Meditation doesn’t always purr. Peppered in among the humming sessions where things seem to rush into place with blinding clarity are the sessions where things are difficult. The mind might be strong or the body might be tired. Whatever the case may be, don’t discount a session that brings you more difficulty than relief.

It is in these sessions that meditation becomes real life–it becomes the difficulty we try to escape. In this grit and grime, the real battle is fought. There is a sentence I return to frequently when my meditation sessions are difficult: “This is why I meditate.” The tough nature of the mind is no match against the preparation for the tough mind. We meditate so that when our practice feels more like broken glass and less like flowing ink painting the night sky, we are prepared. The real world becomes real in the practice.

We’ve all had those experiences in meditation, where things seem to snap into place and clarity is a breath away. Those sessions prepare you for the real world in a very different way than the sessions that almost break you.

There is a simple joy in a meditation session that “goes right.” But once you graduate past the beginner level, it becomes more interesting and satisfying to have difficult sessions filled with distraction and thought. That is the opportunity to practice meditation. The difficulty becomes the fuel from which the practice grows. The cycle deepens itself.

These sessions where peace seems as far away as possible is a chance to wholeheartedly accept what has been given to you: a restless mind. If we fight what happens in our meditation practice, how can we ever hope to let go of the events of life outside of our practice? The sessions that make you feel as if you are making no progress are the sessions where you are making the most progress because you’re doing the hard work. Anyone can meditate when it’s easy. Can you meditate when it’s hard?

This is the grounding nature of meditation: a space where a person can fit into their own corner of the universe and work on the hard problems of distraction and thought. The studio of the mind becomes a workshop of self-improvement. Don’t discount the hard sessions, because the hard sessions are the real work. When you want the meditation session to go a specific way, you step directly back into the ego–the selfish part of you that only cares about how it can be comfortable. When meditation sessions are difficult, don’t worry. That’s the real training, and the real training only comes when you are ready for it.

The world of difficulty can be, well, difficult to stomach, but it’s all a practice of letting go. Don’t expect your meditation to go any one way–otherwise, you invite suffering if it doesn’t go as planned, and you invite suffering if it does go as planned because you are striving to maintain it. This kind of difficulty goes for the other parts of your meditation practice too. If you miss a session, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, you should be glad that you missed a session because you now walk into the world completely exposed, naked, vulnerable to the world’s whims and jabs. And to walk into the world unarmored is a miracle. This is where your practice shows its benefit: a pause before making an offhand comment, a deep breath under work stress, a touch of patience in the grocery store line. In a day where you haven’t meditated, you do the toughest work you can do on your path: greet the world without any sort of protection.

These ideas can help you in the daily hum of the world. When meditation goes well, that’s great–show up tomorrow. When meditation doesn’t go well, that’s great–show up tomorrow. Either way, the world is asking you a simple thing: let go and float downstream. There is no mind like no-mind. And the only way to get to no-mind is to turn off your desire for things to be a certain way and instead accept them. This doesn’t mean you should let bad things happen to you without action, but instead that when bad things do happen to you, take them as a sign that you are on the right path. The way is paved with broken cobblestones.

Let it all rush in without judgment. There will be easy and difficult days, but with enough meditation, they all become easy days–because there is no wanting for anything other than what is. To check out of the wanting game entirely is to win in an instant…if Buddhists thought in terms of winning and losing. We don’t, so I’ll leave that metaphor for someone more qualified to hash out.

There will always be another sunrise. There will always be another day. When the woes of the world get to be too much, remember this: whatever happens, you will always have the sun on your face. Even if it’s ten years down the line before you feel sunshine, there will be more sunshine to come.

Detach, and it just might come sooner.