It is very common for people who begin the practice of mindfulness to wonder whether they are doing it right and whether what they are experiencing is what they should be experiencing.
My briefest response to the question, “Am I doing it right?” is that if you are aware of what is happening, you are “doing it right,” no matter what is happening. That may be hard to accept, but it is true. What’s more, it’s all right to be experiencing what you are experiencing, even if you don’t like it or it doesn’t feel very “meditative.” Actually it is perfect. It is the curriculum of the present moment, of your life unfolding here and now.
When you practice mindfulness, the first thing you are likely to notice is how mindless you can be. Let’s say you decide to focus on the feeling of the breath moving in and out of the body. It is happening in the present moment. It is important. You can’t live without breathing. It is not hard to locate the sensations in the body associated with breathing, at the belly or in the chest, or at the nostrils. You might find yourself saying, “What is the big deal? I will just keep my focus on the breath.”
Well, lots of luck with that one. Because invariably, you will find that the mind has a life of its own and is not interested in taking orders from you about staying focused on the breath or anything else. So it is very likely that you will find your attention dissipating over and over again, forgetting about this breath in this moment, and being preoccupied with something else — anything else — in spite of your own best intentions. This is just part and parcel of the landscape of meditation practice, and it tells you something about the nature of your own mind.
Remember, we have established that the objects of attention are not of primary importance. What is of primary importance is the quality of the attending itself. So the mind’s wanderings — its self-distractedness; its changeability; its dullness on occasion; its excitability; its endless proliferations, constructions, and projects; its lack of focus — are all telling you something important, even critically important, about your own mind. It is not that you are doing anything wrong. You are not! You are simply beginning to realize how little we actually know ourselves and our own minds.
This awareness is far more important than whether your attention in a particular moment is focused on the breath sensations or not. If we understand this, the mind’s own distractedness and unreliability become new and worthy objects of attention in virtually every and any moment.
When your attention wanders away from the breath, it is not a mistake, and it doesn’t mean that you are a bad meditator. It is just what happened in that moment. The important thing is that you noticed it. Can you let it in and be aware of it? Can you not add anything to it? This is where the nonjudgmental piece comes in.