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Meditation Mastery

for

Unique PeopleBy Tom Von Deck

www.DeeperMeditation.net

Monkey Wisdom Publishing

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http://www.DeeperMeditation.net/

Copyright © 2013

Monkey Wisdom and Tom Von Deck

All rights reserved.

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Introduction

The Different Types of Meditation

Concentration: Falling in Love

Mindfulness: Embracing Love

A Guided Meditation Exercise

Visualized Object Meditations

Verbal Object Meditations

Meditations on a Sensation Object

Sense and Concept Meditations

How to Choose the Best Technique

Tips for Establishing a Practice

How to Make Meditation Much Easier

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Introduction

This meditation guide is designed to save you a whole lot of time in your quest to learn meditation. It will save you time in two ways.

First, you will learn how to find YOUR best meditation technique without having to spend obscene amounts of time shopping around the endless maze of books, retreats, teachers and websites. You will also learn how to experiment with meditation techniques in the most efficient manner possible so that you find the right one quickly and easily.

Secondly, this book is streamlined in such a way that you get nothing but the most useful info without any filler or fluff. You will learn how to meditate, and properly to boot. You will learn all the components of a simple meditation technique. You will learn many meditation techniques and how to come up with even more of them. You will learn how to choose the technique that you are most compatible with plus how to make that technique much easier to do on any time schedule. You’ll learn all of this without having to skim through hundreds of pages of fluff to do so.

Do you want to know the best way to master meditation? The best way to accomplish this is not to listen to the advice of a person or organization who tells you that only one technique is right for everyone. Proper meditation begins with the discovery of the very practices that you are most compatible with.

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Some background: My name is Tom Von Deck. I have studied many techniques since the late 1980’s at approximately age 12. After much study, I am now a meditation trainer, speaker and author.

Over the years, I have discovered many ways to add the element of customization to meditation techniques. This includes discovering one’s most compatible methods for integrating meditation into daily life and one’s most compatible ways to prepare the mind and body for deeper meditation. It also includes customizing a practice to fit the busiest of schedules and any and all spiritual, religious and secular backgrounds.

I began the journey of sharing this knowledge when I wrote Oceanic Mind – The Deeper Meditation Training Course in 2009 because people needed a complete meditation toolkit that cuts through all the dogma and favoritism in the meditation world. A toolkit that is viable for ALL types of people.

Now I'm branching out and sharing this stuff through various programs for individuals and workplaces, including free content like this and the blog.

The book you are now reading is focused on a very specific and very important subset of the principles I generally teach. This is so that those who want to simply begin with the basics and/or quickly establish a solid practice can do so easily.

It is assumed that you have already researched the benefits of meditation. That is probably why you want to study meditation in the first place. Therefore, for streamlining purposes, we’ll leave these things out.

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Let’s cut to the chase and learn how to meditate. There are plenty of websites you can go to to learn about me and all the things that I do. One of these is www.DeeperMeditation.net.

Let me know what you think of this book and how it has helped you. My email address is at the website above. Feel free to suggest any improvements in presentation, clarity or formatting. Also, let me know what obstacles lie between you and a successful meditation practice, especially if I don't address them already.

Thank you and may you learn a lot!

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http://www.DeeperMeditation.net/

The Different Types of Meditation

In the “marketplace” of meditation techniques, there are oodles and oodles of techniques to choose from. To make matters worse, everyone seems to claim that theirs is the best. Let’s look at some of the different types of meditation techniques.

Breath meditation is one of the most popular techniques in the western world. There are lots of benefits when you actually pay attention to your breathing. When you watch the breath, you gain a lot of insight into your current state of mind.

Breath is intimately connected with awareness. Notice that when you don’t want to feel something, your breathing restricts itself. Let’s say you’re having a fight with someone. If you check your breath, you may find that it is more shallow than usual. You may notice that the whole body is more tense. This is the ego’s way of shutting down awareness.

At the other extreme, let’s say you’ve just finished making love. The breath is free flowing. I’ll bet you’re intimately aware of the subtle details of the person you’re sharing that bed with (or car seat or picnic table or janitor’s closet or fraternity couch or 5th floor of the library or Jell-O pit or porch swing or pool table or trampoline or elevator or cubicle or portapotty, etc). The colors may be brighter as you take in more input from the environment around you and more oxygen through the lungs.

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The most popular form of breath meditation is often called Vipassana or Mindfulness Meditation. You focus on your breath and become intimately more connected with it. You do this without controlling how you’re breathing. You simply take note of the breath.

This meditation is not the only mindfulness meditation as you’ll see below. It just took on the name. The mindfulness part comes from what you do with thoughts and distractions as they come up. Mindfulness means learning how to relate to thoughts and distractions as they come up during meditation and how to allow the present moment to happen. In a more general sense, it also means being present in daily activities.

Most techniques incorporate the element of mindfulness.

Thoughts, emotions and other distractions are all happening in the present moment. In the practice of mindfulness, you are watching all these processes in the moment. During a meditation session, you simply take note, allow the process and then bring your attention back to whatever you’re focusing on.

We will learn a lot more about mindfulness in a later chapter.

Mantra meditation is the repetition of a word or phrase, either silently or aloud. The famous Transcendental meditation is a simple mantra meditation that involves the silent repetition of a single word. It is also a mindfulness meditation. The word that the practitioner repeats is usually a nonsense word given by a teacher of TM.

Other verbal meditations include the singing of devotional music or the simple uttering of the syllable “Om”. It can be monotone or melodious, religious or secular, aloud or silent.

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In kinesthetic meditations, you focus on sensations in the body. An example is the popular body scan meditation in which you focus on one body part at a time. Other kinesthetic meditations include the movement meditations of Tai Chi Chuan and some Qigong practices.

Some breath meditations qualify as kinesthetic techniques. In particular styles of Vipassana, you focus on the cooling sensation as the breath enters the nostrils and the warm sensation as the breath leaves the nostrils.

Visual meditation techniques involve focusing on a mental image. Examples include a waterfall, a favorite nature spot from childhood, a deity or an entire “mental movie”.

Don’t let the word “visual” fool you. Visual meditations often incorporate all the senses. For example, when visualizing a waterfall, you may imagine listening to the sounds of the water and the birds in the trees and smelling the nearby grass. You may also “feel” your feet as you walk along the riverbank.

Some people speak of energy meditations, and these are typically variations on visual and kinesthetic meditations. For example, chakra meditations may involve visualizing or feeling particular nerve junctions along the spinal column. Another example is the visualization of healing light cleansing the body and mind.

Some movement meditations are considered energy meditations because, as the mind calms itself, you may find yourself focusing on very subtle energy flows. These energy flows are just sensations of very subtle processes that you weren’t previously aware of. Any time someone speaks of “energy”, they speak of subtle processes that the

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brain normally filters out as “unimportant” information. This is the brain’s way of preventing overwhelm.

There’s really nothing whoop-dee-doo-da-hocus-pocus about it. However, as you become more experienced accessing such processes with increasing subtlety and depth, you may begin to disagree with me on this point. It can be pretty mind blowing.

Concept meditations are a little more rare in common meditation literature and retreats. The object of focus in a concept meditation is a simple notion such as God, love, peace or emptiness. The idea behind it is that the more intimately you think about something, the more intimate you become with the reality behind the concept. You may receive a flood of insight into the nature of that reality behind your symbolic thoughts about it.

Sense meditation practitioners concentrate on one sense such as sight. You’ve heard of people gazing at candle flames. They are meditating on the sense of sight.

Many of the sensation focus techniques above fall under this category because the practitioner is meditating on the sense of touch.

Some people naturally perform sense meditation when they listen to birds. There are many pleasant things in this world to concentrate on.

You may have discovered already that, though these classes of meditation styles differ from each other, there are some common threads. Let’s explore these common threads.

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Concentration: Falling in Love

What happens when you fall in love with someone for the first time?

It is very easy to concentrate on this person whom you share so much affection with. The breath is free and easy going. You are intimately aware of very subtle aspects of this person. Your body is relaxed. There is a sense of merging on a deep level with your lover. With this sense of merging comes an experience of oneness.

What happens when the pizza guy shows up during one of your intimate moments?

Sure, you may be a little more relaxed and open because of your recent experiences. However, will you be as intimately aware of the pizza guy as you are of your new love interest? You’ll probably just be focused on giving him the money and getting back to your sweetheart. The separation between you and the pizza guy is more pronounced than any feeling of separation between you and your lover.

What happens when you’re studying for a math test?

If math is not your idea of fun, it may be a struggle to enter the flow of concentration. Your body may even tense up. Your brain may find all kinds of excuses to play video games, eat a banana split or channel surf. The element of love is not there, and the ego tries to transport itself into a more comfortable situation.

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The first example in this chapter reveals the essence of concentration: A relaxing of muscles and defense mechanisms, an expansion of breath, a sense of connection, merging and oneness.

When you have all these components, you are concentrating well.

Concentration is a central component of meditation. When all these above mentioned elements are in place, there is nothing dry or boring about meditation.

There are many tricks for ensuring this state of deep, loving absorption during a meditation practice. You’ll learn a few tricks here. For greater depth and detail, you may want to look at Oceanic Mind.

Keep the principles and examples of this chapter in mind when you learn the meditations in this book.

Now let’s learn about Mindfulness.

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http://www.amazon.com/Oceanic-Mind-Meditation-Training-ebook/dp/B002IVV6ES

Mindfulness: Embracing Love

What happens during your first fight with your new lover a couple months into the relationship?

Obviously, the breath restricts itself, the body becomes more tense and the ego goes into protection mode. It’s a situation the ego does not want to be in, so there is a retreat of consciousness. The deep sense of connection has suddenly vanished. Instead of being deeply aware of where your lover is at physically and mentally, your ego is focused on either protecting a point of view or fleeing.

We spend our whole lives swinging back and forth between attraction and repulsion. The ego favors comfortable and familiar experience. It decreases awareness when it experiences uncomfortable experience. It does so by restricting feeling and breath and by tensing muscles.

Mindfulness is the art of embracing moment to moment experience without losing consciousness. It’s the art of cultivating equanimity so that we can become bulletproof in tense situations and more compassionate and insightful in all situations.

Keep in mind that mindfulness and concentration are often used interchangeably, and that’s OK in everyday situations. Some will define mindfulness as paying attention to what you are doing in the moment. This could mean paying full attention to the act of ironing your clothing. We’re defining it here as embracing all experience,

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including thought. The ironing example embraces both concentration and mindfulness in the sense that we are using these terms here.

What happens when you apply the principle of mindfulness to the pizza guy?

You may have preconceptions of who the pizza guy is. Maybe you met a pizza guy in the past who was rude to you. Maybe he has biker style tattoos, and you’ve had bad experiences with bikers.

Without the element of mindfulness, the pizza guy is nothing but a concept. This concept may be loaded with conceptual associations having to do with past experience.

Mindfulness transforms your perception of the pizza guy into a living, breathing, dynamic process. When you are open to the moment, you are embracing the experience of this person. The embracing of the experience opens you so that you receive a lot more input on the true nature of the person.

How many times have your said the following to yourself or anything similar?

Rich people are greedy

Poor people are lazy and want handouts

Christians are intolerant bigots

Muslims just want to kill us

In all these overgeneralizations, the people spoken of are reduced to concepts rather than living, breathing beings. It’s the ego’s way of

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keeping the universe simple and orderly and of keeping out unwanted information by filling in the blanks with concepts.

Mindfulness breaks through these concepts and allows us to embrace the depth of the experience of the rich person, the poor person and the Christian. It frees us of the conceptual boundaries that separate us from the world and each other.

The way to practice mindfulness in meditation is through the process of noting.

When you are concentrating on a meditation object, the ego will distract you with thought and emotion. Some thoughts will be exciting, enticing and tempting.

All these distracting thoughts are processes happening in the moment. Contrary to popular beliefs about meditation, these distractions are to be embraced.

Imagine these thoughts to be waves on the ocean. You are the ocean and these thoughts are the waves. The waves rise up and fall back into the ocean. The ocean is deep, infinitely still and contains all the waves on the surface.

The practice of mindfulness allows us to experience the pure stillness behind all the constant flux in the phenomenal world. As a result, we become more like the vast ocean.

When a thought rises up like a wave, take note of it. You can use the word “thinking” to let yourself know that “thinking” is happening in this very moment. If an angry emotion comes up, label it with “anger”.

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When you take note of a distraction, you may notice that it will start to recede. Its hold on you begins to loosen, and you develop a greater sense of nonattachment. This is at least true for the thoughts that are not sticking to you too strongly. Those take a little more work to loosen up.

After taking note and allowing these processes, you bring your attention back to the object of focus that you are concentrating on.

The more times you go through this cycle, the more embracing you become. It will illuminate every aspect of your life, including relationships and the ability to be fully present at work.

Mindfulness teaches us that nonattachment is not apathy, but a skill that increases our capacity for love. Embracing the moment is synonymous with love.

Love is also synonymous with knowledge. If you want to be the smartest person on Earth, learn love. You cannot truly learn about anything with depth if you do not embrace the experience of it. If you are a fair weather friend with life, you will learn less. Train yourself to embrace life and learn more.

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A Guided Meditation Exercise

The meditation technique that you are about to learn will be your template. Learn this technique and it will become easier to experiment with various objects of focus.

This meditation is the breath meditation or “Vipassana” mentioned earlier in this book. Vipassana means mindfulness and equanimity.

First, you want to find a comfortable place to sit.

If you are sitting in a chair: Do not lean on the back of it. You want your back to be as straight as possible. Place your feet flat on the floor and your hands comfortably on your lap. Alternatively, you can cross your legs.

If you are sitting on a meditation cushion or pillow: Cross your legs and “plant” your tailbone into the pillow in such a way that helps your back remain straight. The right “plant” feels just right.

Pay attention to where your knees are in relation to your butt. You want your thighs to point slightly downward so that the knees are below the hips. If you need an extra pillow for this, then use one. Master this and you will struggle less with the force of gravity and free your mental resources for meditation.

Step 1: Stack your vertebrae starting with your tailbone. Think of your spine as a column. Start from the bottom and stack them one by one on top of each other. When you get to your neck and head, you

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may notice that your chin wants to tuck itself in toward the neck. Pull in your chin slightly to help it along. You will feel this in the back of your head near the top. Don’t force it. It should feel like what your chin naturally wants to do.

Step 2: Close your eyes. Alternatively you can close them almost all the way to allow a tiny bit of light in. Some people find that this reduces melatonin production and its sleepy effects.

Step 3: Take a few deep breaths through the nose to warm up for meditation and to calm your body and mind.

Step 4: After the deep breaths, breathe normally through the nose. Don’t worry about how deep it is. It will deepen as you continue meditating.

Step 5: Concentrate on the sensation in the nostrils as you breathe. This is your object of focus. You’ll feel a cool sensation as the breath enters and a warm sensation as it exits. Do not follow the breath mentally into your lungs. Your object of focus is the sensation of the breath touching the inside of your nose.

Step 6: When concentration breaks, take note of the thoughts as they come up. Lightly touch the thought with the word “thinking” and let it be. You are the vast ocean. The thought is the wave. You are

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the clouds. The thought is the sky. The same process applies to emotions and any sensations like tension in the muscles. Embrace these things and let them pass.

Step 7: Bring your attention back to the sensation in the nostrils.

Keep repeating this process.

Optionally, you can use the rolled tongue position that is common in many techniques. During the meditation, roll your tongue back so that the bottom of your tongue is against the roof of your mouth and the tip is pointing back toward the throat. Keep the lips closed. Some people find that this practice enhances the meditation experience.

Do not worry if you do not feel like you’ve gone “deep” enough. You are only aware of a small percentage of the profound events that are unfolding inside you. These little waves will add up to a huge tidal wave if you keep a consistent momentum in your practice.

Sometimes you will start a session with an already calm mind and go really “deep”. Other times you’ll feel like your session is a ferocious battle with your out of control mind. The mind fluctuates like that. You are still making progress every time you observe a thought and every time you bring your mind back to your chosen object.

Stay consistent with a daily practice – even just five to twenty minutes per day – and the severity of these fluctuations will decrease. You may also wish to consider some warm up practices to prepare yourself for each session. Oceanic Mind has tons of these.

Meditation is the 7th limb of Pantanjali’s 8 limb yoga system. Pantanjali describes yoga as “the cessation of the fluctuations of the

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mind.” Stay consistent and you will gradually “iron out” these fluctuations and experience true peace more consistently.

It’s useful to add that the most benefits of meditation are long term. People who stick with it for the long haul never regret doing so.

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Visualized Object Meditations

Visualized object meditations take on many forms. The objects of focus range from simple and constant like the waterfall example to complex “mental movies” that feature sequences of events.

Remember the meditation you did above? The object of focus is a simple cycle of sensations. You can do the same exercise again and replace this object with any of the following visualized objects. Keep the same posture, and keep the same mindfulness methods when thoughts arise.

Visualize a waterfall as described elsewhere in this book. Notice that this waterfall is simple and constant. Most objects of focus are either simple and constant or simple and repetitive.

Imagine what this waterfall sounds like and become intimately more aware of the soothing woosh of the water hitting the river below it. Imagine yourself barefoot and “feel” the grass and rocks below your feet. “Smell” the fragrances in the air. “See” the water as it collides with the river. Add as much detail as possible.

If you’re a Christian, visualize Jesus. Hold his hands and allow him to fill you with his healing light.

Visualize the ocean. Incorporate all your senses just like in the waterfall example.

Visualize a nature spot from childhood.

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Visualize yourself on the summit of a holy mountain.

Inhale peace, exhale suffering and tension. Breathe through the nose and imagine yourself inhaling peace. Exhale through the nose and offer up your suffering to God, a visualized fire pit, the Earth’s core, etc. Make sure it goes somewhere where it gets neutralized or purified in some way.

Visualize smiles as your loved ones become filled with light. Extend this visualization to those you’re neutral about as well as people who you don’t like too much. Expand to include the entire Earth and all its inhabitants.

If you find that visualization styles are what you like best, there are tons of them on video sites. Do a web search for guided visualizations.

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Verbal Object Meditations

Verbal object meditations, like visualizations, are very engaging to the mind. People who have trouble staying awake and alert during breath and sensation meditations often choose verbal objects.

Verbal meditations consist of a word or phrase repeated over and over again. They are repeated silently or aloud, and sometimes they are sung.

Here are some examples.

Om. Remember Swami Satchidananda and his “Om for Peace”? The Om mantra has some outstanding qualities that calm the mind and, almost magically, focus attention at the spot between the eyebrows. Some people call this the third eye because it’s connected with the pineal gland, which acts like a sense organ when properly used.

There are different ways to Om. One common method is aloud.

Take a deep breath, then repeat “Oooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmm”. It should last for the duration of your breath. Half way through, switch from “O” to “M” so that they are of equal length.

Repeat Om silently. On the inhale, silently repeat Om just like in the aloud method. “O” and “M” are of equal duration. On the exhale, do it again. Alternatively, repeat “O” on the inhale and “M” on the exhale or repeat “Om” only on the exhale.

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“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.” This phrase is attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, a well known renunciant and nature freak. Make up a melody for it and sing it over and over again or do it in monotone. If you do it aloud, take a deep inhale through the nose first. Silently, you can break it up between the inhale and the exhale or just repeat it during one or the other.

Focus on a nonsense word. TM practitioners do this silently. The word doesn’t have to make sense to the intellect.

Some words that do have meaning and inspire love, such as “Abba” (Aramaic for God in the aspect of Father or simply “father”), may offer some added benefit. After all, concentration is love, right? In this case, you are focusing not just on the word itself, but on the emotions and the concept behind it.

If you concentrate on your love for “Abba” long enough, you’ll be well on your way to getting to know who this character really is. The concept becomes a doorway to that reality behind it. It is like a radio tuner. With love, you are fine tuning as time goes on. This is the whole idea behind the Hare Krishna movement, the Bhakti movements of India and their western counterpart – the kirtan movement. When the concept dissolves and the reality remains, the merging and oneness with the “Beloved” is realized. Until then, it’s just a belief system.

You get the picture. You can repeat any word or phrase you like, religious or secular. It’s especially good if it’s calming. I wouldn’t recommend repeating “kill whitey” during a meditation practice. The violent associations could be slightly counterproductive.

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Try different words and phrases to find what you resonate with. Also remember to practice mindfulness when thoughts and distractions come up.

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Meditations on a Sensation Object

Sensation objects are typically very simple, just like the nostril sensation in the first exercise. They are usually repetitive cycles or constant.

The body scan meditation is a little more complex. The object of focus is roving. It changes every minute or two.

You begin by focusing on your feet and work your way up to your calves, knees, thighs, belly, chest, arms, hands, neck, face and head. Normally, you breathe through the nose the entire time.

When you focus on the feet, for example, you’ll start to notice sensations that you were never previously aware of. There may be tingles or feelings of tension that were previously filtered out of consciousness.

Some third eye meditations involve focusing on the sensations in the point between the eyebrows.

Tai Chi Chuan, a movement meditation, can be classified as a sensation meditation. During your soft flowing movements, you’ll experience many sensations. Your object of focus, like in the body scan, will travel throughout the body. You may also become deeply aware of your body as a whole.

The goal of Tai Chi Chuan is to sensitize yourself to and circulate subtle energy in the body in a balanced way. Your perception of these subtle processes may be dim at first and expand in time. Then the

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subtle energy, combined with the not so subtle body sensations, becomes your object of focus that you merge with. Behind all the flux of energy and sensation, you discover stillness during movement.

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Sense and Concept Meditations

Some people choose sense meditations because it is easy to find something pleasant in the environment to focus on. The flickering in the candle gazing meditation mentioned earlier adds a very stimulating ambience to a meditation session. This makes it very hard to doze off.

In visual sense object meditations, allow the tension in your eyes to soften. Take a few deep breaths and allow the eyes to “turn inward”. It will feel as if you’re “looking” inside your body space and scanning your insides with your eyes.

Once you do this, you may notice that you take in more information. A soft gaze means a fuller embrace.

When the eyes are looking inward and embracing more of the outward, the focus becomes less about the object “out there”. The external object becomes more of an experience within. You’re focusing on the sense and the experience itself instead of something outside of yourself.

Ultimately, every person and thing is an inner experience. Just think of someone you find annoying. An experience is triggered in his or her presence that your ego wants to flee from. When you embrace the experience, you embrace the external person or object.

Ideally, you want the sensory orientation to be turned inward for EVERY type of meditation.

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Here are some suggestions for choosing sense objects. For most of these, you want to breathe through the nose for that calming effect.

You may have experienced a meditative state when staring into a campfire. Dig a fire pit in your backyard and use the fire as your object of meditation every night.

Gaze at a tree. Sit or stand in front of a tree and gaze.

Watch a sunset.

Take a slow walk and listen to the birds. Concentrate on nothing but the birds. When you start thinking about your stock portfolio and your sick dog, use the mindfulness techniques from earlier to take note. However, if the dog’s shooting diarrhea all over your brand new laptop, you may want to give your meditation session a break.

Get a fountain and listen to it. It can be an outdoor fountain or one of those indoor fountains you’ll find in some massage studios.

Sit by a river and listen.

Burn white sage and merge with the aroma.

Use all your senses one at a time. Sit and focus on what you see. Take note of what you see. Then do the same for hearing and all the other senses. Breathe through the nose during the whole process.

We learned earlier that concept meditation entails focusing on a concept such as love or peace.

Pick a concept that you really want to understand deeply and concentrate on it.

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You may experience a flood of insights about the concept. The trick is to not get too intellectual about it. Just like in the other meditations, these incoming thoughts are the waves and you are the ocean. Don’t be afraid to let them go. Your understanding of the concept will deepen regardless. Practice letting go of the thoughts and ideas and you’ll take in even more information. It’s a holistic process that you have to experience before understanding this paradox.

Here are some examples of concepts.

Love, peace or God

Infinity

Compassion

The nature of Jesus

Buddha Mind

Life

Happiness

Approaching one of these concepts as a meditation object may be tricky at first. You might find luck beginning the session by repeating “infinity” a few times or by trying to visualize infinite space. Experiment a little bit, find my contact info at www.DeeperMeditation.net and let me know what works for you. I’m very curious.

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How to Choose the Best Technique

You’ve probably figured out by now that experimentation is an essential part of finding your most compatible (read best) meditation technique. There are other things that you can do to narrow it down more quickly.

Recall that meditation, and specifically concentration, is the art of falling in love. What objects can you think of that invite a state of deep, loving absorption? If you have tried any of the numerous objects mentioned above, you may have felt a greater love for some than for others.

Did you experience that love when gazing at the fire? Write it down as a possible candidate. Find your favorite object in each meditation category and write it down.

Try all of the techniques in your list. Don’t just try four techniques in a row and choose the last one because you were the most relaxed. You may be more relaxed after the fourth because you just did three meditation sessions right before it.

Try them in different orders over the course of a few hours or a few days. You can also practice one each day and shuffle them around until you just know that one of them is the correct technique.

Pay attention to how affectionate you are toward various objects. Also pay attention to thoughts that come up while practicing

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different techniques as well as how you are able to work with the thoughts that come up.

Make a journal for yourself and write down your experiences. You may find that one technique allows you to embrace and let go of thoughts more easily than others. You may also find that one technique keeps you so absorbed that very few thoughts come up. The act of writing these things down will bring more clarity to your selection process.

In many cases, you may be able to bypass the note taking process because one technique that feels just right will jump out at you.

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Tips for Establishing a Practice

You have learned how to meditate using different objects of focus. What you haven’t learned are some of the essential concepts for building your routine. Here is a loosely organized rapid fire barrage of information for you.

The most important things to remember are consistency and momentum. You’ll learn in any meditation book that it helps to devote a specific time of day to your formal meditation practice. Most teachers will also tell you to choose a specific place for your daily routine. If you have a special room that you can devote entirely to meditation, that is ideal. Both consistency and momentum build a habit and create a momentum.

Remember that consistency is more important than quantity. If you spend ten minutes per day in a formal meditation practice, you will gain better results than spending 70 minutes on it once per week. Each session builds on the previous one, and both your long term and short term meditation benefits will depend on this consistency.

Be sure not to choose a location that you associate with sleep, such as a bed. You have already created habits and associations related to your bed that are not conducive for meditation.

If you think that you’re too busy to meditate regularly, don’t worry. Five minutes per day will give you good results. 20 minutes will give you better results, and one hour is ideal. Just keep your consistency and you’ll reap the benefits of meditation. Also try the integration

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strategies in the next chapter to get lots of meditation time into a busy schedule.

As a beginner, you may want to start out with 5 minute sessions. Take a break in between these 5 minute sessions and do something calming like stretching or offerings of gratitude for all of life’s blessings. As you become more experienced, you can do longer sessions. Otherwise, you may already be ready for longer sessions.

Food often hinders meditation because your body spends tons of energy digesting food. Meditate either before a meal or at least a couple hours afterward.

Another thing to remember about meditation is that relaxation and awareness brings up lots of “stuff”. Remember how the brain filters out information it does not want to deal with? Old psychological wounds may come up and manifest themselves as sudden moodiness, anger, etc.

This is a purifying process. Meditation will clean you up from the inside out. Just like giving birth, a beautiful process like this can be a wee bit uncomfortable. Recognize the process when it occurs and practice mindfulness and self care. Remember that the purifying process will increase your capacity for joy.

Let go of expectations when you meditate and experience what is. Experiencing what is is what meditation is all about. It’s not about instant bliss in every session.

Sometimes your brain is so noisy that your session will be all about paying attention to the noise. Some sessions will be absolutely ecstatic. Some will bring up the “stuff” mentioned above and

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suddenly you hate your evil mother and father and their evil parents for giving birth to them.

Enjoy the ride and become more present with it all. You are making progress every time. It just may lead to the breakthrough you need during your next session tomorrow.

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How to Make Meditation Much Easier

Here are some tips for developing a momentum in your meditation practice and for getting yourself in the mood.

You’ll get a powerful boost in your momentum if you integrate calming and centering activities into your day, especially during the down times like when riding in an elevator or when waiting in a grocery store line.

Stretch breaks are great for this purpose in some environments. They generate feeling in the body, and this aids in the processing of experience. Meditation is, after all, about the efficient processing of experience. Stretching also loosens the joints, and this helps you to relax.

There are many activities that you can slip into your day for this purpose. These include prayer, gratitude, 30 second meditations, a brief reading of scripture, self massage and breathing exercises. Visualize nature or experience it for real.

This practice is called interweaving – a great tool for integrating meditation into daily life.

Aim for 30 seconds to five minutes out of each hour, and you’ll accumulate an awesome momentum of peace. Stress is cumulative and so is peace.

The process will occur below the level of consciousness and add up to huge results. This is true whether you experience immediate peace

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during each and every exercise or not. Remember that you’re only consciously aware of a fraction of this process.

Integration strategies such as interweaves will greatly boost your meditation practice. Try it out and you will make a surprising amount of progress.

There is a huge list of such activities and tons of guided exercises in Oceanic Mind, and my blog is also a great resource.

Warm ups greatly enhance the meditation process. The most common warm up exercise is the famous “relax and take a few deep breaths.” It’s a simple warm up that helps your mind and body prepare for the session.

Hatha Yoga (physical yoga that you learn in yoga studios) can be thought of as another type of meditation warm up strategy. You begin with stretching and poses and then some deep breathing exercises.

If you do a brief meditation at the end of class, you’ll notice that you are deeply grounded and relaxed. That’s what Hatha Yoga was designed for – to prepare you for the 7th and 8th limbs of yoga, meditation and Samadhi. Samadhi is the goal of meditation.

Exercises that loosen the joints and spine make great warm ups. So do exercises that increase feelings of love. Meditation is the art of falling in love.

Smile at your inner organs one by one. Pray for the highest happiness of all beings. If you cultivate these feelings of love, your ability to

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concentrate, even on boring things, will skyrocket. Try it before a meditation. Buddhist practices called Metta are great for this.

You can check out Oceanic Mind – The Deeper Meditation Training Course if you wish to study further or browse through the blog. Click on the hyperlink or copy and paste the following url into your browser:

http://www.amazon.com/Oceanic-Mind-Meditation-Training-ebook/dp/B002IVV6ES

Thank you for reading. May you experience profound peace and experience a mind like the ocean – imperturbable and infinitely still.

Tom Von Deck

www.DeeperMeditation.net

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http://www.DeeperMeditation.net/http://www.amazon.com/Oceanic-Mind-Meditation-Training-ebook/dp/B002IVV6EShttp://www.amazon.com/Oceanic-Mind-Meditation-Training-ebook/dp/B002IVV6EShttp://www.amazon.com/Oceanic-Mind-Meditation-Training-ebook/dp/B002IVV6EShttp://www.amazon.com/Oceanic-Mind-Meditation-Training-ebook/dp/B002IVV6ES

IntroductionThe Different Types of MeditationConcentration: Falling in LoveMindfulness: Embracing LoveA Guided Meditation ExerciseVisualized Object MeditationsVerbal Object MeditationsMeditations on a Sensation ObjectSense and Concept MeditationsHow to Choose the Best TechniqueTips for Establishing a PracticeHow to Make Meditation Much Easier