Many meditation traditions advocate the use of a particular technique or structure to performing your meditation.
A quite room
Low lights
Incense (aroma)
Burning of candles
Chanting a mantra
A particular seating position
Thinking about particular things
While all these, and there are many more, may be helpful, it must be said that they are just elements that may help you to reach your meditation experience itself.
They are not a part of the actual meditation experience. Often, these external/environmental elements may help us, get in the mood, so to speak, but that is there only significance.
Once you have been able to achieve your meditation experience, these elements need to be done away with as they no longer serve any real purpose in our ongoing daily lives. There is a danger of only being able to meditate when you are in your well-setup environment and all conditions and circumstances are dealt with, but this trap will limit the beneficial experience of being able to meditate anywhere at anytime.
You can now meditate because you are practised not because or your environmental setup.
Thursday, 24 November 2016
2. What Meditation is NOT!
Meditation is not a religious experience. It may be associated with a lot of religions but that is because they are generally seeking a similar path of peace and calm and meditation is a proven methodology for achieving this.
Meditation does not just miraculously occur because you want it to. It must be practiced, like most things, to achieve the desired skill level.
There is not just one function or purpose for meditation. Remember, meditation is the ability to focus your attention.
Meditation does not just miraculously occur because you want it to. It must be practiced, like most things, to achieve the desired skill level.
There is not just one function or purpose for meditation. Remember, meditation is the ability to focus your attention.
1. An Introduction to Meditation
I am sure this is a subject that has much conjecture already surrounding it, to which I will add some more. Because I live in Australia, I adopt a Western point of view and this maybe helpful for some of you.
As a general statement,
Meditation is the ability to focus and hold your attention on what you choose.
In the Western world we may find this somewhat challenging because we are not used to sitting still, which is an integral part of Meditation.
The other challenging aspect, to meditation, is that you may already have a very active mind and this in itself creates an extra dimension for us to overcome. None the less, it just means you need to be aware of this and not have too high an expectation at first.
As a general statement,
Meditation is the ability to focus and hold your attention on what you choose.
In the Western world we may find this somewhat challenging because we are not used to sitting still, which is an integral part of Meditation.
The other challenging aspect, to meditation, is that you may already have a very active mind and this in itself creates an extra dimension for us to overcome. None the less, it just means you need to be aware of this and not have too high an expectation at first.
Subscribe to:
Comments
(
Atom
)