"With open awareness of multiple objects, there is the potential to build bountiful wisdom."
Sayadaw U Tejanaya
This is an interesting thing to say. You think of meditation as a silent, inward looking concentration of attention on the breath. When you begin to sit, you think it is a way to fill up a reservoir of calm that will be slowly depleted to be recharged in the next sit. Then you see all the calm washes away the instant something happens you don't like, and that happens really fast. You might decide that meditation doesn't really work or you might realize that there is something more to meditation than just sitting.
There are two steps to meditation. Samatha, calm abiding is the practice of turning attention to the breath while quietly sitting. Vipassana or insight, links meditation to life. The Buddha taught that the essence of life is suffering, impermanence, and not self. What this means in functional terms is that you find yourself constantly frustrated because you can never quite get a handle on things. You think that if you do things just right or if other people weren't always doing things so wrong then everything would be OK. But you can't ever do things just right and other people are going to be doing what they do in open defiance of your wishes.
Your personality, which you think of as "me," is nothing more substantial than a set of strategies you've developed to get your way. It isn't working any longer or you wouldn't be meditating and you certainly wouldn't be reading this. To make matters even worse, meditation won't help "you" one little bit. What helps is the realization of not self. Not self simply means that all your feelings and desires are not you, but impersonal energy that comes and goes. It feels good at times and bad at other times but its nature is constant change.
Sitting meditation is important. An attentive twenty minutes should be plenty of time to notice a slight knot of wanting something different or something more in the pit of your stomach. When you turn your attention to it you will notice that the feeling, that might seem so bad is just a sensation that fades as you pay attention to it. This is because that feeling is not you. It is a perfectly natural desire for things to be different than they are. You sit and watch it for a bit and it is, almost magically, quite different. Or, you might notice that knot in the pit of your stomach and watch yourself carried away by the story that your mind concocts about why this is happening. You might find yourself at the center of a story about how you aren't enlightened enough because you aren't meditating right. You might find yourself thinking that someone else has made you mad and you might finish your session only to get up to start an argument with that utterly unsuspecting someone. Then you'll be ashamed of yourself and think you'll never get to a Buddha this way.
But, don't compare, just be aware. Comparison is your ego trying to get things right and "you" won't ever get things right. But when there is awareness of what is happening in this very moment without trying to change it or make it go away, the suffering will resolve itself in this uncomplicated awareness that is unconditioned by personal desire.
This is easier to see when you are sitting quietly, just watching. It is not so easy when you are out in the world with all its demands and diversions. This is why walking is such a wonderful way to realize "an open awareness of multiple objects." Everything you see, think, or feel is an object that manifests itself in awareness. You will like some objects and not like others. But, as long as you maintain an awareness of each object rather than mistaking them for reality, your attention will remain stable in that unconditioned awareness.
When I teach yoga, I tell students that I'm not teaching them how to practice yoga. I'm teaching them how I practice yoga. Each person has to find their own way to practice. My main meditation practice is just simply walking.
I walk at a natural pace, neither fast for fitness or slow for contemplation. I co-ordinate my breath with my steps, counting the steps of each incoming breath to restart the count on the outbreath. I pay attention to my feet meeting the ground and rolling forward and the feeling of the breath moving through my body. I notice the quality of light and the sounds of traffic. There is the buzz of insects in the summer and the silence of the winter. There is this awareness of constant, moment to moment change and the resting in all of it.
May all beings be happy.