Learn How to Meditate

How to Meditate for Peace
Meditation for peace should not be result driven. Ambition and goals reflect egotistic values. We’ve spent our lives constructing an identity that provides us psychological security and comfort. And if you’re reading this, you’ve probably come to realize that selfish desire and egotism is the route cause of discontent. So we need a method of experiencing the present without the selfish perceptions which emanate from the ‘self’ or ego.

Mindfulness meditation is an exercise that reconnects us with our present reality and leaves behind the ‘I’. By selflessly experiencing the present in non-judgment we find the fullness and beauty of life. There are various methods of practicing mindfulness meditation including walking, eating, or sitting quietly. All of them are defined by an awareness and sensitivity to the present that rarely exist at other times.

In all things, doing them for a purpose is what removes us from the present. Performing actions with full attention and without a goal in mind will result in a mindful experience. Don’t eat breakfast to rush off to work, eat breakfast to eat breakfast. Taste each bite fully and take in the texture, smell, and sounds. Virtually every activity can be mindfully performed, but perhaps its easiest to start with sitting meditation.

Mindfulness meditation has little formality, but sitting meditation has a few guidelines. You’ll want a quiet and natural setting if possible. You’ll want good posture which allows for a full deep breath. And you’ll want to practice deep abdominal breathing, drawing the breath into the lower abdomen rather than the chest. Begin by simply observing your breath. Watch it come and go attentively. With time your consciousness will expand to encompass more than your breath, but also internal and external sensations and even your thoughts. Observe all of this without judgment and mindfulness meditation will result in genuine and peaceful experience.

How to Meditate for Power
Qigong, meaning energy work in Chinese, is meditation that develops sensitivity to our internal energy, as well as the ability to manipulate it for healing and power. Outwardly this meditation may look the same as mindfulness meditation. Some forms of Qigong are standing, some moving, and some quietly sitting. But they all have a few things in common.

In terms of basic sitting meditation, all factors remain the same as above in terms of posture and breathing. There is a point about two inches below the belly button and about two inches deep in the body that is the seat of energy. When drawing in your breath you should focus on this point and either observe carefully or imagine your breath fueling a fire that is very small and dense. Each breath adds heat and weight.

Your tongue should be pressed against the roof of your mouth just behind the palate. This connects the two major meridian lines which travel along the front and rear of the body. When these lines are connected and energy moves freely then your healing ability will be at its highest. One should initially work to develop and accumulate energy in the lower abdomen until intense heat or swirling sensations can be felt.

There is no timeline for practice. The first stage of training may take someone 3 weeks or 3 years. The second stage of meditation is the conscious movement of this energy from the lower abdomen throughout the major meridian lines in a constant circular flow. Energy will travel in with the breath to the lower abdomen, down between the legs, up the back to the crown point at the top of the head, and down to the mouth where the cycle begins anew.

Higher stages of energy work include channeling this energy to certain organs or through the limbs for purposes of complete energy circulation or projecting energy outside of the body in order to heal others. In the case of martial arts this energy may be used to enhance martial technique, speed, power, and mental acuity.

When we learn how to meditate most of us assume that meditation is like anything else, a ‘thing’ to be learned and mastered. We assume there are postures, positions, techniques, and typical connotations of right and wrong methods. All of these things however could not be in further contradiction to the truth of meditation.

When learning how to meditate, we are learning about ourselves, not something external. Meditation at its core is honest awareness of the self, as well as an honest relationship with ‘experience’. What I mean by honest is simply experience lacking judgment. Judgment is something we bring to nearly every moment of our adult lives. This tastes good. I feel uncomfortable. That is noisy. This is a pleasurable film.

We rarely observe things simply as they are, independently of the way we think and feel about them. And it is this thinking and feeling about things that cause us heaps of discontent in our lives. Our thoughts and feelings are conditioned responses or logical operations on past experience. Past experience is dead, and to the extent that it is so, it inhibits honest experience of the present. It is like judging a new acquaintance because they bear some resemblance to someone you knew from the past. We could be correct in our judgment, but are most likely not. Either way, we are not looking at the person in front of us, but a figment of the past.

I am not advocating we have a psychological disconnect with our own memory or history. But I am suggesting that our identities and associations cause us pain and suffering. And if we are able to see those experiences as they are and were, fleeting moments of beauty or pain, without associating them with personal values or judgments, then we open the door to genuine meditation. And we allow the beauty of life to manifest.

So to get back to the ‘how to’ part of how to meditate, self awareness is the beginning and the end. We need to look at ourselves within our environment. We need to taste our food, listen to sounds, watch our own thoughts, and be ever mindful of immediate experiences as well as our own judgments of them creeping in. When committed to self awareness we gradually begin to deconstruct these identities we’ve spent a lifetime building, identities which separate us from truth and reality. Perception of this causes its dissolution, and the result is unconditioned meditation, unconditioned and free thinking.

Simple exercises for meditation are aimed at removing distractions and creating sustainable relaxation and comfort in ones posture for the sake of concentration. But these things are not meditation. True meditation can happen anywhere, any time. One can meditate while eating, in battle, in a brothel, and even at work. The human mind can realize beauty and life whenever it is allowed to function and experience without selfish judgment.

This kind of self awareness requires a commitment to the truth that extends well beyond a few minutes of quiet time throughout the day. One needs to be committed to asking why? Why did I just say that? Why did I do that? Why are my legs crossed at this moment in time? Why did I not make eye contact with that beggar? Why are my arms crossed while talking with my mother? And when we begin to see the conditioned elements in our behavior, the door opens for the unconditioned. We can relearn natural and passionate behavior. Innocence will return to our lives, and with it energy and compassion.

Before we learn how to meditate, we must first clarify what we mean by the term meditation. Many people attach the term meditation to an image of an ascetic mystic sitting quietly and transcending the base experiences of modern day life. Not even a sharp noise or dangerous situation can shake him from his concentrated state. Others think of a catholic monk serenely walking through a monastery while contemplating the deep spiritual truths of his faith. And while there is a place for both of these in the broad usage of the term, they do not accurately depict what meditation really is.Meditation, as I understand it, is pure experience, uninhibited by selfish impulses or desires. Experience that is fresh, immediate, and fleeting. This view is contrary to what many sell as meditation, as this state of experience cannot be achieved through effort. As such, there is nothing to learn, parse, just a great many things to unlearn. Take a look around you.

If you’re alone, examine the room you’re in or look out a window. If you’re in a public place, look at the faces of those around you. Most of us, when we ‘see’ things, we see them as we knew them. We know what a tree is, a dog is, our mother is. We don’t observe these things as they are in the moment, but as a familiar object or thing, one that is understood and needn’t be experienced beyond that.

In this habitual categorizing and familiarity with things lies the stain of past experience, and the reason meditation is so important. Our lives have become unconscious strings of associated experiences and thoughts. We no longer ‘see’ the tree, because it’s a tree. We no longer ‘see’ our girlfriend, because we know her. As such, our present experience is the overlap of dead thoughts and ideas.

For most people, this state of living feels normal, and they can’t fathom a way of life that doesn’t come from selfish judgments and perceptions. For those of us who realize the inherent selfishness in not appreciating the beauty in our immediate experience, and who realize there is a truth and beauty to life far beyond our current level of experience, then meditation is for us.

Meditation is merely a return to reality, not escape from it. When you eat your breakfast, do you taste it? Or do you think about the day ahead, or an argument with family, or do you read the morning paper? Did you taste every bite? Did you take notice of the colors of each part of your breakfast, the smells, the sound of each bite? This is meditation. This is being in the present. You needn’t run from experience. You needn’t tune out sounds and sites, or concentrate furiously on not thinking.

You should be aware. You should listen. You should feel. You should see. There are many kinds of ‘meditation’, all aiming to reconnect the lost spirit with reality. But most of them include self-control and effort. These methods augment our ego. They are manifestations of desire, as they are goals we are trying to achieve. This is contrary to what meditation is, which is fundamentally selfless. It is not about you, it is about true experience of the now.

So now that we have an idea of what meditation is, let’s begin. There are many kinds of meditation, and I’ll elaborate on some of them in following posts. But for this week let’s start with the most basic. Choose one meal of the day, every day, and eat it. Don’t devour it while thinking of other things or watching tv. Eat it. Be there. Be in that moment with the activity itself. Watch yourself as you eat. See the truth in your movements, the food, and the experience of eating. Don’t judge it. Accept it. You are one action closer to happiness, and we’ll take steps further together as you learn how to meditate.