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Do not be so concerned about concentration per se. Your task is to endeavor to concentrate. Whether or not you succeed—whether or not, in other words, you’re blessed with an experience of repose or lucidity—is entirely God’s business. It’s the purity of our intention that counts, and not the “fruit of the action”.
It’s true, of course, that when we are able to concentrate, japa becomes less a burden and more a pleasure. But don’t make the mistake, the very common mistake, of interposing some imagined or remembered consolation between the act of invocation and the mantram. Come what may, whether refreshment or tedium, our effort should remain the same.
In a sense it’s the times of tedium, of dryness, that are ultimately of greater value, for then we have the best opportunity for exercising vigilance, for strengthening and toning our spiritual “muscles”. I’m reminded of the 17th-century physician and man of letters Sir Thomas Browne:
“Some believe the better for seeing Christ’s sepulcher, and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now contrary, I bless myself and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles…. Then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not” (Religio Medici, 1.9).
Mind you, I’m not advocating fideism! Nonetheless there’s an important sense in which what the good doctor says may be rightly, and profitably, transposed onto the plane of contemplative method. Experiences, however extraordinary, are not our goal. God is.