I was reflecting this morning (during meditation) that it makes sense to meditate because you actually want to. (hahaha. that sounds like a silly statement.) But I think that a lot of the literature or messages that I saw and continue to see about it seem to emphasize some sort of benefit. They encourage the person to feel that they’re meditating in order to get something else. You know what I mean?
The typical book or video says, ‘Life is full of difficulty and our minds are so unruly’ or some version of that. Or ‘we suffer so much and it’s so hard to be alive’. Or the other version says, ‘we only use a little bit of our potential but what if we could [insert amazing ability here] like have sex for 50 hours, or never forget anything, or attain the greatest bliss’ or whatever.’
Those are pretty good sales pitches, but they end up generating frustration because while the person is meditating, they actually want something else. Maybe I wanted to have sex for 60 hours. Then they’re like, ‘okay, no problem. now go sit down cross-legged.’
There’s no really clear connection between what I wanted and what I’m being asked to do.
I think it works better when you’re actually interested in the specific thing that you’re actually doing.
Well, that’s a personal preference. So, the first approach may be really good for some people, I suppose.
For me, a good reason to sit down and watch your mind is that you really want to sit down and watch your mind. hahaha. 
Let me express this point more clearly.
We often hear that a certain proportion of high-level performers in any craft tend to enter ‘flow states’. These are blissful states of time-dilation and enhanced focus in which the attention is deeply absorbed into the task at hand. Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi spent many years conceptualizing, researching, and writing about this phenomenon. He found that when there is the perfect balance between Task Complexity and Subject’s Competence such that all of one’s capacities are being used, but there is also a good level of successful engagement, people tend to reliably enter these states. Football players, ballet dancers, chess masters, essay writers, joggers, pianists, scientists, whatever.
Now imagine that you read his work that football players enter Flow States, and you think ‘I’d like to experience that’. So you go and learn to play football, even though you don’t like football, have no interest in football, etc. Then you get mad at yourself that you’re not experiencing flow. What you need to know is that flow is not something unique to Football. It’s about doing something in which you can become absorbed.
That’s kind of what I mean. The person who reaches flow states through football was probably not trying to reach flow. Instead, she was trying to play football.
So I think when it comes to meditation, rather than getting excited about all of the so-called benefits, it’s best to choose something that, for you, is its own reward. You just think it’s worth doing. Whether you happen to get ‘enlightened’ or ‘bliss states’ or not.
I usually discipline my thoughts to be a bit more coherent than this. But this time I just felt like trying to get the idea out.
