Your True Potential S1, Ep1, Accompanying notes
Meditation.
Meditation is easier than you think. To get a quick taste of meditation, follow these instructions:
1. Find a quiet place and sit comfortably with your back relatively straight.
2. Take a few deep breaths and close your eyes. Relax your body as much as you can.
3. Select a word or phrase that has some special personal or spiritual meaning for you – for example, “Don’t worry, be happy!” “I am perfect” “I am loved”, etc..
4. Begin to breath through your nose (if you’re able to) and as you breathe quietly repeat the word or phrase to yourself – try silently repeating it to yourself in your mind. If you get distracted, just come back to your breathing and the repetition of the word or phrase.
5. Try to keep the meditation going for five minutes or more. Once you’ve finished, slowly open your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Then slowly get up and go about your day.
How did you feel? Did you find it difficult to stay focused? With regular meditation practice, you will find that you gradually get less distracted and are able to meditation for longer periods, if you wish.
The following meditation, which has counterparts in Yoga and Buddhism, helps reestablish contact with the body by drawing attention gently from one part to another. Because it cultivates awareness and also relaxes the muscles and internal organs, it makes a great preamble to more formal meditation practice. Allow at least twenty minutes to complete.
1. Lie on your back on a comfortable surface – but don’t get too comfortable! Unless you plan to fall asleep.
2. Take a few moments to feel your body as a whole, including the places where it connects with the surface of the floor or bed.
3. Bring your attention to your toes. Allow yourself to feel any and all sensations in this area. If you don’t reel anything, then just feel “not feeling anything!”. As you breathe, imagine that you are breathing in and out of your toes (if this feels weird or uncomfortable, just breathe in your usual way).
4. When you’re done with your toes, move on to your soles, heels, the tops of your feet, and your ankles in turn, feeling each part in the same way that you felt your toes.
Take your time. This part of the exercise is not to achieve anything, not even relaxation, but to be as fully present as possible wherever you are.
5. Gradually move up your body, staying at least three to four breaths with each part.
Follow this approximate order: lower legs, knees, thighs, hips, pelvis, lower abdomen, lower back, solar plexus, upper back, chest, shoulders. Now focus on fingers, hands, and arms on both sides, and then the neck and throat, chin and jaw, face, back of your head, and top of the head.
By the time you reach the top of your head, you may feel as though boundaries between you and the rest of the world have become more fluid – or have totally melted away. At the same time you may feel silent and still – free from your usual restlessness or agitation.
6. Rest there for a few moments – then gradually bring your attention back to your body as a whole.
7. Wiggle your toes, move your fingers, slowly open your eyes, rock from side to side, then gently sit up.
8. Take a few moments to stretch and reacquaint yourself with the world around you, before standing up and going about your day.
The mantra.
The relative repetition of a Mantra tend to calm the mind and relax the body. But the earliest practitioners of Mantra had more spiritual intentions, such as invoking the power of a particular deity, cultivating and strengthening positive qualities, or achieving union with Divine reality.
Though the term Mantra (meaning “mind protection”) derives from the Sanskrit, the practice appears in one form or another in virtually every religion. Sufis repeat the phrase La ila ‘ha, il alaha (“There is nothing but God”), Christians say the “Our Father” or the prayer of the heart (“Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me”), Buddhists intone sacred invocations like om mani padme hum or namu amida butsu, and Hindus repeat one of the many praises or names of God.
Essentially, Mantras are sounds infused with numinous or spiritual power by a teacher or a tradition. When you repeat a Mantra – either aloud, under your breath, or mentally (actually considered the most potent method) – you resonate with a particular spiritual frequency and with the power and blessings the sound has accumulated over the years.
The practice of Mantras focuses and stabilises the mind and protects it from unwanted distractions. For this reason, Mantra recitation often accompanies more formal meditation practices. To experiment with Mantra, just choose a word or phrase with deep personal or spiritual meaning for you. (Traditionally, you would receive a particular Mantra direct from your teacher). Then sit quietly and repeat it again and again, allowing your mind to rest on the sound and the feeling it evokes. When your mind wanders, just come back to your Mantra.
Contemplating the stars.
In his book, Jewish Meditation, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan describes a traditional technique based on biblical verse “Lift your eyes on high and see who created these [stars], the One who brings out their host by number. He call them all by name…….” (Isiah 40;26):
1. On a clear night, sit or lie comfortably outside, gazing up at the stars.
2. While repeating a Mantra, focus your attention on the stars as though you are probing them to reveal the mystery behind them.
You can use the traditional Jewish Mantra I’bono shel olaw to help you deepen your concentration and your sense of the sacred. Or feel free to use a Mantra of your own choosing.
As Rabbi Kaplan puts it, you are “calling to God in the depths of the heavens, seeking to find Him beyond the stars, beyond the very limits of time and space.”.
3. Remain absorbed in your contemplation for as long as you wish.
According to Rabbi Kaplan, this meditation “can bring a person to an overwhelming deep spiritual experience.”.
More advanced meditation preparation.
To prepare for more advanced meditation practices, Sufis often begin with a Darood – a recitation of a sacred phase coordinated with the breath. The American-born Sufi master Samuel Lewis, who died in 1971, taught the following exercise:
1. Start to walk in a rhythmic fashion and synchronise your breathing with your pace – four steps for each inhalation and four steps for each exhalation.
2. As you walk, repeat the phrase “toward the one” – one syllable per step with a silent space on the fourth step.
Walking develops and strengthens the rhythm of the breath.
3. Continue for as long as you wish, with wholehearted attention.
“The Sufi practices living in the breath. 24 hours a day,” says Shabda Kahn, a Sufi teacher who studied with Lewis.
Living in harmony with your Meditation.
Over the centuries, meditators have discovered that how you act, what you think about, and which qualities you cultivate can have an immediate impact on the depth and stability of your meditation. The more meditation you do, the more sensitive you become to how some activities support or even enhance your meditation – and others discourage or disturb it.
There is a never-ending feedback loop between formal meditation and everyday life. How you live affects how you meditate, and how you meditate affects how you live.
With this in mind, here are ten basic guidelines for living in harmony with the spirit of meditation;
- Be mindful of cause and effect Notice how your actions – and the feelings and thoughts that accompany them – influence others and your own state of mind.
- Reflect on impermanence and the preciousness of life. The Tibetans say, death is real, it can come without warning. By reflecting on the rarity it is to be human at a time when physical comforts are relatively plentiful and the practice of meditation and other methods to reduce stress are so readily available, you may feel more motivated to take advantage of the opportunities you have.
- Realise the limitations of worldly success. Through meditation, you can achieve a level of inner success that’s based on joy and tranquility rather than material gain, although if followed correctly in the second half of this series, you’ll find that the techniques I show you can enable you to achieve all you desire, so long as it doesn't intentionally harm anyone.
- Practice nonattachment. Here the point is not to be indifferent or to disengage from the world, but to notice how attachment to the outcome of your actions affects your meditation – and your peace of mind.
- Cultivate patience and perseverance. Meditation practice requires the willingness to keep on keeping on – you’ll reap the greatest benefits if you meditate regularly, day after day.
- Simplify your life. The busier and more complicated your life, the more agitated your mind will be when you meditate – and the greater your stress level.
- Live with honesty and integrity. Meditation mirrors you back to you, and what you see may motivate you to actualise more of your positive potential.
- Face situations with the courage of a warrior. “Meditation Warriors” cultivate the courage to drop their aggression and defensiveness, face their fears, and open their hearts – to themselves and others. Meditation will teach you how. Ultimately, every moment becomes an opportunity to practice.
- Trust the technology of meditation – and yourself. People have been meditating successfully for thousands of years – for longer than technology has been about. With meditation we’re talking low-tech technology, something anyone can do – like breathing and paying attention.
- Dedicate your practice to the benefit of others. This is essential for meditation that is life-changing. The Tibetans call this badhichitta “awakened heart”. The impact of pray on healing has been widely studied and shows that prayers that request specific results are not nearly as effective as those that ask for the best for all concerned – we’ll look at the power of prayer as part of Series 2.
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