How to Meditate: Who Is the Meditator? Nine Questions…

When I began to meditate, I found that I kept on returning to my thoughts, emotions, ideas, distractions...basically, everything that I use to identify myself as "me." What meditation does, at its deepest level, is to help us to free ourselves from this grasping after a "self," a self that we identify with our feelings, our hopes and fears, our projections. For some people, and in some methods, "meditation" is defined as a relaxation technique, a way to de-stress from everyday life and find inner piece. That's good; most of us need a way to remove ourselves from normal speed [...]

2012-02-22T12:17:41-07:00By |Meditation|0 Comments
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How To Meditate: Start Where You Are. Five Tips…

Many people believe that in order to meditate, it's necessary to have special circumstances, special incense or a special method. Start where you are. What that means is that when we start to meditate, we start with the mind that we have, in the circumstances that we're in, with the method that we have. The mind that we have is one that is capable of both distraction and meditation. The circumstances that we're in are whatever life is providing us with at the moment. And, the method that we have...well, that can be whichever one we've learned or used. Too [...]

2021-09-26T14:28:39-06:00By |Meditation|1 Comment
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How Do I Meditate? Use Compassion…For Yourself!

HOW DOES COMPASSION HELP YOU TO MEDITATE? Good question... Let's start this post with the wisdom of a wonderful writer, James Finley. I've used this quote in other posts and keep coming back to it because...it's so good! Our feelings of impatience and frustration with ourselves in meditation are certainly understandable, especially when they persist in spite of our best efforts to overcome them. But as we sit in meditation we can begin to recognize the subtle violence inherent in our impatience with ourselves. As our awareness and understanding of our limitations in meditation continue to deepen, we begin to [...]

2014-08-25T17:42:26-06:00By |Compassion, Meditation|2 Comments
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The Allure of Life’s Dramas, Are We Addicted to Strife?

Are We Addicted to the Soap Opera Mind? Since I first began to meditate, and even after years of meditation, I've found that the "non-meditative mind," the mind that is habituated to distraction, still remains. Though I find more peace and am able to live more presently with the mind that is free from the routine habits of distraction, there's a powerful force within my mind based on the habit of running after drama and strife. I'll call this the "soap opera mind." The soap opera mind likes things stirred up a bit, it likes to chase after drama and [...]

2014-02-24T12:27:13-07:00By |Meditation|3 Comments
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How to Meditate? Ten Essentials to a Great Meditation Practice

Wow, I hope that this title doesn't seem out of place here. I mean, after all, I've been posting on meditation, on its benefits, and on research into meditation now for almost a year. So, why would I post something as "basic" as how to meditate? (and what does a picture of 1000 meditating monks have to do with anything?!?) The basics of meditation, while simple, aren't always obvious when we read about how to meditate. Nor are they obvious in how we engage in our practice of meditation. We've discussed a lot of the "how tos" of meditation in [...]

2011-11-02T16:37:12-06:00By |Meditation, Mindfulness|4 Comments
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