Why 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
Find a quiet place.
Make sure you are free of distractions and do not have any tasks to attend to - for about 10 to 20 minutes.
Sit.
Settle down.
Let your breathing, heartrate, muscles settle down to a comfortable level.
After about 30 seconds to one minute (more if needed) close the eyes.
In your mind, say all or some of the words "REST - RELAX - CALM"
In your mind, listen for an echo of these words. Listen carefully, it is often barely perceptible.
Sense the stillness while listening.
After a little time has passed - after a few heartbeats or breaths - or when the feeling is right - If you haven't heard the echo, repeat the words and again: listen for the echo.
If you have heard an echo in your mind - listen for another.
Repeat.
Gently.
Don't feel you have to force anything.
With this comes the dive into inner silence.
When you become distracted by thoughts, feelings, noises, etc, then simply repeat the words again, and again listen for the echo.
If the pace changes, let it change.
If you worry that you are doing the wrong thing - then gently repeat the words, listen for the echo.
If you feel really aggitated, slowly open your eyes and start over, or stop.
Try again later, when you are less aggitated.
Do all this for 5 or so minutes ... maybe longer when you find it easier to get closer to the silence.
If you feel aggitated and moving further from the silence, then shorten your sessions.
Encourage letting go.
When time is up: gently stop! Stop saying the words, stop listening for their echo, and consciously open the eyes slowly over 1-2 minutes.
The total session should last 7 to 10 minutes - and longer when you feel you are able to easily slip into silence.
Do about 2 sessions a day.
Consider doing more shorter sessions when you are having difficulty settling into silence.
There are many schools of meditation. They all have a different emphasis and goal - depending on the context in which the meditation method is taught. The various schools of meditation present their techniques and training as inner healing, meditation, awareness training, relaxation or mindfulness. They generally share similar procedures and techniques. They often emphasize learning to nurture gentle kinds of awareness, deeper states of rest, 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:
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:
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?
When you read or think about a script, your inner animal goes into a receptive state. The inner animal is learning from the script - consciously and unconsciously. This is the power of scripting and affirmations. Most animals respond to calm and assertive commands. The human inner animal also responds to story telling, which stimulates the imagination - which in turn is very intimately connected with the learning components of the inner animal brain. So we seek scripts, ideas, storylines that are consistent with exploration in a positive way - fuelled by positive instincts and emotions, and seeking to heal the inner animal, our spacious mind and their interconnections. It is best that you develop your own scripts, starting with these examples:
These are a complex collection of goals and expectations. You might feel a little overwhelmed by them. Just remember that the reason for reviewing these goals is to tell your Unconscious Habitual/Instinctive Mind - i.e. - your inner animal - that we really need to change our perspective. Talking to your inner animal is sometimes an effective way of setting the attitude and mood of your instinctive habitual self. By making firm statements of intent, your inner self sometimes responds positively. You should make our own positive affirmations - think about what it means to be positive - and experiment with them. They help our hidden self appreciate these goals. Here are some example of affirmations that support spiritual exploration:
Overcoming self-sustaining stress - the most noble goal
Healing the scars of self-sustaining stress is the goal of meditation, relaxation and mindfulness techniques. These scars are the negative emotions. This destructive energy is elevated when high levels of arousal are sustained for longer than a few hours, or when the trigger levels for your survival instincts have been conditioned to be really low - which means that the smallest things can trigger responses - so you could for example be more easily afraid, irritable or anxious. These destructive states go hand in hand with elevated levels of fear, rage, greed. If you get more of these negative emotions you will have a higher risk of developing dependencies - on all kinds of things, not just drugs, alcohol, etc, but also beliefs, habits, ideas. All these things block your inner and spiritual exploration. Even with a little healing - you experience a blissful state of release.
Learning variations of the quickstart meditation ...
The method described above is a simple and effective meditation technique. 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".
When you are comfortable with your simple meditation and you become interested in experimenting with variations, try the following ..... During the dive, you practice a calming method that you must choose for yourself during the sensing phase.
Here are some calming methods:
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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