Tips On Meditation

by Shaun Butler
(Swindon, Wiltshire)

Any advice on how to start meditating?

Set Aside Time for Meditation

My sister has a set time...either morning or evening, sometimes both
when she relaxes in quiet and no sound, no thought (this is difficult but she persists)

I've tried to meditate...but my head is just too full of ideas and projects.
Also I believe any messages or inspirations will work through my morrass of words and images to represent a clearer, heavenly vision...it's how my poetry comes!

The Benefits of Meditation

I do, however believe the meditation process renews an inner unspoken power and energy re-charging health, mind and bodily being. Also it is soothing and gives reassurance when we may feel isolated or lonely. Our voice may be rather shy or fragile but it is still OURS and God values and honours us.

Thank you Katherine for your concern in this Oh so useful website.

Shaun Butler

Tips on Meditation Techniques

(Katherine)

Have you seen the page on easy meditation techniques. There are some good ideas there, including a poem on meditating badly. :-)

The pages on spiritual relaxation techniques are also good at just allowing yourself to be where you are and fall into the present moment.

Your sister's approach sounds great to me. To set aside a regular time for quiet and stick to it. They recommend twice a day. Make sure the last session is before you are so tired that you fall asleep.

I am the first to agree that the poems that come through in a time of silence you have set aside for God can be a form of God's guidance. That was definitely true for me.

Join a Meditation Group

If you are serious about meditating it can be good to join a group. This is what I did when I used to meditate in a disciplined way.

Swindon Meditation Groups, UK

I know you are from Swindon Shaun, so I can tell you a little of meditation groups in Swindon.

1. A Swindon Buddhist Meditation group meets at the Friend's Meeting House, Swindon - Monday 7pm I think. I went to that once and found it very peaceful.

2. A Christian Meditation Group meets at Coleshill, Swindon, every other Thursday. I went to that one regularly until I moved to the other side of Swindon.

How To Find a Meditation Group in the UK

Christian Meditation
Here is the link to the national organisation for Christian meditation The World Community for Christian Meditation in the UK.
I have looked up the site though and it doesn't mention the Swindon group. So let me know if you want me to contact the organiser to see if it is still going.
Perhaps you could start your own group through this organisation! You get sent guidance on how to do that.
For anyone who is housebound and wanting to meditate, there is a CD sent out with 10 minute talks which each group listens to, followed by a time of meditation, followed by the Our Father Prayer. If it is possible to buy it, you could listen at the same time as a local group and join your mind in meditation with theirs. This can be a powerful way of making a commitment to a practice of meditation.

UK Meditation
I asked the Tourist Office for information on religious groups and was given information on several meditation groups, and you can of course try the internet.

Tips on Meditation

Find Balance; Don’t Try Too Hard, but Practise Spiritual Discipline

I have just read a charming story called The Buddha and The Terrorist
(USA Spiritual Fiction Bookstore,
UK Spiritual Fiction Bookshop)
which quotes the Buddha as saying:

"Allow the mind to be in balance. Avoid extremes: the middle way is better. Neither force the mind into concentration not let it wander aimlessly."

It can be helpful to think of meditation not so much as making the mind quiet, but simply paying attention.
Pay attention to a mantra or to your breathing or to the sensations in your body.
You don't need to think of it as mastering meditation or even learning meditation, but just as setting aside a time of quiet for God.

Poems About Resting In God

There are currently three poems about resting in God on the site:

• A poem by Tagore called A Moment's Indulgence
  


• In God's Time - a poem by Floriana Hall
  


• A spiritual poem submitted to the site Slow Me Down Lord

For those with ME/CFS, there is also a page on relaxation techniques in which I recommend the tapes that helped me to relax in the years when I was ill and had to find a way to lie still without my mind chattering away constantly!

Shaun, you have made me realise there is quite a lot on a-spiritual-journey-of-healing on this subject, so thank you for getting me to summarize it here!

With Love to all,
Katherine

Free Guided Meditation Script

by Keith Milhench
(Reading, UK)

Visualisation - Expansion Beyond Body Identification

Hi folks,

Meditation on the Chakras

I started meditating with a system Stuart Wilde recommended in his book 'The sixth Sense'. It concentrates on Chakras and for me was a very good introductory learning curve.

Meditation - Theta

Now I mostly meditate as follows:

I lie down listening to an MP3 of a THETA metronome download. It enables me to quickly get to the correct pattern of brain waves in order to connect. It is important to use headphones; it doesn't work with speakers. This is the one I use, and it lasts for an hour:

http://www.amazon.com/Theta-Meditation/dp/B002SG3IL2

I will write the following as a free guided meditation script so you can use it if you wish. It is based on the following idea:

I am responsible for all there is. ACIM & Quantum Physics tells me the world is an illusion, so I refuse to make myself fit into IT. I mentally reverse the polarities if you like, from the Universe making me feel and look tiny, helpless, and irrelevant, to me taking my rightful place as master of all I am and all that I project. It's a way of reversing, or correcting, the mistaken image we have of ourselves.
When I simply expand myself to be bigger than the Universe, it seems unreal to me allowing me to know that it doesn't exist, except as a construct of my mind.

Lie here concentrating on your breathing, and imagine yourself as a cloud of atomic particles, removing the image of the human body from your mind.
Remind yourself: I am not a body.
You can go through any current affirmations.
You might talk to Jesus, The Holy Spirit, & God for the first few minutes.

Concentrate on your feelings and talk to spirit accordingly.
Or, just lie here in total silence, with a willingness to maintain this silence.

Visualise expansion of the atoms in your body

After around 5 or 10 minutes, start to expand your cloud of atoms.
Picture the room you're in and mentally fill it to just outside its boundaries.
At the same time as you expand your 'entity', mentally reduce the size of the room, so that as ‘you’ expand the room contracts.

Once you are bigger than the room, wait a minute, feel the sensation, picture it, (knowing that all thought has effect).
Now expand to include the whole building, the country, the world, the solar system, and finally the Universe itself.

Lie here in silence feeling the entire Universe inside you, almost filling your being, because this is exactly how it is in reality.
There is nothing outside you.
The whole Universe is actually inside your mind but projected onto the fabric of creation outside of yourself. You are the doorway to this state of reality.

Meditation Is An Introduction To A Permanent State Of Being

However...and here is the most important part... after 2 years doing this I have realised that meditating is merely an introduction to a permanent state of spiritual awareness, nothing more.

My meditations nowadays are much shorter, sometimes just 5 minutes, because I find it more important to concentrate on maintaining a permanent meditative state at all times.

Love
Keith

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