Now About Meditation

We spend so much of our energy and focusing on what we want—the things we don’t have.  What happens when we choose to focus on what we do have? Finding gratitude shifts our perception towards the abundance of gifts and blessings that are present for us in this moment. Especially during hard times, a moment of gratitude can remind us of just how much we’ve been given: love, support, simple pleasures, material resources, our health and safety, this breath, this moment, this life.    To take it a step further, we can give thanks not only for the good things in our lives, but for the challenges and difficulties that push us to grow and give us the opportunity to put our spiritual work into practice.  “We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with,” writes Acharya Judy Lief. “Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness , loving-kindness or compassion?”

Life is full of transitions, big and small. We transition all of the time and don’t realise they are happening. Sometimes transitions in our lives might be as simple as going from sitting to standing with such without us realising have an effect on us. How?  For example, the flow of blood in the body changes through shifting our position, the amount of effort exerted to be upright changes, and even the breath and heart rate change slightly. Small body transitions change our perception and interaction with the world, so you can imagine that the bigger the transition, the more significant effect on us. And those big transitions aren’t always in the physical realm. They could be and often are in the realm of thoughts and emotions. Relationships change and evolve; comfortable things may need to be swapped out for things that are less comfortable and familiar. The nature of the entire universe is impermanent , and we cause ourselves to suffer by wishing things didn’t change. Noticing our de

Transcendental meditation: Repeating a mantra , such as a word, sound, or phrase, is a part of transcendental meditation. In transcendental meditation the mantra allows you to concentrate and relax without having to exert much mental effort.  Some contemplatives call a mantra "that which protects the mind".  This practice helps ground our attention in the present to cultivate mindfulness. Yoga: Yoga is a form of exercise as well as meditation. It involves a sequence of positions while concentrating on your breath, balance, and body alignment.  And this helps ground our awareness in the body and help us cultivate mindfulness. Body scan: This easy-to-learn method of meditation which is ideal for beginners. During a body scan , you close your eyes and concentrate on one area of the body at a time, usually beginning with the toes and working your way up to the head. While doing this one makes a note of any feelings of tightness, relaxation stillness or other physical sensations i

Feelings of worthlessness, humiliation, and self-criticism that you may have had at various times in your life and that may even resurface during meditation sessions are manifestations of deep wounds. Children who are neglected or abused by their parents may unintentionally develop the idea that they are terrible or worthless. This can happen as a direct result of being told that, but it can also happen for less obvious reasons. Children are completely reliant on their parents for existence, so the thought that there is something really wrong with their caretakers and that they are injuring them is too frightening for them. As a result, children place responsibility on themselves—someone must be to blame, and it can't be their parents; therefore, it must be them. When self-blame initially surfaced, it was an understandable and adaptive attempt to cope and keep sane. Understanding this and reminding yourself of it with compassion whenever such sentiments occur might help them gra

Loving-kindness towards others and self-compassion. As an initial step in the practice of loving-kindness, we start by focusing on self-compassion because self-compassion is the foundation and launching stage from which we then can reach out to others in kindness. Why because as we learn love for self this in time will flow out naturally as we expand our loving-kindness outwards. We can only learn to love others and truly accept them for their own human shortcomings if we have first learned how to love ourselves. Following is a link to a practice called “Memories of Kindness” which can help us acquaint ourselves with the topic of being kind to others, receiving kindness from others and being kind to ourselves - https://claytonmicallef.com/memories-of-kindness-meditation-practice/

  In Mind Like The Sky Thoughts Like The Clouds guided sitting meditation practice, we start by settling into our posture and setting our intention and motivation for the practice.   Then we will go to the stage of settling the mind so as to settle the gross distraction present in the mind.   After we go to the grounding phase, where we will ground the mind within the body as this helps the mind keep present. Remember, the mind can be lost in the past, or the future, or just daydreaming in the present, but the body is always here, and there is one of the greatest allies in our practice. After grounding, we move into the stage of resting in our embodied presence, mind resting in the body resting on the ground unconditionally supported by the ground.   So resting in our embodied presence and then connecting with the sense of the mind being the sky and the thoughts being clouds passing through the sky.   Inevitably our mind will wander away into thinking carried away by a thought. When