Do you often wish that you could just stop your thoughts and experience a little peace of mind? Learning to meditate can do just that for you. If you have ever had doubts about your ability to be successful at meditation, this book will likely change your mind. And by beginning a meditation practice, you will change your mind—literally. As you will learn, meditation is not simply sitting and doing nothing; it is actively training your mind to stay focused on the object of your meditation, and then, as your mind quiets, to open to expanded awareness. Although the experience of one session is enjoyable and beneficial in and of itself, if you develop a daily practice, even after a few weeks you will experience noticeable transformations in your life, including an increased ability to concentrate, diminished stress and anxiety, greater patience, and diminished restlessness, to name just a few of the benefits. You will also notice greater clarity and discernment in making choices throughout the day that comes from tapping into your inner knowing and wisdom beyond your mind.
This book will give you insights and the tools you need to calm your busy mind and open to another dimension of your being: calm and spacious awareness. Meditation cultivates a domain of your consciousness that is always available, but that we are normally unaware of. Through this book we will explore what meditation is and isn’t, the origins of meditation, and various styles of meditation, so that you will be able to find the style and technique that works best for you to gain the wonderful benefits that come from incorporating meditation into your life.
A Little Bit about Me
I am a professional astrologer and metaphysician, and have been for over thirty-five years. I have also been a yoga and meditation teacher and, with my wife, Laurie, have led many groups to sacred sites around the world for a week of exploring, metaphysical studies, yoga, and meditation. My own experiences with transcendent states started very early in life and in a most unfriendly way, with a recurring energy nightmare that would wake me up in a state of panic throughout my youth.
I call it an “energy” nightmare because there were never any images or a story line, as with other dreams—only a swirling vortex of energy that scared the bejesus out of me! It could happen several nights a week: Shortly after falling off to sleep, I would see this swirling vortex of energy above me and feel myself getting pulled into it. As soon as I would feel a surge of energy from the vortex, I could feel it being more powerful than anything I could control, and a terrible and all too familiar feeling of panic would come over me. This would wake me up with a shock, and I would find myself sitting up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. After sitting there stunned for a while, I would eventually go back to sleep, and fortunately these energy dreams never occurred twice in the same night.
This went on until I was fourteen, when a totally unique encounter I had with this energy vortex changed everything. On this particular night, I had fallen asleep listening to a Seattle University basketball game, my favorite local team, and when the vortex appeared, instead of pulling back in fear, I surrendered to the energy. As I became engulfed in the power, I found myself hovering above the game I had been listening to when I fell asleep, and I was able to send the power to the Seattle players. It was exhilarating! Basketball players who can jump over their opponents have a decided advantage, and my super-charged Seattle players could do just that and more, easily winning, to my delight.
From that night on, these still frequent dreams with the energy vortex became welcome encounters that I grew to treasure. I loved the sense of limitless possibilities they gave me—far better than the previous sense of panic, which never returned. I grew to like these special dreams so much that I became curious as to whether I could invoke the same feeling in the daytime.
Experimenting, I somehow found a way of working with my imagination that would invoke the same experience as my energy dreams. I would close my eyes and imagine a cartoon image of a rocket ship, like something I might have seen in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. I would then see myself standing on the ground next to the rocket, looking at another “me” who was sitting in the rocket and simultaneously looking at the me on the ground.
I would then feel the rocket begin to take off and maintain watching myself both in the rising rocket and on the ground—both me’s watching each other. I could feel the sensation of rising up as the two me’s separated from each other, and before long I could feel the familiar spaciousness of my dream state. I developed a measure for knowing if I had gotten to that state or not: if I couldn’t tell if it was an inch or a mile between my lips, I knew I was there.
This practice became a secret treasure that I kept to myself throughout high school and that I would take refuge in during stolen moments when it looked like I was taking a nap. I had never heard anyone talk about such experiences, so I kept it private. In my early college years I had become interested in Eastern mysticism and was reading Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, a book of Zen parables by Paul Reps. After the parables, there is a section called “The Gateless Gate” with a number of Zen meditation exercises, and I decided to try a few. Following the instructions, I focused on my posture and my breath and practiced watching my thoughts. To my amazement, within a few minutes I found myself experiencing the same expansive awareness and feeling of separation from my body that I did in my secret place!
This experience blew my mind. I had thought my inner journeys were unique to me, so I was amazed to discover that this state is well known in other traditions, complete with training available to refine this skill. I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store and have been studying and experimenting with meditation ever since.
I haven’t always been regular with my meditation practice, but I have learned that when I am out of sorts for too long, overly impatient with others, and easily agitated, it is a clear sign that I need to get back to meditating regularly. And when I do, the spaciousness I experience in meditation comes back into my life again. There is more space in me to allow others to be as they are, more space in me to allow life to unfold at its pace.
About Meditation and This Book
Everyone can learn to meditate. We will start right at the beginning with what meditation is, to give those new to it a strong foundation to start their inner exploration. There will be various exercises and practices to engage in throughout the book to give you the actual experience of what is being described. Many different styles and applications of meditation will be explored, and with just a little training, your skill at achieving a calm mind to explore your inner world will improve.
First off, in learning to observe your mind, you will become more familiar with your inner terrain and begin to see the patterns of your mind that distract your inner calm. Knowing your way around your inner world lets you know when you are off-track and what adjustments you need to make to stay in a state of calm awareness. Over time, these adjustments you make to retrain your mind produce long-term structural changes in your brain and its circuitry.
There have been many advances in our understanding of the brain with recent discoveries in neuroscience. In the early 1980s when I was pursuing a master of science degree in experimental metaphysics, the science for understanding the intuitive arts was still rather sketchy. Most of the studies at that time were based on the statistical probability of accurately predicting events, rather than what was actually occurring in the brain.
Up until recently, it was commonly believed that the brain quits growing and evolving by early adulthood. Advances in modern technology’s ability to map and measure what is actually going on in the brain have revealed that the brain possesses the capacity to reorganize neural networks, create new connections, and even create new neurons throughout life. This is popularly called the brain’s plasticity—its ability to grow, adapt, and even change in shape and size.
Furthermore, it was previously believed that consciousness was to be found in the neural circuitry of the brain. With the practice of meditation, you will discover that your consciousness is larger than your mind. The emerging new understanding is that your brain is secondary to your consciousness. Your consciousness is larger than your brain and can choose how it operates. As you develop in consciousness, you begin to see your brain as presenting possibilities that you can choose to act on or not. The “you” that can make choices that your mind presents as options is the “you” that you get in touch with in meditation.
You are not limited by the hardwiring of your brain. By practicing meditation regularly, you create new neural networks in your brain, making it easier and easier to sustain a state of calm awareness within while engaging in life more openly.
The way to measure your progress with your meditation practice is by gauging your ability to stay in a state of open awareness throughout the day, the openness you develop for other people and life itself, and your growing patience with others and yourself. These are valuable measures. In some of your meditations you may receive incredible flashes of insight or magical visions, which are welcome visitors that come of their own accord. More often, meditation is training yourself to experience a calm mind and actually changing the way your brain works. We now know that “firing is wiring” in the neural networks of the brain: neurons that fire together form neural networks that become ingrained as habitual responses. It is also true that when neurons no longer fire together, their network dissolves, liberating you from ingrained reactionary patterns. By training yourself to stay anchored in your peaceful, open awareness, this habit becomes ingrained in the neural networks of your brain and begins to be the norm.
One of the benefits that
you will grow to appreciate is
how your meditation practice
can have a centering effect
on those you interact with,
even if they are not meditators.
One of the benefits that you will grow to appreciate is how your meditation practice can have a centering effect on those you interact with, even if they are not meditators. There was a time when my sons were in school that I grew to realize this. My wife and I are blessed with great children who mostly knew how to stay out of trouble while growing up. However, there were patches of time when chaos and trouble seemed to abound—difficulties with teachers, scuffles, car mishaps, and the like. At that time in my life I was a periodic meditator, and it was during one of those tough spots for the family that I realized these times of difficulty seemed to coincide with times when I had drifted away from my meditation practice. Realizing there was no center in the family chaos, I returned to my practice of centering myself with meditation.
It wasn’t as if I pictured myself sending balanced, centered energy to my family; I simply returned to my own work of calming my mind and sitting in peaceful awareness, knowing my family was already in my heart and energetically connected to me. Returning to my meditation practice always seemed to help bring the family back into harmony.
Understanding Resistance to Meditation
Why is it that many people believe they are not able to meditate? Everyone can learn to meditate and everyone can benefit from the practice. Let’s examine some of the reasons people give for not taking up meditation.
“I Can’t Find the Time to Meditate”
This is the most common reason given by those who are interested in starting a meditation practice but keep putting it off. Where is there time to sit and do nothing when there isn’t enough time already to get everything done that needs to be done? In our modern hurry, hurry, rush, rush world, it can seem impossible to take time away from all of the busyness to stop and meditate. But consider how much time in the day is wasted in idle distractions and worrying about the past or future rather than effectively focusing on the situation at hand. How much time is spent in escapist activities or simply getting lost in social media as a way of escaping the here and now?
There is a paradox that meditators discover: time spent in inner practice is easily regained throughout the day. Your concentration and focus improve, allowing you to get more done in less time with improved quality by harvesting all of the time that is normally lost from your mind distracting you from the immediate task at hand. With a little bit of training, the mind is easily called back from its wanderings to stay present with focused attention.
Outside of the time you set aside for sitting meditation practices, time for meditation can be found at traffic lights, during stalled traffic, or in endlessly slow-moving lines when you are not going anywhere anyway. Times like these are perfect for a few breathing and centering exercises, training your mind to move out of a normally agitating experience and into peaceful, calm awareness.
“My Mind Won’t Stop Thinking
When I Try to Meditate”
This most common problem is common because it is normal. The experience of having your mind distract you from your attempts to meditate with a constant flow of seemingly important thoughts is a reality everyone deals with and must be understood for it not to be an obstacle. Many people never get out of their minds and believe they are whatever their thoughts tell them about themselves, for good or bad. Although you cannot stop your mind from thinking thoughts, you can train yourself not to follow them and their fleeting opinions. As you sit with your practice of quieting your mind, know that thoughts will come, but set your attention to return to the object of your meditation, like following your breath or repeating your mantra.
As you continue with the practice of noticing the voices in your head but not paying attention to them, they eventually quiet—somewhat. You begin to identify with the spiritual essence of your unchanging awareness as your true self and realize that all of the passing thoughts are just that—passing thoughts that can’t even be held on to—nothing substantial to thoughts at all.
Imagine that your mind is going to be throwing sticks in front of you as you attempt to meditate. Do you want to be like a young dog chasing after every moving stick, or do you want to train yourself to be like a lion, maintaining your composure while observing the fleeting sticks and being selective about what you want to pursue? Another useful image is to consider yourself to be the flight controller in your mind. Your mind has all of these incoming and outgoing flights of thought, but you, as the controller, do not have to get on board or follow any of this traffic. If something critical presents itself, you can jump into action. Otherwise, you are just observing the coming in and going out of all the flights.
Meditation is training yourself not to listen to all the yammering voices in your head so that you can hear the still, quiet voice of your Higher Self. It does take a bit of courage and curiosity to let go of the mind’s tendency to seek to figure everything out, and to trust that life will be just fine without your mind directing it.
“Meditation Seems Boring”
The fact that meditation can seem boring is another common reason people don’t take up the practice. Compared to the mind’s fascinations, training yourself to sit with your breath and focus your attention on the here and now can seem dull. Allow this to be. Meditating without a goal of achieving any special state of consciousness can be very helpful. Goals for why to take up a meditation practice (such as to experience peace of mind, relieve stress and anxiety, develop greater patience, or other valuable motivations) are helpful in the background, but it is best to let go of those goals while actually in your practice. Take a “nothing special here” approach and sit with the feeling of this being boring—just the truth of you and your thoughts in the present moment.
Boredom sets in when the mind anticipates something more exciting than sitting in silence and it begins to scan for possible future peak experiences. While your mind is anticipating some alluring, tantalizing next thing, it misses so much of the here and now between peak events. With a little practice, you begin to find fulfillment in simply sitting and no longer looking for the next peak—you start enjoying the plains and valleys as well. This has tremendous benefit throughout the day, giving you much greater patience with life as it is and increasing your ability to enjoy life’s simple pleasures along the way between peak experiences.
There is not just one type of meditation. There are many schools of thought on this inner practice, with many various techniques being taught. They all share the common basis of quieting the mind with breath and concentration, leading to a peace of mind unknown without training. Throughout this book you will have opportunities to experience firsthand various meditation techniques and styles so that you may find a practice that is most comfortable for you to experience the tremendous benefits this inner science affords—so let’s begin!