a practical guide to meditation that really works
TRANSCRIPT
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Overcoming the Basic Challenges andMisconceptions of your Spiritual Practice
A Practical Guide to
MEDITATION
That Really Works
Fully Revised and Updated for 2013
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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THIS GUIDE IS FREE!
Please Circulate it to Friends and AcquaintancesWho May Wish to Start Meditating!
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Website: www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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Version 2.0 - January 2013
A Practical Guide to
MEDITATION
That Really Works
Overcoming the Basic Challenges andMisconceptions of your Spiritual Practice
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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A Practical Guide to Meditation
That Really Works
Overcoming the Basic Mistakes and Misconceptions
of your Spiritual Practice
CONTENTS
1. Introduction…………………………………………………….
Chapter Page
4
2. Part 1: Why Meditate?…………………………………………. 5
3. Part 2: Setting Up a Meditation Space……….………………. 12
4. Part 3: Practical Essentials of Meditation ..….………………. 14
5. Part 4: Building Purpose…………...….………………………. 18
6. Part 5: Barriers to Meditation…………………………………. 20
7. Part 6: Ten Basic Meditations….......….………………………. 26
8. Part 7: Final Notes…………..…………………………………. 40
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Introduction
There was never a better time in history for
people to meditate. Humanity is reaching a
point in our evolution when we must choose
how we wish to live: in growing awareness or
in continuing non-awareness and ignorance.
In ignorance we will simply repeat the
problems of the past, the same problems that
created the recurring suffering of our world
today. In awareness we too will have problems,
but we will also be developing the
consciousness to know that every single one of
them begins inside you and me. To solve those
problems we must concentrate less on what we
create and more on who we really are.
As a somewhat reluctant meditator myself, I
have come to realize the pitfalls of meditation,
as well as the tricks of the ego that would much
rather be watching a movie or bungy-jumping
than listening to my breathing or visualizing
love.
I have experienced the good days and the bad
days, the triumphs of spirit and the ignominy of
ego. I am writing this guide, not because I am
an expert in meditation, but because I want to
share my experiences of how to make the
development of consciousness more that just athirty minute routine you might commit to each
morning but a way of life where every moment
counts and freedom is awaiting every one of us
within both the mundane and the extraordinary
experience of life.
I first published this guide in February 2011
and, as we enter 2013 I thought it time to bring
it up to date with my current thinking. So much
changes in a year in my life, that I have had
good cause to learn very quickly that nothing is
permanent and to honor that universal truth as
the first step to honoring the nature of one’s
own being.
You see, meditation to me is a tool of living
happily. It is the precursor to applying the
awareness of meditation to the challenges of
life that lie beyond it. Only when we accept
that the world we make within us is the world
we will experience outside of us can both the
world individual begin the process of
evolution.
The trick is to start practicing and to stopcomplaining that you can’t meditate. You can.
We all can. It is absolutely essential that we do.
Michael Paul Stephens
April 2013
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Part 1
Why Meditate?
Have you ever tried repairing a machine that
you knew nothing about? What if you didn’t
even know what it was for? Could you repair it?
Imagine looking upon a car for the first time in
your life and someone saying to you, “Well?
Make it work!” It would be difficult, right?Probably impossible. The same thing is true
about fixing yourself. If you do not know
yourself, how can you fix you?
The thing is, most of us live in this shady belief
that we do know our self and we know our self
very, very well. But what if this wasn’t true at
all and the fact that you don’t know yourself is
the very reason why you suffer in life?
You don’t suffer, you say? Life is an endless
procession of joy, angels and chocolate ice
cream? Congratulations!
But perhaps you might consider the possibility
that, rather than having no suffering at all, you
may simply be unaware of how you suffer and
shrug off your personal woes as part and parcel
of normal life. Well, there is no doubt that
everyone on Earth suffers, but what
distinguishes one human being from another is
the degree to which we suffer and whether we
are in the process of letting it go or
accumulating more and more.
Emotional pain, physical trauma, energetic
blockages or mental aberrations: each person
on Earth suffers in our own unique way but all
of our suffering is connected to the same
problem. Sadly, few of us ever become aware
of what that problem is and much fewer realize
that the condition is diminishable and finite
when we learn how to let it go.
The grim truth is that many of us becomevictims of suffering, spending our days
desperately attempting to protect ourselves
from it through shame, blame, justification,
rationalization and insurance! We apply an
inordinate proportion of our life aiming to
negate its impact by accumulating wealth,
possessions and status that distract us from our
base fears of hunger, sickness, poverty and
death. However, this does not remove the
cause sat all. It merely covers up the resultingpain and suffering.
But what if this suffering had other reasons for
being? What if it played a significant spiritual
role in the development of each human being
to fulfill their personal potential? What if it
wasn’t a problem to be covered up at all, but
one to be simply starved of the very fuels that
stoke its flames and build its power over our
lives?
All the normal solutions to life’s suffering have
been tried by people all over the world, again
and again, across the eons of history but still
the pain remains the same.
Let’s go through the list...
• You may have tried pleasure as the solution,
but the high only lasts for a short while beforethe regular discomforts of life come back. In
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this way we constantly seek a high that is,
ultimately, unsatisfactory. If it was truly
satisfactory, it would never end.
• Maybe you’ve tried buying stuff to ease the
desire to be more attractive or the fear of
being behind the times. But no matter how
much stuff you buy the dissatisfaction always
creeps back in, as if you were not treating the
cause of it at all!
• You’ve may even have tried changing
locations and jobs but as soon as you think
you’ve got suffering licked, there it is again,coming back to haunt you like a boomerang
hurled away in despair but eventually
smacking you in the head as it returns to
illicit the same painful result.
The conventional solutions to life’s problems,
those recommended by the brightest
politicians, economists, atheists and scientists
continually fail to fill the unfillable void within
each of us but where are the other solutions?There don’t seem to be any because the
conventional wisdom of our world is
irreparably flawed. It has chosen to perceive
suffering, not as a choice but as something
inevitable.
This is not only wrong, it is dangerously wrong
and condemns billions of people around the
world to engage, not only in the constant
creation of personal suffering, but also tolegitimize and engage in systems of economy,
politics and society that reinforce these
conditions in an endless spiral of suffering and
spiritual decay.
If we want the world to change, we first need to
understand that you and I are the ones with the
power to do that. We must expand our
perception of what creates suffering in the
world and take steps to remove those causesfrom our own lives first. This is where the
purpose and process of meditation begins and
ends. Sadly, an overwhelming majority of
people are entirely unaware of this and thus
remain entrenched within ideas that are slowly,but surely , killing them.
It is true that everything and everyone suffers
simply because we are physical beings but
suffering is a purposeful natural phenomenon.
It can be both diminished and extinguished in
life by those committed to first rooting out its
causes and reducing them and eventually
eliminating them all together. This is a process
that comes from within, not by meeting theillusory needs that we perceive as coming from
the outside.
You see, people live their lives obeying only
certain natural laws and completely ignoring
others. Imagine if you were to ignore the Law
of Gravity for a day? You probably wouldn’t live
through to the end of it. You’d walk off tall
buildings, try to leap wide chasms and catch a
falling tree or two! Ouch!
The one law that we constantly fail to observe
is the Law of Impermanence. This law is simple.
It says: “everything changes.” It shouldn’t be
too hard to live by this law because most of us
already know it as a theory but really, how
many of us actually apply it to our mind, body
or energy system?
Application is the only thing that mattersregarding knowledge. Knowing without doing
is useless and even counterproductive. We
begin to believe we are too intelligent for any
subtle solutions to escape our wisdom. But true
wisdom is only found in doing and as anyone
who observes the world will quickly realize,
what we are doing on Earth is not very wise at
all. Our actions define us and our physical
reality not the theories with which we have fed
our brains. Most of us virtually ignore the Law
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of Permanence despite knowing that it contains
a truth that is ineffable.
A great example of how we ignore it is the way
in which our minds and emotions cling on to
people, objects, situations and our self image
despite knowing that all of these things will
naturally change. Look at the huge sums of
money people spend on their skin in order to
avoid wrinkles and cling to their youth?
Consider the great suffering by a family when a
family member dies, despite all of us knowing
it is a natural process that is no crying matter atall. Look at how we crave that new car as a
solution to our problems and then fear it being
scratched or stolen when we finally possess it.
While these situations may seem very different
to us, each of them is a direct result of suffering
that arises either through desiring to have or
maintain something or desiring to push away or
be free from something. In short, this process of
desire and aversion causes all suffering and yetit is a process to which the whole world has
become ensnared. Entire societies actually
encourage people to participate in an endless
cycle of addiction to the very causes of
suffering from which we are seeking our
freedom!
Consider the huge volumes of suffering
generated through this process? For example,
where do you think fear comes from? It is thefeeling that arises in us when we expect our
present reality to change in an undesirable way.
Society plays upon this fear suggesting that it is
a very healthy way to live by fearing sickness,
unemployment, debt, divorce, being late,
poverty, criticism, embarrassment, spiders and
all manner of other projections that stem from a
desire to permanently maintain what we have
or permanently avoid what we don’t have. Thus
we can be sold things that seem to protect us
from these desperation conditions like face
creams, condoms, drugs, investment plans,
pensions, fast cars and education but none of
them really remove the root causes.
In fact, our reliance upon them and our faith
that they do simply elevates the potential
suffering to a whole new level.
Why should we fear any natural phenomenon?
We should not. Indeed, fear will only arise
when we are not truly conscious of it and thus
cannot control it. Fear is only a lack of wisdom
dulling our faith that the present moment is aperfect creation of cause and effect.
Why do we know that everything changes and
yet expend so much of our lives fighting
change? We cling to what we want and push so
hard at what we don’t want, as if we are
capable of creating a life divided from the very
laws of cause and effect that brought us to this
earth in the first place. That isn’t wisdom. It is
madness.
The kind of control that we apply to life is not a
useful one. We try to bend and mold life from
the outside in, changing the external reality as
if it will ultimately offer us anything except a
superficial comfort.
But, in a world where everything changes, this
will only ever create temporary satisfaction
based upon a misconception. Sadly, seven
billion people are all trying the same
technique, changing the world on the outside
so that they can be happy on the inside. No
wonder the next time you look at the world
around you the part you had perfectly in place
in your life gets moved by someone else and
the frustration, anger and fear plays out all over
again.
This is a way of living that leaves yourcontentment entirely up to the whims of other
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people who are also trying to change the world
for their own person expectations. There has to
be a better way where everyone can win.
What has to change in the world is the idea
that the desire to become something that you
are not will end your suffering. We think:
“When I become rich/a banker/married/
educated/loved”, or whatever, “I will be
happy!” when the fact of the matter is plain
and simple: how do you become a “better
person” when none of us really knows who we
really are now? We don’t look. We don’t
observe. We have never looked or observed. Sohow do we know what we should become and
whether it will serve us any better than who we
already are?
It is no wonder that our external solutions don’t
work and have never worked when the person
we really are doesn't really need any of the
artificial solution we create for ourselves in our
desperate pursuit of happiness!
The truth of the matter is very simple. You
cannot know who you are unless you look in
the only place you exist. “Where is that?”, you
may ask. But the question is flawed. “When is
that?” is a far better question because you do
not exist in a place as much as in a time and
thus, knowing that time with a hitherto
unattained intimacy is the only way to know
who you are and what you are becoming.
In a very real sense, the suffering that you
experience in life through emotional stress,
sadness, anger, bitterness and jealousy are not
problems to be overcome, which is how we
normally try to solve life’s issues. We think that
if I can resolve my conflict or fix a situation, I
can feel better about life but this is another
external solution to an internal problem.
You suffer because mostly because your mindtakes you away from the present moment and
your experience of the unity within it. Of
course, when physical problems occur, there
will always be suffering. But this suffering is not
helped by thinking of all the terrible things thatcould, might or may happen, for example. It
would be far better to let go of all thoughts and
simply observe what is happening but few of us
are taught how to do that or why it would be
beneficial. Indeed, most conventional wisdom
says we can only be happy once we have
solved the pain problem but this can very often
exacerbate and engender greater pain, not less.
When you think about it, every emotion youwill ever experience will be a feeling attached
to a concept in your mind that: the present
moment is somehow imperfect. Reread that
and understand what I mean by it because it is
fundamentally important as to why you should
ever bother mediating in the first place.
Take sadness for example. It is an emotion that
chooses to believe that the present moment
would be a better time if what you have lostwas somehow back in your reality. This reads:
the present moment is imperfect because of
what I have lost. In other words, my ego’s
desire causes me sadness.
Frustration is another good example. This is the
emotion that chooses to believe that the present
moment continues to be less than what you
desire it to be. Frustration arises when you
cannot create the conditions that you think you
need to be well or happy in the present
moment.
Finally fear, as previously discussed, is a great
example of how we project something into the
future and feel a sensation that chooses to
perceive the arising of that condition through
the sensation of aversion. We feel fear because
our ego doesn’t want that kind of present
moment to exist, so it tries to push it away.
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You could go through all the emotional states
and discover the same message. Emotions are
like emails from your spirit telling you that you
are failing to live in the present.
While we can all agree that emotions are an
essential part of being human, we can also
agree that fear, sadness and frustration are
hardly augmentations to life’s experience
however natural they may be. It is ultimately
true that being free from emotional attachment
would create a better present moment for us all
and, far from creating the kind of robot that we
might fear arises from the process of letting goof emotional reaction, what is actually created
is a person who becomes far more sensitive
and aware of the world around them.
From this state arises the natural peace of a
mind that refuses to engage in the pursuit of
endless desire, aversions and suffering because
it has realized that the temporary nature of all
things extends to emotions and suffering, if we
can find the mindfulness to let them go ratherthan holding onto them as I, me and mine.
Meditation is misunderstood because it is often
seen as being a religious practice by those
people who lump together all kinds of spiritual
pursuits in one homogenous mush. This is like
saying that fitness is a religion and if you go to
the gym religiously you must be some kind of
zealot because who but a fanatic would
actually plan a work out, visit a location
especially designed for the practice and work
so hard on it that their body actually changes
shape, mass, size and all manner of inner
workings!
Of course, we do not see fitness in this way, nor
should we see mediation in that way either. The
truth of the matter is that if you wish to be
present you have to work out the muscles that
are not fit enough to keep you there. In this
case, the muscle is not a physical element but
consciousness, an energy that we all possess
but few of us are truly aware of.
One of the fundamentally basic purposes of
meditation is (read the next part of the sentence
very carefully) to observe without judgment
who you are in the present moment . There, I’ve
said it. The secret’s out. It’s not about becoming
Buddha, reaching enlightenment, single-
pointedness or emancipation from the chains of
suffering, it is about simply listening to who
you are here and now.
This is a crucial practice in the task of letting goof attachments and emotional suffering as they
arise. You see, all attachments are born, grow
mature and die within us from moment to
moment. What we can observe in the
development of these attachments are our
desires and aversions arising and falling.
However, if we are not conscious in the present
moment we will be unaware of them and thus
allow them to proliferate along with the
suffering they generate.
Therefore, meditation is one way of attaining a
greater groundedness in the present moment.
As sensations are born within you, you can
allow them to quickly pass through the stages
of growing, maturing and dying out again but if
you are unaware, you will allow your mind to
engage those sensations and start an internal
dialog of shame and blame. This doesn’t ‘work
out’ these emotions. It expands and deepens
them so that you store them up for another day.
Eventually, the amino acids that you produce
when you are emotional will congest in the
body and cause sickness and disease.
In a very literal sense then, meditation is not an
act of doing much at all. It is allowing what you
have already accumulated to arise and dissolve
in the face of your present awareness. It is like
removing the ignorance accumulated in your
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mind and body by a prescription of
consciousness.
Many people like to think they are in some way
incomplete. They desire self-improvement and
betterment but the truth of the matter is that
everyone is already perfect and meditation is
designed to allow that perfection to shine
through. What covers it up are the layers of ego
that we place in its way. Meditation is a process
of allowing those layers to dissolve like peeling
an onion, layer by layer.
Having said this, meditation is also deeplyconnected to our mental and physical
wellbeing. Indeed, the medical benefits of
meditation are recorded in hundreds of studies
across the world, so don’t just take my word for
it.
• STRESS: “Meditation decreases oxygen
consumption, heart rate, respiratory rate, and
blood pressure, and increases the intensity of
alpha, theta, and delta brain waves—the
opposite of the physiological changes that
occur during [stress]”.1
• SLEEPING DISORDERS: 75% of long-term
insomniacs who have been trained in
relaxation and meditation can fall asleep
within 20 minutes of going to bed.2
• BLOOD PRESSURE: Meditation significantly
controls high blood pressure at levels
comparable to widely used prescription
drugs, and without the side effects.3
• PERIOD PAIN: Women with severe PMS
showed a 58% improvement in their
symptoms after five months of daily
meditation.4
• HEART ATTACKS: Meditators over 6-9
months showed a marked decrease in the
thickness of their artery walls, while non-
meditators actually showed an increase.
Thischange translates to about an 11% decrease
in the risk of heart attack and an 8% to 15%
decrease in the risk of stroke.5
• PAIN MANAGEMENT: Relaxation therapies
are effective in treating chronic pain, and can
markedly ease the pain of low back
problems, arthritis, and headaches.6
• AGING: Meditation may slow aging. A study
found that people who had been meditatingfor more than five years were physiologically
12 to 15 years younger than non-meditators.7
The list goes on and on. The medical benefits of
meditation are known: you will attain greater
wellbeing by regularly meditating: fact .
You have spent most of your life to this point
practicing being there and then and wondering
why suffering keeps popping up its ugly head toremind you to do a little bit more of that and
little less of this, but, if you were to listen to the
subtle messages and change now , those
messages would obviously become less and
less frequent. Physical pain would decrease,
stress would alleviate, emotional pain would
subside, threat of illness and sickness would
recede, in short; your life would change and all
because you paused living there and then for a
while and started living here and now.
Of course, while meditation has many great
benefits, it is not magic. It is a practice that
aligns your entire being in the ways of nature
that most of the world is currently ignoring,
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1 Herbert Benson, M.D. Harvard Medical School, author of The Relaxation Response2 Dr. Gregg Jacobs, Psychologist, Harvard3 Journal of the American Medical Association4 Health, September, 19955 Stroke Journal, reported in Psychology Today, 20016 National Institutes of Health, 19967 International Journal of Neuroscience, 1982
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hence the sense of conflict between man and
nature. It is the act of watching who you are in
order to learn, without any shadow of doubt,
totally and through to the marrow of your bone,that everything changes, that everything that
lives also dies, that everything you possess will
one day be lost, that everyday gives birth to a
new one, that every speck of sadness will one
day become joy and that every hope or fear
that can be realized will be realized if you wait
long enough - so, enjoy the journey.
If you do that, life becomes extraordinarily
pleasant.
You cannot enjoy a journey when you’re
worried about who’ll be meeting you at the
station when you arrive or whether you left the
gas on at home. That is what causes suffering.
You can only be happy now and meditation is
learning the art of being now.
You don’t need to focus on creating happiness,
peace, concentration, clear-mindedness or anyof the other barriers to your attainment of them.
Happiness will arise all on its own because
your inner nature is peaceful. Peace will arise
when it’s ready because your true nature is at
one with everything. Joy will come along when
suffering dies as suffering is merely the
manifestation of your struggle to become.
Thus, meditation is about not trying to become
anything. It is about finally allowing yourself tobe who you are, perfect, light and magnificent.
It’s an effortless process that requires just a little
effort.
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Part 2
Setting Up a Meditation
Space
I don’t know about you, but if someone had
told me when I was 20 years old that sitting
and listening to my mind, body and energy was
the key to my spiritual freedom, well, let’s say it
would have taken more faith than I possessed
to believe it possible. So, I understand the
difficulty in changing a mindset that wants to
do stuff, change stuff, get stuff completed and
feel as if the effort is towards something.
For anyone starting anything new, I think it
takes a little faith. It is sad that we live in a
world where the preferred view is that faith is
non-scientific, therefore it cannot have any
other value than as superstition.
But for me, faith is a vital ingredient in what it
means to be human, whether we believe in it
or not. Think about it. Without faith, you would
never make a choice, start any new ventures,
be creative or intuit anything. Indeed, you
would not get out of bed, cross the road or take
any risks whatsoever.
What is clear in our world is that you cannotwait for things to appear. You have to have faith
that you can create them before they will
appear.
A good friend of mine said recently that faith is
living in gratitude for everything you have in
life. It is a great way to live. You give thanks for
what you have and meet every event and
person knowing that the universe doesn’t do
excess. It is perfectly neat, perfectly
economical, perfectly waste-less. It is a perfect
mechanism of giving back what is put in. So,
living in the present and being grateful for it is a
great way to respect that law.
Faith is the magic ingredient that turns logic
and planning into belief and allows the energy
of potential to be actualized into reality. This is
why, as you begin on your journey of
meditation, it is important for you to build faith
in something or someone that represents your
course or the foundations of what you believe.
I don’t care whether that person is Christ,
Buddha, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa orSarah Palin, each of us needs a figure who
represents the values that we are aspiring
towards and has demonstrated to us that they
can be lived in the human form. This gives faith
a face. Then, your personal path becomes one,
not of wondering whether the goal is possible
but of allowing it to be realized from within.
Part of this process of faith is setting up a space
that meets the needs of your meditationpractice. When you dedicate a particular space
to an activity, it is both literally and figuratively
creating space in your life for it. The practice
becomes a part of your existence and the space
you create will help support your practice
because of it.
Many people that come to see me and my wife,
Koong, are ungrounded, meaning that the
foundations of their life are shaky and much ofthis is often down to the state of their home. If
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Part 3
Practical Essentials of
Meditation
Times to Meditate
If you want to change your life, change your
diary. This is the clearest message I can give to
you. It is the oldest trick in the book to keep
telling yourself that you don’t have time to
change. It is also a poor excuse. What you
really mean is that you can’t be bothered.
Important things get prioritized, that is clear, so
work out what is important in your life and
then change your diary to accommodate those
things. Hopefully a regular awareness practice
will be among them!
But , don’t be too strict or hard on yourself.
Make the pledge that you will commit your
time and effort, but, if you really don’t feel like
it or have something important come up,
change your schedule. You don’t want
meditation to become a chore. Just ask yourself
what your motivation is. Are you missing your
appointment with yourself because you want to
or have to? If you cannot meditate for some
reason it is no good at all making yourself into
a victim of your own self-loathing. It rather
defeats the point, doesn’t it?
Find a middle path to your practice. Like
working out your body, keeping a regular
practice ensures the effects multiply and grow
but going to the gym three times a day every
day, because “it is your duty” or “a matter of
life or death”, well, that’s just being zealous
and will result in the opposite of what you are
trying to attain. Peace cannot be created by
being at war with yourself, your time, your
schedule, your space or anything else. Just be
cool.
I like to meditate in the morning. This time is
when I am most alert. There is no fixed time for
it, although the Buddha did suggest between
3-5AM as being the best time! You will find
your own time but book it into that diary of
yours. Don’t go through your day waiting for an
opportunity. It will never arrive, and then,
neither will you.
Before bed is another good time, when the day
has died down and quiet may have descended
in the house. However, be wary of the
tendency to become lethargic or fall asleep. It
is a barrier to practice and sleepiness can
create frustration as you will learn in the
hindrances to practice later on in this guide.
Finally, how long should you meditate? Well, it
is up to you, but I would recommend at least20-30 minutes but that is not to say that ten
minutes is not worthwhile. Any time that you
commit to the process is better than nothing.
Whatever time you do decide to commit, make
sure that you keep to it for that session. You do
not have to meditate for exactly the same
duration each day but be sure to decide before
you sit down. If you decide 20 minutes,
meditate for twenty minutes. This is important
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as without a set time the meditation will not be
as smooth.
Keep a clock nearby so you know what the
time is. If you wish to set an alarm, this is a
good idea, but make sure it is something gentle
that will not be a sudden shock. This is very
important. Bringing you out of a meditation
sharply can be very upsetting for your energy
and destroy the refreshing benefit of calm
relaxation that you may attain.
Sitting, Standing or Lying?
Yes, is the short answer. To be honest, it doesn’t
matter which posture you adopt because you
can be aware of yourself in any of them but
there are certain practicalities to be aware of
and certain postures are better at certain times.
Lying down is more likely to make you sleepy,
so avoid it if you are prone to being plagued by
sloth or torpor. This has been one of my greatest
hindrances, which basically means my mindgets heavy and sleepy, so lying down is a
position I have rarely used. This is not to say it
is inferior to other positions and is certainly
great before bed in order to have that 10-
minute awareness check before drifting off into
a wonderful sleep.
Standing is very possible, especially if you plan
to open your eyes, and there are some great
meditations that make use of it, as you will see.Walking is one of them, especially for those of
us (yawn :o) who have a tendency towards
falling asleep. Another is grounding, which can
be very powerful. If you do plan to meditate
standing up, choose wisely and perhaps learn
to meditate with your eyes slightly open, which
will help with balance.
However, sitting is the favored position for
many meditators. Some levels of awareness canbe quite intoxicating and disorientating, so in a
strong sitting position your body should stay
upright, especially if you adopt the tougher
sitting postures such as the lotus or half lotus.
These postures offer stability although they arehard to impossible for beginners. If you start
young, however, it is a lot easier!
It is also perfectly acceptable to use a chair
when meditating, especially if you find sitting
in a cross-legged position painful. There are
also some great meditation cushions that you
can buy from specialist shops, including a
mediation stool which I have found very useful
when sitting for long periods. More on these inthe next section.
In conclusion, choose a posture that feels best
for you. One of your challenges as a meditator
will be to bring your body to a point where the
posture itself is not a barrier to your meditation.
In theory, no posture should be a barrier at all,
if you are simply observing how things feel in
your mind, body and energy, but in practice,
few of us want to sit through 30 minutes ofexcruciating knee or back pain when there are
easier ways to become acquainted with the
practice before moving on through postures
that may help you attain higher levels later on.
Again, don’t be too strict with this. If you want
to lie down one day and sit the next, do it! Do
what feels right for you at the time. There is no
right or wrong way. It is much better that you
meditate in one way or another than not at all.
When you are sensitive to your needs, sitting
when sleepy, lying when needing to relax for
example, the practice will take care of itself.
Getting Comfortable
Meditation is not a chore. It should be
enjoyable. It should, OK, eventually, be
pleasurable but there are a few tricks that can
be employed up front to avoid some of the
inevitable pain that occurs when your body is
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asked to sit in a posture that, for the first 92
years of life you have singly refused to practice!
Firstly, don’t be cheap on a good cushion. If
there is one thing absolutely guaranteed to
screw up your back it is a soft, limp, squishy-
thing of a cushion. You won’t notice it for about
the first 4 minutes but after that you will realize
that your body is moving ever-so-slightly with
every breath and pump of blood, causing your
back muscles to make slight adjustments as the
cushion moves. While these may be the most
minuscule, even imperceptible movements,
your back won’t care. It will just hurt.
I like to use two cushions, one to place my
bottom on and the second underneath and
large enough for my legs to rest at a slightly
lower level. This posture naturally pushes my
hips forwards slightly, straightening the back
and creating a solid base, when coupled with
good, solid cushions, of course.
There are plenty of cushions designedespecially for meditation. However, a good,
old-fashioned study chair will do just as well.
You don’t need a cushion at all, if you choose
to sit upright. Just be sure that chair is solid and
won’t move. Don’t use your office swivel chair
or the Fitball. It won’t work.
Another great device is a meditation bench,
which you sit on and tuck your legs underneath
the seat, as if you were kneeling. The seat takesyour weight, not your knees and it gets over the
problem of painful knees and legs, while also
helping to straighten the back naturally.
Another part of being comfortable is to wear
the right clothes. Loose fitting clothes are
probably preferable but you have to be aware
of climate and temperature of your meditation
space. It is also preferable to wear natural fibers
whenever possible as human-made fibers arenot so cool energetically.
If you have chosen to sit, there are also
numerous postures that you can choose. There
are a number of different cross-legged postures
that are common but, once again, I urge you tofind the right position for you and not feel that
there is some accomplishment in being able to
sit for an hour with your legs wrapped around
your ears or something like that. This is fine, if
you are in a circus, but unnecessary for
meditation.
The old fashioned cross-legged posture you
used to sit in while watching TV as a child is
one of the most basic positions. Try it out andsee how it feel. If you find that your back is
getting sore, stiff or collapsing in the middle, try
leaning against a wall for support. Over time,
you will get used to the position and not need
the support any longer.
You can put one leg in front of the other, if you
so choose. This is called the Burmese sitting
posture. Another is the half lotus, where you
bring one leg over the other, like the child’scross-legged position, but end up with the
bottom of your foot pressing into the opposite
thigh and the bottom of the foot facing up to
the ceiling. This can be hard on the ankles at
first, so be warned.
I won’t even go into the full lotus position.
The final point about creating comfort is to be
aware of the shape of the posture that you havechosen. Stretch your back, swivel your arms,
move your hips until any kinks are ironed out
and relax into your posture. Sit with your back
straight, but not tight or even forcing it into a
concave shape. This creates tension and you
will feel it as the meditation progresses. Be
aware of tension in your shoulders, neck,
stomach or any other areas where there should
be no tension. Focus on it and let it go.
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Part 4
Building Purpose
When I was about 24 I read in a wonderful
meditation book that I should keep a
meditation diary, which I did. It was a good
suggestion because it helps us to look back on
the experiences we have, draw on the strong
ones and put the less strong into context.
However, I took it all a little too seriously.
I started giving myself grades in order to have a
more empirical gauge of my success.
Obviously, to my logical brain at least, a
meditation with a score of 8 was better than
one with a score of 4, so it made sense to me
that I should keep shooting for 8, 9 or 10!Right?
Wrong! What I didn’t realize at the time was
that such an approach was setting me up for
abject failure all created by my own
expectations. One day I had one of the most
amazing meditation experiences. I felt totally
focussed and I drifted through a world of light
and color that left me full of bliss, on a high
that I assumed had been a product of mydiligence, hard work and the fantastic decision
to grade my effort out of ten and really push
myself towards excellence (that’s irony by the
way.)
Most skills that we learn are such that you can
expec t a lea rn ing curve where the
improvement is generally upwards and things
become easier as we practice but what I did
not know was that meditation is not like really
that. It is like peeling an onion. When you get
through one layer, you have a breakthrough but
there is always another layer and the challenges
may come back even harder than before
because the layer is deeper ingrained into us.
So, the next day I expected the same result and
it set me up for failure. After all, wasn’t I right to
assume that the more I practice concentration,
the more concentrated I will become? Yes, if
the point of meditation is concentration, but it
is not . The point of meditation is to use
awareness to let go of attachments and
sometimes, when you are feeling at your
absolute worst, you may be letting go of farmore attachment than when you are feeling
bliss.
In meditation, there is always what you might
call ‘improvement’, but it is not improvement
in ways that I was gauging my success,. I
thought I had to become more focussed,
concentrated and therefore, inevitably, I would
attain more and more of these wonderful
experiences. But that is not the way.
When you do attain these blissful experiences,
which if you keep going for long enough you
probably will, clinging to them and expecting
more is about as useful as clinging to your
mountain launch pad while hoping to fly. It
becomes the very antithesis of what you are
trying to do, which is to let go of your
attachment to becoming anything tomorrow,
next month or ever and simply experiencing
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who you are right now. Sometimes that will be
in bliss, other times that will be in absolute
misery, but it is better to be totally aware of it
and let it go, than to be totally oblivious to itand prolong the process as if it is really who
you are.
So it is vital that you create a purpose for your
meditation that avoids the usual gauges of
success/failure, improvement/decline or
attainment/non-attainment.
I understand that this may be anathema to
some people. We have trained our minds to begoal centered and predictive, but this is only
one possible outcome of training, not the only
one.
Meditation is the process of retraining your
mind to live with the true nature of nature, so,
different or abnormal processes or purposes are
bound to feel a little weird at first. You will be
fighting a life-long volume of conditioning that
makes anything outside of that conditioningfeel ‘wrong ’ or ‘uncomfortable’ but as soon as
you feel this, remember, this is what change
feels like.
Your purpose for your meditation, at least
initially, should be nothing more that
experiencing your own private present
moment. You’re going to take a look at who you
really are and that can be ugly, beautiful,
focussed or splattered all over the place; it’sanybody’s guess who you will meet on any
given day.
Just sit down being prepared to greet the ‘you’
who you are today without judgement, without
emotion, without reaction and you will begin
to realize that whoever you are right now is
good enough.
Indeed, it is all you are and that cannot beanything less than perfect.
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Part 5
Barriers to Meditation
Ego is a many-splendored thing. It is more
devious than you ever thought possible and it
will throw up countless barriers to make
meditation seem weird, impossible, sleepy or
too much effort without even breaking a sweat.
Here’s some of the barriers you’re bound to
meet and ways to help get through them.
External Barriers
Let’s start with those external barriers that can
become a huge pain. First of these is finding a
place quiet enough for you to sit and listen to
yourself and not the neighbors TV or your kidplaying the trumpet.
Of course, you could break off your meditation
mid-way through and scream for your family to
‘Shut up!’ before returning to your meditation,
but that may be counterproductive in the
pursuit of peace and quiet.
Firstly, do what you can with the environment
that you have. Most of us who live in a city orlarge town will find it very hard to create a
completely noise-free environment. However,
you can reduce interference and interruptions
by doing some very obvious things like turning
off your mobile phone, unplugging your landline, switching off the TV and radio and closing
the door to the room in which you are planning
to meditate. This will help.
However, bear in mind that you are unlikely to
be able to remove every possible distraction.
Indeed, you don’t really want to.
As you will learn, including rather than trying
to exclude sensual experience is the key tomeditating without frustration or dashed
expectations.
Kate, a dear friend of mine and a highly
experienced meditator was encountering all
sorts of external interruptions in her early
morning meditation, not least of these was
morning prayers at a local mosque blaring out
across the neighborhood and a host of early
morning delivery trucks and shop shuttersbeing rolled up doing everything they possibly
could to distract her from her meditative object.
Often, a meditation is about bringing your
mind to an meditative object, like your breath
or a candle but frustration can easily set in
when you perceive outside disturbances as
being the cause of your distracted mind.
So, what do you do? Seeing as you cannot stop
a mosque from calling its people to prayer or
change the delivery time of the trucks that bang
their doors and rev their engines, you should
deal with those disturbances as a part of your
meditation and, rather than focussing on one
object of meditation, focus on them all.
This is exactly what Kate did and soon the
frustration was gone.
You cannot change the outside world, and if it
keeps entering your meditation, embrace it
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rather than feeling the frustration of continually
failing to exclude it.
Remember once again, the point of meditation
is not concentration but observation. When you
embrace this, you will embrace everything that
is in your present moment as being essential for
your personal evolution.
Sensual Barriers
Another aspect of external distraction is sensory
desire. One of those that is most common for a
student of meditation is physical pain! When
you start sitting cross-legged for a period of
time, you may feel your body screaming for
submission.
Of course, you could always move your body,
which is fine, but we can also use pain as an
object of meditation. When you realize that the
motivation to be free from pain is aversion,
another aspect of desire, pain actually makes a
great study of how ego works to create moresuffering, not less. If you do this, you will note
that pain is not a constant feeling but an ever-
fluctuating one. It has many qualities that we
do not usually recognize in our panic to be rid
of it.
Whatever you are doing in life, your senses will
always be in the process of seeking stimulation
in one form or another. It is the way we have
been trained to think and feel, so duringmeditation, why should this process stop?
Seeking pleasure through the sensual
stimulation is like taking out a loan from the
universe. As with any loan, you must repay the
debt with interest. The interest we pay takes the
form of suffering which arises when we are
separated from the object of our desire or all
the pleasure from it is used up and we are left
with that hollow feeling of needing somethingelse from which to rekindle the lost pleasure.
Thus, we set out on the endless pursuit of the
endless experience...
A good example is going out for an ice cream.
Once you have had one, you probably don’t
want another. More ice cream would just make
you sick. So, even if you crave ice cream, you
have a real yearning for it, once you have eaten
the ice cream you will feel great. It will have
done it’s job. Now what’s next? The excitement
and expectation of the experience is over. Your
senses have been stimulated and you are now
left with a gap that your senses will slowly
begin to fill with desire again.
Now I want this and then that and after this and
that I will need these and those. It is never
ending, always borrowing from the universe
and repaying the loan with sadness that it is
gone or emptiness that must be filled again
with objects of desire.
So, it could be said that sensations are like
addictions that our mind clings to. We keepfeeding the senses and so we keep going
through the same cycle of suffering. Of course,
when we start meditating, this conditioned
situations doesn’t just stop because we expect it
to. It is not that easy. Your mind will be well
training in grasping at pleasurable experiences
and sitting without judgment and emotion is
certainly not what you would initially call
‘pleasant’
So, thoughts keep coming at us. We are
uncomfortable. We are hungry. We are cold.
We want to be at peace. We want to be doing
something else. We are bored. Desire and
aversion is the mind we discover because that
is the mind we have been cultivating for our
entire life up to this point.
During meditation, like a spoiled child, the ego
demands to have the senses stimulated and thisis what gives rise to emotional suffering.
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However, if you simply observe each sensation
as it arises, both desire and aversion, without
judgment, without clinging, without pushing
away, this is the cultivation of a cool mind.With a cool mind you can eventually
extinguish the fire of clinging and desire that
perpetuates suffering when it fails to get its own
way.
Be sure, this takes practice! In fact, a life time
of it. While meditation will have quick results
in some areas, the mind will resist being
present with as much zeal as you have put into
training it not to be present. It doesn’t want togive up its pleasures. It must be worked with
like you work on your body in a gym. There are
no instant cures or quick fixes. Only when we
can let go of these sensual attachments can real
peace emerge from the war of desire.
Ill Will
Ill will is like hatred towards people or objects.
There are meditations that are specificallydesigned to help us grow our heart energy
through love and forgiveness because ill will
can unrest any mind if it cannot treat the object
of its meditation with love and compassion.
Every meditation that you conduct will have an
object of meditation, that is, something you will
concentrate on. The point of the meditation is
not to attain concentration but to be aware of
your ego arising to break your concentration.
Your mind, like all minds on this earth, will
wander away from a meditation object because
you have never noticed yourself training your
mind to seek out more and more desires almost
by autopilot. As soon as you stop doing this, as
in a meditation, it is a shock to the mind and so
it resists. Your job as a meditator is not to catch
it, scold it and drag it kicking and screaming
back to the object of meditation, but to be
aware of how and when the mind is straying
and gently remind it of your purpose.
One of the ways we do this is to imagine the
mind as a blue sky and when thoughts or
feelings enter that blue sky we make them like
clouds that slowly fade and are blown gently
away. This is a calming metaphor and avoids
the tendency of goal-oriented minds to view
any distractions as a failure to concentrate. This
labeling of experience in this way is very
debilitating and will eventually cause more ill
will to grow. You will begin to loathe your
practice because you are ‘not very good at it’,or ‘keep failing to concentrate.’
The trick to avoiding ill will against the object
of your meditation (I hate staring at that boring
old candle! Or My stupid mind can’t
concentrate on my breath!) is to develop love
for it.
Many meditations involve watching the breath
in some shape and form. If you treat the breathlike it was your toddling child, how would you
treat it? Would you stop watching it? Would
you drop it and become distracted by sensory
desires? Of course, you wouldn’t. You would be
diligent and loving. If it did wander off, you
would gently bring it back to your attention.
Ill will can be quite subtle but it is a serious
hindrance because of its insidious nature. We
may find it hard to believe we can hate ourown breath or body parts that we may be using
as our meditation object, but we can and we
may not even know it.
As you are meditating, treat the object of
meditation with respect and love and it will
instantly be easier to connect with.
Energetic Barriers
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Having low energy is a barrier to meditation
that has been a particular friend of mine over
the years. This low energy, perhaps due to
physical tiredness, energetic weakness or lackof motivation, can cause the mind to become
easily distracted from the object of meditation
to the point where it is even possible to fall
asleep (not that it has ever happened to me, of
course. Ahem!)
The point of meditation, if you understand that
the mind has two functions: doing and
knowing, it is to maintain the mind in a state of
knowing but to dull the state of doing so thatenough space opens up to truly know the
nature of the object of your meditation.
Tiredness can cause both the doing and the
knowing to become dull and lethargic. That’s
why you fall asleep.
To overcome the energy barrier of lethargy the
first thing you do with meditation is fix the
object of your meditation before you begin and
set yourself a time limit. This becomes a kind ofgoal but without the usual criteria of success
and failure.
The second thing you do is approach the object
of your meditation with the mind of the child.
To the child everything is new and exciting. My
five year old boy, Jacob, is a perfect example.
Even if he’s half falling asleep inside, he will
summon up the energy to force himself to be
alert and boisterous if there is something he
really wants to be doing.
So, before you kick off your meditation, bring
into your mind the idea that you will be
meeting the object of your meditation for the
very first time and you will learn entirely new
properties about it that you have never
experienced before. You are about to embark
on a journey of discovery! This is how you can
develop a sense of delight in exploring the
mundane and that is a sensation full of energy.
If you are prone to a little sloth, prior to
meditating a third approach is to make sure you
have that cool shower to wake you up. Use it
as a mindfulness exercise, feeling what you aredoing as vividly as you can. This primes the
mind for the upcoming meditation.
Also, quickening the pace of your breathing
during meditation can be a good way to bring
the mind into some active energy. Alternatively,
slow down the breathing and make the breath
deliberately long and slow, feeling with greater
intensity the breath as it goes in and out of your
body. This can build alertness in the mind andshake off any cobwebs.
Perhaps you might try an open-eye meditation,
or a walking meditation. Both of these are very
effective and certainly get over the problem of
falling asleep.
Finally, think about changing the time and/or
location of your meditations. It may be better to
meditate earlier, before you get tired or in aplace with better or different energy, such as in
the garden or a local park rather than in the
confines of four walls.
Good energy for meditation really does make a
difference.
Restlessness
The classic simile for the nature of mind is it
being like a monkey. It is always grabbing at
things that fascinate it; sensory objects,
stimulants, colors, shapes, running endlessly
and seemingly without a break from one things
to next like a ceaseless game of word
association played all on its own. It is
restlessness of the mind that, I would argue,
many people find most difficult to come to
terms with because they perceive this
restlessness as a failure to concentrate or tofocus. So they give up.
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It is understandable, of course, especially if you
have been led to believe that meditation is
about being calm, focussed and serene. Thus, it
is somewhat of a shock for people to sit andrealize that their own mind, the thing they think
they know the best about themselves, is
actually completely out of control and filled
with accumulated junk that they didn’t even
know they owned.
What if you went about your meditation with
the intention of being grateful for what you
have, not desiring what you do not have?
Disappointment in meditation is always acreation of trying to be something that you are
not, or discovering parts of yourself that you
don’t like and don’t want to see. True
meditation is discovering who you truly are
without judgment, without disappointment,
without expectation.
So, the practice of observing whatever it is you
find when you are meditating is crucial to
overcoming the monkey mind. What you mustavoid is trying to force the mind to stop
thinking. It is like pushing against a wall of ego.
The harder you push, the harder it will push
back and you will never break down a wall just
be pushing. It will take time, but you must let
the wall rot away, which it will do if you stop
building it with more and more energy.
Simply observe the monkey mind, observe who
you are, observe its changing nature and, over
time, it will calm itself because the energy that
you have fed it over the course of you life thus
far will one day be exhausted.
And then you will be able to observe what is
left.
Doubt
The last but certainly not least of the barriers isdoubt. This can take many forms, each of which
undermine the whole intention of your
meditation. Prior to meditation, you may
wonder, “Why bother?”, or “I hope I don’t
have an unfocussed session again” whichinstantly places doubt and expectation on the
whole endeavor.
What is clear is that starting your meditation
with a doubtful mind will impact upon
everything that happens as you begin sitting.
This is why cultivating compassion for the
meditation object, compassion for the mind
that observes it and confidence in the process
of meditation is essential.
Many people may find that meditation as a
beginner is not as rewarding as they thought it
might be. Others will take to it instantly. It is
crucial that you maintain a mind that is open to
what it receives, which may be bliss, or it may
be frustration. Treating both with compassion
and acceptance avoids doubt.
A second way that doubt creeps in is during themeditation proper. If you begin with plenty of
confidence and good will, this can soon ebb
away, particularly if your ability to focus on the
object of meditation is hindered by other
barriers such as a lack of energy or a monkey
mind. It is easy for the beginner practitioner to
want to give up and scream “This isn’t doing
me any good. It’s just making more frustrated
than before I started.”
This may be true. But what you encounter
whenever your mind begins to sow seeds of
doubt, or lurches from object to object or
begins to drain energy away from the
meditation object, is not a realis t ic
interpretation of what you are experiencing. It
is merely your ego arising with the objection in
order to demand attention.
When you ego desires sensual stimulation itmay tell you: “Wouldn’t it be better if you
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stopped this nonsense and went to see a movie
instead”. When it seeks to sabotage your effort
it may say: “This will never work. How can
doing nothing create something?”
There are many ways for sabotage to occur but
all the barriers to meditation are the ego
placing hindrances in your way, some of which
may seem insurmountable but, of course, they
never are.
You have spent many years in the future, and
many years in the past. Being present is a skill
which is unfamiliar to the beginner and evensome of the more experienced meditators who
are seeking something through their practice,
and therefore it seems a little tough. It is even
tougher when you don’t make that connection
between the very real benefits of meditation
and the need to expand them in your present
moment. It doesn’t seem possible when you’re
in the clutches of monkey mind during your
meditation, that simply observing the monkey
at work is a powerful way by which to diffuseits energy, but it is indeed.
The ego will always offer you attractive ways by
which to fuel its need for sensual stimulation
and activity but it cannot fuel it if you simply
watch it working away, becoming more and
more tired, more and more exhausted, more
and more used up.
There will, of course, be many, many layers toyour ego and just when you seem to have got it
licked, it comes back renewed, as if born again.
But don’t despair, don’t doubt. Faith is a crucial
tool in your practice.
Look at your masters on your shrine. They had
difficulties too. They had a monkey mind. They
had doubt. They had ill will. Their greatness
stems from overcoming them. They could do it.
And so can you.
Practice anew and take each session as a new
day, fresh through the eyes of the child and full
of boundless potential.
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Part 6
Ten Basic Meditations
The following is a description of ten diverse
meditations that I have found very useful
throughout my life. It is by no means an
exhaustive list but is intended to offer you a
nice cross-section of choices when deciding
which meditation will suit you on any given
day.
As you become familiar with them I am quite
certain that you will find some that you like,
some that suit you and others that you don’t
like and are unsuited. That is quite normal.
Bear in mind that this will change as your
practice progresses. I have chopped andchanged my meditation techniques over the
years and have begun to know how, eventually,
the different techniques you learn from each
begin to integrate into a single, flexible
approach to meditation that you can allow to
adjust and evolve just as you yourself adjust
and evolve.
Remember, all meditations are best practiced
using a middle path. The mind should not betoo strict or too lax. You should be
compassionate with yourself and your abilities.
Through love and diligence you will progress
best, not austerity or apathy.
The Ten meditation contained herein are:
1. Mindfulness with Breathing
2. Candle Meditation
3. Chakra Meditation
4. Awareness of Being
5. Loving Kindness Meditation (Metta)
6. Walking Meditation
7. Awareness of Doing
8. Grounding9. Centering
10. Wellness Breathing
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Meditation OneMindfulness with Breathing
It is said that the Buddha himself attained
enlightenment through this meditation.
Needless to say then, it is one of the mostpowerful, but also one of the most difficult to
master. That is not to say that the beginner
cannot use it. Indeed, it is often the foundation
of many retreats and has been for 2,500 years.
What is often not taught is that there are three
different techniques, any of which you can use
and all of which will help you to attain the
same thing: self-awareness.
The point of following your breath is simple.
With awareness you will begin to gain insight
into the true nature, individuality and
connectedness of every breath. You will begin
to notice that each breath is different and
unique and that the very nature of breathing,
and therefore of the person who breaths, is
impermanent and changing.
Impermanence is the very antithesis of ego that
holds onto things and says this is ‘me’, this is
‘mine’, as if these things existed in a permanent
state. It is liberation from these ideas that
Buddha attained through observing his
breathing. So can you.
Part 1: Following the breath
I will assume for each of these meditations that
you have gone through your meditation
preliminaries; preparing your space, getting
comfortable and conducting any rites and
rituals that you need to.
The first part of Mindfulness with Breathing is
to observe the breath as it goes into your body
and out of your body. You do this by simply
training your mind on the sensation of the
breath passing in through the nose, down into
your lungs and into the pit of your stomach,
where the energetic properties of the breath,
called prana, feed the body.
A good technique to use is to imagine that the
breath is a ball, rolling all the way down into
your stomach and possession a cool sensation
before rolling up from your lungs in the
opposite direction as a warm sensation.
Watch this process from one breath to the next,
returning your mind to the breath as and when
it diverts or attaches to a sensation or emotion.
As you observe your breathing, you will
probably find that there are gaps in your
sensitivity, places on the journey of your breathwhere it seems to disappear. Do not be
frustrated by this, but keep observing. Over
time these gaps will be filled as the subtle
nuances of sensation begin to be revealed to
you.
Also, these gaps will probably move around
from place to place. This is quite normal. Take it
as another indication of the transient and
changing nature of living and of life. This is
exactly what you are learning in real time.
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Another little trick to start you off, one that you
can dispense with as you become more familiar
with the meditation process, is to begin this
breathing by counting the breath in your mind.You want to try to get to ten breaths without
losing concentration. As you breath in and out,
that’s one. In and out again, that’s two etc. If
you lose concentration, go back to one and
start again.
This technique is excellent if your mind is really
tending to wander and can help you build up a
rhythm and some confidence. You might want
to start a meditation with two or three rounds often until the mind calms down, or you can
conduct the whole meditation counting. It is up
to you.
Part 2: Observe the Breath Enter, Observe it
Leave (Being the Gatekeeper)
Once you have become familiar with the first
technique, the second is to learn how to
observe the breath like a gatekeeper. You dothis by watching it at two particular points in
your body where the process of breathing
starts and ends.
As you breath in, observe how the breath feels
as it enters your body through your nose. Bring
all of your attention to that point on the in-
breath.
Then, on the out-breath, shift your attention to
the pit of your stomach at your navel, where
you observe the breath leaving the body.
This is a variation on the first part in that you
are becoming more focussed on particular
areas on your body. It can be a little tricky at
first, as shifting the focus can seem to limit the
sensitivity you are building up, but as you
begin to master this technique, you will see
how it leads to the third part.
Part 3: Observation of the Breath at the Nose
The final part of this technique is to fix your
attention at the point on your nose where the
sensation of breathing is strongest. This may be
your nostrils, inside your nose, or even your toplip. As you begin breathing, note where the
sensation is most vivid and use that point as
your meditation object. Follow the breath in
and out at that point only, observing the
changing sensations from each moment to the
next and each breath to the next.
You can use these three meditations
individually or together, progressing from one
to the next as you master each stage orchoosing which is best for you and sticking
with it for some time. It is really your choice.
An Additional Technique
Once you have become familiar with the three
techniques and feel comfortable with each,
there is a great warm up technique you can use
for Mindfulness with Breathing that quickly sets
up your mind to observe the process ofbreathing with more care and attention.
This technique is to practice watching the short
breath and the long breath.
It will not have passed your notice that different
depths and lengths of breathing affects the way
the body, mind and emotions feel. For example,
short breathing might be connected to anger or
frustration, while longer, smoother breathing
might be connected with relaxation and peace.
In this breathing technique you deliberately
manipulate your breathing first to shorten and
quicken and then to relax and calm it
lengthening the inhalation and exhalation
breath to five or six seconds.
Each round of breathing (short or long) will last
about a minute or two. You must take care that
the short breath is not too fast in order to avoid
hyper ventilation. If you ever feel dizzy or sick,
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Meditation Two
Candle Meditation
The Candle Meditation is a simple open-eye
meditation. All you do is light a tea candle and
place it on the floor in front of you at a point
where your eyes would be angled roughly 45
degrees down to the floor. You then adopt asitting meditation position and close your eyes
before slightly opening them to reveal the
burning candle on the floor. This candle then
becomes your object of meditation.
This can be quite effective for the wandering
mind as, in the flame, the mind is observing a
phenomena that is obviously always changing.
This can keep it more occupied that, say,
breathing, which at first can be very subtle oreven fairly numb.
Eventually, as you focus your attention on the
flame, everything around it fades and you begin
to achieve a single-pointedness, However,
don’t go seeking this outcome. It will happen
naturally as you surrender to the process.
Simply watch your mind, observe your body,
observe the flame and let what will be, be.
A variation on this is to use anything on the
floor to focus upon. I have often focussed on a
crack in the floor, a piece of carpet or a speck
of dirt as a meditation object. It became apopular technique of mine, demonstrating how
meditation objects can be anything that is
available. It needn’t be anything special at all.
As long as you maintain the technique of
observing yourself as you observe the object,
the result will be the same: single-pointed focus
and awareness of the ever-changing nature of
reality.
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Meditation Three
Chakra Meditation
Chakra meditation is a classic visualization
technique used to clean your energy field and
empower your energy body. It is great for
developing bodily awareness, your personal
visualization ability and to realize the power of
your aura and its effect in your life.
In your body you have 7 major energy centers
called chakras. These centers respond to your
emotional, physical and energetic conditions as
well as influence them. Each has a
corresponding color that, when visualized in
the physical bodily location of that chakra,
helps to open up the energy and nourish it.
Each chakra has energetic, physical and mentalproperties connected to it. So, if you can learn
how to stimulate the energy in each area and
attain a harmony in all seven, this is a major
contributing factor to good health, quality of
life, contentment, emotional stability, even the
opening of opportunities, love or income!
The Chakras are all located along the spine
(kind of!) with the first and the seventh having a
single location at the tailbone of the spine andthe crown of the head.
The other five each have locations both
emanating from the front and back of the body.
Imagine that they are spinning cones of light
that feed the aura surrounding your body.When these energies spin in a healthy way, you
too will be healthy. But, if your energy becomes
depleted in one or other area, this can cause
complications in how you feel and behave.
Technique
Begin your meditation by bringing your
attention to your breathing and conducting
three rounds of breathing mindfully asdescribed in the Mindfulness with Breathing
Meditation.
Next bring your attention to your root chakra.
This is represented by the color red. It is
located at the base of your spine - the coccyx
or tail bone. The root chakra is your
groundedness and is responsive to your sense
of family & group safety/security, ability to
provide for life’s necessities and to stand up foryourself.
With every in-breath imagine a ball of glowing
red energy to be growing at the base of your
spine. With every out-breath, imagine that ball
becoming compacted into a tighter and more
powerful ball. Spend about 2-3 minutes
expanding the energy in that area.
Cycle through the other 6 chakras like this:
2. Sacral Chakra:
Color: Orange
Location: One inch below your navel
Responsive to your sense of blame & guilt,
money & sex, power & control, creativity, and
ethics and honor in relationships
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3.Emotion Chakra:
Color: Yellow
Location: Solar plexus just under the sternum
Responsive to your sense of trust, fear &
intimidation, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-
respect, care of oneself and others,responsibility for making decisions, sensitivity to
criticism and personal honor
4.Heart Chakra:
Color: Green
Location: Center of your breast plate
Responsive to your sense of love & hatred,
resentment & bitterness, grief & anger, self-
centeredness, loneliness & commitment,
forgiveness & compassion and hope.
5.Throat Chakra:Color: Blue
Location: Your thorax
Responsive to your sense of choice & strength
of will, personal expression, following one’s
dream, using personal power to create,
addiction, judgment & criticism, faith &
knowledge, capacity to make decisions
6.Third Eye Chakra:
Color: Purple
Location: Between your eyes
Responsive to self-evaluation, truth, intellectual
abilities, feeling of adequacy, openness to the
ideas of others, ability to learn from experience
and emotional intelligence
7.Crown Chakra
Color: Golden white
Location: Crown of the Head
Responsive to your ability to trust life, values,
ethics and courage, humanitarianism,
selflessness, ability to see the larger pattern,
faith & inspiration, spirituality and devotion
Meditate on each of these chakras or, if you feel
particularly drained in one or two areas, focus
on them and invigorate by using the same
technique
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Meditation Four
Awareness of Being
Awareness of being is simple, easy to practice
and applicable virtually anywhere. All you do
is cycle your attention through each area of
your body, and, as you do so, expand your
awareness to include all your senses
simultaneously. It is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle of sensitivity.
Technique
Start by concentrating on your toes. How do
they feel? Can you feel anything? Concentrate
on them, patiently, with intention, until you
can. Spend a minute just feeling what is there.
Next, move your attention to the soles of your
feet. Can you feel the blood pumping through
your feet, or your socks cutting into your
ankles? Are there areas of your feet with more
or less sensitivity? Do the sensations change or
remain constant?
After a minute, move gradually through your
body up to your calves, then your shins, and
slowly work your way through your body parts,
becoming more and more aware of wheretension exists, pain, coldness, hotness etc.
If you feel tension, pain, heat, cold, it doesn’t
matter , just examine it. There is no need to
push away any sensations, judge what you are
feeling or become despondent if you feelnothing - just move on to the next body part.
Move to your torso and cycle through your
organs. You may imagine that organs don’t have
much feeling, but you will be surprised. They
are all living tissue and you can feel them at all
times, not just when they are hurting. Build up
a picture of your body all the way up to your
neck and down to the tips of your finger tips.
Next, when you move onto your head and
neck, follow the same pattern of expanding
awareness of every sensation, but this time
include the taste in your mouth, the smell in
your nose, the colors behind your eyes and, last
but not least, the sounds coming in through
your ears.
Reach out your ability to sense as far as it will
go beyond the room and across the street,including, never excluding and never judging,
every sound, color, smell, taste and sensation
flooding into your body.
When you have a complete sensual picture
from the soles of your feet to the crown of your
head, you will have enlivened and become
more aware of who you really are. This
awareness brings with it a sense of peace in the
present moment where there is nothing toworry about or fret over.
This meditation is great for a twenty minute
session, or, you can also learn how to practice
it in just 60 seconds! If you practice three of
four times a day like this, you will soon be able
to ‘remember’ the peace and awareness the
process develops and be able to recall the
feeling instantly whenever you feel ungrounded
or upset.
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Meditation Five
Loving Kindness Meditation (Metta)
Loving kindness is known as “Metta” in Sanskrit
It is the act of growing compassion in one’s life.
Nobody deserves your anger or hatred,
certainly not your poor heart that, each time
you hold onto your hatred or bitterness, stores
up the resulting energy, which will eventuallyaffect its health. Why do you think heart
disease is one of the leading killers in the
western world? No, it’s not just fast food. It’s
slow love. And love in your life surely starts
with you.
What if you could feel compassion for
everyone you meet, no matter who they are?
Wouldn’t that make your world a little freer of
anger, jealousy, frustration and resentment?
Of course it would, and it is only because we
have become so accomplished at holding onto
our judgments about other people that this
seems so idealistic.
In fact, we can learn to love even our greatest
enemies, if we learn how. All it takes is a little
bit of effort and the belief that we can do it.
In loving kindness we consciously generate
love from within for three different people.
Sometimes you might to choose three people
before you begin, especially if you have someforgiveness to practice on particular people.
However, you can also practice this meditation
and see who comes up as you go through it.
You might be surprised.
Techniqueue
• Start by getting comfortable, perhaps
practicing 5 minutes of Mindfulness
with Breathing or Being in order to getyourself in the right zone.
• Now, begin breathing green light into
your heart as you have practiced in the
Chakra Meditation. Visualize with every
in-breath, green light filling up your
chest. Perhaps visualize a green rose in
the middle of heart, opening up each
time you inhale.
• Once you feel relaxed and full of green
light, bring into your heart the image of
a person who you love very much.
Visualize them standing opposite you in
your heart space and hug them with as
much love as you can generate. Feel
also their love flowing back at you. This
is an important step and reminds you
that you too are also worthy of love and
appreciation by others. Spend about 5minute on this step.
• Next, bring into your heart the face of a
person who you are emotionally neutral
about. This may be a co-worker,
someone you saw on the bus this
morning, or a relative who you hardly
know. It doesn't matter. Bring that
person into your heart alongside the first
person and hold hands in a triangle.Generate the same degree of love for
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the second person as you did for the
first, looking back at the first if you need
to be reminded how unconditional love
feels. Spend another five minutes onthis part.
• Finally, bring into your mind a person
for whom you hold onto a painful
emotional reaction. This reaction is just
a learned and repeated response, based
upon judgment and memory. Whatever
you think that person deserves, you
don’t deserve to feel pain for them
anymore. So, bring that person intoyour heart alongside the first two people
and yourself and practice generating
some love for them. This may be
difficult at first, but so is riding a bike.
Each time you fall off, brush yourself
down, and get back on.
This meditation is cumulative in effect. You
don’t just top yourself up with love and go out
and be Jesus for the rest of your life. It takescontinuous effort and practice.
After a while, you may just begin meeting
people with an open mind and, more
importantly for you, an open heart.
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Meditation Six
Walking Meditation
Walking meditation is great for those of us who
have a tendency towards sloth and torpor. It is
far more difficult to fall asleep when walking!
The beauty of it is that it can be done anywhere
and at any time. If you couple this withAwareness of Doing, together they can be a
very complete awareness regime that stretches
across your whole day.
Technique
At first, walking meditation should be
conducted very slowly. It should be an almost
mechanical, scientific study of the process, as if
you were studying a movie frame by frame.
It is best done without shoes and, if possible,
outside, but this is by no means essential. It is
great to practice walking meditation on the
beach or on grass, as the sensations can be
more heightened than on a plain floor or inside
your house.
When you start this meditation, begin with a
four point process of deliberate feeling:
1. Lift the foot,
2. Place the heal
3. Place the foot
4. Bend the toes before lift
Take each part of the process in turn, focussing
all of your awareness step by step. Your
intention is to feel every minute detail of
walking using your feet as the meditation
object.
At first, be very deliberate and conscious of the
four parts to the process but as you get used to
the meditation it can begin to flow flowing and
you will see that each part of the practiceactually flows into the next in one fluid
movement.
This then becomes very practical in your life
and you can meditate walking wherever you
are. This reminds us that meditation is intended
to become an integrated part of your extended
life, not just a thirty minute daily practice.
As with all meditations, walking and the
sensation of walking is merely the object by
which you grow awareness of change and
movement. As Mindfulness of Doing suggests
in the next practice, Walking Meditation is a
great way to bring awareness into your
everyday movement and personal expression.
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Meditation Seven
Awareness of Doing
There is a great line in the 2010 Karate Kid
movie where the master (Jackie Chan) has been
training his student by instructing him to take
off his jacket, hang it up, put in on the floor and
pick it back up again.
After many days of this without explanation,
the student is very frustrated and finally refuses
to do it anymore. The master begins to fight the
student and the student, by following the
instruction of the master to ‘Hang up the coat’ ,
‘Put it on’ , ‘Take it off’ and various other
instructions, has learned many of the
movements of Kung Fu and can defend himself
against his master most effectively.
When asked how he had learned this by
picking up and wearing his coat the master
explains, “There is Kung Fu in everything.”
This line stuck with me and profoundly
epitomized the connection between our action
in life and the observation of the consciousness
that conducts it.
So, just as with Kung Fu, there is meditation ineverything. With everything that we do in life
there is the potential to be mindful while we
are doing it. Both the Martial Arts and
meditation both serve to realize the same
insights into the nature of energy, movementconsciousness and the intimate connection
between them.
However, few of us find this learning in the
mundane, preferring to seek more glamorous
pursuits that stoke our desires and pander to
the modern craze of multi-tasking, which is
basically non-awareness turned into a
professional art-form!
I remember well sitting in the departure lounge
of Singapore’s Changi airport and seeing a
window cleaner performing his task with such
skill, awareness and dedication, I could tell that
he had found compassion in his object of
meditation and mastery in its application.
On the other hand, how many people have we
all encountered who find only boredom in their
tasks when a world of insight, compassion,learning and wisdom exists in all that we do if
we care to look and use it as such? Sadly, these
are minds that seek sensations, not insight. The
mind that seeks insight finds awareness and
compassion in everything.
So, the next time you are brushing your teeth,
brush your teeth. The next time you are eating,
eat. The next time you are cleaning dishes,
clean dishes.
Start extending your meditative practice into
your day; application. Your thirty minutes in the
morning is designed to be practice for 23.5
hours of application afterwards.
Find the essential nature of each action by
performing it with awareness and you will find
pleasure in everything that you do, not just
temporary p leasure through sensualstimulation.
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!"#$%&%$'( *$+,%
Grounding
So many people these days have learned that
they need to solve all their problems using their
heads. We gather so much information and
knowledge that we become very confident that
the mind has all the answers. This places lots of
energy in the head region.
Coupled with the tendency for modern people
to bury their emotions and lose connection
with their family, the energetic comparison is
like having a building with all its weight at the
top. The likely outcome is a collapse. This is
what is called being ungrounded. .
If you store a lot of energy in your head and
little in your foundation, strong emotionalevents will un-ground you. You will tend to try
and ‘work out’ emotions rather than feeling and
letting them go.
Grounding is designed to deal with emotions
by channelling the energy into the ground
while building a stronger connection to the
reality of life on Earth and a better balance
between mind, body and energy.
Technique
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, eyes
open, knees slightly bent (not locked) and relax
your body.
Imagine that you are a tree and roots are
growing from your feet into the ground. With
each in-breath the roots grow deeper, beyond
the floor, into the soil, into the rock, into the
very core of the earth that created your body
and feeds and nourishes you every day.
Imagine that each breath, draws energy up
through the soles of your feet, all the way up
your legs and into your Sacral Chakra, one inchbelow your navel.
Maintain this breathing and visualization for a
minute or two. Keep visualizing your roots
growing deeper and wider. Feel solid but
natural, empowered but in control. In a few
short moments of grounding you should feel
your body calming down, your mind balancing
and your emotions subsiding.
As you practice this frequently it will be easier
to bring yourself back to this state creating
instant relief and empowerment. As this
exercise can be easily practiced sitting down at
work, on the bus, in the car or anywhere really,
it is a great exercise to fall back on several
times during the day.
Whenever you feel a strong emotional response
to a situation, simply start breathing in through
your feet, come back to the breath, watch the
way your breathing changes as you become
emotionally excited. Soon, by grounding and
breathing with awareness rather than thinking
about the emotion, letting your head get
involved and justifying or rationalizing it, you
will regain your composure and the emotion
will have passed through you rather than
holding onto it as if it was a part of you.
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This is how you learn to transform a learned
reaction, which is automated and insensitive,
into a powerful learning observation, which
occurs with awareness and sensitivity.
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Meditation Nine
Centering
You are an energy being and working with
energy is what you do. Unfortunately, most of
us believe we are primarily physical beings and
work virtually exclusively on developing ourphysical energy. Sadly, this eventually weakens
our energy body, which places our physical
body at risk of illness however powerful it may
seem to be.
While the Grounding Meditation creates a solid
foundation and connection to the earth, the
centering meditation helps create power.
Rather than meditating on the earth, this time
we begin to open up the crown chakra thatconnects us with our higher self, and begin to
draw energy into our system through universal
energy.
However, please remember that this exercise
should always be conducted after the
grounding exercise, as working only with the
crown chakra can result in headaches, light-
headedness and out of body experiences in
people susceptible to such things.
The crown chakra is our connection to our
higher self, so playing with this energy center
without working with the others can create
imbalances. Alternatively, you may like to usethe chakra balancing exercise as a precursor,
for the same reason.
The point of this exercise is not to revel in what
we can do as energy being, but to create
practical ways in which we can create power.
Technique
To begin this exercise you focus your attention
on the crown of your head and imagine that
there is a cord connecting you to your higher
self. Visualize it pulling up upwards,
straightening your spine, creating an uplifting
sensation.
Now visualize that your crown chakra is
opening up like the aperture of a camera. Feel
it widening on your head and a bright golden-
white light beginning to pour along the cord
and into your head.
Visualize that energy traveling slowly down
your back, feeling it every inch that it travels.
Observe it all the way down to the base of your
spine, traveling between your legs and up into
your belly where it becomes a colored light of
your choosing. Don’t think too much about the
color. Just let it become the first color that you
can visualize. It will be the right one.
Finally, with the in-breath feel the energy flow
into the ball of light in your sacral chakra and
with the out breath feel that energy condensing
into a greater and greater power.
Once more, this meditation is flexible enough
to be very mobile and can be conducted
anywhere and included as part of the
awareness of being meditation, including allyour senses. I used to love doing this
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meditation riding my motorbike around the
countryside of Phuket, breathing in the
awesome power of nature!
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Meditation Ten
Wellness Breathing
This final meditation is one that I frequently use
with clients who sees me for a reiki session. It is
a powerful visualization that I learned from one
of my masters and helps with cleansing and
purifying our physical, energetic and mental
bodies.
Many meditation beginners will wonder why
simply visualizing color or feeling is a practical
way to create any meaningful change in life but
you must remember that we are visualizing all
kinds of suffering in our lives at all times and
suffering is exactly what we create.
Why shouldn’t we be able to visualize
wellbeing, contentment or happiness? T is nodifferent than a sports person visualizing their
victory, a technique that has attained proven
results in sports psychology.
Most of us don’t try or don’t bother simply
because we believe, perhaps subconsciously,
that life is a physical issue that has to be
worked out and solved and that simply creating
feelings can’t make a difference. This is wrong.
It can make a difference and, when we practiceit often enough, it does make a difference.
The rule that you should live by if you are
serious about creating change though
meditation is “You will see it when you believe
it” not “You will believe it when you see it”,which is the motto of most western-minded
people. This not only helps you to overcome
one of the five hindrances to meditation but
empowers you to live life in faith that our
power is just as important as our plan.
Technique
Wellness breathing is very simple. Firstly you
visualize that the room you are in is filled witha beautiful healing light that is there just for
you. You can make this light any color that you
feel you need. It can change color. It can be
multicolored. It is entirely up to what you feel
you need.
Next, visualize that you are breathing in this
light through every pore of your skin. See it
going into your skeletal system, illuminating
your bones and joints. See it going into yourorgans, your heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, paying
particular attention to any area where you have
physical issues you would like to resolve. See it
also going into your mind and relaxing you.
See it as if through a microscope going into
your cells and your DNA, until your entire
body is glowing with light that is healing a
refreshing.
The next step is to continue breathing in thisbright, white light but changing the out breath
to visualize smoke being released from your
body. The smoke represents anything that you
wish to be free from. It may be emotional pain,
physical sickness, a problem in life, issues at
work, past trauma, anything at all that you feel
the need to release.
Continue with breathing in light and breathing
out smoke, either as part of a meditation or asthe entire session.
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Part 7
Final Notes
Meditation is not a hobby or a past time. It is
no less a part of a well life than eating and
sleeping. We have just forgotten how our
ancestors used to practice such skills daily and
replaced our faith in these techniques withmedicine and repairing our body when it goes
wrong.
Many people will do well with meditation if
they persevere, but I have found many practices
become intermittent if people do not
reorganize their lives, at least a little bit, to
create the right environment for different habits
and states of personal expression to become
more likely.
What this means is, if you are an alcoholic and
you want to stop drinking, you have to stop
going to the pub every night, right?
Likewise, if you are serious about getting to
know the true self hidden under all those layers
of ego, you may have to change some of the
environments that you frequent, people that
you hang out with and stuff that you listen andwatch that has created you current reality. It is
not rocket science. If you want to create light,
you have to burn some things away. You cannot
change without changing something.
One of the best ways to keep your meditation
going is to surround yourself with people who
meditate. This may not be instantly possible if
you are generally surrounded in life by people
who believe that meditation is a pointless waste
of time.
Many people will live in difficult environments
where finding ways to divest themselves of the
causes of their suffering is complicated. But, Iguarantee you, doing the same things in the
same way will not get you better results than
those you are currently attaining. There is
always a better way, if you are prepared to put
in the effort.
A better way of ensuring success is to create a
community Share Circle. There is a guide to
building one of these on my website. It is an
entirely free and no-strings-attached offeringfrom myself to the creation of community-
based wellbeing groups that meet on occasion
to share their practices, insights and feedback
and by doing so, support each other's
spirituality.
There is no reason why there cannot be one of
these on every street in the world. Practicing
awareness of some sort should be no less
essential than brushing your teeth or taking ashower. It is really that important that we raise
ourselves out of the global and personal morass
by, at the very least, being aware of what it is
that created it.
I see the institution of meditation in people’s
lives as, one day, becoming no more strange
than education or exercise. As awareness of
these practices grow and more and more
people realize that they are missing some vitalingredient to contribute towards a longer term
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happiness, some will discover that what they
are missing is appreciation of who they really
are and what they mean. There can be little
genuine happiness without this realization.
I hope this guide has been useful to you. If you
have any further questions or follow up, feel
free to contact me through my website.
Wellness wishes,
Michael Paul Stephens
November, 2013
A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works