Meditation: Life without Endings

I just finished watching a mini-series on DVD. It was one of those that has a cliff-hanger at the end of almost every episode. I couldn't wait to to find out what happened next and, of course, I wanted to know what would happen in the end. But this series didn't really end the story. There was no knowing "how it all turned out". Obviously the last episode was made without the producers realizing it would be the last. Otherwise, the loose ends would have been tied up and the characters would have lived happily, or not so happily, ever after. At first this really bothered me. I didn't like the feeling of everything being up in the air. But when I thought about it, I realized that this is how life actually is -- a series of events, some favorable, some unfavorable, with no end. Something about that feeling of being left up in the air felt so unsettling, and yet so alive. The end of anything is a stopping point -- the end of movement. Everything must end for something new to emerge, but when we hold on to endings from the past or are fixed on how things will end in the future, we stop the natural flow of life. We stop the aliveness.

Meditation can help us give up our attachment to endings. Letting go of outcomes, letting go of having certain experiences and not having others, letting go of the attempt to make it "turn out right", allows us to experience the aliveness that is present moment to moment.

Letting Go Meditation Podcast

Someone found this blog by searching on "letting go meditation". Letting go is an essential element of all of our meditations. While many of them have a focus, such as the breath or awareness of the body, the focus always occurs on a background of letting go, so it made sense to do a meditation with this theme. Even though it's a variation on other themes I've used, such as "simply being", each theme gives us a slightly different angle and allows us to refine our meditation experience.

Letting go has to do with allowing whatever happens to happen. It has to do with not resisting thoughts, noise, emotions, sensations -- not resisting anything. It gets tricky, though, when we try to allow things to happen. If we are in meditation with the intention to allow, chances are we will be manipulating our experience in some way. Everything will be buffered through the filter of the idea of allowing. It's more a matter of noticing when we are resisting what is happening or trying to manipulate our experience in some way. When resistance or manipulation is noticed, it can be let go of quite naturally.

The value of guided meditation is that it can allow us to let go more, because we don't so much have the sense that we are steering the process. It can allow us to relax more into the meditative state. Of course, guided meditations can have many different styles and approaches, so I am speaking about my own. Hopefully once you've used these meditations for awhile, you will be able to enter into a similar process on your own. If you are meditating on your own, you can always go back to the guided meditations anytime if meditation has become difficult and you need a refresher.

We'd love to hear about your experiences with meditation. Please feel free to comment on the blog!

Grounding Meditation

When I hear my husband saying "earth to Mary", it's a sure sign I'm not grounded. It's such a perfect phrase -- "earth to...". Being grounded has to do with our connection to the earth and to our own physical existence. When we are grounded our attention is focused on the here and now. Our minds are coordinated with our bodies. We are more balanced, less likely to make mistakes and have accidents.

There are lots of ways to get grounded. If you've become ungrounded because your are over-stimulated and your mind is scattered from multi-tasking and the general fast place of life, unplugging from your computer, TV, cell phone can help. Spending some time in silence helps the mind settle down and brings you back into your body. Time in nature paying attention to the sensations, sights and sounds also helps reconnect us to our bodies and the earth.

For those who are ungrounded because of too much meditation (which makes you feel "spacey"), focused activity can be a great antidote. Doing sudoku or crossword puzzles or something that requires that kind of mental concentration can quickly make the mind more focused. Doing some physical work or household tasks carefully and with full attention also helps.

There are many kinds of grounding meditations and visualizations. One very common one involves imagining your feet growing roots into the earth. Another involves visualizing a line dropping from your tailbone (or root chakra or tan tien in the lower abdomen) straight down into the earth and anchoring it.

We've just added a podcast episode which helps you ground by focusing your awareness on the lower body, feet and sensing your connection to the earth. Once you've done this process a number of times, you will be able to repeat the process automatically when needed.

What helps you to ground?

Breath in the Heart Guided Meditation

We've just added the Breath in the Heart meditation to our podcast. It's a variation on meditations in which you follow your breath. In this case, you maintain awareness of the breath and the heart area at the same time. This helps open and enliven the heart chakra. The heart is the seat of love and connection. Attention on the heart helps to awaken the energy of love. This meditation can be especially soothing as you connect into the energy of the heart. At the same time, it can bring our awareness to any emotional pain which is present in the heart chakra. The pain may be from past hurts or from our current situation. If we are grieving, bringing attention to the heart will help facilitate the feelings of grief. By allowing these feelings to be present, they can move through and resolve.

"Relaxing into Healing" guided meditation podcast

I just added an episode to our Meditation Oasis podcast called "Relaxing into Healing". It's a very simple, direct approach to healing, and probably quite different from most guided meditations for healing.

The meditation is based on the idea that healing is in the nature of life. The natural intelligence of the body and psyche is always moving in the direction of healing. We can cooperate with this natural process of healing by being open to it, relaxing so that the maximum energy is available for healing, and allowing whatever needs to be healed to come fully into our awareness.

Being open to healing -- In the beginning of the meditation, we set the intention to open to healing. This way we become more receptive to the process of healing.

Relaxing to free up energy for healing -- We relax by letting go of resistance to whatever we are experiencing in our body, mind and emotions. Resistance takes energy, and we want to let that energy be used for healing.

Allowing what needs healing into our awareness -- Finally, the guided meditation encourages you to allow everything to come into your awareness that needs healing. The idea isn't to start thinking about it and analyzing it, but to simply experience it. Our attention is a beam of intelligent energy. Simply having something in our awareness brings energy to it. It may be a situation, an emotion or something in the body that needs healing. The meditation encourages you to simply allow yourself to experience whatever needs to be healed without judgment. In this way you hold a compassionate space for yourself to heal.