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The Provolution Center, Phuket Presents
Overcoming the Basic Challenges and Misconceptions of your Practice
A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
THIS GUIDE IS FREE! Please Circulate it to Friends and Acquaintances who May Wish to Start Meditating! STAY IN TOUCH WITH MIKE, PROVOLUTION, SHARE CIRCLES & OTHER FREE SPIRITUAL RESOURCES BY VISITING: Website: www.michaelpaulstephens.com Mike’s Blog – “Provolution Now” Michael Paul Stephens on Facebook
HELP US ALL PROVOLVE TOGETHER!
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works Overcoming the Basic Mistakes and Misconceptions of your Practice
CONTENTS Chapter
Page
1. Introduction…………………………………………………….
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2. Why Meditate?………………………………………………….
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3. Setting Up a Meditation Space……….……………………….
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4. Practical Essentials of Meditation ..….……………………….
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5. Building Purpose……………….....….……………………….
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6. Barriers to Meditation………….....….……………………….
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7. Ten Basic Meditations………….....….……………………….
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8. Final Notes…………..………….....….……………………….
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Have you Discovered Michael’sThat Other Books Yet? A Practical Guide to Meditation Really Works “Provolution – A Guide to Changing the World Through Personal Evolution” and “Equanimous - A Channeled Dialog of Why You are Here and What You Can Do About It Right Now!” are both out now. For more information please visit Michael’s Site
Introduction Anyone can successfully practice meditation. Failure only occurs because many people practice things that are not really meditation at all. When people say to me, ‘Meditation doesn’t work for me’, it always reminds me of what a great friend of mine said to a corporate c u s t o m e r wh o , wh e n a s k e d whether he’d tried a certain motivation technique with his staff replied: “Oh we’ve tried that, it doesn’t work.”, to which my friend retorted, “It may not be what you tried, maybe it’s just how you tried it.” Many people who have given up on meditation complain that they cannot concentrate, their mind is full of thoughts, they cannot get any peace, saying “It is so frustrating, I don’t seem to be getting any better at it”, but everyone of these comments tell me the same thing: you’re doing it all wrong! If you are sitting down to meditate in order to attain something, become something or transform something, that’s the start of your frustration right there. It’s like a power station transforming coal into electricity. If you mine the raw coal, just one part of the process, and then say, “Well I’ve failed, I didn’t create electricity”, it would be obvious that you had not completed the whole process and your expectations are too high. This analogy is the equivalent of people sitting down to attain a focussed mind from meditation. There are parts to the process that need to be observed before you can attain concentration. Anyway, concentration is not the point of meditation either. It too, is just another part of the process. It is not simply having created electricity that is important, it is how we apply the power that makes a difference in our lives. This Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works is part of my commitment to helping people with their awareness practice. This beginners guide is explored in more detail on my website www.michaelpaulstephens.com This guide will help you overcome some of the pitfalls and barriers to meditation that I have faced in my practice. Meditation is not about enlightenment, although it is a tool for its attainment, it is not about being able to sit with single-point focus in a full lotus-position, although the focus is useful;
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
meditation is about you learning more about yourself than you knew before you sat down and tried. Every single time you meditate, you will achieve that. There is no failure if your goal is to be a witness of who and what you are in the present moment, whoever and whatever that may be. Read on and learn how meditation can be simple, effective and bring great clarity to your world as it has to mine. Michael Stephens February 2011
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
Why Meditate? Have you ever tried repairing a machine that you knew nothing about? What if you didn’t 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 you are just not aware of how you suffer and shrug off your suffering as a part and parcel of living. Whether it is emotional pain, physical trauma, energetic blockages or mental aberrations, each of us suffers in our own unique way, but the causes of these problems, rather than also being unique, are common to all people: nonawareness. All the normal solutions to life’s suffering have been tried and yet still the pain remains the same. You’ve tried pleasure as the solution, but the high only lasts for a while and the discomfort always comes back. You’ve tried buying stuff but no matter how much stuff you buy it doesn’t keep the discomfort away forever, it always creeps back in. You’ve tried changing locations and jobs but as soon as you think you’ve got it licked, there it is again, coming back to haunt you. Discomfort keeps returning as if it never left. And that is essentially true. Whatever you seem to do to get rid of the discomfort using the same old solutions that everyone else in the world is using, the same old discomfort just comes straight back. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Everything and everyone suffers because we are physical beings and suffering is a purposeful natural phenomenon that comes from within, not from being without. It is not your enemy but there are ways and means by which we can identify the roots of this suffering within us and dissolve it to such a considerable degree that our lives become a lot more peaceful. This is where meditation comes in. www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 Transience. This law is simple. It says “everything changes.” It shouldn’t be too hard to live by because most of us already know it but really, how many of us actually apply it to our mind, body or energy system? Application is the only thing that matters with regard to knowledge. Leaving knowledge on the bookshelf 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 not found in knowing but in doing. Our actions define us and our reality, not what we have stuffed our brains full with, but most of us completely ignore the Law of Transience, despite knowing it. Every time we cling on to people, objects, situations and our self image, we thumb our noses at it, as if we believe our desires can somehow be permanently sustained in an ever-changing world. Where do you think fear comes from? It is the feeling that arises in us when we expect something we currently possess to change in such a way as is undesirable. So, we fear sickness, unemployment, debt, divorce, being late, poverty, criticism, embarrassment, spiders and all manner of other projections that stem from a desire to permanently keep what we have or permanently avoid what we don’t have. Why should we fear a natural phenomenon, unless we are not truly conscious of it? Fear is only a lack of wisdom dulling our faith in the present moment. Why do we know that everything changes and yet expend so much of our lives fighting it; clinging to what we want and pushing so hard at what we don’t want, as if we are capable of creating a life divided from the very laws of nature that brought us to this earth in the first place. That isn’t wisdom. This approach to living is the basic nature of all human suffering. It is the desire to become something that you are not when the fact of the matter is plain and simply this: none of us really know who we really are. We don’t look. We don’t observe. So how 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 solutions don’t work when the person we think we are doesn't really want or need any of the things we create for ourselves in our desperate pursuit of happiness!
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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. Then, perhaps, you will know what needs fixing and simply let it fix itself. Yes, you may have noticed the irony in that last statement. You see, you cannot fix yourself. There’s nothing broken. The observation process that occurs during meditation will teach you that, in an ever-changing, ever-evolving reality, you cannot be wrong, you cannot be broken, you cannot be in need of repair. You are simply in need of letting change happen at its own pace and in its own way, like a flower allowing itself to bloom, not through any effort, but through the natural process of being present, grounded and getting your bias and expectation out of the way! We do not live in a world of straight forward right and wrong, good or bad, broken or whole. We live in a world that tells us in all manner of subtle and gross ways just two very simple things: 1. You’d be better off if you did a little less of that 2. You’d be better off if you did a little more of this And it sends its messages through suffering. You cannot listen to those messages tomorrow or yesterday, you can only listen to them now. You cannot create anything for yourself last year or next month either. Only now. But how many of us are truly wise in what it means to be now and what life would be like if we truly were? Very, very few. But it is quite obvious even to the uninitiated that if everything happens now and we spend 30% of our time in the future, and 30% of our time in the past, we are leaving only 40% of our potential to create here and now. It is like buttering only 40% of your bread. That is not enough to be genuinely happy. It may not even be enough to be slightly cheerful. 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
1
Herbert Benson, M.D. Harvard Medical School, author of The Relaxation Response
2
Dr. Gregg Jacobs, Psychologist, Harvard
3
Journal of the American Medical Association
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
• 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. This change 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 meditating for more than five years were physiologically 12 to 15 years younger than nonmeditators.7
The list goes on and on. The medical benefits of meditation are known: you will attain greater wellbeing by meditating: fact. You have spent most of your life to this point practicing being there and then and wondering why suffering keeps coming along to remind 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 message would obviously become less and less. Physical pain would decrease, stress would alleviate, emotional pain would subside, threat of illness and sickness would fall away, in short; life would change and all because you paused there and then for a while and started living here and now. So, meditation is not a magical process of transformation. It is a practice that aligns your entire being in the ways of nature that most of the world is currently ignoring, 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, 4
Health, September, 1995
5
Stroke Journal, reported in Psychology Today, 2001
6
National Institutes of Health, 1996
7
International Journal of Neuroscience, 1982
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 any of 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 be anything. It is about finally allowing yourself to be who you are, perfect, light and magnificent. It’s an effortless process that requires just a little effort.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 at that time 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. Fo r a n y o n e s t a r t i n g 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 application other than as superstition but 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. What is clear in our world is that you cannot wait for things to appear, you have to have faith that you can create them. 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 living in the present. 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 or Sarah Palin, each of us needs a figure who represents the values that we can aspire towards and has demonstrated to us that they can be lived in the human form. This gives faith a face. Then, your path is not about wondering whether it is possible but about allowing it to be realized from within. Part of this process of faith is setting up a space that meets the needs of your meditation practice. 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. www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
Many people that come to see me and my wife, Koong, are ungrounded, meaning that the foundations of their life are shaky. They may have had a difficult childhood or feel insecure, but much of this will be down to their home. If you have a home that doesn’t feel home, like a building with weak foundations, this complicates your energetic foundation and creates great uncertainty. Making a nice meditation space is a great way to fashion a home brimming with your nurturing energy, plus the nurturing energy of those people you believe in most. Everyone can set up a meditation space. You don’t need a spare room or a separate area to do it. You just need a little ingenuity and creativity to put things in the space where you will sit and practice. Of course, if you do have a s p a r e r o o m , t h a t ’s fantastic, but don’t give up just because you don’t have the space. It’s an excuse. Bring together a collection of those things that inspire you and find a table, shelf or top of a cabinet where you can leave them relatively undisturbed. This becomes your little shrine. You can add incense and candles (taking care not to burn down the entire community in the process) and anything else that kindles feelings of attainment, aspiration, and motivation. Our shrine at home in Thailand is a set of shelves that contain things that Koong and I respect and admire as spiritual guides and mentors. We have things from many faiths on these shelves, from Buddhism to Hinduism, Christianity to Islam; items of faith that bring us into our spiritual space. When we look at them they remind us of something important and motivate us to want to emulate the values that the person or object embodies in our mind. This is a powerful foundation for any practice. It is hard enough trying to maintain your practice without believing that people have been there before you. You start out knowing that what they have attained is possible. You can do it. That’s what a shrine says to me. I hope it will say the same and more to you. It is important that your shrine helps you generate the sensation of support for your practice and that your statues, pictures or objects of faith inspire you in some way to be committed to the process of change that occurs overtime you sit and observe yourself.
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Have you Discovered Michael’sThat Other Books Yet? A Practical Guide to Meditation Really Works “Provolution – A Guide to Changing the World Through Personal Evolution” and “Equanimous - A Channeled Dialog of Why You are Here and What You Can Do About It Right Now!” are both out now. For more information please visit Michael’s
Practical Essentials of Meditation Times to Meditate If you want to change you 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 selfloathing. 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 sleep. 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.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
F i n a l l y, h o w l o n g should you meditate? Well, it is up to you, but I would recommend at least 20-30 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 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 you energy.
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. First of these is that 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 mind gets 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 can be 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 are hard to impossible for beginners. If you start young, however, it is a lot easier! 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 of excruciating knee or back pain when there are easier ways to become acquainted with the practice
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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. 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 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-soslightly 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 designed especially 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 takes your 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
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
temperature of your meditation space. It is also preferable to wear natural fibers whenever possible as human-made fibers are not 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 to find 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 and see 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’s cross-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 have chosen. 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. Stretch your back, swivel your arms, move your hips until any kinks are ironed out and relax into your posture. Keep your head slightly back, as if it is resting on your next, not pushed forward or artificially back. Due to its weight, having your head forward or backwards can unbalance you and create tension. Be aware of whether you are pushing out your chest too. You shouldn’t be. Finally, slightly open your mouth and push your tongue gently to your palette and against your teeth. It should feel quite natural to rest in there without any effort.
Creating Ambience None of these things are necessary, of course, if you live beside a beach, in a forest or on a mountain. Just go outside and sit down! Nature is the ultimate meditation support as, in effect, all flora is meditating at all times. You don’t need better companions than that! However, for those of us who live in the smoke and choke of a city or don’t have the luxury of a rock to sit on in some national park, creating the right ambience is a nice way to give your meditation a little boost. www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
I always like to have a shower just before I meditate. This is important to me because meditation is about listening to what is called your ‘higher self’, so I want to respect that. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, my mother used to say, although she’ll probably claim that I made that up, which I did, but never mind, it’s still a fair point. Creating little rituals that are significant to you can help to create an ambience and an air that what you are doing with your meditation is a significant part of your day. It is. It is not something to get out of the way. It is not something to hurry through. It should be respected or it will quickly descend into being no more meaningful than taking a pill for your headache. What you are about to do is listen to the essential nature of yourself. There is really no higher purpose or more powerful act than that. Respect it. Prior to taking my shower, I like to light a candle under my oil burner and add the burner an oil that is suitable for how I am feeling. If I am feeling a little low in energy, lethargic or sleepy I may add peppermint, rosemary or lemon, for example, or if I want to enhance the depth of my relaxation, ylang ylang or orminis flower (camomile) are useful. There are many possibilities and a good list can be found in our shop at The Provolution Center. Then, when I return, the meditation space smells inviting and relaxing, just what I need to get going. Some people like to perform a little ritual before starting to meditate. This is a personal issue as it may relate to a religious prayer or rite, all of which are cool as long as they get you into that space where your mission is the awareness of now. Any methods that help refine the ambience towards being more aware, concentrated and focussed will help. I like to light incense for my Buddha, respecting what he attained within the human form. When we look at the attainments of these beings in this way, we begin to realize they only did what we too are capable of doing. When you come back next day and have had a crappy 24 hours, don’t fret that you didn’t live up to the highest values, principles or actions of your master. Turn to them once more for inspiration and guidance. They will never say no. They will never turn you away. Only you can choose to walk away from them but they will always give more when you ask to receive.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 w a s better than o n e 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 my diligence, 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 expect a learning 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 far more attachment than when you are feeling bliss.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 the mountain that will launch you and 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 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 it and 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/nonattainment. I understand that this may be anathema to some people. We have trained our minds to be goal 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 conditioning feel ‘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’s anybody’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 be less than perfect.
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Have you Discovered Michael’sThat Other Books Yet? A Practical Guide to Meditation Really Works “Provolution – A Guide to Changing the World Through Personal Evolution” and “Equanimous - A Channeled Dialog of Why You are Here and What You Can Do About It Right Now!” are both out now. For more information please visit Michael’s
Barriers to Meditation You will encounter and How to Deal with Them 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 and 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 kid playing the trumpet. Of course, you could break off your meditation midway 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. It is imperative that your meditation space is as unpolluted as possible with outside interference. Turn off your mobile phone. Unplug the land line. Switch off TV and radio, make the environment as unpolluted with distractions as you can. This will help. However, 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 to meditating 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 for a local mosque blaring out across the neighborhood, and a host of early morning delivery trucks 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 your 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 truck 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
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
cannot change the outside world, and if it keeps entering your meditation, embrace it rather than feeling the frustration of continually failing to exclude it.
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. If you do this, you will note that pain changes too and has many qualities that we do not usually recognize in our panic to be rid of it. In effect, your senses will always be trying to seek pleasure in one form or another. It is the way we have been trained to think and feel, so during meditation, why should they stop? Well, it is important to help them stop because seeking pleasure through sensory objects is exactly the kind of attachment that causes suffering. In effect, seeking pleasure through the senses is like taking out a loan. 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 something else to from which to derive our pleasure. Thus, we must 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 which 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, never ending, always taking out the loan and repaying it with sadness that it is gone or emptiness that must be filled again with the objects of my desire. So, these sensations are like addictions that our mind clings to. We keep feeding the senses and so we keep going through the same cycle of suffering. Of course, when we start meditating, these things don’t just stop. It is not that easy. They 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. The mind keeps asking to have the senses stimulated when all you are doing is simply watching what is happening within your mind, body and energy without judgment, without clinging, without pushing away. This takes practice. The mind doesn’t want to give up its pleasures but it is only when we can let go of these sensual attachments that real peace can break out from the war of desire.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
Ill Will Ill will is like hatred towards people or objects. There are meditations that are specifically designed to help us grow our heart energy through love and forgiveness, but 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 distract you from it. 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 breath like 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 our own breath or body parts that we may be using as our meditation object, but we can and we may
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 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 lack of 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 that enough 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 of goal 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 three 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 exercises, feeling what you are doing 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 www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 and shake 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 a place with better or different energy, such as in the garden or a local park rather than in the confines of four walls. Energy 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 to focus. So they give up. 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 and realize 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 a creation 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 must avoid 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 www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 is doubt. 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”, which instantly places doubt and expectation on the whole endeavor. What is clear about meditation is that starting with doubt 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. M a n y p e o p l e m a y fi n d t h a t 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 the meditation 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 realistic interpretation of what you are experiencing. It is merely your ego arising with the objection in order to demand attention. It tells you “Wouldn’t it be better if you stopped this nonsense and went to see a movie instead”, when it wants sensual stimulation. It may say “This will never work. How can doing nothing create something?”, when it
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wants you to be full of doubt and to give up your gentle diffusion of the energy upon which ego thrives. There are many ways, and 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 even some 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 create them in the 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 diffuse its 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 to your 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. Remember the great teachers who were just human beings practicing what you are practicing. They had monkey mind too. They had doubt. They had ill will. But 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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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
Ten Basic Meditations The following is a list of ten meditations that I have found very useful throughout my meditation life. It is by no means an exhaustive list but is intended to offer you a nice cross-section of choices when choosing your meditations. You will find some that you like, some that suit you and others that you don’t like and are unsuited. Bear in mind that this will change as your practice progresses. I have chopped and changed 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 be too strict or too lax. You should be compassionate with yourself and your abilities. Through love and diligence will you progress best, not austerity or apathy.
1) Mindfulness of Breathing It is said that the Buddha himself attained enlightenment through this meditation. Needless to say then, it is one of the most powerful, 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: 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
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 of 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 it 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. 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 breath where you cannot follow it. Do not be frustrated by this, but keep observing. Over time these gaps will be filled as the subtle nuances of feeling 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. A little trick that has been very useful to me over the years is to begin this process by counting the breath in my mind in rounds of ten. 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 of ten until the mind calms down, or you can conduct the whole meditation counting. It is up to you. As you progress and grow your practice you may wish to stop the counting and work with pure awareness. But it’s a great tool. Part 2: Watching the Breath Enter, Watching it Leave You can also watch the breath at the two 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. www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 top lip. 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 form one to the next as you master each stage or choosing which is best for you and sticking with it for some time. It is really your choice.
2.Candle Meditation The Candle meditation is an 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 at about 45 degrees from looking straight ahead. You then adopt a sitting meditation position, close your eyes and then slightly open them to reveal the burning candle. This 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 or even fairly numb. Eventually, as you focus your attention on the flame, everything around it fades and you being to achieve a single-pointedness but don’t let be your motivation. Simply watch the mind, observe your body, observe the flame and let what will be, be.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
A variation on this is to use anything on the floor to focus upon. I used to use a crack or a mark on the floor in front of me as a meditation object, and it became a popular technique of mine. It is one way of 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 the yourself as you observe the object, the result will be the same.
3. Chakra Meditation Chakra meditation is a classic visualization technique to clean your energy field and empower your center. It is great for centering awareness in your body and to sensitize you to your true self. In your body you have 7 major energy centers called chakras. These centers respond to your emotional, physical and energetic conditions as well as i n fl u e n c e t h e m . E a c h h a s a corresponding color that, when visualized in the region of the corresponding chakra, helps to open up the energy and expand it. When all your chakras are working well and full of energy, this is a major contributing factor to good health, quality life and contented feelings. Begin your meditation by bringing you attention to your breath and conducting three rounds of breathing mindfully. 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 for yourself. 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 a grey cloud of smoke is exhausted from you, as if you are clearing your body of any old or stagnant energy that you no longer need. Spend about 3 minutes expanding the energy in that area. Cycle through the other 6 chakras like this:
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
2. Sacral Chakra: Orange - Located one inch below your navel Responsive to your sense of blame & guilt, money & sex, power & control, creativity, and ethics and honor in relationships 3. Emotion Chakra: Yellow - Located in your solar plexus just under the sternum - Responsive to your sense of trust, fear & intimidation, selfesteem, self-confidence, self-respect, care of oneself and others, responsibility for making decisions, sensitivity to criticism and personal honor 4. Heart Chakra: Green - Located in the center of your breast plate Responsive to your sense of love & hatred, resentment & bitterness, grief & anger, self-centeredness, loneliness & commitment, forgiveness & compassion, hope 5. Throat Chakra: Blue - Located in 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: Purple - Located 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: Golden white - Located on the top of your 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
4. Awareness of Being Awareness of being is simple, easy to practice and applicable virtually anywhere. All your 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. Start by concentrating on your toes. How do they feel? Can you feel anything? Concentrate on them, patiently, with intention, until you can. Now feel the soles of your feet and your toes together. Can you feel the blood pumping through your feet, or your socks cutting into your ankles? Now add your calves, then your shins, and slowly work your way through your body parts, becoming more and more aware of where tension exists, pain, coldness, hotness etc. If you feel tension, pain, heat, cold, it doesn’t matter , just examine it. Don’t judge what you are feeling or become despondent if you feel nothing - just move on to the next body part.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 e x p a n d i n g awa r e n e s s o f e v e r y 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 aware of who you are. This awareness brings with it a sense of peace in the present moment where there is nothing to worry about or fret over. You can practice this in just 60 seconds and, if you practice three of four times a day, you will soon be able to ‘remember’ the peace and awareness associated with it and recall the feeling instantly whenever you feel ungrounded or upset.
5. Loving Kindness Meditation Loving kindness is the act of growing compassion. Nobody deserves your anger or hatred, certainly not your poor heart that, each time you practice hanging onto your hatred or bitterness, holds on to the resulting energy and is affected by it. 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 you 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.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
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 some forgiveness 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. • Start by getting comfortable, perhaps practicing 5 minutes of mindfulness of breathing or being in order to get yourself in the zone. • Now, begin breathing green light into your heart. Visualize with every inbreath, 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 5 minute 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 yo u s aw o n t h e b u s t h i s 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 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 on this 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 into your 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.
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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 takes continuous effort and practice. After a while, you may just begin meeting people with an open mind and, more importantly for you, an open heart.
6.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 with Awareness of Doing, together they can be a very complete awareness regime that stretches across your whole day. At first, walking meditation should be conducted very slowly. 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. When you start this meditation, begin with a four point process of 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 on each part, feeling with as much attention as you can muster how each part of the process feels. At first, you can make this very mechanical and be conscious of the four parts, but as you get used to the meditation, it will be more flowing and you will see that each part of the practice actually flows into the next in one fluid movement. As with all meditations, walking and the sensation of walking is merely the object by which you grow awareness of change and movement.
7.Awareness of Doing There is a great line in the 2010 Karate Kid movie where the master 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 upset 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
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
learned many of the movements of Kung Fu and can fight effectively. When asked how he had learned this by picking up and wearing his coat the master explains, “There is Kung Fu in everything.” So it is true with meditation. There is the potential to meditate in everything that we do, because the Martial Arts and meditation both serve to realize the same insights into the nature of energy and movement. 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 an 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. 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? 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 your are eating, eat. The next time you are cleaning dishes, clean dishes. Start extending your 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 in performing it with awareness and you will find pleasure in everything that you do, not just temporary pleasure through sensual stimulation.
8. Grounding Grounding is a quick easy way to reconnect with the present moment. Strong emotional outpourings un-ground you, as if you lose yourself in the emotion and this brief meditation brings you back to your strong foundation. 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,
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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, into your shoulders and head and down through your hands. 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. This is how you learn to change a reaction, which is automated and insensitive, into an observation, which occurs with awareness and sensitivity.
9.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 exclusively on developing our physical energy, which 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 that connects us with our higher self, and begin to draw energy into our system through the source.
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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 use the 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. To begin this exercise you focus 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 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, just keep breathing and following the energy. With the inbreath feel the energy flow into the ball in your stomach 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 all your senses. I used to love doing this meditation riding my motorbike around the countryside of Phuket, breathing in the awesome power of nature!
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
10. Wellness Breathing This final meditation is one Koong and I use with every client who sees us for our Healing Paths 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? 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 and does. 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. Wellness breathing is very simple. Firstly you visualize that you are breathing in the brightest white light you have ever experienced. This is the light of healing and body cleansing. Draw your breath all the way down into your belly button, as you do with Mindfulness of Breathing, and begin creating a ball of white light that expands every time you breath outwards. Gradually build the white light until it fills your entire body from head to toe. The next step is to continue breathing in this bright, 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. As you connect to the issue, visualize which part of the body is holding it. Don’t worry about being too accurate here, use your intuition (yes, this means it is not your brain working it out, but the first thing that comes into your head. You will be right more often than not.) Visualize the smoke being drawn from that area and breathed out.
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
Continue with breathing in light and breathing out smoke, either as part of a meditation or as the entire session.
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Have you Discovered Michael’s Other Books Yet?
A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works “Provolution – A Guide to Changing the World Through Personal Evolution” and “Equanimous - A Channeled Dialog of Why You are Here and What You Can Do About It Right Now!” are both out now. For more information please visit Michael’s
Final Notes Meditation is just part of a life that is led in wellbeing. Imagine meditation as the practice before the application for the next 23.5 hours and you will see what I mean. It is not the end. It is the means to the end. 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 and watch 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, I guarantee you, doing the same things in the same way will not get you different results. A better way of ensuring success is to build yourself a Share Circle. You can find out all about this from the Provolution Center website. It is an entirely free and no-strings-attached offering from 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 a shower. 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 www.michaelpaulstephens.com
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A Practical Guide to Meditation That Really Works
and more and more people realize that they are missing some vital ingredient to contribute towards a longer term 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, think about becoming a member of our Share Circles Forum on the Michael Paul Stephens Site or send me an email. Wellness wishes,
Michael Stephens February 2011
THIS GUIDE IS FREE! Please Circulate it to Friends and Acquaintances who May Wish to Start Meditating! STAY IN TOUCH WITH MIKE, PROVOLUTION, SHARE CIRCLES & OTHER FREE SPIRITUAL RESOURCES BY VISITING: Website: www.michaelpaulstephens.com Mike’s Blog – “Provolution Now” Michael Paul Stephens on Facebook
HELP US ALL PROVOLVE TOGETHER!
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