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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