The Path

What is meditation?
Types of meditation
Setting up a meditation practice
Meditation and the puppy mind
Decisions
The amusement park of life
Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now
How to be a successful meditator
The right time to start meditating
Meditation, the skydiving religion
Sample meditations
Stop meditating!!

















Most of us have experienced a moment of grace at least once in our lives.
A moment when everything is very still and beautiful.

We forget our current piece of gnawing turmoil,
our plans for the future, our remembrances of the past,
We just stop.
It can happen anywhere and at any time -
while you're out in nature or when you stop to appreciate a beautiful sunset
or maybe when playing with a puppy or even washing the dishes.
If you think back on those moments, you might remember that you had stopped thinking.

Those moments are meditation.



Oh, you were aware of what was going on but for a little while you stopped listening to your
mind's constant chatter. Even when we're sleeping our minds are working away,
monitoring the body and creating dreams.
Our subconscious mind is relentlessly sorting the days events into some kind of order.
When we are awake, our minds go into overdrive and the thoughts just don't stop.

"What will they think?",

"look how they hurt me",

"I'm no good",

"I'm good",

"I'm lonely",

"I'm better then him,

"I'm worse then her",

"I'm this",

"I'm that".

We are all trapped in this cage of thoughts that run round and round and round again.
Is it any wonder that people binge on drugs or alcohol to try to escape ?
A cartoon character once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us".
All of us can get caught up in some form of self-hatred and do the things that we know are not in our best interests.

We live in a time where things are speeding up and the world seems more and more stressed.
We may feel we are falling behind in doing all the things that need to be done or even worse,
feel overwhelmed and unable to accomplish all the things that we think need to be done.

These moments are not meditation.


If you could have a choice, what moments would you want to have in your life?
Everyone I know would like to be happy, healthy and at peace.
So why aren't people happy?
Maybe it's because we get trapped in the loops of our thoughts
and when caught in those loops,
it's difficult to see our way out.

Meditation practice gives you the power to shut down the loops, to ignore the chatter and to just feel the moment.
It's like wiping clean a very dusty mirror so you can see yourself clearly.

Is meditation a magic bullet?

Will it make you smarter and more attractive ?
Hey, that's just for starters.
People who practice meditation report that their focus is sharper and it's easier to organize their thoughts.
Many people who practice meditation also report being more relaxed and at peace with themselves.
When you're relaxed and at peace with yourself, you're naturally more attractive.

Meditation does take practice.
It's like doing push-ups, at first you're unable to do any but if you keep at it,
you start to develop stronger muscles and soon your doing a lot of push-ups.
Meditation is much more fun than push-ups.

It gives you something more :

The chance to have a life more fascinating and beautiful than you ever imagined.



Meditation has been practiced for centuries in every human culture.
It has been used for self-discovery, healing, martial arts, sports, to relieve stress
and to clear the way to enlightenment ( no small task!)

Most practices that have to do with meditation, embrace the concept of stopping thought.

Not stopping thought like being a zombie or a vegetable but just sitting there, being aware,
aware of your body, maybe your environment.

Not having any thoughts about the past,
no thoughts about the future,
not trying to rush to the next thing, not making plans, not asleep,
Just Awake.


Sounds like a difficult thing to do doesn't it? It is and it isn't .

It takes a big commitment to make a change that will allow you to have the space and time to practice meditation.
It's tough to sit down for five or fifteen minutes and not want to get up and go do something.
But once you have a consistent practice,
you have a space in your life for magical moments.

You get to experience what the philosophers and holy men call "The Now" .

For your investment of time and effort,
you gain an area for you to chill-out -- a sanctuary for you to use when you need it.

Does your life change?


Yes, but what really changes is the way you look and think about your life.

It changes because once or twice a day you take the time to get away from
all those people and thoughts and ideas that are in your mind.

You get up from your meditation feeling refreshed and ready for the world or
if it's late, you get up relaxed and ready for bed.

One of the purposes of this type of practice is to remind us that we are alive.
Just the act of taking a breath is enough.

This feeling of freshness and awareness of the newness of every moment
slowly starts to slip into our lives.

We start to have more and more moments of wonder.
We feel more in tune with the natural world.




Meditation postures

Over the centuries human beings have discovered certain movements and postures were more conducive
to calming the mind than others. From this understanding came two forms of meditation:

Active and Passive


Both forms have the goal of stopping thought.
They also teach the importance of good alignment --
keeping your spine straight and your head not leaning in any direction.

Passive meditation practices


Passive meditation practices have the idea of stopping the body and then stopping the mind.
The most popular postures for this are sitting on the floor in a crossed-leg position, or sitting in a chair.
Standing postures are also popular.
In the East, sitting on the floor in a cross-legged position is popular because it doesn't require any props
and many people have been brought up squatting down to talk and hang out.
Most Westerners find it hard to sit cross-legged for any length of time

If you are sitting on the floor,
we recommend using a pillow to relieve the stress on your knees and hips.
The pillow also allows your lower back to be supported


Chair-sitting postures have become popular in the west because
most of us find it hard to sit cross-legged on the floor for any length of time.
Sit in the chair with both feet flat on the ground
Your spine should be straight
If you are uncomfortable, shift your position

Active meditation practices


Active meditation practices usually promote stillness in motion.
Martial arts and Yoga are examples of that principle.
Walking meditations also have the power to lead one into a meditative state.
A popular type of active meditation is paying attention to your thoughts during your day.



Setting up a meditation space


Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed.
Choose a place that offers you as much privacy as possible, a place with little noise or human traffic.
Keep your spot private -- this is your sacred space.
Disconnect the phone.
A meditation table gives you a place to focus your energy.
Put a candle, flowers, a picture or anything on it that inspires you.
Good incense contains aromatic oils that can soothe your central nervous system.
Meditate in silence if you can, but if you are being distracted by city noise,
try using meditative music to cover the noise.

Setting up a meditation schedule



If you are a beginner: We suggest meditating in the morning, for fifteen minutes.
After six months, if you feel you'd enjoy it, you might want to increase your sitting time to half an hour.
If this feels good, try sitting twice a day.
Right after you awake is the prime time to meditate - when your mind is calm and it is easier to concentrate.
Meditating after work or in the evening can allow you to shift into a more relaxed mode after thinking all day.
A meditation before going to bed can help you to wind down and have a deeper sleep

Some Posture Suggestions


Sit on the floor. (Use a cushion to help keep your back straight).
Sit in a chair
Stand
Lie down (but not in bed)

Use whichever posture feels comfortable to you,
just remember to keep your spine straight.

Shower/bathe before you meditate.
If you don't have time, then wash your hands and face.
Water can neutralize a great deal of the negative energy that our bodies accumulate.

If you have trouble waking up, have a cup of tea or coffee before you begin.

Set everything up the night before so you don't have to fuss too much in the morning.

Avoid conversation as much as possible before you begin.




First, you must know that there is no measure of success or failure.
But if you need a lithmus test, it would be noticing how happy you are on a day to day basis.
If you are one who is only interested in immediate results,
you may find meditation discouraging.



The following visualization is effective in describing the nature of how we change through meditation.

Imagine you are a glacier sitting in the ocean. Every day a little bit of you melts off.
Some days, huge chunks fall. While it may seem that nothing is happening,
one day you find yourself completely dissolved in the ocean of which you were always
a part of but have made the mistake of seeing yourself as separate from.

Have a sense of humor


This may be the most important thing as you progress down this path of inner study.
We must always remind ourselves not to take this whole thing so seriously
If you can laugh at yourself,

laugh at your mistakes,

your pitfalls,

your faults,
you will walk through this life with much greater ease and enjoyment.

This life fades so quickly,

what is there to be so serious and stoical about anyway?

Make it a habit:


As with anything, if you make meditation something you have to do every day right along with showering and brushing your teeth
it will be much easier for you than if you just try it once a week or once every few weeks.
The best two times to meditate during the day are sunrise and sundown.

At these moments, there is an energy which makes it a little easier to hook onto the earth's energy.

Be honest with yourself:

Be brave enough to look at your life and be willing and open to drop the things that are not making you happy.

These things may range from anything from
your group of friends,
your wife or husband,
your job,
the place you live,

your thought patterns and habits...
Understand that not everything exists in logic.

The path of Buddhism is a paradox.

If you truly want to be happy,
make it a point to make other people happy!



Many people have dabbled in the idea of meditating. They like the idea of it
it has aroused their curiosity and they've tried it once or twice.

However after a few scattered attempts many people say,
I just have too much stuff going on right now,

it's not the right time or my mind is just too crazy;
I'd like to but I just can't.

The first step of meditation is simply realizing how incessant
and out of control your thoughts are


So if you have tried sitting and you feel like you're thinking even more,
you're right on course.

Everybody's path is different.
For some, the first time they sit down they "take off."
For others, while they may not be consciously
aware of anything happening right away, they are still drawn back.

We are a pill society, wanting immediate and lasting results.
With this in mind,
it is very important not to judge your meditations once you are done.
It is those thoughts which will impede the energy of that meditation to manifest.

Often you will find that directly following a meditation you feel very similar to how you felt prior to sitting.
However, it is quite common at some point later in the day to
find yourself in an inexplicable happy, even giddy mood for no apparent reason.
Soon enough you will be getting strange looks from your coworkers and friends
because you start laughing or smiling out of nowhere!


We go through life continually making choices.
The simple ones - like deciding what to have for dinner or what movie to go see -
are usually fairly easy to make and have little impact on our lives.
These types of choices are a preference at the moment and do not require a great deal of investigation.
But what about the BIG decisions -

Which job to take?
Which city to live in?
Who to form a relationship with?

How should these types of decisions be approached when you feel confused?

A big part of the self-discovery process is paying attention to our feelings,
looking deeply into our hearts and discovering what makes us feel good and what does not.
We need to be very clear about what gives us energy and what saps us.

When approaching a BIG decision, it is important to be as clear as possible.
Meditating is step number one. We use meditation not as a place to agonize over our choices,
trying to figure it all out, but as a place where we can stop our thoughts about the choices and
thereby stop any attachments we may have to the outcome.
We may have hidden thoughts pulling us in one direction or another, thoughts that may be from a prior experience, a prior decade or a prior lifetime.
We want to be free of all the "old stuff" before we decide what is best for us right here right now.

Let's take a hypothetical situation. Suppose you need to choose between two places to live.
Most people, weighing the pros and cons in a decision like this, would look at very specific attributes of each place
- rent, safety, shopping bus line etc.

These are all very good things to look at before making this decision and should definitely be considered.
But what we suggest is a deeper investigation, an investigation into the energetic nature of each choice and
assessing, as best we can, how each place would make us feel. Feeling is the operative word here.

We can discover a lot by feeling the energy of a place.
Check each neighborhood out at several different times of the day - nighttime included.
Walk around. Talk to the neighbors. Stop in the shops. Does the landlord live there?
Get a "feel" for it.

Next, sit with those feelings in meditation whether or not you consciously feel them.
Dedicate a meditation to making a decision. Set your intent to come to a resolution before you begin.
While in a calm, meditative state, ask yourself this question - "what does it feel like to live at '.…..?"
Listen to your response. Say "I live at ……." out loud for each address. Observe how you sound saying it.
Was one response firmer or more tentative? Was there any hesitation anywhere?

The thing is, we already have all the answers to our questions except our minds are so filled with noise
the answers are hard to hear.
The best way we know to quiet that noise is through meditation.
When you have a regular practice, chances are much greater for you to access that quiet place inside yourself
where your inner voice resides.
By listening to yourself, you get to decide what's right for you right here, right now.



When we first begin our meditation practice, we start to see that our minds are like untrained puppies - sniffing here, scratching there and generally all over the map. We are constantly thinking and have very little control of what we are thinking about. We often dwell on things we would rather not - digging up past grievances, past hurts, and past emotional upsets instead of the back yard. We re-live these events in our thoughts and in the process keep these hurts alive. Or we spend time agonizing over possible future problems that most times will never come to fruition.

How can we train our minds to go where we would like them to go?
How can we say "no" to thoughts we would rather not think?
How can we appreciate the present moment?

Well, how do you train a puppy? The best-trained puppies are handled with love, compassion and patience. You start training a puppy by giving it a very specific job to do - like "Sit". When a puppy moves out of "Sit", you don't get angry at it - you gently bring it back to "Sit". Learning to meditate is very much the same process. We also have to give our minds a job to do - to focus on only one thing and attempt to keep it there.

When our attempts to quiet the mind fail or are spotty at best,
we might want to beat ourselves up.
We need to learn how to be kind to our puppy minds
not to get frustrated or angry
just to gently bring the mind back to "Sit".


One technique we like to keep the mind "sitting" is chakra meditation. The focus is one of feeling, not thinking. We sit in meditation and attempt to keep all our attention on a chakra usually the heart, navel or third eye. Each time our mind wanders away from that focus, we gently bring it back to feeling the chakra. Every time we notice we are thinking, we lay those thoughts aside and return to feeling the chakra.
By keeping our focus steady:

we reside in the present moment.
We are not thinking about the past or the future.
We are right here, right now.

What this does for us is amazing:

it frees us from all the thoughts and emotions that tie us
to events outside of the present moment.

And in the present moment, everything is perfect. The space we inhabit when this happens has a far-reaching effect.
We are afforded a glimpse into our true nature, unhindered by our "stuff" and we get a sense of who we really are:

Spirits having a human experience.

We also get to see that it is our thoughts that create our world

when our thoughts shift, so does our world.

So just as that excited puppy develops into a calm and happy companion with the right training,
so too will our minds get calm, quiet and happy by developing a meditation practice.

Oh yeah -- we should all give ourselves lots of treats, too.





Sometimes I think of life as an amusement park and we are all trying out the different rides.
Take the roller coaster ride, one moment, I'm headed upwards to a new and brighter future,
the next moment I'm hurtling down towards failure and possible derailment.
At the last possible moment, things change and I am once again seeing the sun break through the clouds the future is looking bright.

I think of the state of meditation as that moment when the roller coaster car reaches the top
and before it begins to descend.

The car is sitting still and you are at the very top,
looking over the whole park,
the activities below seem
removed and far away.
You can feel the wind and hear the babble of sound.
You are experiencing the moment and are aware of being alive.

Then you move your focus back to the outside world and once again you're on the
roller coaster heading for certain disaster or glorious victory.
What would make the ride fun is if we could remember that this is just a ride and that
you can wave your hands in the air and go "Whee" and enjoy yourself as the ride takes you through its gyrations.

Maybe you're bored with your current ride. You've seen the same ups and downs
and have started to know every turn or maybe the current ride was fun in the beginning
but now it seems like a bad dream and all you want to do is to get off.

It's an amusement park!

Look around and decide what kind of ride would be fun to try.
Some rides mean standing in line, studying manuals and taking tests before you can get on
them but the ride might be worth the wait.
Some rides go by so fast that it's all a blur of non-stop events.
Other rides might be a slow canoe ride on a gentle river. You can change the ride at any time.
Yes, it does take effort to go from one ride to another but why be bored when you can have a new adventure?
I judge a ride by its heart.

Is it alive?
Does it add meaning and depth to my experience?
Is it fun?
Would I rather be doing this than anything else?

It's hard to raise your hands in the air and enjoy the ride when your mind tells you disaster is imminent but my friend, all we have is this moment;

anything else is a dream of the mind.



We all do this. We have an idea, an opinion, a like or dislike that set and hardened in our
consciousness sometime in the past. And because of this we still think we feel the same way now as we did then.
But where did those ideas originally come from?
We are all born with a gender, a culture and in a time and place where the rules are already set.
As children, we have very little free will and wind up adopting our parents' outlook.
We are also very much influenced by our teachers, peers and siblings.
This is all very clear to us when we look to cultures outside our own and wonder
how people can think the way they do.
How can a ten-year-old be a racist or an eight-year-old hate hippies?
Well, we think, they were not born this way, they were obviously influenced by others.
But what about our own influences?
Do we ever stop to look at all the ideas we readily adopted as children without ever investigating
how we truly feel now?

Developing a meditation practice is a great place to begin the process of figuring out which thoughts are ours and
which ones are just holdovers from a previous time. When we sit in meditation we are not concerned with the future or the past -- only the present moment.
This frees us from all the ties that bind.
Residing in the present moment creates a great spaciousness -
a place where we can touch our very nature because we are free from the thoughts, ideas, values and judgments of
ourselves and of others. What freedom!



Religion as it is understood in our modern day is an adherence to a
certain belief system. It can be verified by a book, whether it be the
Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita... Religions are full of pious
people, people who are very knowledgable. In other words, religion to
these people is rooted in the brain.

How about an analogy relating meditation to skydiving to make a point:


A religous person knows everything there is to know about skydiving.
They know who the first skydiver was, how a parachute works, what kind
of planes are used. ..They have a deep respect for the skydiving
pioneers. They walk around with pictures of skydivers in their wallet,
they think that skydiving was reserved for other people.

Meditation is jumping off the plane.

A meditator may know nothing about the history, famous skydivers, they
may even have no concept of why they're jumping. There is no comparison
between jumping and knowing about jumping. To clarify, religion as it
is commonly understood today is a knowing, meditation is a doing. There
is no similarity between the two. It is like comparing between an
expert on love and someone who is in deeply in love. At that point
knowledge is completely useless.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with a belief system. It is an actual
experience, a diving into the self. It is essentially not separating
god from ourselves but realizing that god is within all of us. But it
cannot be a concept or a knowing, it must be a union. A knowing is a
good start. Perhaps reading about skydiving gives you a sense of
elation, excitement. There is absolutley nothing wrong with that. But
at some point it will become a crutch, a standstill and soon you will
have to take the plunge yourself.



Well, not exactly. To be more exact, stop using the word, meditation.
Meditation, although still somewhat new to our western culture, already has
been tainted and obscured. Just like god or spirit everyone has their own
idea of what meditation is or what it should be.

And for those on the spiritual path, we can easily get caught up in the
mindset of, I should meditate, I'm supposed to meditate more, other people meditate
better. . . Nonsense. At that level, its become just another religion;
laced with guilt, false expectations and judgment. It becomes something we
have to do to appease some higher being, rather than something we do simply
because it makes us feel good.

Because we put meditation in the blender along with everything else we need to
do buy paper towels, go to the bank, write thank you cards somehow buying paper
towels and going to the bank often takes precedence. We say to ourselves, let
me get this stuff done and maybe if I have time, I'll meditate later. So this
being said, I ask you to change the word meditation with beauty, clarity and
fun. So when youre starting your day off, see how all the stuff you have to
get done (the paper towels, the thank you cards) weighs against discovering
your beauty, finding greater heights of clarity and just smiling and laughing
more. And maybe, just maybe you'll prioritize that 15 minutes of silence and
stillness over the endless revolving list of daily tasks. And the trick of it
is, if you start your day with a little meditation, doing those mundane tasks
are much more enjoyable. While everyone else is standing in line, irritable
and impatient, you could be the one with a curious and inexplicable silly grin
on your face.

We have somehow convinced ourselves that we just don't have the time to
meditate even 15 minutes; we just can't spare it. For a select few of us,
it is upon this recognition that we take a moment and decide were going to take
charge of our lives, of our minds, of our consciousness. We dare to ask, just
who is running the show here. Instead of being a little leaf being blown about
by the winds of habit, desire, society. . . we decide its more fun to
be the wind itself.

Just remember that before you had a name, before someone decided if you'll wear
pink or blue, before all these layers were put on you, you still existed.
Meditation is the peeling back of these layers. It is the discovery of the
self, the immortal, untouchable, unnamable self.

Take the time to discover your own beauty, find the hidden gems and mysteries
that lie within you. There is no guilt, there is no incrimination, no judging
god. There is only you perfect and free. But until there is awareness, we live
and believe in the lie that we are all these other things. Take the time to
stop and not give into the madness.
Get your paper towels later.



For all of the following, find a quiet, comfortable place to sit.

Breathing Meditation


Breath is so basic yet we rarely pay attention to it unless, of course, we have a breathing difficulty.
In this exercise we try to pay complete attention to the breath.

Close your eyes and begin to pay attention to your breathing.
Follow the inhalation and the exhalation.
Try to be aware, also, of the pause between the breaths.
Don't try to control or change your breathing -- just notice it.

When thoughts come up,

keep bringing your attention back to your breathing

and in the beginning, thoughts will constantly come up.

It will become quieter.


Heart Meditation


Many spiritual traditions consider the opening of the heart the beginning of meditation.
In this exercise we will be focusing on feeling the area around the middle of the chest.

Close your eyes.

Try to feel the area around your heart.

Does it feel heavy, tight, open?

No matter what you are feeling, stay with it.

For many of us, the heart is a very vulnerable place so emotions may be stirred.

Whatever comes up,

keep bringing your attention back to your heart.



Back to the path


Selfdiscoveryseminars.com
Email us here