Meditation has been use by spiritual seekers for thousands of years. It is a holistic discipline by which the practitioner attempts to get beyond the reflexive, thinking mind, into a deeper state of awareness. Even though Westerners have been exposed to meditation for almost a century, most still misunderstand it. It was H. Spencer Lewis who first brought meditation to America in 1915, with the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, although it is Paramahansa Yogananda who is usually credited with it.
Meditation, like any skill, takes time to develop. Many people interested in it have erroneously thought that just sitting down and quietly relaxing is meditating. However real meditation takes months to master. It is actually a process of mental, physical and psychic conditioning. We don't walk into a gym, throw around some weights on a few occasions and expect to walk out looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Cindy Crawford. And yet that is the attitude many beginning Meditators have.
It is very likely that you won't experience anything amazing or transcendental the first few times you attempt meditation. It's a process of conditioning, as I stated, and you must have some faith in the process. You have spent years in beta consciousness (the brainwave level while fully awake). It will take your brain and body a while to adjust to new conditioning.
What I will cover first here are the benefits and scientific discoveries of meditation and then get into a very simply technique most Westerners can practice easily; and hopefully daily! I ask you to bare with me and not read ahead to the technique. If it is one thing I have noticed about Meditators, even accomplished ones, is that they know they should be meditating everyday but they lack the will and motivation to do so! I hope that pointing out the benefits will change this trend.
Most Meditators are aware that meditation helps with a sense of emotional well-being and balance. Most are aware that it lowers your stress level and blood pressure. But modern neurologists are using new technology to more precisely study the effects of long term meditation on the brain-body system, with some stunning results.
For decades, researchers at Harvard University have sought to document how meditation enhances a person's quality of life: lower stress levels, steely concentration and sharpened intuition. What's different today is groundbreaking research showing that, when people meditate, they alter the biochemistry of their brain. In 1998, Dr. James Austin, a neurologist, wrote the book titled Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness. When he described how meditation can "sculpt" the brain, he meant it figuratively and literally! In other words, even the curves on the surface of the brain and areas of brain activity and blood flow can now be measured. And modern science is now backing up what Meditators and Monks have known for centuries.
Throughout his career, Richard Davidson, a Professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has pondered why people react so differently to the same stressful situations. Davidson has placed electrodes on meditating Buddhist monks, as they lay in an MRI machine and watched visual stimuli flash on a screen above them.
As it turns out, the monk's brains show activity unlike any other group of people ever observed. The monk's left pre-frontal cortex, the area associated with positive emotion, is far more active than in non-mediators' brains. The monks' meditation practice, which changes their neural physiology, enables them to respond with equanimity to sources of stress. Meditation doesn't make Meditators sluggish or apathetic; it simply allows them to detach from their emotional reactions so they can respond appropriately.
"In our country people are very involved in the physical-fitness craze, working out several times a week" says Davidson. "But we don't pay that kind of attention to our minds. Modern neuroscience is showing that our minds are as plastic as our bodies. Meditation can help you train your mind, in the same way exercise can train your body."
Davidson's research didn't stop with the monks. To find out whether meditation could have lasting, beneficial effects in the workplace, he performed a study on Madison Biotech Company employees. Four dozen employees met once a week for eight weeks to practice mindfulness meditation for three hours. The result, published last year showed that the employees' left pre-frontal cortex were enlarged, just like those of the monks, although not as much.
More new research offers additional encouragement. In a study published a few years ago in the journal Stroke, 60 African-Americans with atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, practiced meditation for six to nine months. (African-Americans are twice as likely to die from cardiovascular disease as are whites.) The Meditators showed a marked decrease in the thickness of their artery walls, while the nonmeditators actually showed an increase. The change for the meditation group could potentially bring about an 11 percent decrease in the risk of heart attack and an 8 percent to 15 percent decrease in the risk of stroke.
Another study, published last year in Psychosomatic Medicine, taught a randomized group of 90 cancer patients mindful meditation. After seven weeks, those who had meditated reported that they were significantly less depressed, anxious, angry and confused than the control group, which hadn't practiced meditation. The Meditators also had more energy and fewer heart and gastrointestinal problems than did the other group.
Diana Kirschner, Ph.D., a Philadelphia-area clinical psychologist, sometimes refers her clients to learn meditation and has seen firsthand how helpful it can be. "Not only is meditation an absolutely marvelous destressor, it helps people better relate to one another," she says "I can tell when clients are following through with meditation. For instance, I had a couple who consistently bickered. After they started meditating, they came in less angry, more self-reflective and more loving."
Okay, so now we've covered significant help benefits studied by science under vigorous protocols. I'd like to cover some benefits that mainstream science might be uncomfortable with: spiritual and psychic benefits.For the natural psychics out there, daily meditation is absolutely essential. Every natural psychic I've ever met who did not practice daily meditation was a mess. It is more critical for them then non-psychics.
Meditation will increase your psychic awareness, sharpen your intuition, give you insights into your purpose in life, will help you keep things in perspective, can help you understand the failings in your past and give insights how to do better in the future. It can help you love yourself by seeing yourself (as best we humans can) through Divine Eyes. You may have personal revelations, precognitive insights and more vivid, memorable dreams. You may have communication with deceased relatives or other persons from the past (or even the unborn). It will help you feel more at one with the universe, help you become more compassionate (not necessary more polite), and most importantly: help you forgive yourself and others.
All this sounds great, doesn't it? Good! Then I better see you practicing this technique and reporting back to me all the awesome experiences and insights you have! I must warn you, I am a trained Remote Viewer! ;-)
Okay, now the technique: without getting too much into the physics / metaphysics of all this, let me just state that matter and energy are one. Most new agers would agree with this, but really mean that everything is energy or incorporeal. That is not the case. Matter and energy exist on a vibratory scale, one simply being more refined (not better) then the other. In our meditation, we are going to ascend the celestial realms with a process of active visualization first, followed by passive receptivity.
First get yourself in a private place, preferably a room by yourself, where you will not be disturbed. I know, this is hard for some people. But if Nostradamus could do his meditation work late at night when his six children were in bed, so can you! Eliminate as many distractions as you can: shut the blinds, put in earplugs if necessary, or throw your cat outside.
Close your eyes and take several deep breaths and hold them in your lungs for as long as comfortably possible. In order to separate yourself from the daily routine, it is important that you prepare out mind. So I want you to say this invocation at the beginning of meditation. You will notice that is it very Christian in it's wording. If you want to change the words to something different like 'Cosmic, Universal Mind, Goddess' you can.
"May the Cosmic infuse my being and cleanse me of all impurities of mind and body, that I may enter thy celestial temple in pureness and worthiness. So mote it be!"
After this I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself ascending, first above your body, to the top of the room, then through the roof and above your house/home/apartment. Imagine your city, town or surrounding countryside as vividly as you can. Then ascend above your town, above your state, and finally above the Earth itself. Watch Earth, spinning in space for a few moment. Take in the magnificence of what you are seeing.
Next I want you to imagine a distant light far off, out in the pure blackness of starless space. Imagine it to be incredible bright. Imagine that as you approach the light, you see a vast white pyramid building, a Temple in space. If you are using your imagination vividly, don't be surprised if the building is rotating or if it changes shape. Imagine yourself entering this Celestial Sanctum with your feet slowly touching the ground. There are levels, walkways and a garden atrium in the Celestial Sanctum. You will notice other people there, also actively participating in the works of the Cosmic. Remember to include scents and sounds in your visualization as well. Imagine beautiful stained-glass windows and sweet fragrances or incense if you'd like and imagine yourself dress in all white clothing.
You may receive an answer right away, you may not. You may have a vivid experience or something more subtle; a simple cognition. You may receive an answer over several days or weeks.
When it is time for you to leave the Celestial Sanctum, you will know. Respectfully leave your set, go outside and feel your feet leave the Temple grounds. Descend, the same way you came, by visualizing the starless blackness of space, with all the galaxies of our universe in the distance. Descend past the outer galaxies and finally close in on the Milky Way. Imagine yourself approach our Solar System, flying past the outer planets of Saturn and Jupiter and descending into Earth's atmosphere. Imagine your state, city, and finally your home. Descend through the roof of your home and finally back into your body.
Open your eyes and say this evocation softly to yourself or out loud: "May the God of my Heart sanctify this attunement of self with the Celestial Sanctum!"
Make any necessary notes of your experience in a notebook or journal. Or you can email me!