BEGINNING
Once you have familiarized yourself with the safety precautions that you should take, there are a few basics about meditation that you should know. In its simplest terms, meditation is the ability to relax and concentrate your attention on one thing to the exclusion of all else. To do this it will be necessary for you to master the ability to control and quiet the chatter of your everyday thoughts, to relax, and to completely dispel any physical or emotional tensions that you might have.
Although various techniques to accomplish these tasks will be given in this section, it is important that you keep in mind that there is no single correct way to meditate. If you find that one approach doesn't work, don't be afraid to mix- and-match techniques from various procedures to suit your own personal requirements. Similarly, don't be afraid to come up with your own techniques. Just as everyone prefers a different sleeping position and a different hardness or softness of mattress, everyone must also find their own approach to achieving a meditative state.
Creating the Right Atmosphere
Some people assume that they must be sitting in a lotus position in order to be able to meditate, but this is not the case. You may find that sitting in a lotus position helps you meditate, or you may find that you have better results if you sit in an easy chair or lie down on a couch. I personally prefer to lie on a carpeted floor when I meditate, but you should experiment and find the position that suits you best. One word of advice—many experts advise against trying to meditate while lying in bed because its association with sleep tends to make the mind bypass the
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You may also find that it is easier for you to meditate when there is a stick of incense burning. Or having an unobtrusive background sound, such as a recording of the ocean or a gentle summer rain, may help you relax. However, it is advisable to turn off the recording after you are in a meditative state, or the sound may unduly color your past-life impressions.
Refer to Chapter 1 for more ideas on creating the best setting for meditation.
Learning How to Meditate
If you have never meditated before, don't expect to be able to master it immediately. In a state of deep meditation you should feel incredibly peaceful, relaxed, and unworried. If you go through the steps of placing yourself in a meditative state, but find that you are still fidgety, tense, or concerned about something going on in your life, you have not yet accomplished your task.
Another indication that you still have some work ahead of you is if you find that your thoughts continually stray from the object of your meditation. For example, if after the first twenty seconds of a breathing exercise, you find yourself thinking about your finances or some other aspect of your worldly life, you have not yet learned to quiet your thoughts and enter a state of meditation. Don't be surprised if this happens, because learning how to keep your thoughts focused on one thing for an extended period of time is by no means as easy as it seems.
If you find that it is difficult for you to shut out the world and quiet the constant interruption of your own thoughts, don't become discouraged. In certain ways the mind is very much like a muscle, and just as you cannot run a marathon or play a piece by Chopin the first time out, it may take a bit of practice before you learn how to control your own thinking processes and keep your mind from perpetually carrying on a running conversation with itself.
As a preliminary exercise, spend a few moments a day staring at a
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candle flame, and try to think of nothing but the flame. Don't think of the flame in terms of words like "flame," "red," or "flickering," but try to contemplate it without using words. Think only of its essence and see how many seconds you can do this before a stray thought pops into your mind. When one does, push it back out and carry on with your contemplation. Start out by doing this for a few minutes a day, and keep it up until you can stare at the candle flame for ten minutes or longer without thinking of any other thoughts. When you are able to do this, you have developed your powers of concentration enough that you should have little trouble achieving a meditative state.
If you find that you still have difficulty quieting your thoughts, another exercise that you might try is to spend ten minutes or so continuously moving every muscle of your body. Stand up, move around, flex all of your fingers, wave your arms, jog in place, shake your head, make sounds with your mouth, and keep every muscle in your body as active and as busy as you can manage. Then, after you have done this for about ten minutes, stop suddenly and quickly lie down, pushing every extraneous thought out of your mind as you do so.
Concentrate only on the sense of relief you feel at being able to stop, and on your breath as it flows in and out, but don't think of either of these things in terms of words or sentences. Simply feel them and see how long you can maintain your meditation.
Learning How to Visualize
Virtually all of the past-life meditative techniques that will be given in this book require that you be able to visualize certain objects and scenes very clearly in your mind's eye. If you find that you have difficulty doing this, your problem may be due to an inability to focus your concentration, so the meditation exercises will still apply. However, if you find that you can easily become very relaxed and quiet your thoughts, but have trouble conjuring up some of the required visual images, you may have to exercise your visualization muscles as well.
One way to do this is to make yourself comfortable in a quiet and
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dimly lit room. Then close your eyes and try to imagine what the room looks like without opening them. Slowly and carefully sketch every feature of the room in your mind's eye, and don't let the image be replaced by any other imaginings. If you have to, take a peek to see if you missed something, but then quickly close your eyes and continue with the procedure, making your mental image as real as possible and holding it for as long as you can.
As another exercise, imagine that you are gazing at a blackboard in a classroom, and you have a piece of chalk in your hand. Then, reach out and write a sentence on the blackboard, such as, "Mary had a little lamb."
Try to feel the texture of the chalk in your hand and feel yourself writing with it. Watch every stroke and observe how you make each letter. When you have finished, step back and look at the entire sentence as you have written it on the blackboard. Approach the blackboard again, and write the next sentence of the nursery rhyme beneath the first, and then the next, filling the board with as many sentences as you can hold unwaveringly in your mind.
Once you have mastered these techniques, you are ready to go on and try an actual past-life meditation.