Tag: meditation

Meditation–Tuning

This is a meditation of the analytical type designed to modify our perception. Our perception of outer reality is largely determined by the internal state of our mind. If we find ourselves in a negative state of mind, we can use meditation to Tune our mind to a better internal state, which can improve our perception of the outside world. This positive state of mind allows us to better help those around us, improving the world for others.

Find a quiet time and place for meditation. Regret any harmful thoughts, words, and deeds you have done to others recently and resolve to do better. Imagine that the universe accepts your regrets and forgives you. Imagine feeling relief at this. Dedicate the benefits of this meditation to all who are in distress. Thank your spiritual guides for the conditions allowing you to do this meditation. Concentrate on your breath, feeling the inflow of air and the outflow of air until you feel relaxed.

Visualize a paradise of peace and beauty, a place you would like to be. Imagine it filled with happy people of all races, ages, genders, and religions, all helping one another. Imagine various animals mingling with the people, predators and prey coexisting. Imagine beautiful plants and flowers. Imagine that the weather is perfect.

You trip and fall, but someone picks you up and tends to your wounds. You become thirsty and a stranger offers you cool, clear water. You become hungry and another stranger invites you to their home for a banquet of your favorite foods and beverages. This makes you sleepy, and your host offers you a room and bed for the night. You quickly fall asleep on the comfortable bed.

You awaken refreshed and greet a perfect morning. At breakfast you ask your host for directions to the place where your most revered master teacher gives lessons. One of your host’s children walks you to the place of learning and you enter. The place is filled with other students of your religion or philosophy. They greet you as a friend and you feel their Love for you and one another. It feels like home.

The master teacher sees and greets you and seems to know you. The teacher then addresses the assembly. You have many questions about the universe and your place in it. The master answers your questions without you having to ask them. During a break, you discover all the students have the same experience. Their questions are answered. After the teaching, all the students request a blessing from the master. The master agrees but asks them for their blessing in return. You have the impression that the master regards them all as equals, not as inferior to the master.

You find a place to stay and a task to perform in this paradise. Continuing the lessons with the master, you find your mind becoming open to new information and more stable. After a long series of lessons and meditations the master invites you to a private conference. There the master questions you, and seemingly satisfied with your answers, touches you on the forehead and heart center and you enter the ecstasy of Bliss. You remain in Bliss for a time and awaken with the clear knowledge that life has meaning. You feel the unity of all things. You become Love incarnate.

Experiencing Bliss and clarity of thought, you wish to share this experience with others who still suffer. The master directs you to the council of elders who help you choose a life of service to others. You make a last round of paradise, enjoying all the features, knowing that you can return at any time. Then you return to the ordinary world and are reborn into a better life. And here you are. What will you do first?

New Cover Promotion

The book cover showing Rodin’s sculpture “The Kiss” was deemed too erotic for use by Amazon ads, so a new cover has replaced it. The new cover features a stairway into the sky, symbolizing a spiritual path to higher realizations. To introduce and celebrate the new cover, the price for both the paperback and Kindle editions has been temporarily reduced. Now is a great time to purchase extra copies as gifts and to recommend the book to friends.

Western Tantra Volume Two is Coming!

Western Tantra: The Red Path of Meditation is nearing completion. A group of readers is reviewing the manuscript and suggesting changes. It should be ready to send to publishers starting in July.

The new volume focuses on tantric practices in the Spirit realm using meditation to effect transformation from the person we are to the being we wish to become. Chapters include Renunciation, Reincarnation, Mind Training, and several other topics. Twenty-three meditations are provided in the twelve chapters to accomplish selected spiritual goals. The book finishes with tantric instructions for navigating the dying process and a Western Tantric mind protection mantra.

Meditation–Reincarnation

This a hybrid meditation containing both analytical and stillness elements. The purpose of this meditation is to gain control over your focus of attention and be able to move that focus as skillfully, gracefully, and calmly as you now move your body. Currently your human body anchors your mind where your body is located. An untrained mind without the body to keep it in place can fly anywhere in the universe. With no restraint, the untrained mind can quickly become lost in unfamiliar places. The Spirit body has no mass and follows the mind’s focus of attention. To be able to choose one’s next rebirth or incarnation wisely, requires the ability to focus on the desired choice, not flit one’s attention around the universe or panic and choose rashly. This meditation helps develop control over the focus of your attention and the direction of your mind.

Find a time and place free from distractions. Look around the place you have chosen and mindfully examine all the objects in the room or area so you have a clear idea what they look like and where they are placed. Find a comfortable chair or cushion, place yourself there, and relax. Do some deep breaths as needed, focusing on the breaths. Choose an object within your field of vision. Pick a point on that object and stare at it until you can rest your attention steadily on that point. Now close your eyes while maintaining a mental image of the object and keeping you focus on the point you chose. Realize that this is your focus of attention. Continue until you can rest your attention peacefully on a point.

Keeping your eyes closed, move your focus of attention to a different object in the room or area where you are sitting. Imagine examining it and see in your mind’s eye what it looks like. Move your attention to other objects in the room. Notice that your mind can move your focus of attention independently of your eyes, even to objects behind you. Practice this until you are adept at moving your attention. Try this with your eyes open while staring at these words or straight ahead while your attention focuses on other objects around you. With eyes open or closed, imagine picking up various objects and examining them from different angles. If this is difficult, return to focusing on a point of a single object, and try this again in a different session.

If you are comfortable with moving your focus of attention and while still sitting, imagine getting up and walking outdoors. Walk around your dwelling, looking at it from different places. Then imagine walking to nearby places, looking at and touching things along the way. If this is difficult, try actually walking to nearby places while looking mindfully at things along the way. Then try to replicate that experience in your mind in your next meditation session.

If you are able to visualize walking to nearby places and examining objects in your path, try visualizing a great leap to a favorite spot farther away and enjoy being there as you normally would, doing what you normally do there. Try to spend some time in that spot, enjoying being there. Try this for other favorite spots until you are comfortable doing this and can rest in these places in your mind’s eye for an entire meditation session.

Visualize looking at the sky. Locate the moon. This can be either in daytime or the sky at night. Study its surface from your vantage point on earth. Examine its craters and surface features. Now gather yourself for a mighty leap and imagine yourself flying to the moon. It gets larger as you approach, You land feet first on the surface of the moon in a great puff of dust. Walk around examining rocks and the stars above. Turn to look at the earth, noting its beauty. Pause to enjoy the sight of the earth for a while. Notice that the lack of air has no effect on your point of focus. Take a few deep breaths of empty space. Now gather yourself for another mighty leap, focus on your point where you left, and imagine flying back to earth, its image getting larger as you approach. Land where you started and look back at the moon. If this is difficult, watch some images and videos of the Apollo missions and try again during another session.

Visualize walking back to your meditation location. Realize that if you can calmly move your focus of attention independently of your body, then you really do not need your body to travel where your Spirit wills it to go. You can go where your heart or trusted guides lead you to you next life without fear dictating your destination.

Meditation–Deep Dive

The following Deep Dive Meditation is designed to provide an understanding of the three levels of reality and how it feels to work in each realm. Repeat as needed until you understand the difference between the Material, Spiritual, and Divine realms and the power of the creative wish. Either record the meditation so you can do it with eyes closed, or imagine that your eyes are closed as you read the meditation. Here is the meditation:

Imagine yourself in the Material world as you are, sitting comfortably in your own dwelling or a quiet place you have selected. Start with your eyes open, then close them and visualize what you just saw, yourself sitting where you are.

Visualize yourself getting up and walking around this location where you are, as you sit with your eyes closed. Pick up some things in your imagination, and feel how firm and real they feel. Think, “These things are physical and real.” Wonder at how they came to exist. Visualize returning to where you are sitting.

You wish to know how physical things came to be, and feel a slight jerk. The place where you are sitting begins to move down like an elevator to another level under the physical world. Here with your mind’s eye you see crafts people designing and building all the things in the room where you were sitting. Architects drew the plans for the room. Carpenters constructed the walls, floors, and ceilings. Artists planned the floor coverings, and weavers wove them on looms. Designers sent plans to shops to build the furnishings. Painters and photographers created the room decorations. Movers on elevators took all these things from below and installed them in the room above where you were meditating. See all this in your mind’s eye.

You decide to explore this Spirit realm of mental forms where ideas are turned into real things. Here you see many beautiful works of art, functional objects, and amazing tools and machines, all with people creating them. You wonder where they get the ideas for these amazing things. You notice each of the makers has a well next to them. They often lower a bucket into their well and bring it up brimming with bright ideas, which they apply to what they are creating.

You pick one of the work stations and ask the worker if she will lower you down her well to see what is there. She agrees. You sit with your feet in her bucket and grip its rope tightly as she lowers you down her well. It is dark in the tunnel of the well, but there is bright light at the bottom which grows brighter as you are lowered. You emerge into formless light and are surrounded by it, immersing you in indescribable joy.

The light is too bright for your eyes, so you keep them closed and feel ideas bumping against you. You reach into the light with one hand. Ideas are elusive and hard to grasp. You find you must concentrate. Still your mind and focus without thought on your outstretched hand. Pause and focus for a while on your hand. Stay focused until your attention rests gently on your hand.

Finally, with a quiet mind, you manage to grasp one of the ideas with your free hand. Imagine closing you hand gently on the idea. You shout, “Bring me up!” to the owner of the well and she hauls you up the dark tunnel to the workshop of visualized forms. You both gaze at the bright idea you brought back, and she helps you craft it into a Real thing.

You thank her for your help, and she wishes you well on your return trip. You walk to the elevator that brought you to this level, and sit again in meditation. Now you wish to return to the Real world of Material form, and the elevator lifts you back to the room where you started. You realize you just made a trip from the Material world of everyday physical form down to the Spirit realm of imagination where mental ideas take form and are transformed into Real things. From there, you plumbed the well of the formless Divine realm where ideas are born, and you brought one back with you. Open your eyes and look at what you created from the bright idea you captured. What did you bring back?

Meditation–Diversity

This is an analytical meditation to help embrace diversity. Close your eyes, take a few calming breaths, and visualize a large box of crayons with many colors (or chalks, colored pencils, or palette of paints of you prefer). Imagine pulling out the black, white, red, and yellow crayons and placing them next to your skin. Is your skin black or white or red or yellow? Certainly not!

Imagine placing each crayon in the large box against your skin until you find a match. See that it is some shade or tint of beige or brown. Set this crayon aside and visualize taking out a large blank sheet of white paper. Reflect that this is true white which is made up of all the colors combined, and if you split the colors with a prism, it forms a rainbow.

Now take the crayon that matches your skin color. Hold it up and think to yourself that this is the best color, and put all the other crayons away. With this crayon, draw a person on the blank paper. Imagine that you can draw well, and draw more people with the same crayon. Think to yourself, “I will draw the best drawing using the best crayon!” Draw the foreground and background of the picture using only the best crayon, making it the best picture.

You take this picture using only the best crayon to an art exhibit to see how others like it. Some viewers say it is a fine landscape or still life, others see animals, but most viewers say, ”It is only one uniform color. What is it supposed to be? A blank wall? What does it say?”

You decide it says there is no value in uniformity, and return to your studio to reconsider. You realize that there is no best crayon. Each crayon serves a purpose, and skillfully combining the colors creates a harmony that tells a story. You see that light falling on objects lightens colors and shadows darken colors. You see that different colors and shapes create variety that delights the eye and the heart.

You make more pictures using all the colors in the box and take your art to the gallery again. A few viewers say your art is too colorful, too primitive, discordant. But most now say they understand what you are expressing with your art. The contrast and interplay of colors speak to them. Notice that they stare at your work and understand. They see the unity in diversity. Do you?