Observing Frustrated Wishes

 When it comes to being in school for a long time, I have noticed that my inspiration will ebb and flow. At times, I am full of zest for the subject, while other times I will not have too many ideas, and instead will have this feeling of 'going nowhere'. In Chan Buddhism, there is significance in how even the meditation method itself will feel dry. How, in those moments, does a person just stay with a sense of 'dryness' or frustration? I think that the key is to understand how the desire to 'get somewhere' is what drives the pressure to think that the present is a frustrated moment.
   Behind every wish for something else, there is an inability to accept the present as it is. But if I let go of the wish for a moment and simply look at the moment for what it is, something opens up there. It's perhaps the counter idea that things are going to be okay, and it's not necessary to reach some final goal. Rather, it is simply a matter of not comparing what's in front of us to an imagined future.
   "Befriending" the feeling of 'going nowhere' is yet another approach that is worth trying. Rather than seeing that state of 'nowhere' as a negative, one can frame it as something that is positive, which embraces the present moment in its imperfection. But in order to do this, we need a practice of not giving into the evaluations of how things should be in the now moment, as well as the stories that we construct around such moments. This is the challenge, to reverse the habit tendencies to see negatives whenever one is not getting wishes fulfilled.