giveaway. I am under no obligation to leave a review or rating and do so voluntarily. I am paying it forward by passing this book along to a business organization that offers business skills, hope, and dreams to be used in their ministry.
October 12, 2021
This was a useful book to read with our local meditation group here - Bill Morgan presents a way to create a loving, kind, creative space for our meditation practices. Everyone got something out of this read- the new folks and those who have been meditating for years.
April 14, 2018
Especially good at explaining and adapting mindfulness concepts to western readers as well as to modern mindsets...
June 12, 2016
Without any exaggeration this is the best book i ever read about meditation. Not that the other many books i consumed were bad, but this one really stands out! I am a meditator myself for many years and Bill Morgan captures the right angle, the right wave to tell us of why Westerners like me are hooked in a certain way of attitude. He shows us the way, the better path to leave that 'zero ground bastion of wanting to know the content of it all' and make us ready to visit pastures that gives us scenes and waves to approach a new a more liberating ground to practice meditation! I say it in two words: "Highly Recommended"
December 20, 2022
Not as radical as it thinks it is and a tad cloying at times, but a common-sensical, less hardcore approach to practice that some will find helpful.
September 28, 2016
I won a free copy from the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway Program and think that it interesting and beneficial. I would recommend it to everyone.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews