Meditation

Meditation deals with contacting your spirit guide and the Chakras, or your energy centers.

Just what is meditation?

Meditation is an activity of the mental consciousness. It involves one part of the mind, observing, analyzing, and dealing with the rest of the mind.

It requires the slow and gradual process of listening to what the higher mind is trying to tell you. It is carefully analyzing the information gleaned and transforming it into usable-workable data.

The ultimate aim of meditation is to awaken a very subtle level of consciousness and it uses it to discover reality, directly and intuitively.

Meditation is NOT spacing-out or running away. In fact, it is just the opposite.

Meditation is being totally honest with yourself; taking a good look at what we are, learning to work with that in order to become more positive and useful to ourselves and others.

You may be asking, “Why do I need to meditate?”

For one very good reason: you need to learn how to control your mind.

The mind is not a physical thing that has thoughts and feelings; the mind is thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Therefore, what you program into it, it becomes. In order for you to accomplish anything on a magical or spiritual level, you must be in complete control of your entire being.

The mind has the tendency to behave like a spoiled child, doing what it wants, when it wants it. When you attempt to force it into some radically different behavior patterns, it rebels. It rebels by blocking your concentration with useless information and endless chatter, keeping you distracted, and therefore unable to achieve your desired goal.

There are many different forms of meditation, and almost every magical tradition has one they use or suggest over all the others. Whichever method you choose, meditation still has the same dual purpose: to relax the body and control the mind.

Time of Day

The best time for meditation is usually a matter of convenience. Some feel their peak is in the early morning hours, and others find it better in the late evening. This is entirely up to the individual, however, for meditation to be of value, it should be done at the same time everyday. The importance is consistency.

Place of Meditation

The most important thing to consider when choosing an area for meditation is the disturbance factor. Is the area free from noises such as traffic, TV, radio and children at play? Will you be able to sit or lie down comfortably and without interruption? Calm music can sometimes help though.

Meditation is difficult enough by itself, but nearly impossible with constant confusion and commotion. Therefor, you will need someplace where you can keep your own council for a short time.

Helpful Meditation Hints

• Get up one half-hour earlier in the morning, before others have awakened and do your meditation then.
• Busy parents with small children can take advantage of their young ones' nap time and meditate then.
• There is nothing quite like a good, hot bath to relax the body. Use your bath time as meditation time.
• Take advantage of your lunch hour. Get in your car and drive to some quiet place with a nice view. This will be relaxing and provide you with a perfect meditation set up.

Basic Meditation

For this exercise, you will need a timer, a notebook, and a pen.

In a place where you will not be disturbed, sit or lie in a comfortable position and begin to relax. Begin at the top of the head and work downward.

Tilt your head forwards, backwards, and side to side, breathing deeply three times each. RELAX.

Continue down through the neck, chest, back, arms, abdomen, breathing deeply three times for each body section. RELAX.

Then continue on down through the thighs, knees, ankles, feet, and toes. Check all muscles you can feel and be sure that they are relaxed before you pass onwards.

Now, in your mind relaxed state, retain your mental concentration and ponder upon the reasons for wanting to practice meditation. There may be reasons, but try to find the one that is most important or which stands out the most. This is the real reason. Try to eliminate all other thoughts from your mind except your real reason. Do your best to keep this single thought-state of mind for at least five minutes. When the time is up, write down your real reason and any other pertinent information.

You would want to repeat this exercise for at least a week, or until you can keep a single thought for a period of five minutes. At the end of this time, you will want to repeat the above exercise, keeping your single thought for a period of ten minutes. The desired goal for this exercise is fifteen minutes.