Spiritual Basics - Meditation

When I went through my spontaneous awakening event, I entered a space of incredible peace and acceptance that was akin to finding nirvana. I have found myself repeatedly over the last few years trying to come into continuous contact with that elusive but complete peace that seemed so obvious during my spontaneous awakening. On reflection, I have developed a clear pattern and process of reaching that space. This process began long before that fateful night. It has been a long journey full of false starts and ego deaths and begging spirit for help. I hope that out of that struggle, I can help you to more easily reach that space for peace of your own. Today we are starting with the basic of meditation practice.

Do you own your thoughts, or do they own you? Thoughts are meant to be a tool that we use to achieve more in our lives, based on assigning certain abstract values to real things around us and using that to analyse, plan and act. When they get out of control, they begin to own us and this can manifest in our lives in certain ways – anxiety, insomnia, discord in relationships, hyper-vigilance, pessimism, depression, and ultimately spiritual inertia (where we seem to be repeating the same patterns and lessons over and over again and can’t figure out why). So how do we become the master of our minds?

Step 1. Clearing the mind

(I know, easier said than done)

This is very important so you can connect with your awareness, your “I AM” nature, the inner witness at the centre of your soul that does not judge. Note that there are a multitude of ways to achieve this, but I have included the ways that helped me the most.

Breathing Meditations or Relaxation Meditations

These begin helping reduce your state of arousal by stimulating your para-sympathetic nervous system. Attending yoga or other exercise classes that focus on breathing and controlled movements can also help to attain this state.

I begin by laying in a comfortable position in a place where I will not be disturbed for at least 30 minutes. I close my eyes and pay attention to my breathes in, and out. I purposefully slow my breathes and count 4 beats in, and 5 beats out.

I then focus on relaxing my muscles. I start from the top of my head and focus on relaxing the muscles in my head, neck, and shoulders. Once I can feel I have relaxed I move down the body (chest, thorax, lower back, tummy, hips, thighs, knees, calves, shins, feet) all the way to the toes. When I have reached the toes, I simply repeat the practice another 3-5 times.

As I go, I make sure to feel the sensation of the surface I am laying on beneath me with my body parts.

There are free apps on the app store that give guided meditations if you find self-direction difficult.

Mindfulness Meditation

This is the practice of observing yourself have thoughts, then letting those thoughts go so that you can be in the moment and not caught in thoughts of the past or future. This type of meditation can take a while to master! Do not worry if your thoughts continuously interrupt you, like any exercise, building good habits and new skills in your brain takes a LOT of repetition and especially if this is a brand-new skill to you.

Visualisations can help with directing your thoughts. If you can, imagine watching yourself have thoughts, then watch yourself either say goodbye to those thoughts (like putting them in a bin) or put them away for later (storing them in a cupboard). Make no judgments on the thoughts, just put them away.

Your visualisations can be anything. Personally, I have a lake that I float in on top of a mountain. From the lake, streams/rivers flow down the mountain side and into tributaries that flow into the sea. I imagine a small reflection/clone of myself placing my thoughts (with respect) into paper boats to float away, down the mountain and out to sea. If I see a thought that would like to have again then I imagine myself putting the thought into a golden salmon that can swim back up stream to me when the season is right.

If you are not a visual thinker (like an estimated 5% of the population), then some have found listening to classical music and being present with it helpful (because they like to identify the instruments in the piece), attending a “gonging” practice and imagining a gong sound when intrusive thoughts try to interrupt your mindfulness, or simply saying to oneself to begin with – “I have this thought, and now it goes.”

Being Present in the Moment

Once you have worked on mindfulness in a controlled meditative setting, then it is time to apply this to your everyday to make it a transferable skill in other settings. We normally do this in certain settings very well already (think – an athlete “in the zone”, playing with our kids or pets in our backyards, enjoying the simple pleasures like watching the sun set with a cold drink and a loved one on a summers eve). The skill is in being able to drop into mindfulness in ANY setting, including stressful ones.

I find the easiest way to do this to be while I am commuting to work, or any drive I normally take that is longer than about 10 minutes (preferably not one where you are stuck in traffic jams to start with, if you can help it). Another good setting to practice this is when you go for your regular walk in the morning.

As you walk along or sit in your car, first start your breathing relaxation exercise. Once you feel relaxed, then simply look around where you are and name to yourself the items in your vision as you pass them. “There is a tree”, “there is a sign”. “The car in front is green”. Work on letting those thoughts go.

If you find your mind attaching judgements or memories (such as – “oh my best friend also has a green car, I remember that trip we did together, I wonder how she is going”), acknowledge the memory or judgement or thought then let it go and focus on another aspect of your environment. Saying to yourself often “here I am, in this place” or “in this forest” or “in this car” is a good mantra for bringing yourself back to the present if your mind wanders.

Step 2. Learning Spiritual Proprioception

Once you have worked on clearing your mind for a while and can more easily feel that connection to the inner witness and being present, you should move on to spiritual proprioception. This is what I like to call the practice of directing your inner awareness to a) different parts of your body, and then b) different hypothetical “neuro-tags”, or pattern representations stored in your brain.

This is different from “thinking” about a subject or a person or a body part, and merely “being” in that body part, or pattern of a subject, person, or situation stored in your brain. It is just sitting and feeling it, like you would stroke a blanket and feel the sensation, and NOT the judgement thought associated with it (i.e., the blanket is “soft” and this is “good”). It is just feeling your spirit, or your awareness, in body/different situations/patterns without judging them or how you feel about them.

Intrusive thoughts are inevitable when you first start this practice, and that is okay! Again, repetition is incredibly important. I would suggest that at first you should bring your attention to patterns of situations that brought only mild stress, not highly traumatic ones that can trigger strongly negative thought loops. You can build your way up to more tricky situations as your skill grows in this area. With regards to the body – if you have severe persistent low back pain for example, start with doing this process in another area – an asymptomatic shoulder, or your dominant hand, or even your nose. It can be anything.

I have a personal history of body dysmorphia, and this is an area that I can struggle with. My favourite mantra when doing these meditations and indeed any meditations that bring the focus to the body is “My body does not separate me from the universe but joins me to it”. This takes me out of the loop of seeing value in only the appearance of my body, and into the feeling of how I am connected to the entire universe through the body that is the temple of the spirit.

We are taught to judge everything we are exposed to from when we are very young by being asked the very simple question of whether we like things or not or watching our parents’ reactions to things. We are surrounded by media from a very young age, especially now so. Because of this, we build up strong associative patterns in our brains that relate to how we unconsciously interact with the world. Each time we repeat specific cue/reaction/reward processes (feedback loops), we reinforce these patterns. Our brains were built to help us survive, not to do it in the most optimal way and in this way our egos can run amok if we leave our minds unchecked.

Step 3. Having Patience

The above practice takes time. Specifically, in retrospect, it has taken me approximately 8 years of practice (on and off, based on the seasons of my life in that time) since I first started learning mindful meditation to reach the point now where I can drop into my space of peace now almost at will. Along the way, I note that I have learned quite a bit about myself and how my mind works that has been invaluable in capturing a lasting peace, as well as transferring to learning new skills and exploring new things. Along the way, I also learned to master an acceptance of others I didn’t think previously possible that has only helped my own practice of unconditional love to grow.

So hang in there and keep practicing! I can’t possibly know exactly what the universe has in store for your personal story this lifetime, but I do know that by learning inner peace you can also learn how to enjoy every chapter as it is given to you.

All my love,

Lunette. xx