Why a “Bad” Meditation is Actually Good

Operation Disclosure Official

By Professor Michael Dargaville, Guest Writer
Submitted on May 10, 2026

WHY A “BAD” MEDITATION IS ACTUALLY GOOD

A bad meditation is often misunderstood by beginners. 

When you sit to meditate and your mind is wild – thoughts racing, emotions surfacing, body uncomfortable – you think it is a “bad” meditation. 

But from the perspective of a seasoned practitioner with 33 years of Stillness meditation under my belt, that “bad” meditation is often the most powerful healing.

What You Experience And Why It Is Healing

Mind will not stop racing. You are finally observing the noise instead of being controlled by it. Every time you notice a thought and return to your breath or mantra, you strengthen the neural pathways of awareness. This is not failure; it is reps for your brain.

Suppressed emotions arise (anger, sadness, fear). Meditation creates a safe container for old, stuck emotions to surface. Feeling them without reacting is how they release. A “bad” meditation that brings up tears or frustration is a profound emotional detox.

Body itches, aches, or feels restless. Stagnant Qi and stored tension are moving. The discomfort is the sensation of blockages breaking up. This is not a sign that you are doing something wrong; it is a sign that something is shifting.

You feel like you are “fighting” your mind the whole time. The “fighting” is the practice. Effortless stillness is the result, but the effortful return is the training. Every time you bring your attention back, you are building the muscle of concentration. That muscle grows strongest in the struggle, not in the ease.

And of course the basic practice is that you are simply observing your thoughts without getting caught up in them. You are a passive observer. Eventually thoughts slow and gaps between thoughts arise. That is stillness, the gap between the thoughts. You enter into that gap of Stillness. And Bingo. ENLIGHTENMENT AND HEALING.

The Key Insight: The Returning Is the Practice

The goal is not to have a quiet mind. The goal is to have an awareness that is not disturbed by the mind’s noise. The only way to develop that awareness is to practice returning – again and again, gently, without judgement.

Each return is a rep. A “bad” meditation with 1,000 returns is far more powerful than a “good” meditation where your mind was simply dull or checked out.

What Ian Gawler Taught

Ian Gawler is the world famous mind-body medicine pioneer who used meditation to cure cancer and set up a natural medicine cancer hospital near Melbourne.

Gawler emphasised that healing comes from the gaps between thoughts, not from the absence of thoughts. When you are struggling, those gaps may be tiny – milliseconds. But they are there. Resting in those micro‑gaps, even for a second, is healing. The meditation is not bad; it is deep work.

When the gaps widen and the thoughts slow peace, healing and bliss follow yet there can still be occasional thoughts that do not disrupt this more profound stillness that develops.

My 33 years of practice is proof. I have sat through thousands of “bad” sessions. And look at me now: I can enter stillness at will, heal my body, and discern truth from deception. Those “bad” sittings were not wasted; they were essential.

So when you sit and your mind is chaos, smile. You are doing the real work.

For most people, the moment they sit down to meditate, their mind explodes. Thoughts race. Emotions flare. Itches appear. The body screams. They conclude: “I am terrible at meditation. This isn’t working.” But that conclusion is the greatest misunderstanding in spiritual practice.

Yet it needs to be stressed again that the truth is that a “bad” meditation – the one where you struggle, where your mind is a storm, where you feel like you are failing – is often the most powerful, transformative session you can have. 

Now I’ll explain this further by drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, and the direct experience of meditation masters like Ian Gawler.

1. The Goal Is Not a Quiet Mind

First, we must correct the goal. Most beginners believe that good meditation means no thoughts, perfect stillness, bliss. That is a result, not the practice. The practice is the relationship to thoughts, not the absence of them.

The analogy: You cannot control the weather. But you can learn to stand in the rain without getting soaked. The mind produces thoughts the way the sky produces clouds. You cannot stop the clouds. But you can learn to watch them pass without being swept away.

A “bad” meditation is one where the clouds are thick and the wind is fierce. You are struggling to stay dry. But every time you notice that you have been distracted and gently return your attention to your breath or mantra, you are strengthening the very muscle of awareness. That return is the practice. That return is the healing.

2. The Neuroscience: Neuroplasticity in Action

Research on meditation shows that the brain changes with practice, but not in the way you might expect. The key is not achieving a state of relaxation; it is the process of noticing distraction and returning.

Each time you catch your mind wandering and redirect it, you are:

– Strengthening the prefrontal cortex (responsible for attention and self-regulation).
– Weakening the default mode network (the brain’s “daydreaming” circuit, which is overactive in anxiety and depression).
– Building new neural pathways that make it easier to focus in the future.

A “bad” meditation where you are constantly distracted gives you many reps. A “good” meditation where you are effortlessly focused gives you few. Which one builds more neural strength? The struggle builds more.

This is why Ian Gawler, who healed from terminal cancer using stillness meditation, never said “only sit when it’s easy.” He sat for five hours a day, through discomfort, through boredom, through emotional upheaval. He knew that the healing happened in the return, not just in the peace. It happens in both places.

3. The Spiritual Reality: Releasing Suppressed Material

In spiritual traditions, the mind is compared to a lake. On the surface, waves (thoughts) constantly move. Below the surface, deep stillness. When you first sit, the waves are all you see. But as you practice, the waves do not stop; rather, you become aware of deeper layers.

However, there is another phenomenon: meditation often stirs up suppressed material. Old emotions, forgotten memories, buried fears – they rise to the surface. This is not a sign of failure; it is a sign that your mind feels safe enough to release what has been locked away.

A “bad” meditation that brings tears, anger, or restlessness is a catharsis. You are not being disturbed by these feelings; you are finally allowing them to arise and be seen without judgment. This is emotional detox at the deepest level.

In TCM, this is the movement of stagnant Qi. When Qi that has been stuck for years begins to flow, it can feel uncomfortable – aches, tingling, emotional shifts. That is not a bad meditation; that is the medicine working.

4. The Philosophy of the “Bad” Meditation

Philosophers and mystics have long understood that struggle is the path. The 20th-century spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” That observing – even when the mind is chaotic – is what you are training.

In Zen, there is a saying: “Great doubt, great awakening. Small doubt, small awakening. No doubt, no awakening.” The doubt, the struggle, the sense that you are “failing” – that friction is the very fire that burns away illusion.

In Taoism, the concept of wei wu wei (action through non-action) is often misinterpreted as effortless doing. But the path to effortless action is thousands of hours of effortful practice. The “bad” meditations are the effort. They are the grinding of the sword.

5. Ian Gawler’s Direct Teaching

Ian Gawler, a pioneer in mind‑body cancer therapy, never promised easy meditation. In his work, he taught people to sit with whatever arises – pain, fear, despair – and simply watch. He documented that patients who could tolerate the “bad” meditations, who sat through the storms, were the ones who experienced tumour regression.

He said: “Do not judge your meditation by how you feel during it. Judge it by the quality of your life afterwards.” A “bad” meditation that leaves you feeling raw but more present the next day is a good meditation. A “good” meditation that leaves you spaced out and disconnected is not.

6. My 33 Years of Experience

I have sat for thousands of hours. I have had blissful sittings where time disappeared. I have also had agonising sittings where my mind was a war zone. Both are valid. Both have contributed to my healing.

The “bad” sittings taught me resilience. They taught me that I am not my thoughts. They taught me to return, again and again, without judgement. That skill – the ability to return – is what saved me during various serious diseases I’ve had in my life. When the fear and deception were overwhelming, I could return to my breath, my mantra, my light. Not because my mind was quiet, but because I had practiced returning in a thousand “bad” meditations.

Those sittings were not wasted. They were my training ground.

Conclusion: Embrace the Struggle

So, when you sit and your mind is chaos, thank it. The chaos is the raw material. The returning is the alchemy. The struggle is the path.

A “bad” meditation is not a failure. It is a heavy lift in the gym of your mind. It is the run that leaves you breathless but stronger. It is the storm that passes, leaving the sky clearer than before.

Next time you sit and feel like you are meditating badly, smile. You are doing the real work. You are healing.

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Michael Dargaville is a punk poet, philosopher, natural medicine oncologist and general clinician, transpersonal psychologist, gonzo counter culture publisher, global journalist, generalist poet, famous performance punk poet, avant garde novelist, meditation teacher, academic/teacher, singer/musician, physicist/generalist scientist, laid‑back surfer, pioneering Zen skateboarder and visual artist. He grew up and was educated in the hippie, punk, surfing and New Age counter culture of Sydney, Australia. He has taught at more than 20 universities (five at professorial level) around the world but especially in China. Michael wrote three major master’s degree theses involving the quantum theory of alternative medicine and alien space travel, the New Age movement and transpersonal psychology. He then spent 10 years on a PhD called THE NEW IDEALISM joining all of this together which eventually became a major book of published philosophy (published in full on his website). His journalism has been read by more than 200 million people on the Internet in countless newspapers, magazines and websites with many stories going outright viral and translated into 15 languages. He has published more than 100 hard copy books and pamphlets with more than 70 works of poetry, five novels, four books of philosophy and many books/pamphlets of journalism. For more than 30 years he had been involved in community and global counter culture publishing outlets and founded three famous publishing houses. Michael performs as a poet and singer widely and loves both punk music (especially New Wave punk, folk punk and jazz punk) and World Music such as the utterly amazing Fatoumata Diawara from Mali and Gambia’s Sona Jobarteh. Yet his love of many other types of music from many civilizations around the world is heartfelt. From Chinese classical and Chinese folk music to Chinese pop music singer Wong Faye and Greek virtuoso Yanni, Michael’s musical taste is extremely eclectic and he regards music as part of his soul. He’s been committed to punk D.I.Y publishing since the late 1970s as a teenager and involved widely (globally) in independent and community media. Michael was trained as a journalist and was a full‑time staff journalist for eight years on the Hobart Mercury plus other major newspapers such as the Melbourne Sun News‑Pictorial and China Daily where he wrote features and worked on the newsdesk in Beijing. Michael is in telepathic and physical contact with Galactic Federation alien leaders who told him to his face that he was a starseed human alien from a Galactic Federation human planet with 10,000 year lifespans. Michael says he can categorically declare he in no way feels like Superman. In fact he feels the opposite because higher level starseeds can have serious energetic problems adjusting to Earth and experience massive sickness. Michael declares this is one reason he has devoted himself to natural medicine.

______________________________________________________

Contact Author

If you wish to contact the author of this article. Please email us at [voyagesoflight@gmail.com]. Availability of author’s contact information depends on if said article was user submitted or reposted.
______________________________________________________

Guest Posting

If you wish to write and/or publish an article on Operation Disclosure all you need to do is send your entry to [voyagesoflight@gmail.com] applying these following rules.

The subject of your email entry should be: “Entry Post | (Title of your post) | Operation Disclosure”

– Must be in text format
– Proper Grammar
– No foul language
– Your signature/name/username at the top
______________________________________________________

Newsletter

If you wish to receive the daily Operation Disclosure Newsletter, you can subscribe via the PayPal “Subscribe” button located at the bottom.
______________________________________________________

Operation Disclosure is an independent media platform dedicated to exploring global geopolitics and alternative perspectives. Our mission is to provide a central hub for diverse viewpoints on world events, including independent research into exopolitics, aerial phenomena (UAP), and the historical origins of humanity. We believe in providing a platform for information that encourages deeper inquiry into the world around us.

Disclaimer: The content on Operation Disclosure—including articles, videos, and images—is contributed by our readers or curated for informational and educational interest. Views, opinions, and claims expressed in these posts belong solely to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Operation Disclosure. We do not guarantee the absolute accuracy or completeness of this content; therefore, we encourage all readers to engage with the material with a spirit of personal inquiry and discernment.

Copyright © Operation Disclosure Official