First stillness. then silence

When I first learnt meditation, my teacher said to close my eyes, focus on a mantra, and if thoughts arose as a distraction, to gently bring my focus back to the mantra. Along the way, many others shared numerous ideas on how to meditate successfully. But it wasn't until I started studying Psychosynthesis that I experienced success with stilling the mind.

Let's get one thing clear though - learning to still the mind is nothing to do with any religion, but to have an experience of the 'self', with the larger goal of living 'consciously', which to me translates as living vibrantly, meaningfully, one hundred percent engaged with being here now!

Here's a suggestion for a straight-forward way to start:

Find a quiet place; sit comfortably, whether on a chair, on the floor, on a cushion on the floor, or whatever works best for you. Slowly 'inspect' each section of your body, starting from the top, the head, moving slowly down, checking each part for any tension anywhere. If you have a sense of tension/restlessness/discomfort in more than one part then choose one amongst these for now. Address this part, explaining to it that you need some time for 'you', and will be back to investigate the problem, and will take care of it. Now with each out breath, exhale whatever tension you may be feeling, especially in the chest/heart area, and/or the solar plexus. Once there's a feeling of calmness and balance stop and take a few moments to truly allow yourself this experience.

Focusing again on your breathing, very slowly, with the help of your in breath go to a deep part inside you. Look around and make a mental note of what you see. Do this twice more, each time going to a still deeper part. The third time, stay where you find yourself, enjoying the feeling, the vista, the rest and repose. See if a word, or an image come to mind for where you are, and how you are feeling. Don't force anything. If there's no image don't worry. Take your time with this part of the exercise, and when there's a sense of completion for you - slowly come back to the room and open your eyes. Taking a paper and a pen, make some notes -- if you can draw the place where you found yourself, or the image that came to you, all the better. Feel free to share your experience with me in the comments, and if you'd like my input then do remember to send me your email address.

So, how was it :-)?

Kiki ;-)
P.S. My request to those who 'borrow' from this blog is to please give adequate credit to the source of the borrowed information - whether me, or books and people I quote from. Thank you.