LET'S GET IT ON
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Awareness and meditation proudly present to you...MEDITATION.
As a meditation instructor people periodically ask, "Can you teach me to meditate"? Total transparency, I can show you what I have learned and experienced and meditation can be studied in books or classrooms but like anything else we learn, the concept and process is explained then away you go. I may be the bow but you are the arrow. Once I provide you with all that is needed and release the bow string you, the arrow, must then hit the target. In all reality every letter, word, sentence and paragraph presented in these posts are simply that, words, letters, sentences and paragraphs. Meditation must be experienced. Meditation must be practiced. Daily and diligently. Half measures will avail you nothing. I can't get into your head and act as concentration or awareness. You teach yourself how to meditate.
If you read and understand all the posts, you have enough information to begin meditating. Will you become distracted? Yes. Will you experience periods where you just don't want to do it? Yes. When I was a child my father suggested I open a bank account and put money in every week. The amount didn't matter as much as the discipline to just do it. Some weeks it was loose change others dollar bills. In the beginning I thought "What's to gain by putting $ .25 in the bank"? But I continued to do it. Then one day I received my bank statement and was shocked as to how much I had actually accumulated. That moment was the tipping point to make me want to save more. Meditation is something like that. A moment will arrive, through daily practice, that you will have a breakthrough. That breakthrough will allow you to seek another and another. As the saying goes, "Don't leave before the miracle happens".
Meditation is a lifelong journey. Even if we are fortunate enough to achieve NIRVANA (total enlightenment) we continue to meditate, study and learn. I am currently reading 4 books that pertain to meditation and I've got a pretty certificate on the wall that labels me as a "CERTIFIED MEDITATION INSTRUCTOR". Granted much time and effort went into achieving this honor but we are never done learning.
The beauty of meditation is that however many times we do it we have never done it before. HUH?Remember meditation is about living in the/this exact moment. If we truly apply the principle of everything has a beginning, middle and end then we must acknowledge that moments do too. So this moment right now is gone, as is this one and this one. With each end a new beginning comes, even with moments. So whatever you are doing right now, although you may have experienced it before, in this exact moment it is new.
Each meditation session will be different and new. While the premise of time, place, relax, breathe and focus will never change our style or form or posture or place may. I move from spot to spot daily when I go to meditate. Sometimes it is in the back yard, others on the deck, or the bedroom or the basement. Sometimes I sit, kneel, stand or walk. Sometimes Metta others Zen Buddhist. But I never stop concentrating on my breathe and moving distractions along. That is why I meditate, to experience the exact moment where there is no love or hate or pain or pleasure, just the middle path...THE MOMENT.
Next post - FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS
