informal practice - the meditative mind

[happy soul]

How do you guys approach the meditative mind?

A few possibilities are:

- Traditional mindfulness, which consists of paying attention and being aware of the contents of consciousness (including external things) in each moment.

- The 'direct approach', which entails 'being aware of being aware', or 'just being aware'.

- Practicing peace, in which you deliberately practice being at peace from moment to moment. To put it another way, 'rest in peace'.

- Simply being, in which you 'just be'.

- Continual mindfulness of the breath, which entails remaining aware of your breathing from moment to moment.

- Body awareness, in which you remain continually mindful of the body and physical sensations.

- Mantra recitation, where you repeat a mantra continuously.

- Practicing the presence of God, in which you remain ever mindful of God's presence and love.

Do any of you practice any of these things or have any comments about this?

I draw a distinction between meditation, contemplation and trance. Each has its place but they can overlap of course.

Meditation can involve any of the adumbrations you've given some in combination others not. Body awareness is usually sensual awareness for me - about what the body is doing/how it's moving/internal processes seen as the flowing of sense experiences - highly visual. (This has featured strongly in dealing with health issues like thinking out ways to remove some alien impairment to health. "The Art of True Healing"). Also for "chakra cleaning" - the Middle Pillar.

Contemplation is more about pondering an issue. If I had to draw a pic of it it would probably be a radiant sun, the sun being the issue and the rays terminating in a related aspect, perhaps in turn to becoming new nodes with further rays etc., so one has a rich picture of what's going on.

A path-worker on "The Tree" will switch between different phases as need demands.

The possibilities are many...