Why Don't We Meditate?

I've been thinking about why we don't meditate or do other internal healing practices, and whether it has to do with some sort of resistance. This is assuming we already have reasons why we want to have more of a practice and have enough training to know how to do it, but are unable to get it going. I was thinking that it is about laziness, but that is just my self-critic talking. On a deeper and more holistic level, it seems to be about what motivates us to do things, and what system of rewards we are dependent on or habitually acting upon.

The main distinction seems to be about where we are sourcing our self-worth. If we are trying to seek validation from the external world, it is going to be the rewards of external achievements and production that will be driving our motivation to do something. The resistance to doing internal exercises will be that there won't be anything to show for it, knowing that the internal arts take much time to progress, and even then, there won't be anything produced that can be seen or shown to validate my worthiness. How much easier and quicker it is to repair the fence, paint the bathroom, balance the budget, or do any various thing on our to-do checklists to get the reward from the external world to validate our existence?  

What will there be to show for an hour of meditation? It is ironic that we will inevitably feel better. Whereas, with external achievements, especially when it is others praise that I seek to feel better about myself, it might take a while for someone else to notice or might not come at all if what we did doesn't meet their standards or expectations. It is even unhealthy for us type-A personalities, that would of course feel better with some meditation, but end up overloading our to-do lists so much to feel good about ourselves that we end up stressed and let down that we didn’t meet our superhero goals. Even though the eighty percent that we did achieve would have been a successful day for the mere mortals of the world.  Isn't it a little twisted that the internal arts tend to improve our feeling right away and yet we so often choose the external indirect route? It is important to recognize also that even if we do feel better with the external rewards, it is fleeting, and then we need to keep achieving and producing to maintain the external rewards providing the positive feedback. I get tired just thinking about that pattern, like a dog chasing its own tail.

Ultimately, I think we are always doing things because we think we will feel better by doing it. So it is a matter of reorienting ourselves to the internal rewards and turning inward to the incremental improvements that the internal arts offer us. It seems easy on paper but undoing ingrained dependence on the external world for our self-esteem rewards is no small feat. It will be helpful to tune into how we feel more, because otherwise it will take more to have a sense that we are actually achieving anything, besides our minds confirmation that we are on our spiritual path, which is true, but not as rewarding to our emotional reward system that is the primal driver of our willpower. The will to choose to do something has maximal power when we can engage our emotional desires up to our mental faculties that think that meditation is important to the evolution of our soul.

Meditation has helped me to reduce my stress, improve concentration and memory, become more aware of my emotions and body, and many other things that you probably already know. It is the increased self-awareness that I want to highlight. What if that heightened consciousness that develops through the practice of the internal arts fills that very sense of emptiness that we sought to cover up with the rewards of the external world? What if the deepened connection to the true state of our beingness through meditation could plug the holes in our leaky bucket, and replace the desire to do so much to feel whole and worthy? Could we finally take a sign of relief and feel what Thich Nhat Hanh commonly reminds his students, you have arrived? That is how I think that we can best fully engage our willpower to initiate and maintain the practice of the internal arts. That’s how one can get off the hamster wheel and take action to not fill a deficiency but choose to do something to add to the abundance. We will never get it all done anyway.  Who doesn't want to come home after a long strenuous journey, take a deep breath, kick our feet up on the seat of our soul, and say to ourselves, I have arrived?