There is a lot of unclarity about the ancient art of meditation. As there are a lot of different concepts and ideas about it. There are actually also many forms of meditation. It doesn’t need to be while sitting, for example, to be more precise, meditation is contemplation and focus. Being absorbed with just one thing. Being in a flow.
A homecoming, disconnection, and connection
The more one practices meditation and becomes more comfortable and used to it, it becomes sort of a homecoming. Similar to all the science fiction movies, in which sometimes you can see several or many bodies in glasses with liquids, being connected to tubes which supply them with oxygen and other important substances. Meditation is similarly a disconnection of all distractions and disturbing topics of life. You’re cut off the outside, just like the bodies in the movies.
But meditation is also a connection. Not only a connection to your inner life or world but to your essence of being. The place where your biggest clarity, joy, and power is waiting for you.
Speechless.
Pure awareness. Just feeling, perceiving, listening and seeing. No judgments, comparisons or any other comments or thoughts. These came with language; many little mouth sounds that together create vocal symbols which depend on the cultural context to understand it’s meaning or single symbols which form often groups of written symbols.
That is why 20 minutes of inner silence is as healthy as a full night of deep sleep and 10 minutes regular daily meditation prolongs one’s life expectancy by about 7 years.
Meditation is a disconnection and connection at the same time.
Dis-connecting from the so-called outside world, at first sight, to connect with the so-called inner world, to connect in the end the outer and inner world in the most harmonious and powerful way.
But:
Meditation is also just meditation.
Becoming too lazy to do anything except breathing
It has goals and aims and at the same time, it doesn’t. Part of reaching goals and aims with meditation is by having at first none.
To relax the body and the mind with absolute laziness in the sense of doing as less as possible. Especially being too lazy to interfere with the thoughts that appear in your mind, as well as trying to silence them.
Because if you try in the beginning without any practice directly to stop your thoughts, it’s like, as Alan Watts has described it, “trying to smooth the ripples of water with a flat iron.”
It’s about becoming very simple and letting everything get simple.
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” Also Alan Watts.
Because the thought of wanting to stop your thinking is thinking itself.
How to start. Lazy and small.
Being aware of what is going on internally and externally, can be tricky, hard or even overwhelming. There is a reason why many people love to be distracted all the time.
I would recommend to start with 5 minutes a day. 5 minutes 100 % for you. 5 minutes can be short or long. When you are doing nothing, 5 minutes can seem longer than they actually are. But the more one meditates, the less one notices the time passing.
I would start with 5 minutes until you feel like doing 10 minutes.
Just find a quiet moment and place, in which you can close your eyes and focus on your breathing and let the thoughts do in your head whatever they want to do for a little while.
Swing it.
Leave them alone by shifting your focus again and again on the swinging of your breath, which swings into you and out of you.
Follow its rhythm instead of forcing a rhythm upon it in the beginning. Just make sure that the time you breathe out, is around three times longer than the time to breath in.
Straight up.
Meditation, when done in Zazen, the sitting position you can see in the posts image, needs to have a straight back or spine. With a straight spine, you recognize that your breathing is much easier than when your upper body is sort of bent or sunk in. Straight up as much as possible, keep your shoulders comfortably back, not hanging, but also not in a way that your shoulders muscles are tight up. A position between hanging and as far as you can pull them back.
Be gentle.
Be gentle to yourself. You cannot become peaceful and harmonious by accusing yourself of not focusing enough on keeping your attention on the breathing or not keeping your spine and back straight. Simply focus without judging again on your breathing and enjoy the simplicity of the moment and of being with yourself.
The fulfilling feeling of breathing the substance in that keeps you alive.
By doing this just with your focus while breathing consciously, you grow the ability to hold your focus longer and to “drop” certain thoughts by just focusing on another one that you prefer. At the same time, you start to become more forgiving to yourself. You stop trash-talking yourself because of every little ridiculous thing.
Who breathes for you when you consciously don’t do it?
By breathing consciously, you connect yourself more to the vital energy of you, which takes care of your blood circulating system, nervous system, digestion, regeneration of your cells and breathing amongst much much more.
By sitting with a straight spine, your ability to breath smoothly into the depths of your belly, accompanied by you, imagining how you breathe until your tail bone, is a lot easier.
You can try to find an angle in which your back holds its position by itself almost, without creating a hollow-back.
Every noise is background music.
While focusing on your breathing, you can start to perceive all sounds and inner thoughts simply as background music.
The background music helps you to stay in the present moment with your focus on your breathing.
A little trick to cut your stream of thoughts
While being absorbed in breathing consciously in and out, you can interrupt your stream of thoughts for a view seconds during the swinging by stopping suddenly your breathing while you either breath out or in. Just stay very consciously on your breathing and the stop.
The more you practice this exercise, the faster come the cut in the streams of constant thoughts and the longer the time, you can hold this cut open, without any thoughts interrupting this intimate moment and reunion with your essence and the naked presence of the moment.
Sunny meditation
A nice feature for the beauty of meditation is when you meditate somewhere in the sun. She is in somewhat the Mama of our Pachamama.
You can do this also without the typical meditation pose called Zazen. The one you see on the image of this post. You can do this while sitting on a park bench with your spine somewhat straight and closed eyes. Focusing on the area just a bit above between your eyebrows. Focusing on your breath and everything that you’re grateful for. After that, you can start visualizing something you would love to be, do or have in your life, as if it is already there, or you already do or are it. Believe it to be true and manifested already while you visualize and know afterward that what you have visualized is going to happen when you keep your focus, faith, and the right efforts and actions on it.
By doing this, you strengthen your clarity, your imagination, as well as your power to ignite good feelings.
Basic advantages of short & regular meditation.
I hope this post helped you to find a smooth way into meditation and to understand, in how many ways this ancient art is extremely helpful for us humans. By just telling your body to not move for 5 – 10 minutes a day, as well as what I recommended in this post, you already increase slowly but surely your
- focus capacity
- dropping thoughts and relaxation ability
- body posture
- breathing pattern
- inner clarity
- confidence
- daily mood
- the power of your imagination
- strength and sharpness to believe your own lies less.
Not bad for almost doing nothing but breathing.
Enjoy yourself, as well as your lazy and perhaps sunny way to liberation, yourself and your home.
