How To Meditate Better - Much Better With Feedback

They say practice makes perfect, but the rule doesnt seem to apply to meditation practice. After twenty years, warned a Zen master, you can finally say you have begun to learn how to sit. Many will take even longer.

Practice skill in meditation (and benefit that comes with it) is slow to develop. I asked why this is, approaching the question as a research psychologist interested in skill learning. I discovered a surprisingly simple solution to the problem and Id like to share it here. Let me show you how to turn the tables on slow progress -- how you can meditate better with feedback.

What Is Feedback and Why Do We Need It?

Meditation takes many forms. Some methods sit, some move, some are vocal, some silent. All forms of meditation however, have the same active ingredient. It is attention. With sustained attention (on a mantra, a candle flame or the breath, for instance), meditation moves mountains, and if you want sustained attention you need feedback. Let me explain why.

Paying attention is a learned skill. Feedback is the knowledge of results necessary for learning any skill, including attending. Imagine shooting darts blindfolded and youll understand why feedback is necessary. In building skill at darts, seeing what you are doing lets you correct your aim. Meditation without feedback is like shooting darts blindfolded. Your target is attention but you cant see your target. When you sit down to meditate, attention slips away unseen. You lose it without even knowing you are losing it, finding out later when awakening from a daydream. You need to see what you are doing. You need to monitor attention. You need feedback.

How Can We Add Feedback to Meditation?

Adding feedback to meditation is surprisingly easy. Indeed, visual feedback has been right before our eyes all along and unrecognized. If you meditate with your eyes open, you may have seen it yourself. It is visual distortion in the form of light. This light is caused by attention itself when attention holds the eyes still. A stabilized retinal image uses up the photo pigment, causing distortion. Zero in and focus on the light and you literally pay attention to your attention. Halos of light (and other distortions) are feedback signals.

Focusing discs can be easily made or found online at StraightLineMeditation.com. Draw a circle the size of a quarter on a sheet of paper. Add a pea sized bulls eye and you have a focusing disc. Now simply focus with a gentle gaze on the bulls eye. When distortion appears it signals attention. Shift your attention to the light and you can pay attention to attention itself. If your mind wanders, your eyes too will wander. Then visual distortions will vanish, signaling you to re-focus on the bulls eye. This allows you to self-monitor continuously. That's how with feedback you can mind your mind!


What are the Advantages of Feedback?

Now consider the advantages of feedback. First and foremost comes fast practice skill development.

Fast Practice Skill Development.
With traditional meditation (as in shooting darts blindfold), you cant correct your aim. Practice skill improves very slowly. (You might even get even less effective over time.) As the Zen Master said: After twenty years you can finally say you have begun to learn how to sit. Feedback changes this. Skill improves automatically when you can see what you are doing, and great gains come from doing it better, not necessarily longer.

Accelerated Gains.
Buddhist tradition says: Just sit and eventually, maybe after many lifetimes, you will come upon the truth. This assumes many lifetimes of drifting and dreaming. With feedback however, a butterfly mind takes a bee-line. Quality, not quantity of practice counts most here, not hours spent meditating, but minutes on target. Beginners have instant success. Advanced practitioners have breakthrough intensity. Feedback signals prevent mindless wandering and when you dont wander you cover ground fast. This is straight-line meditation is the shortest distance between you and your goal.

Complete Self-guidance.
Meditation students are often taught there is no right or wrong way to do it. They sit passively, hoping for luck. Why is meditation so passive? Because it has to be! Being aggressive would be like running full speed when youre not sure where you are going. Feedback lets you see where you are going and correct your course. With it you can run full speed.

Attainable Goals.
You can tell if someone is driving blind. He is all over the road. Inconsistent results of meditation show the same directional instability. It is all too easy to meditate in circles. Some meditation teachers encourage students by saying there is no goal. Some even say there is nothing to be gained, but this puts a damper on motivation to practice. Who wants to work toward no goal? Feedback takes care of this too. You can set goals and you can aim high.

You Can Aim High and Count on Success.
Many meditate for relaxation, not knowing that meditating for relaxation is like attending a banquet and eating crumbs off the floor. With feedback you can feast at the banquet. Traditional meditation gets you into the banquet hall, but feedback sits you down at the table to feast. You can aim high, and most important of all, you can count on success.

Meditation is a trial and error process but with traditional methods, most error goes undetected. Without confirmed attention theres no guarantee of success. With feedbacks precision guidance comes a guarantee of success.

The feedback meditation method is now fully developed, researched and presented in Straight Line Meditation: How to Restore Awareness and Why You Need to by Carol E. McMahon, Ph.D. with Master Deac Cataldo. Try it and you'll see the light in more ways than one.