Where to start?

Think about meditation as a very simple process. To begin you don't need a mantra, teacher or any technique – you just need a place to sit that is cosy and comfortable, and your body structure should be straight. If you don’t move physically, the mind will become still too. Try it. Once the mind starts becoming still, and not having any thoughts, you will feel cosy and you will want to do it again and again. In the beginning you won’t be able to do it for a long time. Gradually as you develop that cosiness, this thought-hitting process becomes shorter and shorter. It is a myth that when you sit down you will be able to completely quiet the mind. The mind generates thousands of thoughts per second. When you sit quietly, and turn the focus inward, you become very aware of what is going on in the background of your mind. Distractions are the rule.

Keep going back to your breath, or mantra, or other points of focus. Do not evaluate or react to the extraneous thoughts. Let them be processed by the mantra. The mind never stops but you can create stillness, a calm which will serve you all through your life. Have patience with yourself. Perhaps at first you will achieve only a minute or two of fully focused meditation. Trust the process. When you meditate regularly you will have intuition to see the unseen, know the unknown, and hear the unheard and your life will not be the same as it is now.

Where to focus?

Try shifting your meditation's focus to one of these ideas. See which one creates the most powerful experience for you.

1. The Breath - This is perhaps the most common type of meditation. Focus your attention on your breath and simply bring it back to the breath whenever your mind wanders.
2. The Body Scan - Pay attention to the physical sensations in your body. Start from the top of your head and slowly move your attention down. When you get to the floor, change directions and slowly move back up.
3. The third eye point (the brow point) - This stimulates the pituitary gland - intuition is developed.
4. The tip of the nose - This stimulates the pineal gland and the frontal lobe of the brain.
5. Mantra - A word or phrase repeated over and over again during meditation. They are generally sacred in nature - they’re designed to change you.
6. Emotions - Focus on your emotions. What are you feeling? What are the layers and subtleties to those emotions?
7. White Light - Meditators often find that visualizing white light is calming and rejuvenating. Visualise this light flowing into you, through your breath or emanating from your heart
8. Space and Expansion - The vast majority of matter is made of space. See if you can feel a sense of vastness, to feel space itself.

Most meditations are done for 11 or 31 minutes

3 minutes Affects your circulation, blood chemistry and stability of the blood. The increased blood circulations begins, distributing enhanced neuroendocrine secretions throughout the body.

7 minutes Brain patterns start to shift from the static of beta waves, to calmer alpha waves and ultimately to deep relaxing delta waves. Simultaneously, the magnetic force surrounding the body increases in strength.

11 minutes The pituitary gland, glandular system and the nerves start to learn and change. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems begin to accommodate the increased energy.

22 minutes of meditation balances the three minds and they begin to work together.

31 minutes of meditation allows the glands, breath and concentration to affect all the cells and rhythms of the body. It lets the psyche of the mediation affect the 3 guns, all 31 TATVAS, and all layers of the mind’s projections.

62 minutes of meditation changes the grey matter in the brain. The subconscious” shadow mind” and the outer projections are integrated.

2-2 1/2 hours of meditation changes the psyche in its co-relation with the surrounding magnetic field so that the subconscious mind is held firmly in the new pattern by the surrounding universal mind.

Daily Habit

To master the effects of a meditation, practice it as a sadhana, a daily discipline. This will develop a life-promoting habit. Habit controls us so much that is it said that we can actually change our destiny by changing our habits.

It takes 40 days to change a habit.

It takes 90 days to confirm the habit.

In 120 days, the new habit is who you are.

In 1,000 days, you have mastered the new habit.

The duration of 40 days of practice lets the meditation provoke your subconscious to release any thought and emotional patterns that hinder you. A good meditation will break your old patterns, put in a seed for new patterns and clear the subconscious. Try to mediate at the same time each day. It is helpful to keep a journal of your daily practice.

BENEFITS

Meditation....
* promotes a sense of well-being, inner peace, stability, and calm
* develops the intuition.
* releases reactions and unconscious habits, subconscious fears and blocks
* builds the spontaneous and intuitive link to awareness itself.
* promotes the ability to focus energy, enhancing effectiveness and efficiency,
* promotes clarity of mind, mental awareness and the ability to be present
* resolves core issues of stress-producing patterns.
* develops the frontal lobe of the forehead, which controls your personality

Igniting Your Light
Rad