Progress on the path

I've noticed that beginning meditation students naturally assume that "easier" is "better" and that "more pleasant" also is "better". That approach may be okay in the early days when we're developing a taste for meditation but the time will come when it will impede our progress. Ram Dass speaks to this in his book, Journey of Awakening:

As your meditation develops, you may find yourself drawn back to the methods you avoided when you began. You may get frustrated because the fire is not hot enough and you want to move faster than easier methods permit. So you work with one method after the next until all aspects - heart, mind, and body - are balanced. If you begin with one of them, sooner or later you will probably want to integrate the others as well. It makes no difference which technique you start with. Try to sense what you're ready for and what you need. Above all, be honest with yourself.

A useful tactic is to pick a method that feels right and do it for two weeks. During this trial run, agree with yourself, "I will treat all my negative reactions to this form of meditation as merely thought forms prompted by my ego to keep me from taking it seriously. I will suspend judgment, criticism, and doubt." At the end of two weeks, you're free to evaluate the method. Or, give yourself three months or six months.

I know that in the early days of my meditative practice, I was very attracted to Zen and then to mantra. I stuck with those two methods for years and years. Then the Tibetans got hold of me! I ended up learning very intricate methods of visualization to which I was not attracted at all and to which I had quite a bit of resistance. I'm so glad I stuck it out, though. Working with less appealing methods of meditation ended up giving my mind a flexibility I didn't know it could have. Don't dismiss difficult methods out of hand. In the long run you'll only benefit by persevering.