Posts Tagged ‘meditation’
Meditation Basics: What, Why and How
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”
~Margaret J. Wheatley, Writer and Management Consultant
Meditation is a contemplative state which one enters in order to relax the waking consciousness. There are many reasons that people take up meditation and there are numerous benefits to incorporating a regular practice of meditation.
Meditation can be used to cultivate a deeper awareness of one’s relationships and surroundings. Calming the ego-consciousness (the judge) that lives within our waking mind and opening ourself up to receiving peace, allows us to recognize and, with diligence, to access a higher state of consciousness.
Why should you want to reach higher consciousness?
That is a very good question and yet, one that is very difficult to answer. You may want to reach higher consciousness for the changes that it makes in how you use your life. You may want to reach higher consciousness to develop new abilities. Or perhaps you would enjoy having a higher consciousness because of the differences your actions may make in the lives of others.
What can be said is that, through the regular practice of meditation, you will come to realizations, values and talents that you are very unlikely to arrive at without the aid of meditation. I say unlikely, I do not say never. Meditation is a tool, like a key to a door. It is not the key that makes the wondrous thing behind the door exist. That thing always existed, all that the key did was make it easier to reach.
The realization and changes that develop in you over time, while practicing meditation (things like, mindfulness, calm, spiritual oneness, empowerment) are subtle shifts in your level of awareness that will help you to, among other things:
- -Form more healthy romantic relationships
-Fulfill your internal life purpose
-Expel toxins and illness from your body
-Speak and act with true integrity
-See the beauty in all things
-Cope better with change and challenges in life
-Build self-esteem
-Look and feel more youthful
-Gain spiritual awareness / inspiration from the divine
-Walk lighter on the Earth
-Appreciate the gifts that you have in your life
-Serve yourself and others with deep kindness
-Channel positive creativity through your unique self
So I suppose that the question is not why you should want to reach higher consciousness, but why you should not want to?
What does meditation mean exactly? I have heard so many different things about it.
Meditation means many different things to many different people. There are several approaches to meditation, several layers of … Continue reading →
Universal Soul: A Video Meditation
“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”
~Ben Okri, Nigerian Poet and Novelist
I get so many requests to write more guided meditations like Reading the Trees. Sometimes the muse just will not descend. Of course, I write a lot of targeted meditations for my own spiritual path. But very few of them are appropriate for others. We are all on our own unique journey.
In response to the level of requests, as well as to a directive from the universe, I have decided to try my hand at visual meditation. Please go easy on me as its my first foray into such territory. Also, email and let me know if it works for you. If a lot of you like it, I will try to make it a regular feature here at Awaken to Light.
Of course, you can tell by watching this what my story for the meditation is. But I thought it might be fun if you make up your own story to the images. Include them in your comments. Or if you have a similar video of your own, feel free to … Continue reading →
Reading the Trees: A Meditation
The groves were God’s first temples.
~William Cullen Bryant, “A Forest Hymn”
A tree is an interesting entity in the realm of creation and in the realm of nature. It is a living being, an energy form that, more than any another, records within itself the knowledge and history of its surrounding environment.
A tree begins from seed, embodied within which is its own original energy. But then it amasses its self and its mature energy from the environment around it.
The trees are the books of time, just as their wood may provide fodder for the books of mankind, so, too, does the environment provide fodder for the books of the trees. The trees are like braille waiting to be read, like a musical recording waiting to be played.
Knowing of the Divine Self
“I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired.”
~Richard Wagner, 19th-century German Composer
The divine self is your inner life force, your true motivation for living. The divine self is what powers you and makes you wonder. It is the soul light at your core that chose to be incarnate at this point in time.
The divine or higher self is that part of you that is ever-aware. The divine self has been aware and thinking since your birth in this lifetime and since your birth in every other lifetime. The body and the physical realm, in which we dwell, are but a vehicle for the higher self.
You are here because you have chosen to be here and because the energy force, that is life and awareness, has lessons to learn and exchanges to make that can only be accomplished by taking human or manifest form.
All that is, is light.
Though it may seem as if the physics of incarnation, of being born and of living in the busy, colorful, physical world of manifestation would cut us off from knowing the divine self at our core, it does not … Continue reading →
