“Follow your feelings. If it feels right, move forward. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.”
—Oprah Winfrey
 

ne of the worst pieces of advice I hear frequently given to new meditation students or seekers on the path is to “do what feels right for you.”

A student will mention that it feels better to meditate lying down, even when the instructions are explicitly to sit up, or they prefer to keep their eyes closed instead of open. They’ll ask if it is okay to allow the mouth to droop due to excessive relaxation.

That’s when you’ll hear, “Sure. Why not? Do what feels right for you.”

In spiritual circles, you’ll learn how there is no “right” way to do practice and no “wrong” way to do it. You’ll find phrases like, “Let it go, let it be…Allow the moment to guide you…Let the moment decide…Live in the now…Discover your own answers…”

In this way, meditation and spiritual practice, in general, have gotten the unfortunate stereotype of being somewhat passive. Acceptance is equated with submission to what the Universe decides, and you’re as directionless as a leaf blowing around in the breeze.

But I would like to suggest that the opposite is true.

Let me ask you this: If doing what “feels right to you” actually worked as a principle, wouldn’t you have found peace and fulfillment a long time ago? Look out at the world. All you’ll see are people “doing what feels right” to them. Is this spiritual practice?

Anyone who sticks around with me for any length of time will hear me talk about the voices in our heads. Now, these voices, in most people, are The Boss. They are the “buck stops here” with every decision you make. They argue, “No time, no energy, don’t feel like it, don’t trust it, don’t agree with it, don’t like it, can’t afford it, don’t wanna, etc.” and you nod your head and go along with it. You just think, “That’s me thinking.”

The ultimate questions I would suggest that you ask yourself are, “Who is the authority you are giving your attention to? And where are you getting your information?”

For most people, they don’t even know who the “you” is in the statement “Do what feels right to you.” Which “you” are you talking about? The you who is the voice of limitation? Fear, worry, separation, self-effacement, insecurity?

Of course, those voices would pick some of the choices that don’t serve you and get you into the messes they get you into. That’s really it, right? The unstructured life is somehow believed to be a “free life.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.

During my time at the Zen monastery, many retreatants arrived and were overwhelmed by the sheer number of guidelines we drilled into them when they sat down for orientation. Among them, one was to be on time and to wear a watch at all times. They were surprised to hear this and assumed Zen was this “go with the flow” type of practice that wouldn’t bother with a watch.

Absolutely not. Our job was to trip the voices of egocentricity up. We were going to rattle the very foundations of who you assumed you were. How could that be done if you were just left to float around acting out from them and believing they were you?

No, there was absolutely no room for them doing what felt right for them.

We were going to expose them so you could actually discover who YOU were beyond feeling and not feeling right.