Inner healing, meditation, relaxation

Settling, Sensing, Diving, Letting go - the rhythms of inner healing

Meditation -

- find healing in deep relaxation
- awaken your inner healing forces
- revive your spirit of exploration
- cultivate new states of consciousness
- create inner senses - learn to sense the subtle play of spiritual energies
- explore ways of navigating the web of spiritual energies that connects all things
- build an inner wall of protection against stress, fear, hate, greed, violence

General preparations for learning meditation, inner healing

The practices of inner healing, meditation, awareness training, relaxation and mindfulness generally share the same procedures and techniques - learning to nurture gentle kinds of awareness, deeper states of rest, and learning how to let go, to flow, or release inwardly.

Most schools of meditation prepare their students through lectures, study and discussion before they teach the student their particular form of meditation. This kind of preparation varies from one school of meditation to another, but there are similarities, such as:

the student is given hints of how their thoughts, emotions, and awareness can change during meditation - such as quietening of the mind, calming, richer or brighter awareness
the student is given hints about how meditation will benefit them - short and long term - such as improved handling of stressful situations, better health, holistic states of consciousness, spiritual growth
they discuss how these benefits relate to the student's individual goals - perhaps making changes to these goals
an outline of the meditation technique is given to the student

This preparation may be made over a few hours, days, weeks or possibly months. This preparation sets the tone for the student to learn the actual meditation technique. If you choose to learn from a book on meditation, or relaxation, the first few pages or chapters cover the benefits and describe what meditation is generally like, before describing the technique. There are some exceptions to this generalization - one book immediately opens by encouraging you to practice a breathing exercise for calming your mind (i.e., take 3 slow deep breaths) - details and discussions are postponed.

What does this preparation do? It gently plants seeds of expectation, it quietly steers your anticipation, it sets the tone for learning the actual technique.

General meditation procedure

The meditation technique itself has the following general procedures:

you are encouraged to be watchful or to direct your attention - for example, to a sound (mantra), or to the rythms of your breathing, or counting from 3 to 1 in your mind
you are encouraged to bring your mind back to it's main task (mantra, breathing, etc) when you find yourself distracted (this always happens and you are asked to simply accept distraction as part of the process)
you are encouraged to let go, release, allow the process to change of it's own accord - so for example, the mantra might change in repetition rate, tonal quality, or become quieter
you are generally encouraged to allow yourself to settle down, to be non-judgmental, to be gentle, to change between phases of meditation with gentleness, to avoid being forceful, to take your time, slow down the pace of your thoughts or quieten your expectations

Depending on the school's style of teaching, these "encouragements" may be explicitly stated, otherwise they are subtly implied.

By the time you learn this technique, those hints, benefits, and ideas have been planted in your mind (during the preparation phase) - and they provide a gentle motivation to settle down, to enter quieter states of mind, to calm your feelings. These preparations have a great influence on the results of learning the meditation technique.

Preparations for the spiritual explorer

As spiritual and inner explorers, what kind of preparation should we make?

Start by exploring some goals consistent with this spirit of exploration, for example:

we explore ways of inner healing so that we can:

explore new realms of being, discover new states of consciousness, so that we can further our explorations by learning to sense and navigate the web of energies that connects all things
to listen within - to sense the energies of our inner being

we seek ways of healing the mind, emotions and body so that we can:

bring the spacious mind, animal mind, thoughts, emotions into an cooperative and integrated harmony
find release from the grip of self-sustaining stress, lowering the general level of stress-based self-arousal, overcome the grip that reactive conditioning has on our lives
heal the scars of grasping/aversion - those scars manifest as the negative emotions - for example fear, rage, greed, hate

we seek ways to bring positive healing emotions into our inner being:

compassion, forgiveness, humility, patience, generosity, kindness
peacefulness, openness, gentleness, caring and nurturing

explore how these healing forces bring about inner integration, calmness, wisdom, sense of respect for the web of life and nature
learning how to let go, release, to go with the flow of spiritual energies - to become unstuck

These are a complex collection of goals and expectations. We can make our own positive affirmations to help us appreciate these goals, for example:

My inner exploration is a spiritually enriching way of life
I seek to explore the web of energies that connects all things
I will learn to let go, to release, become unstuck at every level of my being - down to the core of my soul
Positive inner healing forces/emotions will heal the scars of grasping and aversion
The spirit of nature loves to see us explore and nurture compassion, forgiveness, humility, patience, generosity and kindness
I seek peace, openness, a gentler way
As I seek communion with the web of life, so too will others come to respect the web of life
I seek a holistic state of being full of integration, wisdom, calmness
I seek to bring a state of cooperation and harmony between my inner animal, my spacious mind, my thoughts and emotions
I will wrap my thoughts and feelings in a warm blanket of gentleness and quietness
I will peacefully explore the inner senses from which awareness grows

Overcoming self-sustaining stress - a noble goal

Healing the scars of self-sustaining stress is the goal of meditation, relaxation and mindfulness techniques. These scars are the negative emotions, high levels of arousal, lowered trigger levels for your survival instincts - elevated levels of fear, rage, greed - higher risk of developing dependencies - all of which block your inner and spiritual exploration. With a little healing - you experience a blissful state of release.

Learning meditation ...

Here is a simple and effective meditation method. It offers a simple approach towards undoing the detrimental effects of self-sustained stressors. With meditation, over time you find yourself removing the destructive entanglements between your inner animal and your creative-analytical-mind (your "spacious mind"). These entanglements fuel almost all destructive urges and all forms of violence. They also pump fuel into the fire of those self-inducing stressors. Remove them and your life will improve beyond measure.

The outline for this meditation procedure is quite simple - just remember "Settle, Sense, Dive and Let Go".

During the dive, you practice a calming method that you must choose for yourself during the sensing phase.

Here are some calming methods:

Sound repetition: gently directing your attention to a mentally repeated sound/mantra

for example, "peace", "calm", "quiet", "om", "spirit", "hreem", or other simple words/sounds

Breathing: gently being attentive to your breathing - gently acknowledging distractions, then returning to being attentive to your breathing
Releasing mindfulness: gently being attentive to your thoughts/feelings/memories, letting them come and gently encouraging them to go
Mindfulness: gently turn to being inwardly and quietly watchful. When thoughts or emotions intrude - inwardly say to yourself one of the following, and then gently return to being inwardly watchful:

intruder! - let it go!, or,
a thought - let it go!, or,
an emotion - let it go!, or,
this (thought/feeling/memory) is an expression of grasping - let it go!, or
this (thought/feeling/memory) an expression of aversion - let it go!

During your spiritual travels, you may discover many more kinds of calming techniques.

If you feel that you aren't meditating "correctly", don't worry. Sitting for a few minutes, quietly, with eyes closed is more than good enough. Anything else that perhaps deepens the calmness is an extra treat. Don't dwell on any worries about technique. Gently ask them to leave the inner theater of your mind.

This meditation process goes like this:

Settle down

Sit quietly. Slowly close the eyes. Give yourself a chance to settle down. Become aware of any arousal, tension, discomforts - and give yourself a few moments while you let them fade away or settle down.

Settle down in this way for a minute or two, or count a few breaths before moving gently into the next phase.

It may be helpful to start paying attention to your breathing and waiting for the breathing to slow down a little.

Sense

Now that you have settled down a little, begin to turn your attention to your body, thoughts, emotions, or other inner sensations. Begin to sense what's going on within you.

Let your awareness move within you - as if you were exploring your inner being.

During this exploration, sense which kind of calming method feels appropriate for you.

Dive

Now gently direct your attention to the calming method you have chosen to use.

Let go

As you calm down, your sense of calmness will change, perhaps becoming deeper, richer, or taking on a noticeably different quality or tone. When you sense this change of calmness, give up the dive, and encourage yourself to "let go".

Perhaps thinking or feeling to yourself "let go, ever deeper, release".

Take your time. Allow yourself to dwell in each phase for some moments - quieting the pressures that urge you to move on to the next phase, or to get up. Take a few minutes to practice this - somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes - aiming for about 15 to 20 minutes for most session.

Remember to be attentive during the whole process.

Relaxed, non-judgmental attentiveness brings out the healing forces that dwell within us.

At the end of this time, don't jump up immediately. Take a few moments to gently open your eyes and slowly become attentive to your daily ambitions or activities. If you had a lot of troubling disturbances during your meditation, and if you have the time, it is sometimes helpful to take a short nap. Allow time for apres-meditation naps especially when you are learning the process for the first time.

That's all there is to it.

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