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GUIDELINES FOR DEVELOPING MEDITATION SKILLS

CLEAN AND CLEAR SPACE

Create a special space for yourself, either a room or a corner, and use it only for your meditation and heartfelt study or contemplation. Put in this space only those things that help your meditation. Find a comfortable seat for yourself. Arrange in a pleasing way the pictures and objects that energize the qualities of heart and mind you are trying to nurture. Keep the space clean and clear, as though you were always expecting a special guest. Enter it with respect, and nurture and be energized by its peace, beauty, and healing qualities.

MINDING THE BODY

In general, you will find it helpful to precede your quiet sitting meditation with at least a brief period of mindful stretching, t'ai chi, yoga, or gentle exercise. This will help you to build energy and focus your attention. At times you may find that your mind is simply too agitated to begin with quiet sitting meditation and you will gain much greater benefit from a session of walking or moving meditation such as Concentration While Walking (page 00), Doing What You Love to Do (page 00), or Mindful Walking (page 00).

For sitting meditation, whether you sit cross-legged, in a chair, or kneel with a meditation bench is largely a matter of style and preference. Experiment and see what works best for you. It is especially important to sit comfortably, with your spine straight and your body upright and relaxed. Sitting in this way it will be much easier to remain alert. Sit naturally and at ease, and avoid forcing your body into uncomfortable postures. Your eyes can either be gently closed or softly open—though practicing with them softly open will reduce the tendency to doze off and can help you to carry a meditative presence over into other activities. With practice you will learn to bring a meditative mind to every activity whether sitting, standing, walking, or lying down.

RELEASE PHENOMENA

In meditation, as you begin to relax, it is quite common to experience what are called “release phenomena.” These may include jerking or quivering of the body as you are falling asleep, gurgling of the stomach, tingling feelings or numbness, memories, mental images, inner sounds, or other perceptual changes.

Release phenomena are common indicators that your practice of relaxation or meditation is becoming effective in dissolving deeply imbedded mental, emotional, and physical holding patterns. The best way to deal with these experiences is to simply allow them to arise, unfold, and dissolve without distracting your attention.

With practice, you will become aware of the subtle physical, emotional, and mental states that are the indicators of progressively deeper levels of relaxation and meditation. Eventually, your reservoirs of accumulated stress will be drained, allowing you to feel lighter, clearer, and better able to handle the challenges of daily life more effectively and with greater patience and understanding.

RELAXED YET ALERT

For most of us, our experience of deep relaxation lacks awareness and is at best dull and dreamlike. And at the very height of alertness we are the complete opposite of relaxed, experiencing physical tension and mental agitation. Both of these extremes are far from the relaxed yet alert, calm delight of meditative equipoise. A classical analogy talks of tuning a stringed musical instrument: If the strings are too tight or too loose the sound is not very pleasant. Similarly, to find the sweet notes in meditation, it is necessary to find a dynamic balance between being overly alert and overly relaxed. The first extreme creates physical and mental tightness and eventually leads to distraction. The other end of the continuum creates dullness and heaviness that usually leads to sleep.

Especially in the beginning, much of your session might be spent finding this balance, bringing the mind back from dazed distraction or dullness to a state of relaxed alertness. Eventually, you will become familiar with this state of being. During your meditation sessions you will be able to be deeply relaxed as well as extremely lucid, and in daily life you will find that your view of the way things are will be less conditioned and obstructed. With this deepening understanding, you will be better able to optimize your response to the challenges and opportunities of each moment with more creative and compassionate attitudes, words, and actions.

DYNAMIC RELAXATION: HAVE MERCY

As we were about to enter into a long meditation retreat, we visited one of our special teachers. With intense and tender concern, he took us by the hand, looked deeply into our eyes and said, “If you wish to be successful in your meditation practice, the most important thing is to remember to stay relaxed! If you get tense and try too hard, it will only create problems.” Dynamic relaxation is a first step in opening to our wholeness, our full potential, and to the world. As you learn to relax and to release unnecessary tension, the physical vitality, mental clarity, calm, centered strength, and emotional well-being which are fundamental to the human spirit, will naturally and effortlessly arise. The tensions we hold in our day to day lives are, in many cases, armoring reflective of our underlying anxieties and fears about not feeling safe or secure in the world. When we knot our muscles, clench our teeth, or tie our guts in knots, it does little for us but cause pain, raise blood pressure, and create more noise in the nervous system. While this bracing accomplishes the unconscious task of dulling our sensitivity and shielding us from the intensity of life, it also exhausts, depletes, and weakens us. Such survival skills are not sustainable and, over time, the accumulating stress and strain will lead to many problems.

Relaxation is a means of ceasing to create pain for ourselves. Often the first strategy we teach people to relax is to actually increase the level of their tension! Why? Because when we realize that we can increase the tension—say, take it from a “4” up to a “7”—we recognize that we really are in control of, or at least can influence, the situation and our response to it. No one can make us tense, no matter how much blame we may want to project onto others. If we can increase our tension, then it is also possible for us to release it, to relax from a “7” back down to a “4,” and with practice down to a “3,” “2,” or even “zero.” As we gradually learn to recognize and reduce the habits that create noise in our bodies and mind, we learn to relax and open our bodies, mind, hearts, and souls to commune with creation in all its many dimensions.

Dynamic relaxation—the state of optimal tension, free from unnecessary strain—is a gesture of mercy and compassion toward ourselves. To make this step again and again takes courage—the courage to look, listen, feel, and welcome life without running away, or constricting back into our shell of tension, or ignore-ance. At the sacred heart of the Islamic faith, the first words of worship are Bismillah Erachman, Erahim: “We begin in the name of Allah, the One who is Merciful and Compassionate.” Taking this prayerto heart, we come to realize that this is where our work on ourselves must begin: to begin to open our hearts with greater mercy and compassion toward ourselves and others.

THOUGHTS TO ENERGIZE YOUR MEDITATION

Consider the precious opportunity that this human existence gives us. By practicing meditation we can realize and express our enormous potential. This is a great gift.

Then consider impermanence. Whatever is born will die, whatever appears will disappear. Recognizing this, we understand that we really don't know how much time we have to realize our true nature and potential and to love and help those we care for.

Contemplating the laws of cause and effect, we understand that we have choice in our lives. What we experience today is largely the result of the choices we made previously, and what we choose to do, think, and say now will shape and determine our future.

Finally, consider why we should work with our minds. The long-term result, the experience of enlightenment, is more joyful, more intense, and complete than anything we have yet known, and once found can never be lost. Secondly, there is so much suffering in the world, and our ability to benefit others is very limited if we ourselves are confused.

So, for ourselves and others, we want to place our trust in those who can inspire and guide us in this inner work and in the traditions, teachings, and methods that help us to master our minds and to awaken genuine wisdom and compassion in our lives.

FAITH, SUPPORT, AND INSPIRATION

For all these reasons, then, we seek a refuge from the chaos and confusion within and around us. Like a child taking refuge in its mother, or hikers seeking shelter from a storm, we seek an oasis of sanity in a chaotic world.

Outwardly, we place our trust in the teachers who remind us through their example, their kindness, and their teachings that it is possible to become free from mental and emotional confusion and to become wise and kind as well. We find strength and guidance in the teachings that show us how to master our minds and find freedom and understanding in our lives. Likewise, we find refuge in the community of friends and companions who share our study, practice, and investigation of how meditation can be practically applied to meet the challenges and opportunities of daily life.

Inwardly, the teacher reflects the seed of our own potential for deep understanding and genuine kindness. Oral and written teachings point our minds toward the ineffable wisdom that shines like the sun and moves within our hearts, the real mystery that precedes life and endures beyond death. Our companions along the way remind us of the community of people who, from the beginning of time, strove to find the same understanding and who preserved and passed on the teachings.

Meditation—whether you are sitting alone in a cave, or in an office, or meditating in a group—does not happen in a vacuum, devoid of relationship and sharing with others. Affirming, trusting, and drawing strength and inspiration from your relationships with others and your connectedness with the universe will offer you protection and peace of mind, and will inspire your meditation practice.

PROPER MOTIVATION

As you begin each session, remind yourself of why you are sitting down to meditate. Why are you giving yourself this gift of time for centering, harmonizing, and fine-tuning? To avoid pain? To be happy? To find peace? To rest or energize?

Remember, as you grow in clarity and peace of mind you directly contribute to bringing peace and understanding to others. And as you develop patience toward the people and situations that previously triggered frustration, you will be filling the universe with compassion instead of anger, understanding instead of confusion.

Our intentions reflect back to us an echo of the same energy. How often have you seen actions motivated by fear emphasize the paranoia of a situation? And how often has your love and care touched and opened the heart of another?

Remember, it is not what you do but how and why you do it that really matters. You always have a choice, so use it wisely, compassionately, and creatively.

MONITOR YOUR MEDITATION

Your meditation session is likely to go through several phases. Once you have settled down you should stabilize your attention by practicing a concentration technique for a few moments. Then you can apply your mind to whatever meditation—mindfulness, reflective, creative, or heart-centered—you choose. Throughout the session, use your vigilance or introspective alertness to monitor the quality of the focus of your attention. In this way you can recognize when your attention has wandered off or faded away. If you find it difficult to stay with the meditation because of too much distraction or dullness, you will find it useful to balance your mind again with a few minutes of concentration meditation, especially by watching the breath. Then, once again, return to your main meditation.

DEDICATION AND SHARING

Take a few moments at the end of each session to consciously extend and share the positive energies you have accumulated. From your heart radiate out into space warmth, light, and love, and imagine it touching others as a vibration that calms, energizes, heals, comforts, and nourishes. Be creative! Imagine you are playing a mental video game. Beam all your positive feelings to your friends, family, people you feel neutral toward, even to your enemies. Realize that they all, just like you, want to be happy, want to escape suffering and pain, and desire to make the most of their lives. Imagine radiating all the positive energy you have generated through your meditation out to all beings, and that each receives from you whatever they most need at that moment to carry them from fragmentation toward wholeness. In this way, realize that this inner work on yourself is also an offering to the world. (See Dedication Meditation on page 00 for a more detailed explanation.)

CARRY-OVER PRACTICE

Through your practice of meditation, it is possible to develop many previously latent positive qualities. Having used the brief period of your quiet meditation to touch and develop the peace, clarity, understanding, kindness, and vitality within, you now face the challenge of carrying these qualities into dynamic action as you move through the world. Throughout the day, consciously recall and reenergize these feelings. Particularly when you start to rush and tumble, internally pause, center, and move toward the sense of harmony you experienced earlier in meditation. Periods of quiet, undistracted meditation are precious opportunities to get in touch with qualities that will gradually grow and pervade even your busiest activities.

You will find that any activity can become an opportunity to train your mind, develop concentration, refine your awareness, deepen your insight, practice patience or loving-kindness. Live in a creative and meditative way, as though your life were a dream and you are busy waking up.

REMEMBER THE INNER SMILE

Lest you get too serious, it's important to approach your meditations with a sense of curiosity and playful inquisitiveness. For many people, holding a gentle inner smile during meditation helps to prevent them from trying too hard, getting tense, or being too self-critical. Enjoy your practice! Smile! Be playful!

FIVE STEPS FOR A DAILY MEDITATION PRACTICE

In establishing a daily meditation practice, the following guidelines can help add variety and richness. Your confidence in weaving these pieces together will grow with practice and this simple flow will become quite natural. There are five parts to this sequence:

1 Inspiration and Intention: As you begin, take a short time to clarify your intention and offer a prayer of gratitude or a call for inspiration. Remember that meditation is the practice of deep relationships, and that you never practice “alone.” Call upon the sources of inspiration in your life, that they may inspire your meditation. Remembering all those who share your life and world, practice in order to in some way be a force of healing and wholeness in the world.

2 Concentration: Next, shift to some type of focusing, concentration meditation, such as mindfulness of breathing, the nine-part breath, or the elemental breaths.

3 Meditation: Now shift to a longer period of quiet meditation using whatever technique you are drawn to.

4 Dedication: Finally, end the session with a brief dedication, gathering the potency generated through this time of meditation into your heart and radiating it to share the blessings with all beings.

5 Application: As you conclude your formal meditation practice, make a smooth transition and hold the intention to carry the quality of mindful presence into whatever activities will follow. Throughout the day, pause from time to time for a mini-meditation to renew your connection to these qualities, and then continue to infuse your life with the mindful presence, insight, creativity, and compassion that flow from your meditation practice.

Though these five stages build upon each other, if time or inclination do not permit you will still benefit from doing only steps 1, 2, and 4, steps 1 and 2, or even just step 1. Give yourself credit for any sincere steps that you make in the right direction!

Keep your formal practice short and simple at first so that you can begin to establish this new life-habit and feel some success in maintaining it. Then, as you see the benefits, gradually develop, deepen, or expand your practice.

TAKING REFUGE: RECEIVING AND RADIATING SPIRITUAL STRENGTH

There is one meditation that is universally useful as a preliminary practice for all other meditations. Because it is so fundamentally important, we would like to offer it here, to serve as a bridge to the rest of the meditations that follow. Technically, it would be classified as belonging to the “creative” category of meditation, and although it often serves as a foundation for other meditations to build on, it is also a complete and potent practice on its own.

This training is based on a profound principle found universally in the contemplative traditions, sometimes described as “taking refuge.” One of the most beautiful references for it is found in the Holy Koran, and is expressed in this exquisite translation by Sufi Sheik Lex Hixon:

With each breath may we take refuge in the Living Truth alone, released from coarse arrogance and subtle pride. May every thought and action be intended in the Supremely Holy Name, Allah, as a direct expression of boundless Divine Compassion and Most Tender Love. May the exaltation of endless praise arising spontaneously as the life of endless beings flow consciously toward the Single Source of Being, Source of the intricate evolution of endless worlds. May we be guided through every experience along the Direct Path of Love that leads from the Human Heart into the Most Sublime Source of Love.

A survey of the world's spiritual traditions reveals a common grounding in a trinity of refuges that support meditation practice:

• First, we take refuge in the living examples of great teachers who have kept the tradition alive and guided others in its ways.

• Second, we take refuge in the inspiring body of spiritual teachings that offer practical principles, techniques, and advice on how to live a truly righteous and balanced life.

• Third, we take refuge in fellowship with the spiritual community of kindred souls who walk the path with us, and who are a source of companionship and support along the way.

Each of these factors provides the nourishment and support essential to meditation practice. Bombarded by the intensity and complexity of our life, it is easy to feel overwhelmed: “How can I possibly manage this situation?” We all need help, guidance, and inspiration to find our way and to stay the course at times when we may become distracted or disheartened. Incorporating the practice of taking refuge into the beginning of a meditation session offers a sense of deep connection and groundedness that supercharges your practice with inspiration and strength greater than your small limited self. Here is one way to awaken the mind of refuge in your meditations.

As you sit here now, envision yourself sitting at the center of your universe, surrounded by all living beings. Holding this image in mind, pause for a moment to remember, invite, or sense the presence of those who have most deeply inspired you in your life. Reach out now from your heart, and with your hands, to these beings whose presence in your life is truly a blessing, a source of renewal, deep information, and inspiration. Imagine that all of them are right here with you now, surrounding you and shining like a constellation of brilliant suns. Or, if you like, envision that these many sources of light merge into a single brighter sun that shines a radiance of blessings and inspiration into your life.

Imagine that with each breath you reach out to them and hold their hands, and that through your connection with them you can draw strength and inspiration. In fact, the stronger and more sincere your own aspiration, the deeper and stronger the flow of inspiration becomes. Imagine that each of these inspiring people in turn reaches out to hold the hands of those to whom they look for guidance, strength, and inspiration, and that they in turn reach out to those who have inspired them. Sense your teachers reaching out to their teachers, who reach out to their teachers…. Envision yourself balanced within and receiving from this endless cascade of wisdom and love as it flows to you and through you from countless inspired ancestors of the far and distant past.

Envision this inspiration as knowledge and energy soaking into you now. It energizes the parts where your life-force is weak. It balances what needs to be balanced. It floods, cleanses, and opens the spaces and places within you that are clogged or congested, and nourishes the seeds of your deepest potential to blossom beautifully. Like sunlight filtering into a deep clear pool, sense these waves of inspiring grace flooding your mind-body-energy-spirit. Every dimension of your being is illuminated, blessed, and renewed. With each breath you are filled, saying silently “receiving.” With each breath you release what you no longer need to hold on to, saying inwardly “Releasing.” Receiving…releasing…receiving…releasing…. Plugging into this renewal circuit, you are revitalized, calmed, and energized, and move towards balance between your inner and outer worlds.

Having cleared your circuits, charged your batteries, and filled your tanks, begin now to radiate and expand this sense of peace and well-being within you. With each inhalation, shift to receive, and then with each exhalation, radiate. Breathing in, imagine the inspiration and blessings converging and spiraling into you, filling your heart. With each out-breath sense, imagine, or feel your heart silently radiating like a bright, shining star. Effortlessly offer the natural radiance of your innermost being to the world. Allow it to shine through the darkness within or around you. Allow it to light up your inner and outer world effortlessly, immediately. Let this be the light of your love, the light of your peace, the light of your presence, the light of your good-will and positive regard.

Now, having enhanced and expanded your radiance, begin to direct your attention and energy to the world around you. Reach out to those who look to you as a source of inspiration, guidance, and support. Reach out to your children, your students, your patients, your clients and customers, and to all those who look to you as they seek balance and belonging in their lives. Receiving inspiration, wisdom, and strength from those you draw guidance from, reach out with your hands and from your heart and let each exhalation become an inspiring gift that you offer to those who, in turn, look to you.

Envision each person you reach out to taking your gift to heart, and feel that it truly inspires and awakens greater wisdom, balance, and strength in their lives. As you reach out to your children, envision them receiving and taking this gift to heart and then passing it on to their children, who pass it on to their children, who pass it on to their children, and to all whose lives they touch. Envision your students reaching out to their students who reach out to their students. Imagine that all those to whom you reach out take these gifts to heart and pass them on to those who will pass them on, in an endless cascade of inspiration and blessings that reaches out into the world to help awaken all beings to their True Nature, nurturing harmony and wholeness for countless generations to come.

In this way, receiving and radiating, sense yourself balanced here, reaching out from this fleeting moment where all the experiences of the infinite past and all the potential for the boundless future converge. Viewed in this light, realize that your real life-work is to reach out and realize your connectedness and wholeness, to deepen in balance, to increase your capacity to gather inspiration and wisdom, to take it to heart and pass it on as far and wide as you possibly can. From the depths of your being, generate a deep and heartfelt aspiration to awaken fully to your True Nature and potential and to help all beings do the same, so that they in turn can inspire others to awaken fully.

Imagine the silent light of your innermost being blazing with exquisite clarity and radiating out to fill your body. Imagine it radiating out into the world around you now, and sense yourself as a lighthouse of love, a radiant source of inspiration for all beings. Holding your loved ones and friends in mind, radiate this love to them. Bring to heart and mind the leaders of the world, the children of the world, the beleaguered nations and species of the world, and radiate your heartfelt care and prayers to them.

In this way, receiving…radiating, each breath affirms your deep relationship with the whole of creation, and with all beings in the past, present, and future. In this way, each blessed breath becomes a gesture of balance, a gesture of receiving from and offering to all.

Sense, imagine, and affirm that those you offer to are actually helped and inspired by the love and energy you radiate to them. Envision their tensions, worry, or fear melting away. They are inspired, renewed, and moved toward harmony and balance through your influence. Out of gratitude they radiate back to you waves of thanksgiving and blessings. These add to the waves of your inspiration. You radiate and offer your heartfelt thanks to those who inspire you, and they in turn, pleased and inspired by your gratitude and generosity, then radiate even more energy, inspiration, and blessings to you. This reciprocal and responsive flow radiates in both directions like a figure eight of receiving and radiating. As this flow circulates it seems that everyone in the loop receives exactly what they need to find harmony and balance and to awaken to their own True Nature and potential in their lives in this moment.

Rest in this flow for as long as you like. Then either shift into another meditation, using the sense of refuge and deep connectedness as a springboard and foundation, or make a gentle transition into whatever activity comes next. As you refocus your attention into other matters, simply allow this sense of deep relatedness to remain active as it slips more into the background of your awareness. Throughout the day remember that this deep connectedness and flow is only a thought or a breath away. Now and then, as you are involved with other things, with a natural mindful breath reach out and take refuge in this deep connectedness as you continue to receive and radiate. When in doubt, remember these four things: “reach out,” “plug in,” “receive,” and “radiate.”

Practiced in this way, taking refuge and receiving and radiating is a complete meditation practice in itself. It is also a wonderful preliminary meditation that can be done for a few minutes prior to any other practice to infuse it with many blessings. Take some time to let this expanded sense of yourself and your relatedness integrate. Notice how finding yourself in this circle of wholeness changes, expands, and impacts your sense of yourself, your sense of connectedness, your sense of balance, and your sense of being.