[Gem]

Indeed "Free yourself up a bit and make meditation a part of organising your life... This way of looking at your life, externally and internally, is the essence of meditation."

We can further use meditation to explore the roots and truth of our issues and suffering.begin to let them go

Tru dat Good idea. It could be helpful for some, but I'd discourage dwelling on emotional things, and it's possible the journal could become a clinging thing, so I like it in some scenarios, but it's a complicated one which could backfire a bit. I think if emotional contents are obsessive, it's good to write rants or fake letters to people that hurt you to get the knots to unwind a bit until things are vented out and quiet down a little, but don't keep them. Throw them away to indicate you are not attached to it anymore. I think keeping a journal might be giving too much importance to emotional content, so it's a tricky one... More for a psychologist to talk to someone about.

One other thing that can be of value to explore as we evolve with meditation is what is actually aware of the breath, thoughts, and emotions.

True. I wasn't really going to go into anything complicated on this thread, so I figured simple breath awareness would be enough, but you'll find when you sit to observe breath you'll start noticing what the mind is doing, wandering, reacting, generating negativity, running self-narratives and so on... which is no problem... just keep feeling your breathing.

Becoming aware of awareness itself

I think that's going a bit beyond the scope of this thread, and it's probably best to have the one thing - just feel your breathing. People will start to be like 'oh I have to watch my mind, I have to do emotional work, I have to aware awareness, which are all relevant things, but since this is just about having trouble meditating, a lot of stuff isn't going to make things any easier. Feeling breathing is simple, and no matter what mind and emotion does, just feel breathing. I don't think people are that reliant generally speaking and can sort out a lot of things on their own, but if a person needs psychological help they might decide it's a good idea to see someone about that. It's beyond my scope and I'm not advising it.Absolutely. Please come back again and say some more. The breath meditation is a good starting point, but it's not a beginner meditation. It's something anyone can do.