Learn How To Optimize Your Meditation
There are two basic methods of meditation practiced:
Before we shall have a more in depth look into meditation techniques and understand the above two different principles applied in meditation, there are a few other questions to be answered:
What is meditation?
An extended and continuous concentration on a single object, with this object being the only thought in your mind, may be a good definition of meditation. If you can practice this for more than 5 minutes with one single object in your mind and ALL your concentration being directed continuously on that particular object, then you may have reached a good beginners level of meditation-practice. How easy or how difficult it can become to accomplish this, depends on the object you concentrate on. If you keep God in your mind it shall become quite easy, as God is Love, peace, harmony, tranquility, health and all the powerful positive aspects you may imagine.
Why do people meditate?
Daily life may often cause lots of turmoil in your mind and emotions. Stress with your job, your family and political or economical situation of your surroundings of your life may cause lots of anxiety, fears, emotions and thoughts, acting like a storm inside you. Mankind on earth has most often forgotten to live according to spiritual laws and Divine principles of God's creation. So they are sometimes creating Karma several times each day almost on a continuous basis.
Another reason for meditation is an advanced spiritual technique. Extended meditation by fully concentrating on an object, until becoming one with the object of meditation leads to the knowledge about the object. This technique is called Samyama. It is a technique that may be used to get an answer about important spiritual questions, or find solutions for important situations of your life. But as a beginner you may practice thousands of hours of meditation before you may become one with the object of meditation. What is is slowing down your success ? Your anxieties, your expectations about the answer, your desires, preoccupation, ... your ego.
So instead of practicing in the beginning of your spiritual path Samyama, you would get much better results if you start continuously working on your spiritual progress by dissolving all your ego, your wishes, .... in the fire of Divine Love. If once all your personality has been filled with the Divinity of your soul - made to the image of God - then you may need only minutes or seconds to achieve knowledge about an object, since one with God, you may have easy access of all the knowledge you truly need. Intuition is the advanced method of achieving knowledge about important objects in God's creation. You simply look at something and you may instantly know everything that might be important for the moment.
The use of meditation to gain peace within and to concentrate on God, the Divine is the recommended method and use of meditation. Some important spiritual wisdom may however be achieved to help you to understand the true meaning of life on earth in a physical body and to speed up your spiritual progress. You may find a few important and helpful questions to meditate and / or think about in another chapter or you may ask God to help you understand it before falling asleep in night time. Receiving an answer through meditation is much different than reading it. When receiving an answer by meditation then you are fully aware even within yourself of the full content and meaning of the answer. By reading an answer you may intellectually know it, keep it stored in your physical brain without having it ever understood. For that particular reason many wise man from the past have written questions to meditate about - rather than provided intellectual answers. One such examples may be the Yoga Sutras from Patanjali, or Lao Tse.
What do people expect from meditation?
Meditation is then experienced as a relief of all this mental and emotional pressure. People expect it to create some calm within and if properly done it really does successfully relief you of any stress, emotional and mental.
What is the purpose of meditation in spiritual traditions?
The purpose of meditation in all spiritual traditions is to:
How can we achieve this goal by meditation techniques?
First of all there definitely is a need to immediately stop any action causing such turmoil in your emotions, mind and actions. This is done by conducting a peaceful life in harmony with the Divine. To start this, you need to learn again to listen to his Divine and loving guidance. It is all the disharmony in your thoughts, emotions, words and actions that caused the turmoil. All the Karma you ever created will collect and be with you, until you start to change your style of life. Serious study of all spiritual laws and practicing and applying them in every days situation of your job, business, family, friends, recreation, politics, and any other situation of your life will be the first step toward creating peace within.
It makes little sense to meditate in order to create peace, as long as you still persist in creating turmoil before and after meditation in your daily life. So be ready to change your life, your inner and outer behavior while at the same time start to practice daily meditation and applying or living the spiritual laws in every days situations.
Meditation techniques shift your focus on God or Love.
Some spiritual traditions practice meditation by concentrating on emptiness. This is quite difficult, because there is no emptiness in the entire creation. So these person applying successfully this method often are hanging between two centers of consciousness, i.e. between physical and astral body, being neither in physical nor in astral body. Or between astral and causal body, again being neither in astral nor in causal body. You may somehow compare it to the gear of a car. The "normal" procedure is to move from one center up to the next higher until you are one with God-consciousness. Like shifting in a automobile from 1st gear to 2nd and 3rd up to the highest one when accelerating. Like in a automobile before shifting to the next higher gear, a driver usually accelerates to a certain speed before shifting to the next gear. A similar principle works in meditation. Before you can move from one center of consciousness to the next higher one, you may definitely need to increase the vibration of your present consciousness and all its pertaining parts in your spiritual body and its aura. This point is hard if ever to be accomplished when concentrating on emptiness, besides the fact that there is no emptiness at all, so you may waste some time to look for something in-existing. How can you move from one point to another when there is no orientation, no driving force that keeps you moving in a constant direction with all your spiritual practice.
Meditation techniques with Mantras.
Others are meditating by using a large variety of Mantras, or by using the picture of a Guru or deity to concentrate on. Some Mantras are associated with deities, others with "metaphysical gifts". When you concentrate on Mantras, deities or Gurus, it may lead to the result of you becoming one with the object of your concentration. Contemplation as a result of extended concentration is leading to Samyama - becoming one with the object of concentration. If this is what you are practicing, you may realize one day that you have achieved your goal, being in beautiful Worlds and universes - far away from God. That is the reason why in many Holy scriptures there is a warning - you should never have other deities beside me. Striving for unity with any deity may lead to this achievement, but this can and may lead to being far away from the source of all sources for a long time before you may realize how far you are from your intended goal.
The best meditation technique always is to focus on God.
Since the only true spiritual goal can be oneness with God, the Infinite, the Source of all sources, it should be your true and honest intention to have only God in mind when meditating. God is the Source of all sources, the Infinite beyond any creation and manifestation, thus God has the highest vibration of all. Everything is made of and by God. But any deity is a manifestation, like a highly evolved soul. God the Infinite source of Divine Love in your mind keeps you accelerating steadily, while replenishing your mind with Divine peace and Love again and again, dissolving in Divine Love anything else in your aura and mind. When you truly understand the principle of Samyama, then you may understand why it is advisable to concentrate on God and nothing else. It is the goal of any true spiritual tradition to achieve God-Realization through God-Union. This can only be reached when aiming at God in your concentration all the time. It is a straight forward evolution on your spiritual path and as God is Love, it also means your spiritual path will become paved with Love. Union with a deity can never be a true spiritual goal. Spiritual in its absolute and traditional sense is always directly God-related thus finally leading to God the absolute beyond any manifestation.
The concentration on God may sometimes appear difficult, because there has been too much time elapsed since your last incarnation where you have been closed or one with God. So therefore you may need the help of a Mantram to concentrate on God during your meditation. OM the only Mantram that is directly related to the Infinite beyond any manifestation. The repetition of this Mantram is the only one that should really be ever practiced if you prefer the use of a Mantram. Learn to properly pronounce it. In different languages people pronounce the two letter OM differently, that is the reason why sometimes it is also written AUM. As this again may be pronounced correctly like the original Sanskrit Mantram in those languages. The original is Sanskrit and there is only one way to pronounce it in Sanskrit - OM in Sanskrit is a letter of its own.
God is love - focus on love and you focus on God.
Besides the use of a Mantra you may use a word that has an attraction to God and is directly related to God the Absolute. One such word is Love. The word Love in any language can be used to create a relationship to God and cause Divine energy from God to flow to you and through you and to finally uplift you to become one with your source. You may even say the sentence "God is Love" in any language to initiate you meditation.
God is Love. It is one of God's principles to be Love beyond any manifestation. So concentrating on Love can relate you to God and at the same time fill you with this most Divine principle of Divinity - Love - until you are becoming a being of Love. A being of Love is always filled with wisdom, calmness, peace, harmony, grace and mercy, as these are but manifestations of Love.
God beyond manifestation can sometimes be perceived as the sound of OM, a humming sound sometimes similar to the sound of a propeller engine of an ancient aircraft. This sound however never is heard inside your ears, it vibrates and sounds everywhere. First may be in your entire head - some people may consider it at first to be Tinnitus - a hearing disorder. But when properly listening, you may realize, this sound comes from anywhere and everywhere within. It can be heard like any audible sound, it may be strong and consistent in your daily life, whatever you do. It is a proof of the omnipresence of God within you. Whenever you hear this, be happy and open yourself to this sound. Imagine it like being an ultrasonic sound "cleaning" your body, mind and soul. It is like if God was saying to you.
"I love you - I miss you - come home and be happy again, just devote yourself to this sound, to me and with the power of my omnipresent and omnipotent Divine Love I shall lift you up into my spheres - into your Divine home in me and near me".
Concentration on this OM sound is very powerful for meditation, as it is a direct perception of the Divine. You may use the freeing and healing power of God's OM sound by directing it in any part of your body where you may have any physical disorder. The best however is to let it expand on its own. Just welcome God in all parts of your being including in all your physical body, your personality, your Karma, your emotions and your mind. The same applies for the light you may perceive, as described below.
Some people may perceive this vibration of OM as brilliant light whenever they close their physical eyes during meditation, or they may perceive it with open eyes in their surroundings. Everything is filled with a brilliant light beyond any physical description. Like powerful light coming from many sources. It never can create any shadows because it is omnipresent. It is another way of direct perception of the Divine within and around you. When the 3rd eye - in Sanskrit called Kutashta - is opening, this then may one day become a normal perception of you. The 3rd eye is used for vision of the astral universes and the astral / mental aura of beings, including manifested beings without a physical body. This light may be seen in the air, in and around any objects and has nothing to do with the aura of any object. It is a manifestation of the omnipresent Holy Spirit flowing through all of us at any time. When you perceive this brilliant light, then just let it fill you throughout your entire body and aura, let it heal and free you. Keep it in your mind, your consciousness and as a focus of your concentration. This again is a very powerful help for meditation equal to the sound of OM.
The most powerful meditation technique is Kriya Yoga itself - it dissolves in love all until God is one with you. To learn Kriya Yoga is easy as it involves above all the development of true love in all situation of life to create peace of mind and heart.
In Kriya Yoga the Mantram of OM, the sound of OM and the light of OM are used as the preferred methods for meditation and the various techniques of Kriya Yoga. It is certainly advisable to use these methods as a standard for any true spiritual meditation.
The more you reach out for God - the more God reaches out for you!
Whenever you meditate, call for Divine help from God first in a deep and honest prayer. This may be only for seconds or a few minutes. It is your honest devotion to God that is important. Ask God to help you to meditate more successfully, to release you of anything that may keep you away from him. By the power of his almighty mercy, grace and Divine Love, God certainly shall listen to any call of any of his Divine Children.
We all are Divine Children - made to the image of God.
Remember: God loves you and always did so. It is but you who for a short while forgot to love God and all his creation in all and any situation.
- With your mind completely empty - concentrating on emptiness.
- With your full concentration on a particular object.
Before we shall have a more in depth look into meditation techniques and understand the above two different principles applied in meditation, there are a few other questions to be answered:
- What is meditation
- Why do people meditate
- What do people expect from meditation
- What is the purpose of meditation in spiritual traditions
- How can we achieve this goal by meditation techniques
What is meditation?
An extended and continuous concentration on a single object, with this object being the only thought in your mind, may be a good definition of meditation. If you can practice this for more than 5 minutes with one single object in your mind and ALL your concentration being directed continuously on that particular object, then you may have reached a good beginners level of meditation-practice. How easy or how difficult it can become to accomplish this, depends on the object you concentrate on. If you keep God in your mind it shall become quite easy, as God is Love, peace, harmony, tranquility, health and all the powerful positive aspects you may imagine.
Why do people meditate?
Daily life may often cause lots of turmoil in your mind and emotions. Stress with your job, your family and political or economical situation of your surroundings of your life may cause lots of anxiety, fears, emotions and thoughts, acting like a storm inside you. Mankind on earth has most often forgotten to live according to spiritual laws and Divine principles of God's creation. So they are sometimes creating Karma several times each day almost on a continuous basis.
Another reason for meditation is an advanced spiritual technique. Extended meditation by fully concentrating on an object, until becoming one with the object of meditation leads to the knowledge about the object. This technique is called Samyama. It is a technique that may be used to get an answer about important spiritual questions, or find solutions for important situations of your life. But as a beginner you may practice thousands of hours of meditation before you may become one with the object of meditation. What is is slowing down your success ? Your anxieties, your expectations about the answer, your desires, preoccupation, ... your ego.
So instead of practicing in the beginning of your spiritual path Samyama, you would get much better results if you start continuously working on your spiritual progress by dissolving all your ego, your wishes, .... in the fire of Divine Love. If once all your personality has been filled with the Divinity of your soul - made to the image of God - then you may need only minutes or seconds to achieve knowledge about an object, since one with God, you may have easy access of all the knowledge you truly need. Intuition is the advanced method of achieving knowledge about important objects in God's creation. You simply look at something and you may instantly know everything that might be important for the moment.
The use of meditation to gain peace within and to concentrate on God, the Divine is the recommended method and use of meditation. Some important spiritual wisdom may however be achieved to help you to understand the true meaning of life on earth in a physical body and to speed up your spiritual progress. You may find a few important and helpful questions to meditate and / or think about in another chapter or you may ask God to help you understand it before falling asleep in night time. Receiving an answer through meditation is much different than reading it. When receiving an answer by meditation then you are fully aware even within yourself of the full content and meaning of the answer. By reading an answer you may intellectually know it, keep it stored in your physical brain without having it ever understood. For that particular reason many wise man from the past have written questions to meditate about - rather than provided intellectual answers. One such examples may be the Yoga Sutras from Patanjali, or Lao Tse.
What do people expect from meditation?
Meditation is then experienced as a relief of all this mental and emotional pressure. People expect it to create some calm within and if properly done it really does successfully relief you of any stress, emotional and mental.
What is the purpose of meditation in spiritual traditions?
The purpose of meditation in all spiritual traditions is to:
- Empty your mind to become ready for pure consciousness.
- Empty your emotions to become aware of your surroundings emotions.
- Relief all your stress and emotional and / or mental pressure.
- Create peace of mind and harmony within yourself.
- Replace your emotional or mental turmoil by something positively and actively sacred and Divine.
How can we achieve this goal by meditation techniques?
First of all there definitely is a need to immediately stop any action causing such turmoil in your emotions, mind and actions. This is done by conducting a peaceful life in harmony with the Divine. To start this, you need to learn again to listen to his Divine and loving guidance. It is all the disharmony in your thoughts, emotions, words and actions that caused the turmoil. All the Karma you ever created will collect and be with you, until you start to change your style of life. Serious study of all spiritual laws and practicing and applying them in every days situation of your job, business, family, friends, recreation, politics, and any other situation of your life will be the first step toward creating peace within.
It makes little sense to meditate in order to create peace, as long as you still persist in creating turmoil before and after meditation in your daily life. So be ready to change your life, your inner and outer behavior while at the same time start to practice daily meditation and applying or living the spiritual laws in every days situations.
Meditation techniques shift your focus on God or Love.
Some spiritual traditions practice meditation by concentrating on emptiness. This is quite difficult, because there is no emptiness in the entire creation. So these person applying successfully this method often are hanging between two centers of consciousness, i.e. between physical and astral body, being neither in physical nor in astral body. Or between astral and causal body, again being neither in astral nor in causal body. You may somehow compare it to the gear of a car. The "normal" procedure is to move from one center up to the next higher until you are one with God-consciousness. Like shifting in a automobile from 1st gear to 2nd and 3rd up to the highest one when accelerating. Like in a automobile before shifting to the next higher gear, a driver usually accelerates to a certain speed before shifting to the next gear. A similar principle works in meditation. Before you can move from one center of consciousness to the next higher one, you may definitely need to increase the vibration of your present consciousness and all its pertaining parts in your spiritual body and its aura. This point is hard if ever to be accomplished when concentrating on emptiness, besides the fact that there is no emptiness at all, so you may waste some time to look for something in-existing. How can you move from one point to another when there is no orientation, no driving force that keeps you moving in a constant direction with all your spiritual practice.
Meditation techniques with Mantras.
Others are meditating by using a large variety of Mantras, or by using the picture of a Guru or deity to concentrate on. Some Mantras are associated with deities, others with "metaphysical gifts". When you concentrate on Mantras, deities or Gurus, it may lead to the result of you becoming one with the object of your concentration. Contemplation as a result of extended concentration is leading to Samyama - becoming one with the object of concentration. If this is what you are practicing, you may realize one day that you have achieved your goal, being in beautiful Worlds and universes - far away from God. That is the reason why in many Holy scriptures there is a warning - you should never have other deities beside me. Striving for unity with any deity may lead to this achievement, but this can and may lead to being far away from the source of all sources for a long time before you may realize how far you are from your intended goal.
The best meditation technique always is to focus on God.
Since the only true spiritual goal can be oneness with God, the Infinite, the Source of all sources, it should be your true and honest intention to have only God in mind when meditating. God is the Source of all sources, the Infinite beyond any creation and manifestation, thus God has the highest vibration of all. Everything is made of and by God. But any deity is a manifestation, like a highly evolved soul. God the Infinite source of Divine Love in your mind keeps you accelerating steadily, while replenishing your mind with Divine peace and Love again and again, dissolving in Divine Love anything else in your aura and mind. When you truly understand the principle of Samyama, then you may understand why it is advisable to concentrate on God and nothing else. It is the goal of any true spiritual tradition to achieve God-Realization through God-Union. This can only be reached when aiming at God in your concentration all the time. It is a straight forward evolution on your spiritual path and as God is Love, it also means your spiritual path will become paved with Love. Union with a deity can never be a true spiritual goal. Spiritual in its absolute and traditional sense is always directly God-related thus finally leading to God the absolute beyond any manifestation.
The concentration on God may sometimes appear difficult, because there has been too much time elapsed since your last incarnation where you have been closed or one with God. So therefore you may need the help of a Mantram to concentrate on God during your meditation. OM the only Mantram that is directly related to the Infinite beyond any manifestation. The repetition of this Mantram is the only one that should really be ever practiced if you prefer the use of a Mantram. Learn to properly pronounce it. In different languages people pronounce the two letter OM differently, that is the reason why sometimes it is also written AUM. As this again may be pronounced correctly like the original Sanskrit Mantram in those languages. The original is Sanskrit and there is only one way to pronounce it in Sanskrit - OM in Sanskrit is a letter of its own.
God is love - focus on love and you focus on God.
Besides the use of a Mantra you may use a word that has an attraction to God and is directly related to God the Absolute. One such word is Love. The word Love in any language can be used to create a relationship to God and cause Divine energy from God to flow to you and through you and to finally uplift you to become one with your source. You may even say the sentence "God is Love" in any language to initiate you meditation.
God is Love. It is one of God's principles to be Love beyond any manifestation. So concentrating on Love can relate you to God and at the same time fill you with this most Divine principle of Divinity - Love - until you are becoming a being of Love. A being of Love is always filled with wisdom, calmness, peace, harmony, grace and mercy, as these are but manifestations of Love.
God beyond manifestation can sometimes be perceived as the sound of OM, a humming sound sometimes similar to the sound of a propeller engine of an ancient aircraft. This sound however never is heard inside your ears, it vibrates and sounds everywhere. First may be in your entire head - some people may consider it at first to be Tinnitus - a hearing disorder. But when properly listening, you may realize, this sound comes from anywhere and everywhere within. It can be heard like any audible sound, it may be strong and consistent in your daily life, whatever you do. It is a proof of the omnipresence of God within you. Whenever you hear this, be happy and open yourself to this sound. Imagine it like being an ultrasonic sound "cleaning" your body, mind and soul. It is like if God was saying to you.
"I love you - I miss you - come home and be happy again, just devote yourself to this sound, to me and with the power of my omnipresent and omnipotent Divine Love I shall lift you up into my spheres - into your Divine home in me and near me".
Concentration on this OM sound is very powerful for meditation, as it is a direct perception of the Divine. You may use the freeing and healing power of God's OM sound by directing it in any part of your body where you may have any physical disorder. The best however is to let it expand on its own. Just welcome God in all parts of your being including in all your physical body, your personality, your Karma, your emotions and your mind. The same applies for the light you may perceive, as described below.
Some people may perceive this vibration of OM as brilliant light whenever they close their physical eyes during meditation, or they may perceive it with open eyes in their surroundings. Everything is filled with a brilliant light beyond any physical description. Like powerful light coming from many sources. It never can create any shadows because it is omnipresent. It is another way of direct perception of the Divine within and around you. When the 3rd eye - in Sanskrit called Kutashta - is opening, this then may one day become a normal perception of you. The 3rd eye is used for vision of the astral universes and the astral / mental aura of beings, including manifested beings without a physical body. This light may be seen in the air, in and around any objects and has nothing to do with the aura of any object. It is a manifestation of the omnipresent Holy Spirit flowing through all of us at any time. When you perceive this brilliant light, then just let it fill you throughout your entire body and aura, let it heal and free you. Keep it in your mind, your consciousness and as a focus of your concentration. This again is a very powerful help for meditation equal to the sound of OM.
The most powerful meditation technique is Kriya Yoga itself - it dissolves in love all until God is one with you. To learn Kriya Yoga is easy as it involves above all the development of true love in all situation of life to create peace of mind and heart.
In Kriya Yoga the Mantram of OM, the sound of OM and the light of OM are used as the preferred methods for meditation and the various techniques of Kriya Yoga. It is certainly advisable to use these methods as a standard for any true spiritual meditation.
The more you reach out for God - the more God reaches out for you!
Whenever you meditate, call for Divine help from God first in a deep and honest prayer. This may be only for seconds or a few minutes. It is your honest devotion to God that is important. Ask God to help you to meditate more successfully, to release you of anything that may keep you away from him. By the power of his almighty mercy, grace and Divine Love, God certainly shall listen to any call of any of his Divine Children.
We all are Divine Children - made to the image of God.
Remember: God loves you and always did so. It is but you who for a short while forgot to love God and all his creation in all and any situation.
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