Meditation

What is meditation? What are its fruits?

Silence and stillness: I become the calm observer of my dramas (that ego so loves). This enables me to live in the present and brings awareness (focus) and equanimity (freedom). I can hear best when I am most quiet.
Connection: it is to disconnect from ego and to connect with my higher self, detaching from form and attaching to spirit. It is to enter the heart, unity consciousness, oneness of connection. This will lower resistance and bring higher frequency – an energetic frequency above that of the thinking mind.
Consciousness, not mind chatter: I dis-identify with my own mental noise and no longer let it pull me here and there. Here we learn to use our minds instead of continuing the cycle of our minds using us. Here we feel the inner body. This will transmute pain into Presence.

To see your feelings as the trustworthy compass that they are
To see the real you that is beyond them
To see through the eyes of Christ with acceptance of self and others

A meditation-based practice changes the way you perceive reality and live your life… Learning to let go of what we’re clinging to, mentally as well as emotionally, actually catalyzes some revolutionary—and evolutionary—changes in our neural wiring… Contemplative prayer is no longer a luxury; it is an absolute necessity. … that allows us to empathize and relate to each other without fear, judgment, demonization, or division. Cynthia Bourgeault

We meditate: that we might awaken to God’s presence all about us and within, as Saint Augustine phrased it, closer to us than we are to ourselves. … We meditate that we might learn to see God in all that we see. And as our resistance to God’s quiet persistence diminishes, we are realized into oneness with Christ. … It is to be as compassionate as we can toward ourselves as we sit in meditation. James Finley

It is only when you slow down to a state of stillness that you can even experience the perspective of Source. Teal Swan

It brings me back in alignment with the Divine Flow so the Infinite Source can once again flow into me and through me. Great love, great suffering, and some form of contemplative practice are the usual paths that help me get my small, false self out of the way and become an open conduit for the gushing stream of abundant life that God always is and that the believer always becomes (see John 7:38).
People often ask me how long they should pray, and I say, “As long as it takes you to get to “yes.” If your heart and emotions are still saying “No!” to the moment right in front of you, don’t leave your place of prayer until you find “Yes,” until the flow begins to happen and the constriction (which often feels like pettiness) begins to lose its hold on you. Then you’re abiding in a place of abundance where you know there’s more than enough of you left over, and you don’t need to be stingy, guarded, or hold on to even minor grudges. You can let love flow—to you and through you—toward all the world around you. Richard Rohr

This is a period of breaking through the “veil” of third density and remembering what you already do know at soul level but have forgotten consciously. Suzanne Ward

Three simple steps of ‘How to meditate’– Gregg Braden

1) Place your hand(s) over your heart

2) Slow your breathing to about 5 seconds per inhale/exhale

3) Think on one of these four words, care, compassion, gratitude and appreciation

Meditation builds resilience, the ability to adapt to change. It increases heart/brain harmony and heart rate variability, which is to be less rigid in our ways. It builds personal coherence, which is the way to global coherence. To marry our heart and mind strengthens our magnetic field, increasing cooperation and peace, making for less aggression.

7 steps to entering universal awareness (BLESS ME): Suzanne Giesmann. The brain goes into alpha mode, rather than its normal beta waves. Shut out the outer world to enter the inner world.

Breathe and set intention to connect. 3 deep breaths and release. Slow down the brain
Lift your consciousness. Clear chakras. Open your heart. Feel Love and gratitude.
Expand your energy field. I am limitless.
Surrender your story, release expectations and all resistance
Shift into the spirit world. Lift your head up, see yourself as going up
Merge with spirit, inviting in guidance
Experience whatever is supposed to happen. Ask your question. LISTEN.

The Presence Process, by Michael Brown

Week 1, This moment matters
Week 2, I recognize my reflections and projections
Week 3, I choose to respond
Week 4, I feel unconditionally
Week 5, I am innocent
Week 6, I integrate charged emotion
Week 7, I feel safe now
Week 8, I forgive myself
Week 9, I love myself unconditionally
Week 10, I appreciate what I am

The goal of meditation is to free ourselves from the accumulated knowledge of the mind, so that we may experience each moment as new. Enjoy life, but don’t take it seriously. Practice developing a detachment from thought and understand that your thoughts are not who you are. When we are in a state of Presence and pure awareness, we welcome all experiences, allowing them to come and go freely. Ego will naturally dissolve into our loving awareness, without us having to do anything.

Focus on your breath
Feel into your body
Practice gratitude

Joseph P. Kauffman

Meditation is:

Taking time out to be grateful.
just sitting down and taking ten minutes out to unwind, to appreciate the silence. Be content to sit with whatever it is and see how it plays out, in both mind and life.
To be more sensitive to emotions while less identified with them. These are just thoughts (feelings). They are not me, neither can they hurt me. We need to see these things clearly before we can let go of them.
not about getting rid of the anger, but instead meeting the anger with kindness and understanding. Encourage a sense of kindness and compassion toward yourself. Stop fighting the feeling and give up the resistance.

Andy Puddicombe

Meditation is a transition from ego to your higher self, from mind thinking to heart knowing, from doing to being. My higher self: 1) I came here for the experience of this, 2) I have no expectations, and 3) I explicitly trust the universe.

To discover and know my true self, without being defined by my surroundings. We are far from being flawed, at our core we are goodness. It is covered by many layers of ego garbage. Living from the surface is riddled with suffering. An ego driven person is in pain. Only in living out of our depths can we find fulfillment, we learn how to truly love. Reggie Ray

Mini-meditations (15-30 seconds) Eckhart Tolle

Step out of the stream of thinking, take 1-2 conscious breaths, feel the inner body, engage senses
Do this at the beginning of habitual activities (ie. Climb in a car, sit down, etc.)

There is nothing more important than consciousness. Meditation brings present moment awareness, which brings soul perspective. It is accumulative, so subtle, but so transformative.

Meditation is: Sit still and let life win. Matt Kahn

Meditation is an act of love for humanity. Jon Kabat-Zinn

… to CONSCIOUSLY breathe, feel your inner body, sense your surroundings and fully surrender all. It’s a communing with the soul rather than incubating in ego, an entering into the heart sanctuary rather than dwelling in thought, it’s a transformation into Love rather than conforming to the world.

Breathwork – 7 min. of 3-step breathing thru the mouth (stomach, chest, exhale), one minute of holding your breath, one minute of regular breathing. 10+ minutes of gratitude lying down.

Tonglen = breathing in hurt from others, breathing out healing for them.

To let go of the world and all our hearts attach to (ACIM lesson 128).

Mindfulness = the awareness that arises when we are paying attention on purpose in the present moment and without judgment. Jon Kabat-Zinn

Meditation is a waste of time to the ego. It is a means to more consciousness and less insanity, to more love and less fear and judgment. It’s a way to freedom, to accept what is and to release what was. It is a dying to or detaching from the life of form.