Ritam Studio Podcast With Jonni Pollard and Carla Dimattina

Breaking Through Meditation Plateaus

• Jonni Pollard • Season 5 • Episode 6

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Feeling like your meditation practice has lost its spark? You're not alone. After years of consistent practice, many meditators encounter a mysterious plateau where the once-transformative experience becomes mechanical and seemingly lifeless. This conversation dives deep into the phenomenon of meditation staleness and offers a refreshingly practical path forward.

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Speaker 1:

I'm curious about the question myself, looking at it through the lens of your experience as a meditator. For me it's been like six to eight years since I learned this technique and it's been interesting I'd say the last five years like feeling of staleness and lack of charm. I'm just curious, through your experience, do you have that and how you've moved through that? And, if not, help me, johnny. Okay, so sorry, can you just say the middle part of the question again? I don't think I totally understood it Through my experience, what? Reaching a point of staleness or oh, staleness, yes, right, right, um, hmm, yeah, to some degree I think I've experienced a sense of, hmm, I'm kind of of grinding a stone here. I think I need to mix it up and I generally just get to it. I throw myself into something that generally terrifies me, step into the unknown. That's bigger and more demanding of that innate intelligence. I place more pressure on it to reveal greater capacity and that's kind of just my general mode of operation.

Speaker 1:

I'd say I experienced that more in my 30s, where I was really enjoying just, you know, surfing and doing as little as possible to, to, to earn money and and to eat and all of those things, and yeah, and then I kind of got the bug again of, just, you know, throwing myself into the deep end of of what I understood my potential to be. And yeah, look at it as a, as a, as a creative spiritual exercise. You've got something in here. There's something in here you really want to do that might not make sense rationally in terms of like a, you know, a revenue generating thing which might be necessary. You need to listen to whatever is going on inside of you. That's at that deeper level. There's something there, and sometimes we're very clever at rationalizing why we shouldn't do that right now or not consider it as something that we need to do. Is there something there? Yes, yes, bravo, something that we need to do? Is there something there? Yes, bravo, yeah, of course there's something there. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, well, I guess it is very easy to rationalize. Well, it is extremely easy to rationalize. Um, yeah, I probably I found myself becoming more judgmental.

Speaker 1:

I'm probably meditating as the years have gone on in a weird way, because my meditation is often my most creative 20 minutes and it's I'm trying to remove myself from that as a creative like a lot comes up in that 20 minutes and it just no longer feels like the. A lot comes up in that 20 minutes and it just no longer feels like the, the meditation. I don't want to go back to how I used to be, because that's not realistic. I started starting out in very juicy, deep, you know, falling asleep situations for a few years, but it feels very creative I don't know whether that's I mean making excuses, you know, not really. Don't even write in tense or I don't know, not too sure it's not very clear. The practice well, let's definitely catch up for a little tune-up on that.

Speaker 1:

What I can, what I'll speculate and this is just something for you to consider as a proposition that what's crept in is some expectation of yourself. There is a resistance to accepting what is, there is a dissatisfaction, some agitation deep in the system and you're desiring something that you're not giving yourself permission to have the experience of and that is manifesting as this experience that you're describing, a staleness, kind of inertia, and as a gateway to resolving this, my recommendation is this Next meditation tomorrow morning, just allow yourself to have the crummiest meditation that you're likely to have, just whatever it is, I'm going to meet myself where I'm at and I'm going to become curious about what it is I'm actually experiencing, as opposed to having an opinion about what I'm experiencing, because there's no value in you critiquing yourself in this way. There's none. There's no insight to be gained through the critiquing and criticizing, analyzing and judging your experience on the surface level, because the problem that you're facing is not a surface level problem. It's operating deeper and the only way you're going to access deeper is by no longer ruminating or even having a care or concern about what's actually happening on the surface level of your meditation experiences.

Speaker 1:

Accept and stop controlling and this will relax the muscles for you, the spiritual muscles for you to gain access to what wants to be birthed. There's something there that wants to be birthed and, for whatever reason you're like, you've put a container and a set of conditions over it and the little lock on that needs to be picked. Open the door, let it out, let it come up, start entertaining the thing. It doesn't mean you have to act and, you know, have your business plan and all of that ready in three days, because I know the way you think yeah, just let it air out, yeah, yeah, just let it air out yeah, and reveal to yourself that you're far more complex than the way that you're. Oh yeah, sorry, there's a bit of delay there.

Speaker 1:

I was just going to say there's definitely a conscious denial of something that I'm going to risk it out. This is kind of what it is. Great, that's good. I can see how that plays out. Great, this is all it is, you know, because all of this is just the games we play with ourselves. The second we take full responsibility for what's going on. We can get on with it. All the problems that we're having, folks, we're actually in control, we can resolve them.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes it feels like that's not the case, but it's the case and there's no condition to that rule. And so you know, and this is the big reminder, like that's what I constantly embellish, you know, why we're here talking about this is we're just reminding ourselves of what our capability is, what our capacity is, what the truth is, what we so easily forget, what we need to be reminded of, and it's, you know, I'm saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, in lots of little fancy, different ways. I'm saying the same thing over and over and over again, and that is awareness unlocks our power, and the truth and the intelligence, janus unlocks our power and the truth and the intelligence. And at the moment you said you're consciously denying, you know just the fact that you can acknowledge that and admit that to yourself. You're like 98% there.

Speaker 1:

Now you need to just choose and act. It's as simple as that. We don't need to psychoanalyze it, we don't need to get all heady about it, we don't need to do past life regression. We just get into it, get on with it, and that the uncomfortableness of taking the steps will cause the purification. Taking the steps will cause the purification. Everything, all the kind of debris of the, the cage that you're blasting open, will just. It'll get removed. Naturally. Shiver, we'll come in and just.