What helps you meditate?

[Uma]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

garlic and hot peppers

Puts me in mind of another thing to think about - food and meditation.

I keep it simple and this is my routine.

1 - Walking meditation through my living room, kitchen and bedroom. I do one circuit focusing on the feel of my bare feet and sensations of the various floor surfaces and temperatures, a second focusing on my stride, a third focusing on the swing of my arms and a fourth focusing on the air pressure on exposed skin caused by movement.

2 - Then I sit and take a few minutes to scan bodily sensations starting at my feet and working to my head, followed by full body awareness for a few breathes. Body on the cushion, mind in the body. Oh, I use a chair. :-)

3 - Then I settle into either calm abiding, mindfulness of sound or choiceless awareness.

I do two sessions a day, an early sitting of either calm abiding or mindfulness of sound and a late sitting of choiceless awareness. I use some YouTube vids of Tibetan Singing Bowls for sound and I'm finding I really connect with that.

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

***

Hi Miss H!

What I’m saying is simply this ... our attention flows. It flows where our priority lies. We do not have to consciously work towards an activity we enjoy. However, for the most of us, such activity is in the external ephemeral.

Now, having voluntarily self realised that enduring joy can only be found in the internal eternal, our priority on where our attention dwells should shift. However, life not quite being black & white, we tend to stagnate in old habit patterns.

In as of my own experience, continuous contemplative consciousness correction steers us inwards. Layer by layer. Unless we cheerfully choose to change, a forced meditation is but a chore.

Sure. Meditation, even if as a ritual helps but in a limited way. I hold the view that our very orientation itself should be meditational. This would mean that it is our default position, relaxed and easy, free flowing in the now continuum. We then call upon thought to perform our daily activities and that too subject to frequent review so that the fulcrum of our consciousness shifts.

Speaking as of my experience, I would affirm that meditation is simply orienting or positioning our consciousness to magnetically induce Divine energy to connect with us. As such, there is nothing we can do ... all being a Divine grace, be it the oneness experience in the void or kundalini rising and then igniting in the heart centre or whatever. Our only doing is in allowing. Devoid of resistance. That would mean as much disassociation from the mind-body as we are able. Which means that our priority must shift. If priority shifts, meditation is our default orientation. Our natural state of being. Just like breathing.

Now, having gotten to this, being mostly meditational, stagnation may be said to be indulgence in old habit patterns rooted in transience. So, whilst we may engage, we should seamlessness disengage easily.

Coming to meditation as a doing ... sure, once we have shifted as such, we sit quietly, doing nothing, simply accentuating our inner silence by distancing ourselves even from memory drawn imagery anticipation. We just let go and be. The Divine energy does all the doing.We just have a burning yearning to connect. This yearning, if only occurring when the alarm rings or a pop up reminder in the phone comes on won’t do. Which is why meditation ought to be our naturally flowing state of being.

And no ... such an orientation does not impede daily life. On the contrary, we are always centred.

What I have said is not conjectural. It is as of my life I’m living. Yet, this sharing in no way assumes to suggest that all follow this path.

***

Well said.

And I would contend and add that periodic sitting is for most essential, critical, key; builds a momentum and hidden energy and force that informs daily life.

The longer the better but regularity being key. Go away for retreats, Buddhist centers, others of affinity.

Silence silence silence

Inner

Outer

Cultivate, live, flow

Jl

Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

I keep it simple and this is my routine.

1 - Walking meditation through my living room, kitchen and bedroom. I do one circuit focusing on the feel of my bare feet and sensations of the various floor surfaces and temperatures, a second focusing on my stride, a third focusing on the swing of my arms and a fourth focusing on the air pressure on exposed skin caused by movement.

2 - Then I sit and take a few minutes to scan bodily sensations starting at my feet and working to my head, followed by full body awareness for a few breathes. Body on the cushion, mind in the body. Oh, I use a chair. :-)

3 - Then I settle into either calm abiding, mindfulness of sound or choiceless awareness.

I do two sessions a day, an early sitting of either calm abiding or mindfulness of sound and a late sitting of choiceless awareness. I use some YouTube vids of Tibetan Singing Bowls for sound and I'm finding I really connect with that.

Thanks for sharing and welcome!

[Miss Hepburn]

When I was younger what helped me meditate was: The need To Escape!!!

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

When I was younger what helped me meditate was: The need To Escape!!!

For me it was something I first turned to in a serious way after a disastrous relationship with a lovely woman with triplet 10 year old boys.