Meditation

What is Meditation?

Meditation is when you allow the mind to rest and go quiet.

When our bodies are worked really hard, we get aches and pains. We need to rest the body so it can recuperate from the stress and physical strain we have put onto it. If we don't our bodies can become ill which can lead to neck and back strain. When this happens we are forced to take it easy. We have a good night's sleep and in the morning we feel rested and relaxed.

With our minds we are always thinking, even in sleep the mind is working because most of us dream while we are asleep. As you can see the mind never rests. However, with meditation we can slow the mind down and relax it to such a level that it gets the chance to have a good rest. After practice you will be able to stop the thoughts altogether for a short time.

In times of stress and serious illness we are constantly worried, and that puts pressure on our mind and our bodies that is no good. These two factors can lead to even more illness and more stress. Just imagine if we rest our mind through meditation we are allowing whatever problem's that are present in our body to heal themselves without the added stress of constantly worrying about them.

Meditation is so easy that even young children can practise meditation. This would be beneficial to children who are going through problems at school.

When we learn to gain control of our mind, and her negative thoughts we are able to access our inner child and our higher mind completely. When we learn to do this, we can bring about total awareness and inner healing.

The mind is able to be slowed when we have something to focus on that helps us to distract itself. When we learn to slow our minds down and think of nothing without any help, we are able to bring ourselves into a state of total awareness. In this state 100% healing can take place. We are able to totally bring into us, our inner child and higher mind.

With the use of soft or rhythmic music we are able to place our focus on something that does not need our intense concentration. Music has this ability to slow our thought process down.

When we stop thinking, we start to truly listen to what is going on within ourselves. We are able to hear our higher mind and our inner child. We learn how to listen to our body and what she has to say. If something is off balance or not right, we are able to talk to our bodies and find out exactly what is the problem. Through meditation, we learn how to make true contact with ourselves. We learn to train our mind to function the way she was meant to. Instead of the mind controlling us, we control our mind. The soul becomes in charge once more. All our extra sensors become open and we are able to access all our hidden knowledge and gifts that are blocked from us because the mind is stopping them coming through. Meditation provides all of these powerful healing tools.

How is Meditation Done?

When you wake up in the morning, take a few minutes to wake yourself up. Do this by giving yourself a good shake, then find somewhere, where you can sit without being disturbed. It can be on the floor with a couple of pillows or even sitting up in bed, out in the morning sun, in fact anywhere where you feel comfortable. You can have some soft music on, or if you prefer just have silence.

When you are comfortable, I want you to focus on your body, starting with your feet, and focusing on your breathing, I want you to notice your breathing, slowing the breath, bring your awareness to your feet and travelling up your whole body from your knees to your hips, from your hips to your stomach, from your stomach to your heart.

Now notice your heartbeats, breathing with the rhythm of the heartbeat, try to stay focused, but if you find that your mind wanders do not be alarmed, WITH TIME AND PRACTISE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO STOP THIS.

Breathing with the heartbeat will help you to understand the rhythm of your body and this is the start of learning to listen to your natural body language. When you have mastered this art you will be able to read the warning signals in your body when something goes wrong. When you are ready bring your focus back to the body. Focusing on your shoulders, breathing slowly, bring your awareness to your neck, and then still breathing slowly bring your awareness to your head.

When you have reached the head slowly bring your whole awareness to all of your body. Now take time to listen to your whole body, listen to the sounds coming from your body and breathe with those sounds.

After you have done this bring yourself back to reality, slowly allow your mind to start its thinking process and your breathing to go back too normal.

Now just sit for a few minutes and feel how calm and relaxed you are, when you are ready get up and start your day. You will notice by doing this morning meditation that your whole day will feel more peaceful and there will be less stress around you because you will have given your mind a rest.

You can also use meditation to help you with any problems you may have in your life.

Before you enter into your meditative state, focus on the problem and then ask your higher mind to help come up with answers. Go into your meditation and after you have finished, see if you receive any advice or hidden insight that could help you. It may be that you will see the problems in a different perceptive. If you are after some emotional healing within yourself you can also focus on the issues that are causing you pain, grief or worry before you go into your meditative state. Ask that your inner child help you heal these situations. After the mediation, you may well find that you see your pain, fear and worries in a different light also.

Chakra Meditation would be covered later.

Meditation Techniques

There are hundreds of Meditation Techniques, so only some would be featured. Two would be featured each week.

Prayer Meditation

When we pray, it is considered advantageous to spiritual growth to pray selflessly. All religions direct their followers to have faith in God and to demonstrate that faith by having confidence that everything that happens or will happen to you is guided by God for your evolution in holiness. This being the case, it is completely unnecessary to pray for anything for oneself. Thus, selfless prayer is ideal. For instance, a not very developed person may pray to God to be relieved from their own suffering, while a highly developed person would see their own suffering as a gift or test of God to make them a stronger person. They would most likely send out prayers for God to relieve others from their suffering. So the formula for spiritual growth could be stated to be "the more selfless the prayer, the more advanced the pray-er".

The souls who pray totally selflessly are most likely to be the most advanced meditatively as well. Their meditation would be empty of limited selfish desire and therefore they will be able to fill limitlessly with God's direction, inspiration, light,and love. The "Prayer Meditation" is as follows:

Sit quietly in your sacred place. Relax and center yourself. Witness yourself praying to God. Witness silently, detached, without commentary, judgement, or comparisons. Say a prayer for yourself. Say a prayer for someone else. Say a prayer for everyone and everything. Do this again and again for a total of 3 cycles or do it for a total of 12 times or until it feels like you've done it enough. By the act of Witnessing, you will eventually clearly see that you feel really good when you pray for others. You may even be somewhat spiritually embarrassed in front of yourself when you witness yourself praying selfishly. As always, it is appropriate at times like that to simply inwardly say "Oh Well" and then go back to the meditation instead of scolding yourself, feeling sad, or in any way dwelling on it negatively. For this and for all the times you see yourself as an egotist or unevolved or whatever, be gentle with yourself and laugh and learn lovingly from your goofyness.

As you practice this technique, you will automatically become less and less self-centered and more and more selfless. We actually spend hours and hours every day subconsciously praying to fulfill our desires and ego trips. As this suffering-causing habit lessens, we become more and more ready to listen silently as God whispers lovingly to us.

Let us pray that you and everyone and everything will soon gain the bliss selflessness brings and live happily ever after.

Death Meditation

You're not your body, you're not your mind, you're not your emotions. What you are, who you are, who your Real Self is, is the consciousness that can witness your physical, mental, and emotional reactivity and activity. It is your birthrite to know this consciousness and recognize its energy, infiniteness, and eternal nature as your own.

When you drop this body, you will not be doing anything new or different. Every night you go to sleep in your physical body and awaken to and use your astral/dream body. That already accounts for 1/3 of your life that you don't spend interacting with your pus, urine, feces, mucous, phlegm container. Even during the other 16 hours of the day, we are rarely in touch with our body. Virtually all of our time is spent daydreaming about fulfilling our desires and fantasies or regretting what we have done to others or what they have done to us. "I would of, should of, could of" disease runs rampant and takes up huge chunks of our life.

We rarely are aware of what our body is experiencing and even when we are it is usually only one sensation at a time. If we're listening to something, for instance, we are totally unaware of what our body is seeing, touching, tasting, or smelling. Thus, in a way, most of the time, 4/5 of our body is dead to us. Looking at the situation scientifically, we are a collection of cells made up of molecular compositions that are in constant flux. There is never a second that our atomic structure isn't changing. Every moment our molecules are different, our cells are different, our body is different. In this perspective, our body dies and is reborn every second.

In reality, every atom in your body has changed from the time you started reading this until this very moment. And in this Now, you are again completely different. Similarly, when that inevitable moment comes when the energy of life leaves your body forever, the cellular, molecular, atomic, and subatomic structure of your body will simply continue doing what it always has. Your cellular composition will change into other molecular groupings. Atomic and sub-atomic processes will break down your molecules into components that will merge with other molecules and life will go on.

When you die, what once were the cells that made up your flesh and bones will go into the earth and merge with the soil where they may be joined with other molecules that grow in the earth, like grass, get eaten by cows, which get eaten by people. They then get diffused as food into the cell structure of the person who ate them. If a body gets cremated, the particles are dispersed into the air and could be inhaled into someone's lungs and merge with that persons cell structure. If a body is buried at sea, its parts could be eaten by a fish that gets eaten by a person and becomes an integral part of their body. The cell absorbtion process merges the bodies and life continues. This has been going on for millions of years. It has been said that with every inhalation, we breathe in atoms that once were part of everyone who has ever lived.

Please meditate on these obvious facts of life and cease and desist your illusion of being your body. It is simply an ever-changing collection of atoms that will continue changing forever, whether there is a living energy in it or not. You are not your mind or emotions either. They keep constantly changing, are inconsistent, and yet you know intuitively, in your gut, that you are constant. When you are awake or dreaming, your thoughts and feelings fluctuate between good and bad, happy and sad, clear and cloudy, calm and distressed, depending on the internal or external things stimulating you at the time.

What you are is the consciousness that can and does witness the activity and changes of your mind, body, and emotions. It is not that which comments, judges, or compares. That is a function of your mind called your intellect. Rather, it is that which witnesses the commentary, judgements, and comparisons in silence that you are when you say, "I AM". This consciousness is within everything, everwhere witnessing everything, everywhere. When you stop indentifying with your body, mind, and emotions, as happens at death, you gain the opportunity to tune into the infinite consciousness and witness all the permentations of life that have eluded you when you limited your experience to just those things experienced via the five senses of the human body and the finite intellectualizations and emotionality that go with them.

Just as a chick gains new freedom when it emerges from its shell, you will enjoy an exquisite, infinite release from bondage when you drop your attachment to your body. Like a butterfly freed from its cocoon, you will soar into the stream of universal consciousness. Once free from the limitations of experiencing life with only 5 senses, you will never want to go back. And yet you will have to until the time comes when you have evolved beyound the misidentification of your self as apart from the rest of the universe instead of as a part of it. To help you achieve this merging and emerging, you have to stop fearing the passing of your body and prepare to do it calmly with a willingness to face the next phase of your evolution as the silent Witness that in fact you are and have always been. To help accomplish this, there is a specific meditation technique that allows you to practice what it will be like to die. It allows your real self, your Witness, to become more apparent to you at the same time as you become aware of that which will occur at the time of death.

It is very easy to do this technique and yet very few meditations have such a great potential for learning and making a profound evolution in your conquering of the fear of death. Simply inhale slowly and deeply, as slow and deep as you can. Hold your breath as long as you can. Then, exhale as slowly and fully as is comfortable and then refrain from inhaling again for as long as you can. Repeat this 12 times, rest and do 3 or 11 more sets of this inhale, hold, exhale, hold rhythm. You may find it quite strange feeling, even alarming, when you first try to have no air in your lungs, but you will soon find that the more relaxed you stay during that time, the easier it becomes and the more comfortable you become. As a matter of fact, this may become the most influential technique you ever do for self knowledge.

You can learn greatly about the way our body, mind, and emotions are reacting and causing you to react to the fear of death. You will gain first-hand knowledge of your real identity as the Witness that is transcendent of the body, mind, and emotions and gain the kind of faith that only the surety that first-hand experience can provide. There really is going to be a time that will come when you exhale and never inhale in this body again. Virtually every religion has prayers and rituals for the time of death and just after, they try to bring a calming to the one going through the experience. This meditation technique will get you used to the state and you will be calm and collected at that precious time you die forever to the attachment to this body. You can then collect your heavenly reward and truly live happily ever after.