Meditation

As anyone who practices mindfulness, you must face the challenge of the aspects which you have pushed aside. While it is an admirable practice to improve your focus in life by pushing aside other thoughts, emotions or feelings, you need to take a deeper challenge. The challenge is to realise that pushing aside any thoughts, emotions or feelings, does not make them disappear. When pushing them aside, they continue to exist on the periphery of your consciousness.

 

You need to understand these aspects within your life so that you can then move beyond them. Moving beyond them, you can no longer react to the stimuli which they produce. However, if you leave them unattended within the recesses of your mind, they are like the proverbial Pandora’s box. As such, any emotional aspects not appropriately understood or banished completely from your mind, can lead to many unforeseen problems.

You may well have taken advantage of mindfulness techniques to stop, pause, to become aware of what is taking place in the moment. You might have leveraged meditation as a reprieve from your emotions, thoughts and feelings. What is it that makes you act, respond, think, believe and feel in the way in which you do? What is the trigger which presses your psychological or subconscious buttons? The answer to these inquiries might be far more complicated than you initially conceived, as you view your place in the larger cosmos.

There is much more that is not seen than can be seen. Take into consideration that everything in the universe is energy. Welcome to the world of actuality and real facts. Absolutely nothing within the cosmos is by fortune or accident, all adhere to well-prescribed patterns and circulations of energy which form the basis of all matter, thoughts and our reality.

There are several reasons people can feel sleepy when mediating. The fundamental key is that you need to learn to be in control to stay master of your mind and body, instead of your mind controlling your body.

If you have had an overwhelming day or struggle with stress, then you may discover that you frequently become sleepy during the course of your meditation, as your body starts to destress from the pressures of your life. If you routinely experience this, then take some time-out to stand or splash some water on your face prior to proceeding.

During the afternoon, many people experience an energy slump, so instead, they choose to practice meditation in the morning when the body is awake. It is also common that a relaxed sitting posture can contribute to the impulse to nod off, so take the opportunity to get started with some good posture before you begin your meditation.

A far more perplexing reason why you might become sleepy during your meditation is because your mind controls your life. You may uncover that it is your mind which is wielding control, drawing you away from your meditation. Essentially your mind exerts control over you, impeding your ability to effectively practice meditation. As you continue to meditate, you can strive to take back control from your mind, nevertheless be aware that your mind is going to resist relinquishing control at any cost.

In the simplest form, meditation can be stated as being at one. Through learning to bring quietness to your mind and silencing the endless noise of your thoughts, emotions and feelings, gradually the essence of your true self, the Life Force, begins to emerge. The light of your Life Force, the true self within all people, is hidden behind barriers of material thoughts, emotions and feelings which have been built up by your mind and persona. Through an open, peaceful and quiet mind, this light of your Life Force can be awakened through various Life Force meditation techniques.

Many of you may have systematically made use of mindfulness techniques to stop, pause, to become aware of what is transpiring in the moment. Alternatively, you may have leveraged meditation as a respite from your emotions and from your thought and feelings.

However, what is it that makes you act, respond, think, believe and feel in the manner in which you do? Realise that absolutely nothing within the cosmos is by accident, all follows well-prescribed patterns and flows of energy which form the basis of all matter, thoughts and our reality. So consider for a moment how these unseen or unrecognised energies could influence you daily and trigger emotions or feelings hidden deep with your psyche.

It can seem uncomfortably awkward or even alien when you start meditation, especially if you lead a busy life, or there are lots of things which typically occur around you. This can be a completely natural sensation as your mind is used to the normal hustle and bustle of everyday life. The change of pace when meditating can trigger feelings of anxiety or nervousness, as if something is missing or even a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out).

 

If you do feel uneasy when practising meditation, then be aware it is your own mind which is generating these sensations, as it strives to maintain its control over your life and your way of thinking. Several techniques which can aid you to become more comfortable while meditating include: basic breathing techniques, such as Breathe with Purpose, to elements of mindfulness. When you first start to practise meditation, another effective way to help you feel less anxious, is to simply lower your gaze to a spot on the floor or ground before you, rather than closing your eyes.

Ritual can take over if the essence of your true self is forgotten. Our outward appearances can come to be more important than our inner experience when ritual reigns and dominates the spiritual practice. For instance, if you practice meditation in the hope of enlightenment, how much time, and with whom you meditate, should not be the driving imperative. It is actually more important how your meditation or spiritual practise has allowed you to reach within to your inner self. The greatest value is understanding how your spiritual practice has enabled you to change your heart and transform your thoughts and feelings to those people around you. Always strive to reconnect to your inner self in your spiritual endeavours, allowing you to transform your thoughts and bring to light authentic awakening

As humankind, we possess higher intellect, perception, imagination and intellection. The cognitive powers of your mind and your faculties of knowledge operate on multiple simultaneous levels. Through active intelligence, you have the ability and the capacity to combine all of the diverse aspects of your intellect to manifest into life. Through positive thought, you can illuminate your life in the same way as light renders colours visible in the world around us.

Frequently people struggle with mindfulness or meditation by aspiring to eliminate all the thoughts from their mind. Realise that making this effort to clear your head is likewise a thought. Discovering the silence in between your thoughts can be a really powerful technique to assist you to calm your mind and attain aspects of meditation.

As an alternative to focusing on the thoughts which you are attempting to clear from your mind, focus on the silence in between each thought. All the while, as you keep on focusing on the silence in between the thoughts, observe the silence expanding. Continue to focus on this silence in between your thoughts to ensure that it thrusts an increasing number of your thoughts to the edges of your mind. Gradually this silence will expand to grant you some calmness of mind, from where you can move ahead with your other mindfulness or meditation activities,

The majority of us have noisy minds, so you are not the only one in your attempts to tame the limitless babble of your mind. A usual hurdle when embarking on mindfulness, or meditation is that people cannot make their mind go clear nor empty, regardless of just how much they try. Employing focused thought (Ekagrata) can aid you to hone in on a single thing, such as your breath, or reciting a mantra. As you progressively discover how to become the master of your mind, you intentionally pay attention to one thing at a time, as opposed to allowing numerous thoughts to overwhelm your thinking. If errant thoughts enter into your mind, you acknowledge them and move them aside, to attain that focus of mind which is Ekagrata.

There are often times during the course of a day when you can direct your attention to help bring facets of calmness within you. As you take a walk down the street, or by way of the park, you might focus on the sounds you take in. What is important is that you are in that present, as you can use these techniques without the rigour of a schedule – you can gain from their application any time in your life.

There are no preeminent times to practice meditation, however, most will concur that it is necessary to develop some time for you, no matter the time of day. While conventional meditation practice in a relaxing location where you are less likely to be distracted is valuable, you can apply aspects of your cognition, mindfulness or meditation at any time or place. Undoubtedly, it is in these hectic, stressful or uncontrolled times when you need the real benefits of these meditative practices the most.

The utmost aspiration for anybody undertaking meditation is to realise a comprehensive quietness of the mind. However, for many of us, this is frankly not achievable. If you have a noisy mind, attempting to attain an absolute silence of mind may be difficult to achieve. Typically, your very own attempts to quieten the mind will replenish your mind with the noise of thoughts similar to those which you are attempting to eliminate. While you might not have the ability to attain a total quietness of mind, you should not give up. After all, it is more important to focus on mastering your mind. The distinction being, that as you come to be that master, you can learn to focus your mind with one thought, so by banishing the noise to the background.

When focused with intention, your thoughts are the most commanding. When your thoughts do not have focus, it is like light travelling through a prism contrasted to being concentrated by a magnifying glass. While light can transit through either the magnifying glass or the prism, what occurs afterwards to the light is really different. The aforementioned analogy holds true for your thoughts. Discover how to focus your thoughts, instead of letting them be scattered. The techniques which are incorporated in mindfulness, as well as meditation, can assist you to focus your thoughts; with higher levels of focused thoughts (Ekagrata) being possible through the refined process of Life Force Cognition.

There are numerous forms of meditation practised across the world. Many aspects of meditation involve bringing your mind’s attention to the present without wandering back to the past or drifting into the future. Meditation can be an important tool to help master your mind enabling you to make conscious contact with your highest self.