Monday, June 19, 2006

How to meditate?

How to Meditate:

When you are ready to begin, sit quietly holding your hands lightly at your side or in your lap. Now, with your eyes closed, start to breathe lightly and easily.
Let your attention easily follow your breathing. Feel your breath entering your nostrils and flowing down into your lungs.
Don’t inhale deeply or hold your breath, just breathe normally.
When you exhale, let your attention follow the air up out of the lungs and softly through the nostrils.Nothing is forced here.
The breath is moving easily and gently; your attention is following it softly as it leaves swaying in the treetops. As your breathing relaxes, make it a little lighter. Again, don’t force this, but when you feel that your breathing wants to get a bit shallower and lighter, just let it happen. If you start to feel short of breath, don’t worry. This means that you need a little more air and that deep stresses are coming out. Or you might also be forcing your breathing to be lighter than it wants to be. Return to whatever rate of breathing your body feels comfortable with.When you are comfortable with this effortless process, you can add the mantra “so hum” to the procedure, silently thinking the word “so” on each inhalation and “hum” on each exhalation.Continue this exercise for two or five minutes, just closing your eyes and focusing your mind on easy, natural breathing and silently repeating “so hum” with each cycle of your breath. What is happening with this exercise? You probably noticed that just by paying attention to your breathing you sank deeper and deeper into relaxation, and as you did so, your mind naturally became quieter. Did you sense that? If so, you probably experienced a few glimpses of complete silence, which you aren’t likely to have noticed, because I didn’t ask you to be on the lookout. If you had looked for silence it wouldn’t have appeared. Yet I imagine there were stretches where you lost track of time, which is a good indication that you were getting very near to the goal. Most people experience much fainter thoughts than usual, which is another good sign.

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