practice mindfulness

It was Meditate, now its practice mindfulness.

In order to radiate love we need first to experience the same feeling within ourselves. It often proves to be the case that as children we did not feel valued and loved. So before radiating love to others we need first to create these feelings towards ourselves. Enter your own state of mediation and become aware of your heart. Allow yourself to feel deserving of love. Allow yourself to surrender to this feeling. Imagine that you cradle a new-born child in your arms. The child is you. Let loving feelings flow through you., let the child be held in a deep and safe embrace. Offer love to yourself first until you feel nourished. This meditation appears to be very simple but it is quite likely to reveal how we have been loved in the past.

When you feel ready and able to generate this feeling towards others, you can extend your loving thoughts to others. It is natural to extend love first to loved ones but radiating love in this way need have no boundaries or limitations. The daily news brings us face to face with grim reality an the despair of the many. Hold these in your loving thoughts and discover the meaning of the global human family. there is an old saying ‘energy follows thought’.

Using the human body as a mandala, a scared pattern (a star) , is to resacralise form and restore meanting to everything the body can do. Imagine yourself standing with arms and legs outstretched. See how your body forms a five-pointed star. You are a star. Begin your meditation by contemplating the feet and their daily work of putting you in touch with the earth. How often do you walk upon the earth. How well do you look after your feet. Contemplate the legs that carry you in life. Are thy strong and confident? Move your awareeness into your trunk. Contemplate the work of your own excretion system. This is a part of you which is most likely to be taken for granted.Move your awareness into your feelings to relate here. Contemplate your physical sexual nature. How have you used this power? A woman can contemplate the womb and the monthly cycle witch sustains the life-giving process. Continue moving through the body, moving your awareness into as many parts of the body as you wish. There is plenty to meditate on, and you will not tire of subjets when using the human form as your mandala. Contemplate organs in relation to one another and in relation to the whole. contemplate functions and abilities. Choose your own subjects. there is much to discover.

1. Muladhara chakra
Sit comfortably and become aware of the area at the base of the spine. When you are settled begin to contemplate your relationship to the physical world around you. What does this level of existence mean to you? Allow images of the physical earth to arise in your mind. Muladhara means ‘root’. Contemplation on this centre involves a quiet awareness of our sense of rootedness into the earth. Simply close your meditation when you have contemplated your relationship to the earth.

2. The Scvadishtana chakra
This time focus your inner awareness just above the base of the spine. Settle into your own meditation and begin to contemplate the way in which your are able to relate to others. Do you find this easy or difficult? Do you sustain relationships over a long period? Do you give yourself in a relationship? This chakra is related to all the close relationships which we create. Svadishtana means ‘sweetness’ or ‘ones’ own abode. Both titles reflect the intimate function of this chakra. Violation at this level of being is indeed a total violation of ‘ones’ own abode.

3. The Manipura chakra
To meditate on this chakra place your awareness deep in the abdomen. This area is often known as the solar plexus. Enter your own meditative state and contemplate how you exercise your own true will in life. Are you wilful or do you use will in harmony with your sense of the divine will. The sanskrit name of this centre, manipura, means ‘lustrous gem’ or ‘city of jewwels’. The solar plexus chakra is a storehouse of subtle energy. This centre should glow and radiate like a shining gem or a bowl of jewels piled high.

4. The Anahat chakra
To meditate on this chakra become aware of the heart centre. This is the centre of transpersonal and unconditional love. When you meditate on this centre take unconditional love as your focus. Ask yourself where is your unconditional love? This is not the personal love of a relationship but the extension of deep and generous loving kindness to others. Anahat means ‘unstruck’. It refers to a sound that is heard but not struck, a subtle reference to the more sensitised qualtties of this chakra. Only a sensitised ear hears a delicate note.

5. The Vishuddi chakra
Sit quietly in meditation and become aware of the area of the throat. This is clearly connected to the function of speech which in turn is related to the kinds of thought which arise within you. Reflect upon how you communicate. What do you talk about? How do you express yourself? Do you always say what you mean and mean what you say? Vishuddi means to “purify’. This principle can be applied to the power of speech and communication to distinguish between those words and thoughts which are allied to a purpose and those which are no more than meaningless noises.

6 The Ajna chakra – not interesting to me.

7. The sahasrara chakra
This chakra is often treated quite separately from the first six. When you meditate upon it think of the space slightly above the head. Sahasrara means ‘threshold’. This chakra is shown as an open lotus with a thousand petals to symbolise the idea that a human being has an unlimited number of qualities to unfold. In your medtation contemplate the idea of potential and fulfilment. The sahasraa chakra is like the spiritual crown the crowning achievement of your being.

From: Teach Yourself Meditation by Naomi Ozaneic.

Note for readers: The notion of “chakras” is something that I have always dismissed. And I am not about to start now thinking of bits of my body as some sort of source of mystical energy or whatever. However the above meditations have notions that appear to be genuinely useful.

I’ve just had a very bad week/10 days. Now I am going to resume my practice.

I found I didn’t feel like trying at all during this bad period. But I am surprised how quickly it is passing. It could be due to having some people around, I am not sure.

I love this. Especially the awareness part. Of course I have a lot of work to do to make this a real habit but I already notice numerous instances throughout the day when awareness has enabled me to change what I say, write or do. Or course I still slip up though.

I also shared a little bit about what I am learning with an old lady i look after. She has a hard time and I think meditation is possibly the only thing that can make her life better. She seemed willing to have a go though she said it was hard. But in her situation she has all the time in the world to practice these techniques. I really hope she can make it work. Next I would like to have the time to suggest something similar to her husband. Then they may be able to stop upsetting each other so unnecessarily. Its so sad.

I am going fine with this. The book i’ve found is well written though sometimes there are things I don’t understand.

Exercise 1 was simply to sit for five minutes with eyes shut and become aware of all the thoughts that entered my mind. Easy. A nice exercise.

Exercise 2. For one week count your breaths. count on the inhalations 2,4,6,8,,10 or on the exhalations 1.3.5.7.9.1 or count the breath as a unit on the way out. or as a unit on the way in.

When you do that you can notice the thoughts that arise in your mind, and then let them go as you come back to the counting. Its pretty nice.

Exercise 3. Though I haven’t done a week of the breathing, Number 3 meditation is now posing a bit of a problem for me. The excercise says:
“choose one of the root delusions (see below) as a subject for daily mediation. Try to see how this quality functions in your life. Become aware of the feelings and circumstances associated with it. Are you going to loosen the grip of this quality in your life? Stay with your chosen subject until you feel you have gained in understanding. You can always return to the same subject at a later date. When you are ready choose another subject and examine it in the same way.

Whoops. I see now i had not bothered with that part of it. I was just concentrating on the delusion part – i chose to go with ‘negative doubt’ – Anyway I was wondering if i was supposed to “think” about it or just hold the ideas in focus oh and count my breaths at the same time. Now I see I should have been trying to do something with those questions above. Still not too sure if I am supposed to actively think. It would seem most sensible.

I thought I might try to do it three times a day.

Relaxing at the hairdressers the other, I read an article about stress. I recognised three signs of stress in the list that are characteristic of me when I’m stressed.

I am a bit stressed at the moment. On Monday I felt particularly frazzled and decided to look for a book at the library about it. I found several but one was on meditation, so I am going to have another go at that.

Its largely based on a buddhist approach. I don’t care about things like reincarnation or an afterlife or reaching nirvana. (In fact it looks like the Buddha himself thought it would be all over once he died too). Detachment from everything is not something that i will be striving for, though a little could be helpful.

Its all about living well and living morally well. I am into that. So let’s see how I go.