Peace
Here is a nice meditation by Carrie Hart:
Sit quietly and close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and then out. And another in and then out. And yet another, in and then out. And now, just relax as we ask an angel to come to you and set you free.
See her before you now, a beautiful angel floating in the air, her fluttering wings outspread, a bright golden glow about her head and emanating from her entire body. She is aglow with love, with caring and affection for you.
First, she reaches into a little bag of golden silk and pulls out a handful of sparkling angel dust that she now tosses over you. It falls down upon you, but instead of clinging to your skin, it becomes a band of energy, bright and glowing, around you. This golden glow is clearing the field around you, purifying it, removing any residue of doubt or fear that has been clinging to you.
And now, she pauses and looks deep into your eyes, asking permission. Nod your head yes: Yes, you grant her permission to look into your heart.
She touches you lightly over your heart and your heart opens wide to her view. And as she looks within, you find that you can see it as well.
First, see that your heart is glowing golden. It is made of love. It is a great treasure within you, the place where the light and love are stored. It is glowing and golden but it is also soft and pliable, able to change and adapt as life requires.
But here and there within your heart are some stones you have picked up along the way, things that happened to you, things you considered sad or bad at the time, and you stored them in your heart. At the time these things happened to you, you were unable to just let them be or to examine them and allow them to dissolve, and so you stored them away, hoping that they would not exist in your life any longer.
But yet here they are, stones that you carry in your bright and glowing heart, weighing it down, making it less soft and pliable than it could be. Stones that block some of the bright love from glowing and flowing. Stones that you must carry every day, even though you are not even aware that they are there.
Look at the stones now. There are stones of unforgiveness, bitter and sharp. There are stones of sadness, each a heavy weight your heart must carry. There are stones of anger, hot and smoldering; stones of fear, like chunks of ice that keep the warmth of love from spreading easily; and many pebbles of doubt, which add up to a heavy weight indeed.
The angel now looks again deeply into your eyes. She is asking you a question. Are you ready to free your heart of these burdens? Are you ready to let all of this leave your life? Are you ready to forgive yourself and others, to let go of the anger and bitterness and disappointment? Are you ready to let go even of the doubts about yourself? Are you ready to free yourself of fear?
Nod your head yes: Yes, you are ready.
And now the angel opens wide her silken bag. She reaches into your heart and removes the stones one by one, taking them from your heart and placing them in the bag. One by one, they come out of your heart. And with each one that is removed, you can feel your heart growing lighter and lighter. All the regrets are taken out. All the fears of the future. All the doubts about what you can accomplish. All the anger and frustration, all the disappointment, all of this is removed.
Feel your heart growing lighter and lighter. Feel yourself growing freer and freer. Feel what it is like to let your heart glow as brightly as it can, unencumbered by these burdens it has been carrying. You do not need them any more.
And as your heart glows more brightly, that glow spreads throughout your body. And your body, now exposed to this bright glow of inner love, finds that it no longer needs the habits and addictions that it has been using to shield it from the energy of the stones. Your entire body now feels light and free, bright and glowing.
And the angel looks at you and smiles. Then she closes her silken bag and flies up to the heavens, where she holds the bag to the light. And as you watch, in a great golden burst of light, the stones are all transmuted into love, love bright and golden. And a gentle shower of love begins to fall down upon you, golden drops shimmering in the sky and falling down upon you, pouring over you, covering you in sweet love.
And this you are. Love. Love glowing in your heart. Love glowing in your body. Love shimmering all around you. Purified and clean, glowing and golden, you are.
And all of the possibilities of this precious life are glowing and shimmering around you as well. You can do and be anything. You are utterly fearless and confident. You are completely unburdened with the past. You are in this moment only, shining and bright, feeling and being love, knowing yourself as love and only love.
It is a new day and a new life. You are born anew in love and the world lies open before you. Step into it and embrace it now, right now. You are this sparkling wonder of love. You are.
- Find a quiet spot to sit for a moment.
Close your eyes and imagine you can feel the presence of your Guardian Angel. If you could see this Angel, what would it look like to you? Any shape or form is fine, for your angel will take on the shape you need the most, the form you want to see. Your Angel encourages contact from you and is quite willing to mold its form into a shape that you find comfortable with.
- Imagine this as clearly as you can.
Imagine that this Angel is smiling, that this Angel is radiating a love that surrounds you with comfort, safety, and security. Really feel this feeling in your body if you can. Feel it in your emotions.
- Imagine that your Angel is saying to you these words: “It’s all right. It’s all right, It’s all right.”
Allow your body to feel the relief that accompanies these words. Allow your body to feel relief in the knowledge that it *is* all right. For it is all right for you to be who you are, to think what you think and to feel what you feel.
If there is something else that you would like your Guardian Angel to say to you – something that is loving, that holds no judgement, only love – a greater love than you have ever experienced in this lifetime – then imagine your Angel saying this to you.
- Feel the words of your Angel moving through your body, settling your unsettled emotions, calming your confusion.
Thank your angel for this gift. And know that the words your Angel has said and the feeling of comfort your angel has brought you, the feeling of safety, is yours.
You can tap into this at any time, in any place. It is your birthright. Through the use of imagination, to imagine that your Angel is there, you tap into the reality that your Angel *is* there. Through the use of your imagination, you begin to develop a relationship with your Guardian Angels or with the other High Beings and Angels around you.
These exercises in imagination are the beginnings of a wonderful reality in which you begin to understand the essence of who you are.
- Invite your Angel to be with you at other times.
Acknowledge your Angel’s presence when you are sitting in the theatre watching a movie, enjoying a beautiful song, or during a time of discomfort or stress. Know that your Angel is with you at all times, in good and in bad, and you give yourself the gift of safety, of security, of knowing that you are not alone. You do not have to face your world alone. You have help.
~Janet Dane
With every breath we take, nature is potentially providing us with an opportunity of shifting our consciousness and entering an enlightened state. The reason this gateway to the greater reality remains firmly shut for most of us is that we don’t give it our attention. We are much more committed to following the commands of our inner commentator with its incessant stream of thoughts over which we have little control.
If we get into the habit of using our breath as a means of focusing attention away from our thoughts to our feelings, we would gradually obtain sovereignty over our mind and liberate ourselves from the compulsions and addictions of habitual and often idle thought. Above all, instead of debating good and bad, pros and cons in our thoughts, we open an instant highway to the spontaneous wisdom of the heart.
It is the decision making process more than anything else that will train our mind to embrace Stillness instead of continuing to endure the constant inner chatter and uncontrolled commentary of our thoughts. By deciding to favor our breathing with our attention, rather than our inner chatter, we are gradually training our minds to embrace a greater reality. From then on our thoughts will become our tools and instruments rather than our masters.
The best way to deprive our thoughts of their compulsive nutrition is by using a different mode of thinking and perception. Instead of seeing with your eyes which is then narrated and judged by our mind and our old ideas, we learn to see with your heart, without judgement or interpretation. Using the same process when speaking and hearing will make a difference to the quality of our communication.
This new mode of gathering information or communicating will connect us to a higher level of reality. It will also open the channels of intuition, which is basically a much more evolved form of thinking as it encompasses information we are consciously unaware of.
This new mode of operating our senses can be learned like any other skill. We will know when we are successful when our stream of thoughts becomes quiet and everything becomes still around us. Our thoughts are no longer in the driving seat and instead of continuous judgement, which takes all our energy and deprives us our objectivity, we become aware of a powerful feeling of compassion, love and connectedness to all life. Our ego identifications become less important as we begin to identify with the the space surrounding us rather than the voices in hour head. We access reality directly rather than our interpretation of it and gain a much more inclusive understanding of who we are.
The best way to practice this kind of Seeing and Thinking with our Heart is by connecting our feeling to our breathing. As we breathe constantly anyway, we can practice this technique all day long. Instead of following our thoughts we simply decide to follow our breathing. We do this breathing in the awareness of the energy and the stillness surrounding us through the base of our body.(see diagram) We then follow our breath as it reaches our heart. We then surrender our breath again to the Stillness of the greater consciousness surrounding us, the same space of consciousness where we have taken it from.
The surrender of our breath or outbreath is accompanied by a feeling of goodwill or love. With this feeling of love we also automatically surrender the idea of our limited ego identification without even thinking about it. Instead we take comfort in the fact that we offer everything we are to a greater reality and the much larger reality of our true being.
This is the Anytime Anywhere Meditation because we can do it anytime and anywhere, whilst washing, having breakfast, driving to work, in the office, at lunch, in the cinema, talking to friends or operating machinery because it is a feeling rather than a conscious thought process. We favor surrender rather than clinging to our thoughts and judgments. Gradually our thoughts will learn to follow the wisdom that rises from the heart rather than insist on its old prejudicial pattern. As our thinking becomes more clear and we become in tune with reality our actions will be guided by the rise of wisdom, and we will use our mind as an instrument.
Source: Multidimensional Man
Hugging meditation is something to practice with people you love and trust, particularly if you have been upset with each other. To begin, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and visualize yourself and your beloved three hundred years from now. Then, open your arms and hug your loved one.
If we can see the impermanent nature of our self and our loved one, we can realize how precious every moment is that we have together. We won’t want to waste our time together by being angry and hurting each other.
When you hug someone, first practice breathing in and breathing out to bring to life your insight of impermanence. “Breathing in, I know that life is precious in this moment. Breathing out, I cherish this moment of life.” You smile at the person in front of you, expressing your desire to hold him or her in your arms. This is a practice and a ritual.
When you bring your body and mind together to produce your total presence, full of life, it is a ritual. You hold the other person in your arms gently, and breathe in and out three times, cherishing the other person’s presence. Then you separate and smile to each other again – a smile of gratitude and love.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
‘Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind,
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.’
.
~Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche
Meditation is one path to self realization and tranquility. One of the most important meditation techniques is the mindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness is a mental state that enables you to stay with a calm mind. It helps you stay aware of all the physical and mental activities of the present. It is a form of Buddhist meditation that has been practiced for eons. According to Buddha’s noble eight fold path, it is the seventh element. Mindfulness develops wisdom of the human mind.
Insight is another name for mindfulness meditation. This type of meditation helps to concentrate on the present. This technique allows you to let go of the past and future thoughts, hindering a certain peace of mind. During mindfulness meditation, you stay aware of the mind’s thoughts that are going on, and any actions that are happening in the present moment. This meditation technique helps to focus on the real present and develop concentration.
To really understand the meaning of and the benefits of mindfulness meditation you will need to practice it. The basic preparation and guidelines to practice this meditation technique properly is discussed here: Beginning Mindfulness Meditation.
Found at: Meditation Guidance
Here we have basic preparation and guidelines for a beginning practice in mindfulness meditation:
Create a favorable environment. This is one of the most important things to do. Mindfulness for beginners is quite easy, if you take that all important step and get started.
There should not be any sort of distraction in the place that you will select for practicing this meditation technique. This place should be calm and quiet. There should not be any sound or noise to distract you and disturb you during your meditation. This place should be such where you can forget all your pain, sorrow and can get rid of all your stress. This place should emit a sacred feeling. It can be a religious place or any place of your choice which gives you positive vibes. You don’t need to be a practicing Buddhist to see the benefits that come from a mindfulness practice.
Starting your meditation is a rather simple process. It may help to start meditating for just short periods, but do so frequently. Do not sit for long periods of meditation initially. You’ll need to slowly adjust to the meditation techniques for best results. Utilizing a meditation timer is a great way to keep track of time without worrying about a clock.
Having the correct posture is crucial step in mindfulness for beginners. There is a strong connection between the body and the mind. Hence, to control your mind you need to control your physical posture. The right way of meditating is to have an upright erect posture. Think of the traditional cross legged (lotus) pose. Keeping an erect posture helps with concentration, though you should not experience any discomfort. When it comes to meditation for beginners staying focused is one of the biggest hurdles.
Your focus should be down around the few inches around your nose. The eyes can remain open and still not be distracted by your surroundings.
The goal here is to focus on your breath during meditation. Your natural breathing process should be the object of concentration during your meditation. You may focus on your exhale as it passes through the back of your nasal cavity or you can feel the air as it escapes past your nostrils. If you get distracted, that’s okay, just refocus and feel your breath as you come back to the meditation.
Remove your thoughts and focus on the present through your breathing. It may be easier said than done, but this is what we strive for. Initially it will be very difficult to focus and concentrate your mind. You will feel yourself getting distracted by the constant chatter of the mind. By feeling your breath to the core, you can gradually root your mind in the present and stay focused.
These are the very basic fundamentals, as they relate to practicing mindfulness meditation. There are many Buddhist texts and guided meditations that will certainly help advance your practice.
Found at: Meditation Guidance
Among the Vedic gods and goddesses, the elephant-headed divinity Ganesha is renowned as a remover of obstacles. Ganesha’s mantra, below, can help you resolve inner conflicts that you may be projecting onto external situations. By helping you discern a state of mind that is creating disharmony between you and your partner (or between you and a friend or colleague), Ganesha produces order in the outer world. The tangible effects often seem like a sudden, almost magical disappearance of obstacles.
Ganesh is also known as Ganapathi. ‘Gana’ means “power” in Sanskrit, and ‘pathi’ means “spouse.” So, in one context, the literal translation of the name is “spouse of power.”
‘Gana’ can also mean “group” if used in another context. Ganapathi, then, becomes “spouse of the group.” The power of this mantra will always be operational whenever people come together as a group. There is a correlation here to the words of Christ, when he said,” Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be in their midst. ”
Here is the mantra:
Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha
( OM GUM GUH-NUH-PUH-TUH-YEI NAHM-AH-HA )
” Om and salutations to the remover of obstacles for which Gum is the seed. “
From: Healing Mantras by Thomas Ashley-Farrand
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be well.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be happy.
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