Meditation:
I continue to encourage you to find the time to intentionally rest, or check in with yourself as "a daily practice", for at least 5 minutes once a day. This is very little time and yet the benefits are significant.
Here is a specific way to use your time to exponentially increase your awareness and speed up your progress.
Below is a complete and simple beginning instruction for you to get started. This is a practical and non-religious meditation that enhances the development of the skills we need to manage and heal our complaining, critical and condemning mind.
First, this is a list of what it can do:
Develop clarity and wisdom.
Metabolize and release emotion.
Reduce emotional overwhelm.
Strengthen the observer and witness.
Train yourself in non-resistance.
Train yourself to redirect your attention.
Cultivate presence.
Practice "Conscious Hesitation".
Develop patience.
Strengthen your will and self-control.
Expose unconscious patterns.
Begin what I call "Story Control".
Open intuitive channels.
Manage and reduce obsessive thinking.
Redesign your self-perception and learn to fall completely in-love with yourself.
Bryans simple starter meditation instructions. All you need to know to begin.
10 to 20 minutes every day is preferable. Commit to only a reasonable attempt.
Create (not find) a time that will be the most convenient and make a date with yourself.
Perfect posture is not essential for this. Any comfortable position that keeps you upright and alert is fine. Please do not lie down or get too comfortable or you may fall asleep.
Close your eyes, rest the end of your tongue on the back of your top front teeth unless you find a more comfortable place.
Rest your hands on your thighs regardless of what position you are sitting in. Explore and become familiar with your physical sensations as you breathe in and out. Breathe through your nose if possible with your mouth closed. The main point and direction of the practice is to keep returning your attention "to the sensation of your breathing" as you inhale and exhale air, in and out of your body.
Choose where you will try to focus. Your nostrils, your throat, your chest, or wherever you can experience the feeling of the air moving through your body the most obviously.
Please notice I said, " keep returning to your breath". You cannot expect yourself to stay focused on your breath or to get rid of your thoughts. This is not supposed to happen and it is not the goal of the practice. The results may include this but it is not a marker for success. So much more is happening that is much more significant.
When you have been distracted by a thought or emotional or physical feeling,
notice this has happened and identify it as thinking.
Intentionally choose to stop it and let the thinking go.
Then find your breath again and start over.
Unlike Yoga, do NOT try to control the breath. Rest your attention on the sensation of your breath. See if you can feel it or watch it, and not get caught up in controlling it. REST your attention on the breath, as your breath breathes itself.
A deep breath is not preferable over a long one in this practice.
Thinking will continue to occur and distract you from keeping your attention on your breath. This is normal. The goal is not to keep your attention from leaving your breath, but to return to it when it does. The goal is not to get rid of your thoughts.
The goal is to simply return to feeling the sensation of the breath after you have noticed you have been carried away by thinking, and start again without any resistance to this process as it repeats itself endlessly.
When you notice that you are telling yourself some story (thinking), or realize that you have been so immersed in one that you've lost awareness of the fact that you were meditating, simply bring your awareness back to your breath and start over.
Attempt to meet any part of the process with love and compassion. Every moment of awareness must be met with unconditional acceptance. Do not let your CCC get away with criticizing what you find, or trying to make you feel guilty. This unconditional acceptance is called equanimity.
Expect your mind to be busy and expect yourself to only come back to your breath occasionally. If you do come back often, or stay longer that's a plus.
REMEMBER: Paying attention the content of your thought or the reason for your feelings in this practice, is thinking and not meditating. You already do that all the time. If you just let yourself think you have been distracted from the instructions. There is another time and place for thinking and contemplation. This is meditation.
If you have difficulty focusing on your breath, you can count your breaths. Just identify the breath with a number after it is over and before the next one starts. When you get to 10, just start over again at 1.
Have patience with yourself, get committed, and don't let your complaining, critical and condemning mind cleverly talk you out of a really great idea.
Sit down and relax,
Find your breath,
Stay with it until you are distracted,
Label your distraction as thinking,
Bring yourself back to feeling your breath,
and start again.
Have fun. Get curious and explore. This is one of the most powerful tools you could ever develop. I have practiced for 25 years and it has been life changing. I highly recommend it.
Best wishes and peace to you,
Bryan
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bryanzerr copyright 2011
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