Guided Meditation to Evaluate Your Energy

By AMANDA SMITH

Meditation can be defined as a set of techniques intended to encourage a heightened state of awareness and focused attention. Meditation is also a consciousness-changing technique that has been shown to have many benefits on psychological well-being.

Some key things to note about meditation:

Meditation has been practiced in cultures worldwide for thousands of years.

Nearly every religion, including buddhism, hinduism, christianity, judaism, and islam, uses meditative practices.

While meditation is often used for religious purposes, many people practice it independently of any religious or spiritual beliefs or practices.

Meditation can also be used as a psychotherapeutic technique.

There are many different types of meditation.

In this book, the discussion is about meditation what it is and also do we see anything else, etc. Let's explore your energy through a body scanner tool i.e., meditation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Smith
• Release date: Mar 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201797911

Book preview

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

In meditation consciousness changes more and more into a consciousness of that which has no form. It focuses on the realm of the transcendent or the world of the abstract, that is, on that which is abstracted from form and directed towards itself.

It is easier to state what meditation is not. Meditation is not: slumped in your easy chair watching a football game. Meditation is not: getting hypnotized by the stripes on the road when you're behind the wheel. Meditation is not: staring out your window while working.

The meditation process discussed in this book has to do with focusing attention, not thoughts. Some methods are not even about focusing attention, but about relaxing the body and mind. Because there are different methods and goals in meditation, there is no exact, comprehensive definition. Dictionary definitions give us the characteristics of meditation. The first definition in most of the dictionaries of the Language is: 'contemplation, reflection, contemplation; – attempt to experience the deepest reality through inner contemplation: transcendental meditation, aimed at detaching the mind, as it were, from the body.' This definition gives us a good indication of the meaning of the word 'meditate', but there is more to say.

'Meditate' comes from the Latin word meditari and means 'to engage in contemplation or reflection'. It also means 'to draw attention' to something or 'to think or ponder' about something. A third definition is 'planning or projecting' one's goals in one's mind. The most useful in our case is the description about directing attention, but that's not it either true purpose of meditation. The word 'meditate' is also associated with Latin words such as meta, meaning 'border', and mederi, meaning 'to heal, to heal'. The Greek word medomai, meaning to pay attention to, is also related to the word to meditate.

These definitions and words give us a vague idea of ​​the meaning of 'meditate'. However, let's take a look at its content and meaning. For most of us, everything we do has a purpose. We don't spend a lot of time acting aimlessly. If I want to convince you that meditation is good, I must clarify its purpose. I must convince you that through meditation you can achieve worthwhile goals. Another expression worthy of attention is 'be mindful of'. Meditation is sometimes referred to as mindfulness training or mind training. Instead of letting the mind go its own way, we can direct it.

Meditation is about relaxing the mind, directing attention and achieving a goal. This book examines a number of aspects thereof, namely:

1  what methods are there to relax body and mind;

2  how to direct your attention (for thisI give different exercises);

3  what reasons there are to meditate, and what goals you can achieve with meditation.

What is actually meant by a boundary (meta)? How does this aspect fit into the meditation picture? When we think about ourselves, we tend to think that we are all separate from each other. 'I live in my own body/mind and the rest of the world is outside it. I set a boundary around myself.' Such a limit is not entirely logical. With each breath, I inhale air, which—for the most part—has already passed through someone's lungs. I eat foods that have been processed by others. In my daily interaction with others I try to make contacts, so that I don't feel so isolated. And yet I have this self-made boundary between myself and others.

We see boundaries everywhere. My house is the boundary between me and the cold outside. My yard has an officially established boundary that was set when the land around my house was divided. Countries have borders. Companies have legal boundaries in the form of patents, copyright and the like. It's all about boundaries. Or not?

In his poem 'Mending Wall', Robert Frost says, 'There's something there that doesn't like a wall' and 'Before I build a wall I'd like to know/What I was walling up and what wasn't,/And who I was doing with it. would offend.' Frost also wonders, Why do I need this wall between myself and my neighbors? You can ask yourself this question about any wall between you and others, or between your conscious and unconscious experiences.

One goal of meditation is to understand the limits we have set for ourselves. The strongest – and certainly toughest – boundary is the one between the conscious and less conscious part of our mind. No activity demands more from us than breaking down that barrier. Every day we are guided by our conscious life and every night the unconscious approaches us in our dreams and gets to know ourselves. Every morning we rebuild that barrier. We are all looking for a way to better understand what goes on in our minds when we are awake, asleep or just not paying attention; meditation is one such way.

Let's take a look at the function of boundaries within some systems in our lives. We tend to think that our lives are made up of separate parts that mutually influence each other, yet remain independent. An example is the family. I grew up in a family with parents, brothers and sisters. At one point my grandmother came to live with us. Before she lived with us, she was, as it were, a separate unit. Once she lived in our house, she became part of the family. She took an active part in the household, read to us, talked to us and corrected us, just like our parents. She went to concerts with us, did crossword puzzles with my father, and went on vacation with my mother. When she later left our house, she was no longer part of the family and reverted to her old role of relative.

Isn't this distinction strange? How can we just put grandma in and out of our family? Our front door defined the boundary. All the people on the other side of that door were not part of our family.

Exercise: Perceiving Limits

Take a moment to think about something in your life that is important to you. 1 Think about the boundaries you encounter when you think of this.

2  What people, animals or things belong to this part of your life?

3  Now think about what will happen to these people, animals or things if you don't do anything to them. Do they cross the line to become part of another system? Are you crossing a border yourself?

4  Is the picture getting complicated? How do you know exactly where the boundary is? Will it be moved or will it change as circumstances change?

Meditation can help you understand these limits you set yourself. You will see why some of these limits are useful and others seem to serve no purpose. During this process, relationships with other people will change. You can also expect a noticeable change in the understanding you have of yourself.

Much of the stress you experience in your life stems from boundaries. When you understand how all kinds of systems in your life – conscious and less conscious, social and economic – influence each other, your body and mind will be able to relax. Meditation is a way to gain insight into the way in which you yourself accept the boundaries between different systems.

Your Spiritual Meditation Gear

Meditation begins with our views and judgments about the world. We perceive the world through five senses, with which we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel. Inevitably, the limitations of these physical senses hinder our ability to obtain information about the world. With our mind we judge the world based on what we perceive; we think about the facts and make decisions.

Integration depends on the things that we cannot perceive with our senses. We live in the system of interrelated elements that we call body and this system is related to other systems. (For example, you are one part of your family system.) We depend on, are influenced by, and react to many factors within that body that we cannot sense sensorily. (For example, our heart rate is fairly easy to detect, but our blood pressure is not.) How can we relate to these factors? We have three methods of gathering information beyond the senses.

1  We have instruments and machines perform measurements for us. This does not require meditation, although some form of meditation may have been used when these devices were devised.

2  We use our minds to gather information and think. When we have collected sensory information, we try to understand it through thinking – we arrange or organize it logically. We solve many of our daily problems with this process of research and organization. At that point, critical evaluation can take place.

3  We also gather information through contemplation, resting the mind. During meditation, the mind often focuses on one thing—a mantra (words), a yantra (visual image), or the breath—to banish other thoughts. A ritual process takes place to direct the mind in a certain direction. In some meditation practices, as many thoughts as possible are consciously banned from the mind.

We all know how to make devices collect and record information, but we forget that we can give our minds a chance to select and reorganize the stored information by relaxing. Even less are we able to use our minds to recall information from 'unusual' memory.

With scientists we think of the first method described above and with philosophers of the second. The third method is often ignored. According to Ken Wilber, a leading author of transpersonal psychology, all three methods are valuable.

Each of the three modes of thought gives access to real (empirical) data in their respective realms — practical data, cognizable data, and transcendental data — and the data are always distinguished from each other by a direct or intuitive kind of comprehension.

We all learn the first opportunity to connect with the world: we collect information with our senses. Most of us also learn some theoretical and philosophical principles from the topics that interest us. This means that we also know the second method. However, few have learned how to collect and process transcendental information. Western religions tend to present such information to us as if it were proven facts, when it is not. In The Job of the University, writer and philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset says, There is no compelling reason why ordinary people should be scientists. He proposes that we delve into the physical system of our work, the organic life, processes of the human race, and the universal plan. He therefore assumes that this plan exists. Many religions claim that this plan can be understood through reflection, but you don't have to join a church community to get information about the world.

Ken Wilber addresses the question of purpose in us in the following way.

The basic nature of man is... ultimate completeness. It is eternal and timeless—from the beginning, to the end, and most importantly, right now, moment to moment to moment. This ever-present and ultimate completeness, as it occurs in men and women, we call Atman (after the Hindus), the nature of Buddha (after the Buddhists), Tao, spirit, consciousness (superconsciousness), or... God.

Is ultimate completeness your meditation goal? Maybe not. Yet the chances are that this transcendent experience takes place as you meditate, challenging your ideas about boundaries. It is important to know that you will not lose your ability to function within limits. Many boundaries are pleasant and have a clear function. Without it we would feel lost. Meditation provides broader awareness experiences. In this way you will be able to cope with the tensions in your life more smoothly by giving instead of resisting.

Another benefit of meditation is a change in your self-image. We define our place in the world through boundaries between ourselves and others. The paradox, however, is that you think you are separate from and different from others, when you are not. We are not separate, even while you are reading this page and I am (physically) on the other side of the world. We, on the other hand, are important parts or