Meditation types

Not all meditation is created equal. I have tried the most popular commercial apps that are around at the moment – Headspace and Calm but to no avail. To me they feel like you are just going through the motions since they are only utilising a calming voice, tranquil music and visualisation; nothing else. This is why the American self help programs, positive affirmations and mindfulness I have previously tried to get behind haven’t worked. They feel lacking in authenticity to me. It’s like having an artificial structure imposed onto your life but there is no content to sustain it. If you just have the bare bones of something it’s not going to be very useful. Very much like in languages if you can say hello, my name is, how are you and I’m good this does not make a conversation or a friendship. It’s just politeness that feels like progress as its relaxing you, but stops short of actually achieving anything.

Meditation is being commercialized in a big way right now but when that happens the very essence of what you are trying to accomplish is lost. This happens continuously because when you introduce money into these concepts they stop being about self actualisation and start becoming about income and nothing else. They lose their potency which is the very reason why you want to do them in the first place!

Religion is a bit like this too. As I’m learning more about the origins of the big religions and how they have changed over the years I seeing why people are losing faith in them. There becoming corrupted from there original goals. No wonder Americans study the bible in Greek. The King James Bible is so altered from the Greek or the Russian Orthodox version. I wouldn’t say I was religious at all but there are truths in these books. It’s why they have persisted for so long. It’s control but it’s also an understanding of human nature. We have not changed as a species so the same stories still help us through the centuries. The father, the son and the Holy Ghost is a recognition of the fact that we grow throughout our lives but there are still elements of the past within us while we anticipate and plan for the future. Our personality or soul, what makes us unique, can be carried on to future generations through our actions, words and tasks. Our legacy can live on even though we do not.

I really liked the Deepak Chopra 21 day meditation course I’ve just done. This is available for free on YouTube if you want to take part in it yourself and I highly recommend that you do this. There are other resources to go with these videos which I was provided with as part of a group exercise I took part in. I’m not sure just the meditation works on its own even though he uses chanting, mantras and visualisation techniques. This is where the difference comes in with competing regimes. Deepak Chopra is a world renown doctor of endocrinology and has researched what happens with the body/mind connection. Not many other people are that steeped in the knowledge required to do this properly and it certainly shows with the outcomes of these programs. I’ve got his latest book Meta Human to continue the progress I have started.

I’m deep thinking and highly empathetic which is slightly problematic when I want to talk to someone about this. Most people are not able to understand this in the way that I need them too. Most of the people that do however have much higher levels of emotional intelligence than I do so trigger me. While this is good to a certain extent being triggered by them all of the time means they are not for you.

So once again I have the dilemma of where do I fit in and will I ever find my tribe? Being an optimist is only good for so long. That’s why occasionally I do have a healthy dose of scepticism and pessimism. If I was accepting of everything and everyone all of the time; my brain would be so open it would fall out. You have to stand for something otherwise you will fall for anything. Principles and a moral code are extremely important here as standards do need to be respected and kept.

Life is a game of balancing the 2 sides of everything. You can’t truly experience anything if your only seeing one side whether this is through your own myopic view or that which has been created in your own country.

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The Perils of Self Help Advice

Self help advice is all over the place. It comes in many forms and is freely available on many platforms. However, without knowing how to utilise any of it, it’s absolutely useless.

To explain this think of your questions being keys flying about in your brain. Then think of the answers which are within your body being keyholes. The trouble is they are both unlabelled so you have no chance of discovering which belongs where.

This is where we need to find a program that will allow us to identify and match the keys with their keyholes. This is where meditation comes in as it relaxes you enough to open up your mind. You already have a mapping system to enable you to do that but you need to dust it off to make use of it again.

For many centuries prayer was used as a means of figuring out our intentions. When we had voiced what we wanted to achieve then the universe could direct us to where we could find the knowledge, materials and people to complete such a task. This is the law of intention and desire as I’m learning about in my Buddhist meditation program.

I’m learning how to attract abundance into my life be it financial or otherwise. For while we become the qualities of those 5 people we spend the most time with; if you spend time with no-one this is what you are likely to become.

We are all capable of much more than we know but we restrict ourselves. We hang on to a lot of emotional baggage not only through our own lives and choices but absorbed from all those around us that have ever entered our lives. If we ask ourselves the right questions when meditating and journaling; then the answers will be delivered in a steady stream.

Just be aware the answers may come at awkward times where you struggle to process them and subsequently are not able to record them properly. However, you do have to trust the process. You can’t cheat by skipping out parts that make you feel uncomfortable as that means it’s doing its job. This is however a private process. Do not share your insights immediately if at all as you will be less honest. This needs complete transparency to work to the best of its ability.

Also, it may take the best part of a day to reveal its magic. If you haven’t engaged in it wholeheartedly, then it may not work at all. You have to decide for yourself whether you are willing to commit to this series of reprogramming techniques. It’s for your own benefit but you may not yet be ready to heal and grow.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. Your circumstances may change though so that although the lessons are still equally valid; your perception of them changes radically. Growth is a rollercoaster so there will be steep drops into what seems like the abyss and there will also be times when you come to a complete standstill. This is normal as you are preparing for your next rise into a higher level of consciousness.

Using meditation to supercharge your mind

While in lockdown I’m trying out Deepak Chopra’s 21 day meditation course. It’s been provided by a friend and it’s like the hen do that we didn’t get to go on due to Covid.

I’m finding it amazing for my clarity of mind and we’re only on day 4. It has simple tasks for you to do but they produce results. The meditation contains a mantra in Sanskrit which helps clear your mind. It’s different every day and a translation is provided. It only lasts about 15 minutes but you do need to be uninterrupted for this time for it to have its full effect.

I definitely felt the loss of it today as I receive them in the evening and I did yesterday’s before I went to sleep. So, by the time it got to siesta time the next day I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed with the rest of my day. The previous day I had experimented with doing it just before siesta time so I haven’t found a good time yet. However those are the easiest times for me to slot in such a routine as phones and technology are not a thing I can do too easily first thing in the morning. It affects my day too much if I do that.

There is also a new phrase to write down and repeat each day to power you up but doing these at night defeats the purpose as you forget by morning. Halfway through the day means your energy is mostly gone so maybe I aught to try breaking it into parts with the audio at night and the rest later on? I could perhaps repeat the audio while doing the task later?

In addition there is also a task (writing, drawing etc) to do that maybe related to previous tasks so you need a notebook to keep all of the work together. It helps in processing things. They bring up surprisingly things which are best written down also lest you forget these important revelations.

There are getting to be questions to be answered too so again a dedicated pad of paper is required to make full use of the techniques you are learning. A sheet for each day is good or one each for the phrases, mantras, tasks and questions. I have a feeling this might get quite lengthy, quite quickly and you will need to refer to previous days to get the full benefit.