Active and Reflective
Crystal Meditation
When René Descartes wrote his groundbreaking Meditations, he coined one of the most famous expressions in all of Western philosophy: “I think, therefore I am.”
The very act of thinking, he postulated, proves that we exist. Granted, he said, we can doubt our senses, and we can doubt what our senses tell us about the world. As a result, we can doubt the reality of the world, and we can certainly doubt the existence of God. But there is no way to doubt that some kernel of our being is thinking about all we have to doubt, and that leads to one inescapable conclusion: we exist, even if nothing else does.
Happily, Descartes went on to demonstrate that if we exist, the rest of the world exists, as well, so we don’t have to worry about suddenly finding ourselves as lost, disembodied intelligences floating through the empty void of space.
While meditation can prove that you’re alive, it can also enhance the quality of your life. Meditating for just ten minutes a day will lower your heart rate, your blood pressure, and your cholesterol. You will feel calmer, more optimistic, and less anxious or fearful. You will learn faster, and remember what you have learned over longer periods of time. You will be less prone to illness and infection—and you’ll look and feel younger, too.
Basic Crystal Meditation
Before you start meditating, make sure you’re in a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted. Find a comfortable sitting position, either in a chair or on the ground. Some people like to sit on a small pillow. You can lie down, if you’re not too tired—but be careful not to fall asleep. Have a blanket handy, because after a few minutes of sitting still you might feel cold. If you are just learning how to meditate with crystals, plan to try it for just ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
Get comfortable, and pick up one of your favorite crystals. Examine it closely; look at every side, every angle, every facet and crevice. Run your fingers over its surface, and feel its weight in your hand.
Then close your eyes, and repeat the process. This time, explore the crystal with your hands while you visualize the stone in your mind’s eye. Be open to any impressions you get from the crystal. They may be visual. You might “see” images of people, places, or things in your mind’s eye. You might “hear” something—a short sentence, a snippet of conversation, or a line from a favorite song might suddenly pop into your head. You might feel a temperature change. You might smell flowers, or hear birds, taste salty sea air,
or sense a cool breeze moving across your skin. You might even feel emotions that seem to come out of nowhere and catch you by surprise.
Most people say the experiences they have while holding crystals are positive. Those experiences vary in intensity. Some are subtle, consisting of little more than a gentle sense of relaxation or a slight boost in energy. Others report feeling as though they have been taken somewhere else in place or time, with a detailed awareness of the new world around them.
If you don’t like your experience, you can stop it at any point; just open your eyes and put the crystal away. But if you like the experience—as most people do—you can recreate it whenever you wish, simply by picking up your crystal and settling down for a few more minutes of meditation.
Expanding Your Practice
Try the following crystal meditation exercises, designed to help you with two varieties of meditation: active, in which you keep your body busy so your mind can wander, and reflective, in which you quiet both your body and your mind.
Start and finish each session with a few minutes of deep breathing. When you’re through, record your insights and observations in your crystals journal.
Reflective Meditation
Reflective meditation is calming, quiet, and passive. For Westerners, it comes closest to Zen meditation, in which the goal is to forget oneself and experience the universe as a whole. Here are some reflective meditations that you can try.
Rise and fall. Lie on your back, and put a crystal on your chest or stomach. Watch the crystal rise and fall as you breathe slowly in and out.
Sit still. Sit barefoot, with the soles of your feet pressed together. Balance a crystal on your head, or balance crystals on your shoulders or your knees. Sit still, and focus only on maintaining your balance so the crystals don’t fall off.
Get to the point. Hold a quartz point to help you focus during meditation, especially if there is a pressing issue you want to think about.
Quantum leaps. While crystals certainly feel solid in your hand, spend some time imagining them on a quantum level. Feel your consciousness shrink to a subatomic level, where you can feel molecules vibrate and atoms dance to the cosmic rhythm of the universe. Picture yourself as energy, pure and simple, flowing freely in the open areas of the crystal’s atomic lattice and molecular framework. Imagine yourself as a particle, a neuron, or a quark, moving through the endless spiral dance of time and space.
Mix and match. Hold a dark crystal in one hand and a light crystal in the other. Imagine the energy rising from each one in waves of colored light, swirling and blending around you, until you feel balanced.
Color breathing. Choose a brightly colored crystal, or one with a hue that you find especially healing, soothing, or intriguing. As you hold the crystal, imagine that it is filling the air around you with its color, tinting the air with subtle tints and hues. Breathe deeply and imagine that color filling your body, oxygenating your bloodstream, moving and circulating with every breath you take and every beat of your heart. Imbue yourself from head to toe with the healing qualities of the color you hold in your hand. When you’re finished, allow the atmosphere around you to return to its normal state before you head back into your regular routine.
Moving pictures. Choose a crystal with a flat, smooth side. Imagine that as you gaze at the flat side of the stone, it starts to glow, like a projection screen. Allow images and scenes from your life to be played out on the screen, as if you were watching a movie. Be open to any visions that take shape, even if they unfold only in your mind’s eye.
Go inside. Pick up a crystal and study it carefully. Look for inclusions—trace elements of other minerals, rainbows, or veils—and notice any cracks or chips. You might feel as though you are peering into another world. You might see buildings, or landscapes, or the faces or silhouettes of people, animals, and mythical creatures.
Then imagine yourself growing smaller, or visualize the crystal growing larger. Imagine what it would be like to enter the crystal, and walk through it as if it were a great crystal cavern. Explore all of the fissures and crevices. Watch the interplay of light and shadow as sun or moonbeams bounce off its facets and travel through the stone. Enjoy your visit to a timeless world, one that was created long before you were born and will continue to exist long after you leave.
Rock on. As you hold a crystal in your hand, imagine that you are the crystal. Picture your early stages of development, first as molten magma, flowing freely within the earth, and then as a seed crystal, deep within the earth’s crust. Experience your growth as a crystal, in the dark chambers of an ancient continent, evolving slowly and silently through thousands of years. Imagine what it was like to be discovered, mined, and lifted to the surface of the earth. Then visualize your journey to the place where you now sit—passed from hand to hand, packaged and shipped, dusted and put on display—all along its path to you.
Crystal deva meditation. Hold a crystal in your hand. It can be any crystal—unpolished specimen or tumbled stone, carved totem or crystal rune, large stone or small. Imagine the crystal getting warmer and warmer to your touch. Feel it begin to tingle, and then to vibrate, as a white light begins to glow deep within the crystal.
As the white light begins to spread, it changes color—from red, to orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The rainbow hues slowly come together in the shape of a graceful arc, which moves from the crystal in your hand to a space about three feet in front of you.
That rainbow will become a bridge, and the ethereal spirit of the crystal deva will travel out from the crystal into the real world. Breathe deeply, and he or she will materialize right before your very eyes.
Picture the deva taking shape in front of you. Visualize every detail of his or her physical appearance: size, shape, color, clothing, hair, and expression. Ask the deva for a message, and listen quietly for a response. You might only receive a nod, a cryptic one- or two-word answer, or an emotion in response—or you may be able to engage the crystal deva in a full-fledged conversation.
Active Meditation
Active meditation is dynamic and lively; it usually involves physical movement. Here are some active meditations that you can try.
Rock walks. Take a walk, and keep your eyes open for new crystals and stones to add to your collection. You are likely to find quartz in its raw, natural form around rivers and streams, for example, and rocks like feldspar and granite in fields and unpaved roads.
Target practice. Hold a crystal in your left hand, and point at it with the index finger of your right hand. Imagine a beam of pure white light flowing into your body from the sky above your head, its source high in the upper reaches of our atmosphere. Then imagine that you can release a continuous stream of that energy through the tip of your index finger. Aim your finger at the crystal in your hand, and imagine your energy flowing into the stone.
You might want to set up a feedback loop, in which a second stream of energy will flow from the crystal back in your direction. Traditionally, the right hand is used to send energy, while the left hand is used to receive.
You can put the crystal down on a table or the floor and practice sending and receiving energy from various distances. You can also practice controlling and releasing that energy from each of your fingers in turn, or from both of your hands, or your third eye, or from any of your chakras.
Remember to switch off the flow of energy when you’re through playing . . . and if you plan to aim your cosmic guns at anything but crystals, be sure you don’t point at anything you don’t intend to shoot.
Crystal milestones. Choose a crystal to represent each major milestone of your life so far. As you choose your crystals, try to develop a rationale to explain each choice; you might choose a white stone to represent the innocence of your early years, for example, or a red stone to symbolize the passion of your youth, and a green stone for your first forays into the working world. Be as specific and detailed as possible, and lay the stones in a design or pattern of your choice.
Stone goalposts. Choose a crystal to represent goals for the next week, the next month, and the next year. Program those crystals with your intentions, and keep them around as a tangible reminder of your hopes and dreams and the steps you need to take to make your vision a reality.
Crystal mandalas. Use crystals to create a mandala—a colorful, circular design that represents the shape and the creation of the universe. Mandalas incorporate precise geometric patterns, which makes it easy to visualize energy flowing in and out of their construction. You can construct your mandala of uncut and unpolished gems, tumbled stones, quartz points, or any crystals in your collection.
The colors of consciousness. As you experiment with crystal meditation, try choosing stones based on a color wheel. A color wheel will show you the three primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—that can’t be mixed from other colors. It will show you the three secondary colors—green, orange, and violet—that result when you mix primary colors. And it will show you tertiary colors—like blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-green—that are created when you mix primary colors with secondary colors.
Colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel are complimentary colors. Use complimentary colors when you want to find balance in your work with crystals.
To balance the energies represented by red crystals—such as anger or passion—use green. To bring new energy into a life that feels too sedate—or blue—use orange crystals. If you are feeling too intellectual—which is classically symbolized by the color yellow—pull in some energy from a spiritual purple stone.
You can also try mixing the energies of secondary and tertiary colors simply by determining what each color symbolizes in your own life. The possibilities are as endless as the paint combinations on an artist’s palette.