Recently, I realized that I was practicing concentration meditation incorrectly.   In my past practice I followed the Leo Gura and Daniel Ingram -first jhana- instructions for concentration practice (or at least what I understood from it).  What I was doing is choosing an object of concentration and concentrating very hard on it, like a laser, making efford and trying to silence the background. It made sense to me, since on a day-to-day basis, when I want to focus on something very important, I naturally make a great efford to focus, open my eyes, intentionlly silence my thouhgs, etc; It's an act of great effort, it's not like letting go.   But, what I recently learn, based of jhana teachers as Leigh Brasington, Michael W. Taft and Rob Burbea is that the practice of concentration is about efortless and joy, not very hard intention on the object. This is counterintuitive, because it is not how concentration works in ordinary life.   Here a summary of the instructions (also Leo Gura and Daniel Ingram dont´mention the pati phase which seems like a central point) :     You may also be practicing the exercise wrong, so I think it is important to share this with you.