Sometimes people become discouraged when they try meditation and see just how busy their minds are. They decide they are not able to meditate, and some of them even believe their intellect is so soaring and powerful, that they are just too intelligent to be able to sit in meditation. The truth of the matter is, there are many types of meditation, and if one technique doesn’t work there is surely another that will be more effective.
When I first began meditating I started with a somatic type of meditation that drew attention to the energy centers in the body. Since my mind was VERY busy, it was a good doorway into meditation, because the technique gave my busy mind something that occupied it, something which it enjoyed giving its attention.
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 7:30 to 11:00 PM Eastern Time. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
Sangha Co-hosts for meditation are:
7:30 - 10:00 Ooooh and davehouck
9:30 - 11:00 thanatokephaloides
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This evening, once again, I’m offering a meditation technique that is different than watching breath or thoughts. I believe what I am about to share comes from the Christian mystical tradition, but I can’t prove that. In fact, I can’t even find it in the book in which I’m sure I first read of it. It is a meditative technique to meet Love.
Where ever you are, imagine there is a a spherical energy field of benevolence, about 12 inches in diameter just above and in front of your forehead. Just spend some time noticing it; you may perceive it to be larger or smaller than 12 inches, that is just fine. You may even notice it as a sphere of white light. The most important thing is to acquaint yourself with it and feel its benevolence.
After you’ve spent some time visualizing and sensing this energy source, imagine that it expands and becomes large enough to envelope your entire body. As you sit within this energy field, being bathed in the energy you feel endless love and compassion surrounding you. You may notice a lovely warmth surrounding you as well, not heat, just a comfortable warmth which radiates love and compassion. You may even notice that love and compassion come in waves, and that there is a distinct frequency and amplitude to the waves, or you may not. However you perceive it, tune into this energy and let it resonate in your chest cavity.
As you feel this energy resonate in the spaces in your chest, consider asking it to merge with you; it will not enter you without your consent, and that is what you need to do. Feel the energy resonate in your chest and desire its presence within you. Only you can create the intention to allow, even desire, all this goodness, all this love and compassion to make its home in the cave of your heart.
Invite this energy in and allow it to be present within you, ask that it be a catalyst for your own awakening and foster it with your own intention to know you are loved, to know yourself as love, to feel love flow endlessly into you, and endlessly out of you until there is, finally, no difference between giving and receiving love. Know you are loved not only for your goodness, but also know you are loved with even more tenderness in the places where you miss the mark, the places where you know you are weak, the places where you wish you might have done better. Know you are loved with an extra measure of tenderness and acceptance for your failings. Let yourself feel this immediacy, intimacy and tenderness. Know you are loved completely and sit with this as long as you like.