Meditation

What is meditation?

Meditation means contemplation. There's passive contemplation and active contemplation. An example of passive contemplation would be sitting comfortably and observing thoughts coming and going without interfering with them, just observing. Active contemplation would be taking a subject and turning it over in your mind, studying all sides until your understanding of it was deep and all-inclusive of every facet. Of course, you would never be able to know if you have uncovered and understood every facet since you would only be exposed to the facets that your mind can come up with. Therefore, if you were to do this in a group or with a teacher you would inevitably come up with more facets than you would if you did it alone. Nevertheless, you would be able to come up with a much wider and deeper understanding if you contemplated alone than you would if you just thought of something and let it be as is, being the first thought that came to you. As you practice you will become better at opening yourself to deeper understandings.

Another type of active contemplation would be thinking of an object and holding that object in your mind for as long as you choose without letting it go. You can either hold an image of it in your mind’s eye or you can hold the concept of it in your thoughts. Once you let it go, you can choose to bring it back, go on to another object, or end the meditation.

 

Why meditate?

All the above lead to different results. Some lead to a deeper, wider, and better understanding of a subject while others may lead to an emotional, visceral, hallucinatory, or spiritual experience. A person can have truly meaningful experiences that can be life-changing.

Meditation can help a person be closer to themselves, learn and understand themselves, appreciate and respect themselves, develop personal awareness and identity, learn how to identify triggers and triggered responses, and become true to themselves.

Meditation can help undo a lot of developmental traumas that may cause a person to live with stress and anxiety causing them difficulties knowing what they want from life or continuously feeling like they are fighting with the sense of feeling stuck. This constant battling with their inner selves often leads to the fear and panic of feeling like their life is getting by them, that they should be enjoying life more or getting more out of life or doing more with their lives but don’t seem to be able to get past themselves. Meditation can help with this and develop a deeper awareness of what is going on and how to overcome it.

 

Who's meditation for?

A person who is generally happy with their life and feels productive is not recommended to practice passive meditation. Rather an active style of meditation would be more beneficial for them and possibly contribute to more growth and development.

A person who suffers from stress, anxiety, or a general sense of dissatisfaction will usually benefit from practicing either passive or active meditation. It would be wise for them to start off with passive meditation to help them achieve a sense of self.

The most benefit will come when learning with someone who has experience teaching meditation and working with past trauma since past hurts can pop up during meditation and will need to be dealt with in a professional manner.

The meditation student interested in personal growth and development will benefit more from a non-religion-based meditation style devoid of religious symbolism. One reason for this is when one focuses/meditates on a specific symbol the personal subjective experience of discovering and developing an awareness of your inner self will be overshadowed by the symbolism. The best way for a person to discover and become aware of self is to be with the said self without the distraction of external thoughts, intentions, or beliefs. 

During this journey of finding self, a person will come in touch with their historical inner child who has quite often been hurt through some type of emotional, physical, psychological abuse, or physical or emotional abandonment. Active meditation will be very helpful in relating to your inner child in a loving, caring, and concerned manner. A sort of parenting, if you will, of your inner child. This will usually require a trained guide.

Take the opportunity now and register for the upcoming workshops.