by Thomas O'Donnell

Created on: February 16, 2007   Last Updated: May 17, 2007

Don't confuse it with levitation, e.s.p., sorcery, or jedi mind tricks, but if you just want to calm down, focus, relax, and gain insight then meditation is for you.

One day a girl asked me to teach her how to meditate because she 'had tried, but nothing ever happened and she just ended up thinking about all sorts of stuff'. This is a common plight, but easily remedied. After reading such books as "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" and "The Mysticism of Sound of Music" I realized just how easy this whole meditation thing was to explain.

1. Concentration and meditation are two points on the same line.
The beginner must start out by concentrating on something in particular. This something should be something uplifting to you, preferably something which you consider greater than yourself or beautiful or strong or so on. Once you choose something you must not give up on it and choose something else.

2. Do not meditate for the wrong reasons.
If you are meditating to gain some special power, wisdom, beauty, or money purely for personal gain you are doomed for failure because meditation is a universal thing which taps you into a higher force which does not bend toward selfish gains.

3. Breathing.
In the movie 'Million Dollar Baby' Clint Eastwood yelled at the trainee because when she got into trouble in the ring, she would stop breathing normally, which only got her into more trouble. Breathing is very important and must be deliberate, constant, and even.

4. Body.
The reason that Yoga has always been such an important aspect of meditation is that it prepares the body for meditation, which is to say: being able to stay in one position for an extended period of time. If your body is distracting you because you just ate a hot dog and are digesting, or your leg is cramped, or whatever, you will not be able to concentrate on that which you have chosen...which would never be your own body, which should ultimately be forgotten.

5. Patience.

6. Location.
You need to pick a comfortable, quiet, relaxing environment. If you can, nature is best. You become like your surroundings and it is best to become more natural, especially in such an unnatural age. In nature, you can also meditate on nature itself which can eliminate the obstacle of being distracted by sounds, but allow them to all flow into your brain freely. As opposed to cars and humming of electronic appliances which should not be allowed to flow into your brain for it disturbs the natural processes. Thus, these types of sounds would be distractions.

7. Time.
Most experts in the field of meditation would agree that just before sunrise is the best time to meditate. This is inconvenient to a lot of people. My suggestion is sunset, which works great for me. If you meditate facing the sunset and close your eyes before sunset and vow not to open them afterward, just that alone (never mind anything you thought about the whole time) will change your whole perception of reality.

In closing, the mind is a battlefield. If you find yourself continually thinking about all sorts of things you probably have too many unresolved conflicts in your life. My best advice would be to clear up any of these conflicts as best you can before meditating. If you really need to clean the kitchen, do that. If you have to do laundry, do that. If your brother is mad at you, call him up and apologize, tell him you love him. Otherwise, your meditation will be plagued with these thoughts or your mind will continue to wander to get away from thinking about these things.

I hope this was a help.

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