How To Meditate Better: Much Better With Feedback

They say "practice makes perfect." The rule however, doesn't apply to meditation. "After twenty years," warned a Zen Master, "you can finally say you have begun to learn how to sit." The sad truth is: you can get even less effective with practice! Meditation holds promise of great rewards, but the wandering mind gets in the way.

This age old problem now has a surprisingly simple solution. Let me show you how to meditate better -- much better, with feedback.

What Is Feedback, and Why Do We Need It?

Meditation takes many forms. Some methods sit, some move, some are vocal, some silent. All methods however have the same "active ingredient." It is attention. With sustained attention (on mantras or breaths, for instance), meditation moves mountains. To sustain attention, you need "feedback."

Psychologists know feedback as knowledge of results. Feedback is necessary for learning any skill, including attending. Imagine practicing darts while wearing a blindfold and you'll understand the need for feedback. In shooting darts, seeing what you are doing (i.e., feedback), lets you correct your aim. Meditation without feedback is like shooting darts blindfolded. Your target is attention but if you can't see your target, you can't correct your aim. In meditation, attention slips away unseen. You lose it without even knowing you are losing it. (You find out only later when you wake from a daydream.) Meditation needs a way to monitor attention. It needs feedback.

How Can We Add Feedback to Meditation?

Adding feedback to meditation is surprisingly easy. Indeed, visual feedback has been right before our eyes all along and unrecognized. Many have reported seeing "the light" without realizing its source and significance. If you meditate with open eyes you may have seen it yourself. Visual distortion in the form of light is caused by attention itself when attention holds the eyes still. This creates a stabilized retinal image, using up the photo pigment, causing distortion. Zero in and focus on the light and you literally pay attention to your attention. Halos of light (or other distortions) are proof of attention. They are feedback signals.

Try the Focusing Discs provided online (Straight Line Meditation). Print one out or just focus on the screen, or make one at home. Draw a circle the size of a quarter on a sheet of paper. Add a pea sized bull's eye and you have a focusing disc. Now simply focus with a gentle gaze on the bull's eye. In a minute distortion will appear, signalling attention. Shift your attention to the light and you can attend to your attention. If your mind wanders, your eyes too will wander and visual distortions will vanish, signaling you to re-focus on the bull's eye. This allows continuous self-monitoring. With feedback you can ‘mind your mind!' From this comes extraordinary benefit: the advantages of feedback.

What are the Advantages of Feedback?

Consider the advantages of feedback. First and foremost comes fast practice skill development.

Fast Practice Skill Development.
With traditional meditation (as in shooting darts blindfold), you can't correct your aim. Practice skill improves slowly if at all. "After twenty years" as the Zen Master said. Feedback changes this. Skill improves automatically when you can see what you're doing, and great gains come from doing it better, not necessarily longer.

Accelerated Progress.
Buddhist tradition says: "Just sit… and eventually, maybe after many lifetimes, you will come upon the truth." This assumes many lifetimes of drifting and dreaming. With feedback however, a butterfly mind takes a bee-line. Quality, not quantity of practice counts here, not hours spent meditating, but minutes on target. Beginners have instant success. Advanced practitioners have breakthrough intensity. Feedback prevents mindless wandering and when you don't wander you cover ground fast. This is straight-line meditation is the shortest distance between you and your goal.

Complete Self-guidance.
Meditation students are often taught there is no right or wrong way to do it. They sit passively, hoping for luck. Why is meditation so passive? Because it has to be! Being aggressive would be like running full speed when you're not sure where you are going. Feedback lets you see where you are going and correct your course. With it you can run full speed.

Attainable Goals.
You can tell if someone is driving blind. He is all over the road. Inconsistent results of meditation show the same directional instability. It is all too easy to meditate in circles. Some meditation teachers encourage students by saying there is no goal. Some even say there is nothing to be gained, but this puts a damper on motivation to practice. Who wants to work toward no goal? Feedback takes care of this too. You can set goals and you can aim high.

You Can Aim High.
Many meditate for relaxation, never knowing that this is like attending a banquet and eating crumbs off the floor. With feedback you can feast at the banquet. Traditional meditation gets you into the banquet hall, but feedback sits you down at the table to feast. You can aim high, and most important of all, you can count on success.

Your Success Is Guaranteed.
Meditation is a trial and error process but with traditional methods, most error goes undetected. Without confirmed attention there's no guarantee of success. With feedback's precision guidance comes continuous self-monitoring and guaranteed success.

The feedback meditation method is now fully developed, researched and presented in Straight Line Meditation: How to Restore Awareness and Why You Need to by Carol E. McMahon, Ph.D. with Master Deac Cataldo. Focusing Discs that enhance feedback are available at Straight Line Meditation. Meditate better with feedback and you'll "see the light" in more ways than one.


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As a National Science Foundation Trainee, Carol earned a Doctorate in psychology from Penn State University. National Institute of Mental Health and American Philosophical Society grants followed and Carol published widely in distinguished journals including the American Journal of Psychology, Psychological Medicine, and Medical Hypotheses. Her book WHERE MEDICINE FAILS (1986, paperback edition 2009), acclaimed the authority in its field, became a driving force in the holistic health movement. Discovery of a feedback method of meditation, however, and the meditation breakthrough it produced, redirected Carol to teaching, testing and refining the Feedback Method and to crafting enlightenment tests to guide readers to the grand prize. This culminated in 2009 with: STRAIGHT LINE MEDITATION: HOW TO RESTORE AWARENESS AND WHY YOU NEED TO by Carol E. McMahon, Ph.D. with martial arts Master Deac Cataldo. Carol is the author of THE PIG FAIRY and other stories in a forthcoming series: Awaken The Children. She is married, has a daughter, holds a sixth degree black belt in Karate, and makes her book available free of charge to retreat center and prison libraries. More at: Straight Line Meditation and The Best Way To Meditate