July 5, 2009: Meditation techniques demystified - Part 1 (Meditation teleclass)
I am happy that we have finally reached the point when everyone has heard about meditation. It is good that meditation is now mainstream. People talk about it. People imagine doing it. People take classes to learn it. It is a topic of conversation. Everyone knows it is good for you. News media says so as well. Everybody thinks it is good to relax, relieve stress, get better concentration. Yet, few have really tried meditation or understand deeper purposes of meditation. Thus, let me say a few words about meditation.
Meditation is a type of contemplative practice. It has been practiced in all cultures and by people from all religious backgrounds. Meditative practices exist in all spiritual traditions, even if we sometimes need to dig deeper to find them. They are well-tested by time, by many people. Meditation is safe but effective.
There are basically two kinds of meditation: meditation that seeks to transform and meditation that seeks to let go. The former is more of a visualization type. The latter is more of an insight type. In order to understand either, we need to experience, much experience. It is not really enough to talk about the subject. A typical time commitment to meditation is half an hour twice a day for a while.
Insight meditation teaches being. It is about noticing where you are and how you are. It is about being here and now -- in the present and not in the past or the future. It is about recognizing that past and future are mental projections that do not have real existence to the mind, rather they are conjured by the mind for its endless conceptualization processes.
Insight meditation leads to letting go. When you let go, you let go of your resistance. This resistance to life is the root cause of all troubles, physical or mental. Humans are socialized to believe that making an effort, going upstream is a way to success. Insight meditation teaches you to let go and let the flow of life take you downstream toward success. That is why this seeming non-activity generates so much inspiration for action and change.
You can start practicing insight meditation now by simply becoming aware of your breathing or the way you are sitting, standing or walking. Or you can do insight meditation by just sitting and not doing. Practicing fifteen minutes each time is a good start. You can find a more detailed technique here.
The visualization meditation seeks to transform you directly into what you want to be. It uses the law of attraction, which is at the core of our universe, to engage the principle as you think so you become. This style of meditation is essentially about pretending to be who you want to be until you are no longer pretending. Practitioners typically imagine themselves to be gods or goddesses with desirable or appealing qualities such as peace, intuition, wisdom. After some practice the practitioner develops the qualities.
For example, it is natural to want to be near our role models because we seek to be like them. We naturally think of him or her and consequently derive pleasure and receive emotional sustenance from his or her company. We can spend time near the role model--or we can engage in visualization of being near him/her with similar results.
Likewise, if we meditate on peace, we will become peaceful in due time. If we visualize being a great writer, we will write well. If we meditate on our inadequacies, we will attract them. Thus, the visualization meditation transforms by activating the law of attraction.
These two styles of meditations (insight and visualization) have been developed by human experts many thousands of years. There are also tantric meditation techniques that were given to us by beings from outside the human realm. Those tend to be more powerful and, hence, require more caution. You should always engage an experienced teacher if you want to go deeper with meditation. For the received tantric techniques, one should seek out a lineage holder who knows how to teach those methods.
We will discuss and practice the two types of mediation in our teleclass. In the subsequent teleclasses, we will delve deeper.
Copyright (c) Dr. Anatole Ruslanov
