religion
Meditation Is Easier Than You Think!
No doubt you’ve heard of the many benefits of meditation, both physical and spiritual. But how does one start a meditation practice? It doesn’t have to be intimidating. According to the Zen master and teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, approaching meditation with a beginner’s mindset is actually ideal.
It’s important to clear up a common misperception about meditation. Meditation is not simply ‘thinking of nothing.’ Rather it is a spiritual process in which we learn to center, breathe, and achieve clarity.
Meditation is practiced by cultures all over the world and does not have to be associated with a specific spiritual tradition or religious belief system. It also does not have to involve sitting passively with a ‘blank mind.’ Rather it can be anything from coloring mandalas, to a walking in nature.
So, how does one begin, if you’re new to the practice? Consider the goals you wish to achieve with meditation: stress reduction, taming your thoughts, physical relief from pain, spiritual growth? Tailor your practice to build toward your personal goals. Remember, it’s a journey and not a destination.
Keeping a meditation journal, as you go along, can be very helpful. The most important thing is consistency. Make meditation a part of your daily routine, and ideally at the same time each day.
Once you have the basics in place, it’s time to begin. Choose a pose or stance which is comfortable, and a space which is calming, private and quiet. If playing comforting music or lighting candles, or incense, relaxes you, then do that!
How To Live A More Spiritually Aware Life
To lead a more spiritual, and therefore a happier and more fulfilled life, you do not need to develop a passion for incense, or hire a guru to assist you in going through some form of spiritual awakening. Instead, you may be comfortable with more down to earth approach.
Firstly, it is important to recognize that religion and spirituality are not necessarily the same things. Religion is just one form of spiritual practice. Spirituality itself is something that comes from within the individual.
Spiritual awareness is a sustained belief that there is much more to life than meets the eye, something greater than yourself, even though you have no evidence for it. Hold onto this belief or feeling, as it is very, very real!
One of the best ways to get in touch with your spirituality is to spend time in nature. It does not matter whether you live, in a town, city, or rural area, connecting with nature is imperative, as it will help to bring a sense of peace to your overworked mind, and it will uplift your spirit with its rejuvenating power. By doing so, it will assist with your spiritual development.
To become more spiritually aware it is also important to learn to control your inner dialogue. Becoming a more spiritual person involves monitoring your inner voice and making sure that your self-talk is healthy. Meditation can be particularly helpful in this respect, as well as recognizing any negative thought patterns or false beliefs that you may have.
Choosing A Spiritual Path With Heart
There are many blind choices we make when we are too young or inexperienced to make the best decisions for ourselves. We are born into a family, or raised in a culture, for example, with its unique traditions and beliefs, or lack thereof, and we are usually quite susceptible in our youth to these influences.
In the process of becoming an adult, the questioning of such beliefs and traditions leads us towards who we will become, to discovering what truly resonates with us, and what does not. But this is something we may have taken lightly in our youth, and therefore needs to be looked over several times in our life to find out with real sincerity what is truly calling us.
It is possible that being born in a traditional Christian home, for example, we felt constrained and limited, even small and powerless, ultimately causing us to reject all dogmatic religion. For someone else, brought up maybe in an atheist home, the search for God or faith may bring a profound sense of empowerment and life purpose that nurtures their life. It all depends on us as individuals, and how we process our own reality.
Carlos Castaneda writes in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, “Before you embark on any path ask the question: does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him.”
Spiritual Hypnosis
Did you know that there are parts of your consciousness from which your spiritual being transmits? Many of us tend to trudge forward on a little known path toward finality, oblivious to our spiritual being. We often only dwell in the here and now of the conscious mind, and we forget or neglect those aspects of us that pertain to our higher spiritual self.
Each one of us has a spiritual mind. It’s our wise mind, the all knowing self, which guides us to seek peace, to love one another, and to forgive others, as well as ourselves. It calls us to be healers in every sense of the word, to seek bliss and enlightenment, and to have a better human life in a better way.
Some hypnotherapists, who practice spiritual hypnosis, define our different levels of consciousness as follows:
The Conscious Mind – from which comes everyday thoughts, actions, logic and judgment
The Subconscious Mind – where all your life experiences, memories, feeling, habits, and reactions associated with them, are stored, as well as our unconscious body actions such as heart beat, breathing, digestion, bio-action, and so on.
The Super-Conscious Mind – the I am of the higher self, of unconditional love, light, and wisdom; being of peace, compassion, forgiveness and the bliss of enlightenment.
The Unconscious Mind – the over-soul of all incarnations of lifetimes; stored karma.
Coming To Terms With Death… Our Greatest Ally!
Behind our pretentious mask lurks the realization that we have one authentic desire: to find something… anything that really matters. True desire is a funny thing. If it’s genuine, it must manifest.
According to one ancient esoteric law, manifestation occurs when we realize we don’t want or need the object of our desire anymore. In other words, when we’re no longer separated from ourselves by conflict, we can and do get anything we want.
What prevents us from finding and activating this unity within? The fear of death. Most often times, mortals live in deep conflict and continue to do so for a very long time. Inconsistency is another word that better describes the obvious division existing within us. As it is written in James 1:8 a “double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
We want to live so badly, but we know for certain that we are going to die. It’s a contradiction in terms we never really get over.
Contradiction forms itself in the midst of insincerity. The obvious apprehension associated with the idea of death produces an acute inability to communicate honestly and effectively. At our base lurks a finite, uncapped agony. Antagonistic behavior, whether managed, maintained and controlled appropriately, reveals itself in a myriad of deflated obvious ways.
Be Mindful Of Your Words And Thoughts
It is important to consider one’s ‘vibes’ and intentions, because is an essential aspect of understanding intuition, manifesting, destiny and predicting the future. The momentum of any person’s life is consistent with the vibrations they are putting out into the Universe. So, when an intuitive or psychic is looking at your situation, it is often based not only on your existing vibration, but often Spirit will also reveal a potential that could shift the vibe within a situation or change the future outcome.
Psychics, intuitives and diviners do not create your future, but they can explore and reveal the potential and energy within a situation, in order to predict the likelihood and probability of potential outcomes. Although it does not happen very frequently, I sometimes have clients approach predictions during a reading with a cynical mentality of ‘it will never happen.’ And, I have also heard Spirit respond very bluntly to such skeptical clients: “Then it won’t.”
The mind matters when it comes to our lives and situations. I don’t believe that Spirit deals in false hope, but I do know from experience that the mind is the catalyst for our experiences. Therefore, vibes are important. Our vibes show us what we are actively engaging in and what we can expect for the future. At times it can even be best to stop, or satiate the more challenging vibes we have to a situation, by disconnecting from the story of the situation entirely.
Meditation Is Much Easier Than You Think!
Meditation is one of the best things a person can do for their spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health. The National Institute for Health, as well as the Mayo Clinic have published articles on their websites touting the well-researched benefits of this ancient spiritual practice.
All the major religions practice some form of meditation. However, meditation itself is not just a religious practice. The good news is, if you practice religion, meditation is a tool you can use. If you are non-religious, meditation is also a tool you can use.
So, why don’t more people meditate? Because they have a misconception about what meditation is, and how to do it. Many people think meditation means sitting in a lotus position while chanting, and not having a thought at all in your mind. While sitting in a lotus position and chanting is one way to meditate, it is not the only way. Furthermore, having no thoughts in your mind at all for an extended period is in fact not possible.
Meditation is about relaxation, attention, and focus. It is about recognizing the smallness that we and our problems are in the grand scheme of things, and conversely, remembering the infinite greatness that is our energetic being, as well as the Infinite Greatness we are a part of. This can be done in many ways.