Beginner’s Guide to Meditation

If someone told you, “Do this one thing every day and your life will absolutely – without a doubt – improve. Even the present will become more enjoyable,” most people would beg to sign up for it! Yet when you reveal this magic to be meditation, there can be resistance.

Some of us would rather be told that the key is a risky operation – or an expensive investment. Perhaps you tried meditation once and decided – “I can’t do it! I can’t even sit still for five minutes! How can I meditate for 10 or even 20 minutes?”

The real question is – how can you not meditate?

Our minds crave peace and emptiness so much that they try to process everything as quickly as possible, to get to a peaceful place. But instead of giving our minds some rest, we just pile on more things for them to do! We fill up all of our time, our relationships are endlessly complex – and our world is filled with passwords, parking spaces, pollution and taxes! Our minds want to rest so much they have to make us physically sick just to get a break.

If you live an unconscious life of action and reaction, you cannot have inner peace, and outer peace will eventually be impossible. But if you dare to dive within, you won’t just find peace – you’ll find everything waiting for you in the unified field.

This energy is what ties everything together in the entire universe. It’s always there, but the world of form confuses us, and we think the form is the reality. But it’s what lies unseen beneath the form that is real. It’s holding everything around you – and is even holding you. When you meditate, you wrap yourself in a blanket of infinite possibility and power.

With that in mind, try our easy beginner’s guide to a journey that could change your life.

Keep it simple!
You don’t have to find a guru to learn how to meditate. You don’t have to take a class. You don’t have to pay for a “mantra.” You can do all of the above if you find them helpful, but meditation is for free – for joy and for you.

Step 1
Meditate as soon as you wake up. It can be helpful to brush your teeth or drink a glass of water, but you probably don’t need to eat breakfast. In fact, the less you put between the moment you awaken and the moment you start meditating, the better. If you can sit cross-legged on the floor with your back straight, that’s great. But if you would prefer to sit in a chair, that’s also fine. You don’t have to look like a yogi to experience the power of meditation. You just need to be willing.

Step 2
Start with sound, and then move to silence. Begin by setting a timer for ten minutes, and set it aside. Now open your mouth and make sound. Unformed, open, pure sound. It will sound strange to you if you are used to only using your mouth for words, but let go of all self-consciousness and just let pure sound come out of your mouth. Keep doing it until you are the sound. Then take the volume down to silence.

If you are not in the practice of meditating, as soon as you stop making noise, your mind will leap right back in with chatter, “You don’t have time for this, this isn’t doing anything, why did you say that at work yesterday…” and that is great. It means your mind is so full that it wants to empty itself. As each thought comes, say out loud, “Thank you, I release you now,” and return to open sound and then return to silence. If you keep this practice going, you’ll find that the space between the thoughts (the peace that passeth all understanding) will grow and grow. Soon, your grateful dismissal of thoughts that do not serve you will come quickly – and you’ll find yourself dismissing thoughts all day long that do not move you toward a peaceful existence.

Step 3
At some point, ten minutes will feel like five – eventually! At that point, go ahead and set the timer for 20 minutes. It’s time to swim in the infinite field! Start your meditation with open sound, and turn to silence. Now focus your energy from your pelvis, and then on to your heart – then focus on the space between your eyes. Some call this the “third eye.” Visualize a little man who leaps from your forehead, and splashes into an endless sea of light. You are that little man – you are surrounded on all sides everywhere by the infinite field. You are made of the very same light, and you can swim in the infinite field at all times! When we open our eyes, we see all the distractions from peace. But the distractions are an illusion. The field is always there around you – you are never alone, because you are never separate. You are part of the whole. The field is you.

Step 4
Now it’s time to receive. In just a day or two you will see how meditation quiets your mind and makes you more alert and – more at peace. Over a period of weeks, you will start to see things connecting in your life in unexpected and incredible ways. Thoughts will come when you are swimming, and you will start to feel led in your life – rather than alone and terrified! Negativity will diminish itself as you empty the thoughts each morning. The thoughts that do interrupt you will be softer and kinder. The hard, angry thoughts are always the first to go, because they are the strongest and they are the first to fight against meditation. Once you release them, they lose all their power. Some days you have so many negative thoughts, it seems like all you are doing is releasing them! Isn’t it wonderful that you can let them go? Before meditation, you had no defense at all. And it is these voices that keep us from accessing our true selves, our purpose and our great life.

There is nothing more powerful you can do than to meditate – to receive all the universe wants for you. Why wouldn’t you want to tap into every talent and ability you have?

Tips
Don’t give up if you miss a day or two. Just go right back to your practice.

Don’t judge your meditation. It will plateau a few times before you really go deep. That’s okay.

If you get discouraged, meditate. If wonderful things come into your life, meditate. If you don’t know what to do with your life, meditate. All the answers are there.

Finally, remember – when you are in alignment with your power, your power will go beyond what you ever imagined. Your dreams are just waiting for you to allow them to come true.