Host: What if meditation doesn't work for me?

Dava Money: If meditation doesn't seem to work for you, the first thing you want to do is explore what your expectations of it are. Many people that are beginning to meditate expect that they are going to be able to achieve states of calmness, differing states of mind very quickly and that isn't the intention nor is it going to happen very quickly. What you want to be able to do is just start, do it and finish it. So if you set aside 20 minutes a day and you sit down and you follow your breath and you get -- your mind wanders and you get lost and then you come back to following your breath and then your mind wanders and then you come back to following your breath and you stop after 20 minutes. You have just meditated and that's perfectly successful meditation. After doing that some period of time, you will find that there is a little, quiet gap, a little bit of silence in between the thoughts or in between the sensations and you will notice that and try not to get attached to that, but that is what you want to eventually begin to achieve this greater periods of silence in between.