Meditation
all about meditation
Meditation makes people connect better with others and feel more compassionate towards them. Given how many of our daily and worldly challenges stem from seeing others as a problem to our own lives, could gaining a connection to others create a more peaceful and joyous reality?
In this guide on how to meditate I will answer all of the basic questions of how to meditate, what meditation is, why it’s important, the benefits of meditation, and a basic exploration of the process itself (what we are doing when we meditate). This is the absolute basics of how to meditate, so if you need a more detailed and comprehensive guide on meditation, check out the meditation techniques page.
What is meditation? There is a lot of confusion about this question in the world today, at least among the majority it seems. Some people view it as sitting quietly because that is what meditators appear to be doing, thus they think it is about relaxation. But to describe the external appearance of the practice is to miss 99.99% of it’s substance, which is the exact same thing we are doing with our understanding of reality.
With so many problems in the world, it can be easy to question the value of so-called ‘selfish spirituality,’ when we could be focusing on helping others. Common images of people retreating from the problems of the world to meditate have given spirituality a reputation for being escapist, but it doesn’t have to be.
A team of researchers just published some remarkable information about meditation. It turns out that non-focused meditation, wherein a meditator allows the mind to just relax without a particular object of focus causes the brain to process more thoughts, feelings, and memories than when the mind is just ‘at rest.’ In essence, during non-focused meditation, the brain gets ‘smarter’.
Tools for Peace programs are dedicated to strengthening and supporting emotional and social intelligence as well as academic and professional success. The teen curriculum helps middle and high-school students learn to handle stress, manage emotions, and relate to adults and peers more positively by learning to approach people and everyday situations from the perspective of kindness and compassion.
As the energetic layers of your ego are pushed to the surface and dissolved through this practice, you will find not only more intelligence, power, imagination, and stupendous learning and creative abilities within you, you will also resonate more with truth itself. Then you will become completely open to the universe, and the universe will be completely open to you, and we will be one.
One sure-fire way of knowing if we are energetically out of sync with our lives is to observe whether we are feeling inspired and energized. If we are not, on some level we are choosing fear and are being held captive by it. Through the stance of inner listening and through acknowledging, identifying and embracing unconscious beliefs and behavior patterns hidden beneath a reluctance to change, we are able to access an expanded vision for our lives. And when we align with renewed vision and purpose, we become more authentic. We are able to engage with ourselves and with the world in a way that reflects passion and integrity.
Peter Russell: The next stage in knowing reality is knowing ourselves. To our mastery of matter, we are adding a growing mastery of mind. Transcript follows…
In mindful encounters we are able to clearly see the essential. In ordinari-ness we find our most basic connection, stripped of all the other stuff that deflects our attention. We are connected – with ourselves, with others, with the earth, the universe – and ultimately, with love. There is only the one reality. It is love – it is us – it is ordinary – and it is awesome.
We can train the brain’s electrical impulses to cycle within frequency ranges that trigger states for active awareness, bursts of creative insight, and more.
Intuition is challenging to define, despite the huge role it plays in our everyday lives. Steve Jobs called it, for instance, “more powerful than intellect.” But however we put it into words, we all, well, intuitively know just what it is. Pretty much everyone has experienced a gut feeling — that unconscious reasoning that propels us to do something without telling us why or how. But the nature of intuition has long eluded us, and has inspired centuries’ worth of research and inquiry in the fields of philosophy and psychology. Here are 10 things that people in touch with their intuition do differently.
If the Buddha celebrated at Wesak were alive today, he would experience a dramatically different world. That world is your world, and your challenge in these moments is to find new ways to walk the spiritual path. That path is timeless, as are the teachings of the great ones like Buddha, the Christ, and Kuan Yin. They shared universal truths to remind you of your divine nature and the love that it is at your core.
What the great sages and mystics have repeatedly told us throughout history is that the solution lies NOT in trying to get rid of our thoughts, but rather in stopping our habitual and robotic tendency to identify with them.
Someone asked me the other day how I was able to follow energy flows in my body. My answer was that I could feel energy and sense if it was flowing in a certain direction. Although that seemed to satisfy my questioner, it made me think about my journey toward becoming energy sensitive. As with […]
