Literata September, 2011

Meditation Moment: A Practical and Magical Skill

I’ve spent the last few months discussing different ways to meditate; this month I’d like to focus on why meditation is such an important skill for both practical and magical purposes. Research is revealing more and more health benefits to a regular meditation practice, but the ability to direct your own attention and shift your focus as you wish is incredibly valuable in everyday life, not just while actively meditating, and also an essential part of working magic.

As a practical skill, meditation can help us deal with difficult times in our lives. Many people who have depression experience being stuck in negative thoughts, going around and around the same issue or problem over and over again. This “spin cycle” can produce feelings of helplessness and despair. Meditative practice at redirecting your attention can help you break free of these traps.

This “thought stopping” is a difficult skill to develop. It requires a kind of self-awareness that allows you to monitor your own internal monologue so you can recognize when you’re getting stuck in repetitive thoughts and feelings. It’s very difficult to develop this ability while you’re in the midst of a stressful or painful time. Meditation practice gives you a chance to cultivate that skill so you will be able to use it when you need it most. Exercise helps you develop and maintain the physical skills and strength you need for other activities; meditation is mental and emotional exercise.

It is a bit misleading to talk about “thought stopping,” though, because it’s not so much stopping as redirection. Just as in meditation, you don’t so much stop thinking about one thing as choose to direct your attention elsewhere. And like in meditation, you have to be gentle with yourself when you do this. It’s counterproductive to blame yourself for thinking or feeling the way you do; what matters is moving your focus to something else of your choosing. If you’re spending time and energy blaming yourself, worrying, or suppressing those thoughts or feelings, you’re still focusing on them. You can acknowledge them, then refuse to let them occupy center stage in your mind. Gently let them go and redirect.

The same advice applies when you’re trying to change a mental habit. If you identify a negative idea about yourself that you’re trying to change, maybe by replacing it with an affirmation, you need to redirect your attention away from the negative idea, not suppress it. Many admonitions to just “Think positive!” make people feel like it’s their fault if they think negatively, which makes them feel worse, which gives them even more negative thoughts and feelings to try to ignore. I call this the backlash of positive thinking, because the harder you push down those negatives, the more energy you give them to throw back at you, often subconsciously or from an unexpected direction.

To avoid that backlash, don’t treat an affirmation as a magical incantation that will banish your hurts, fears, and doubts all by itself. Acknowledge those feelings or your negative beliefs about yourself and gently redirect yourself away from them towards the new mental habit you want to cultivate instead.

Where this becomes a magical skill is when you use the same techniques to improve your visualization and focus on your intent for a spell. We do magic because we want something to change, but in visualization, we need to concentrate on our desired outcome rather than the current state of affairs.

This is the “Don’t think of a pink elephant!” problem. If you’re trying to help heal a friend, for example, it is easy to be distracted with concerns about how she was sniffling and coughing this morning. That’s the reason you’re doing the spell, after all! But you’re not raising and sending energy towards the idea of her staying sick; you want to concentrate that energy on her being well, so you have to catch those thoughts and change your focus to your visualization or affirmation of her as healthy and happy.

Working with different types of meditation can help you identify your strengths for magical practice and improve your abilities in areas where you’re weaker. If you like meditating with a physical object to focus on, then you can use the same techniques to direct your intent towards a spell component like a candle, stone, or herb. If chanting or prayer works well, make the most of that by designing spells with verbal elements. On the other hand, if you are good at concentrating when you have your eyes closed, you can work on meditating while gazing at a physical object to make it easier for you to concentrate on an object for magical purposes.

These are just a few examples of how awareness of your own thoughts and feelings and the ability to redirect your attention are both practical and magical skills. As your practice deepens, you’ll find even more ways to apply the benefits of meditation in everyday life.

Tags: magic, magick, meditation

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Literata August, 2011

Washed Away

If meditating in motion wasn’t really your thing, here’s another approach to meditation that also takes advantage of summer’s more temperate weather!

Most of what I wrote about in terms of beginning meditation was about how to reduce your distractions: quiet time, calm space, and one simple thing to focus on. The approach I’m suggesting this time seems like it’s just the opposite: it’s all about your senses. It’s about letting your senses be your focus, but not any one particular sense or object, the whole flow of things it’s possible to be aware of, all around you.

There’s a constant stream of sense-data that we are capable of getting. Most of the time we aren’t even aware of it. In order to pay attention anything at all, we have to block out the vast majority of all the potential impressions coming at us. One way to meditate, especially in connection with nature, is to turn those potential distractions into our means of meditating. We can let our usual thoughts and concerns be washed away in the constant stream of physical awareness by opening ourselves to more of it than we usually perceive. This is another way of applying the skill of forgetting in order to be truly present in the single moment and single space you occupy right now.

To try this, find a place where nature is present in all your senses. It doesn’t need to be isolated or totally insulated from obvious examples of human activity, like road noise, it just needs to be a place where there’s at least as much nature for you to see, hear, touch, and smell as there is constructed stuff for you to sense. It should also be a place where the sense impressions you get are ones you can at least mostly enjoy. And finally, it should be a safe spot for you to sit and close your eyes for a few minutes: not in poison ivy, not on top of an anthill, not where you’re going to get sunburned if you sit longer than you thought or fall in the river if you go to sleep.

When you find a spot, settle yourself there however is comfortable for you. It will probably help at first to close your eyes, since vision is a very focused sense. Try to start with your breathing and relax, and gradually open yourself to your senses.

Start with touch: what do you feel? Let yourself be absorbed in your sense of touch, all over your skin. It’s not just whatever you’re sitting or standing on, but the flow of the air around you, the warmth of the sun or the cool of the shade. As you grow more aware of what you’re sensing, don’t just focus on each individual thing in turn. Let all the impressions flow through your awareness; let each impression go as soon as it forms, so that you continue to be receptive to what you’re feeling. Open your awareness to as much as you can all at once. Any time you start to focus on one sensation, let go of it and relax, opening yourself to all the other sensations.

Add in other senses and forms of awareness gradually. Start noticing how humid or dry the air is, how it feels and how it tastes, and what scents it carries. Listen to the world around you; don’t try to block out any sounds, even the annoying ones. Just let your awareness of them go, as you do with all the awarenesses. An annoying one may come back time and again, but don’t give it any more attention than you do the pleasant ones. Treat them all alike, as things simply to be observed in turn, but not concentrated on, even by trying to ignore them. Let that awareness go so that more impressions, each fleeting in their turn, can form.

Concentrating on any one thing, like looking at something in particular, is an active behavior. It’s something we do, with purpose, with intent, even subconsciously. For this meditation, try to let go of that intent, that purpose, and be a passive observer. This is why it’s very hard to do this with your eyes open, especially at first. We automatically focus, literally, our vision on things around us.

If you want to try it, you might let your eyes drift slightly out of focus, or try to look into an indistinct place in the middle distance, so that you’re not looking at any one thing in particular, simply gazing and being aware of as much in your field of vision as is possible. If that’s too difficult or gives you a headache, do this meditation with your eyes closed instead. You might be amazed at how much information is available to you through your other senses, even while you’re sitting still. We depend so much on our vision that it often blocks out our conscious awareness of senses like touch and smell.

Even without vision, the amount of information flowing through our senses is tremendous. By letting go of every impression as soon as it is formed, we let that flow proceed smoothly, like sand through an hourglass or water through a calm river. Opening ourselves to more of that flow means that we can use it to help dislodge persistent thoughts or worries, just as water can move obstacles out of its way. Just for a little while, let yourself be overwhelmed, in a good way, by your senses, so that you can reconnect with the world around you. Let yourself be washed away.

Tags: meditation

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Literata May, 2011

Bringing the Outdoors In

Last month I wrote about how being deeply present in a single moment helps us relate to all moments; this month, I want to extend that approach to thinking about space as well as time. As Pagans, we tend to cultivate our connections to the world around us, especially the natural world. Meditation can help us deepen that connection.

Many of us practice in urban areas, but still want to connect to the rhythm of the seasons and natural cycles. It can be ideal to find a location outdoors in which to meditate, but few of us have the luxury of doing that every day. So we need to find ways of bringing the outdoors in for us to connect with during meditation.

The goal here is to be present in a particular place, just as last month we talked about being present in the particular moment. We want to be present with this individual stone, or shell, or flower, or twig; not with all stones, or all flowers, but this one, in particular, in all of its uniqueness. It is an example of the place it came from, a connection to that one spot. But just as being present in each unique moment helps us connect to all moments, narrowing our focus to a deeper contemplation of this one location can paradoxically help us appreciate the totality of the world we live in.

Meditation’s connection between the minuscule and the majestic – now and all time, here and everywhere, myself and all living things – makes this contemplation of nature much more than a decoration, more than a superficial acknowledgement, and into a deep act of awareness. When we want to have a more meaningful relationship with the web of life and the natural cycles that support it, we can start small. Recognizing the uniqueness of one thing and the richness in one small corner of reality helps us appreciate that each corner is similarly rich and full.

If you can make meditating outdoors in a particular spot an occasional addition to your regular practice, that can help you establish a relationship with a specific place. Then taking a small reminder – a stone, a leaf – back to your usual meditation space is part of an ongoing process of connection anchored in that location, not just a scattershot series of one-off connections with a multitude of places. Even if there’s no special place where you can go and meditate, maintaining a connection with a particular spot is a better way to anchor yourself in the rhythms of nature; connect to one tree or one group of living things in your area, and use reminders of them as your focus for meditation.

If you really want to connect to the seasons in that place, make sure to change your focus on a regular basis. Take your reminder back to the place you got it, and return it to nature with your thanks, then find something else, something new, to focus on, to help you experience the constant change and wonderful variety found in your particular location. Especially at this time of year, when flowers are blooming and trees are unfurling their leaves as fast as possible, don’t let your focus get fixed on a single object to the extent that you ignore the changes taking place in your little corner of the world.

Get physical about your experience of place, too! The physical world engages our senses in ways that an abstraction like time can’t. Feel the texture of trees’ bark with your fingers, taste the tart sweetness of blackberries later on, listen to the birds and the wind in the leaves and the patter of the rain. And yes, stop and smell the roses – and the honeysuckle and lilacs and everything else, too.

I mentioned that a connection to place can serve as a kind of anchor. Just as the ability to draw one’s attention to the present moment can be a part of grounding and centering, the deep awareness of a particular place can also be a form of grounding – the literal meaning behind the metaphor. That familiarity with a location can be a touchstone, a reminder of the relationship that we hearken back to every time we pause over a meal or give thanks for coming home safely after a trip.

And since you know that by connecting to your one place, you are also connecting to all places, even when you are in unfamiliar surroundings you know you have the ability to ground yourself there as well, to tap into the connection to the same deeper reality, and if you need to, to become familiar with this new place as well.

The beginning of this month is the celebration of Beltane; it’s time to fall in love again. One of love’s amazing qualities is that it takes us outside of ourselves. By engaging with someone else, we gain a whole new perspective on the world, and on ourselves, and we gain the opportunity to change and grow in ways we could hardly have imagined alone. This Beltane, consider falling in love with the land. When we do, when we bring the outdoors in, if we fully engage with it and start to develop a relationship, it too, like all good loves, will take us outside of ourselves.

Tags: meditation, outdoors

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Literata April, 2011

Connection and Context

Last month, I talked about letting go of time to be wholly in the present moment. Worrying about a few pieces of the past or future disconnects us from the present moment, and also leads us to ignore the rest of the past and future as well.

Being wholly in the present moment is an experience of mystery and delight; each present moment, taken by itself, connects to all the moments, past and future. The immediacy of the present moment and the eternity of all moments have more in common with each other than they do with our usual ways of understanding and experiencing time.

Meditation can be a way of connecting opposites, both practically and mystically, and can help us see objects, experiences, and even ourselves in a wider context, with a more holistic vision.

Here’s a practical example: beginning drivers often feel overwhelmed with the amount of information coming at them. They feel like they need to be looking in all directions at once, watching every other car, looking for traffic signals and signs, and monitoring the dashboard. Trying to pay attention to everything makes it difficult for them to pay attention to any single thing.

As they learn to drive, they learn to limit their attention to only a few things at a time. They learn where to look to anticipate what’s going to happen, and they learn what parts of their visual field they can ignore. They learn when to check the dashboard and when to keep their eyes up on the road; they know when the rearview mirror is important and when it’s only a distraction.

We all learn ways to filter our attention: we can pay attention to everything, which means we end up not noticing anything, or we can pay attention to some things and ignore others.

Meditation lets us learn to use those filters in different ways. When we narrow our attention to the present moment, we can perceive that moment’s uniqueness. Such perception paradoxically widens our attention; we become more receptive not to the everyday noise that surrounds us but to the broader mystical context of each moment in time.

One meditation technique that I enjoy uses a juxtaposition of opposites and invites contemplation of similarities and differences to both harness the straying nature of the mind and emphasize connections such as this. The first time I did it, I was focusing on an arrangement of stones that consisted of mostly jagged, dark pieces of shale with a few round, clear marbles scattered throughout. Any similar contrast of yin/yang, dark/light, hard/soft, or similar will work.

Start out contemplating one end of the polarity, and when your attention wanders, bring it back to the other end of the polarity. Consider the dark, flat pieces of shale, and then shift to the round, translucent marbles. How do they express polarity? How are they similar? Is there a unity between the differences? As you keep doing this, shifting between the two becomes easier, and eventually the union of the contrasts becomes the main point of contemplation.

This contemplation on contrasts is a way of deliberately shifting what is in the foreground of our vision, what it is we’re paying attention to. When we contemplate one piece of a contrast, the counterpart is in the background; reversing the situation shows us that our attention determines what we perceive as foreground and background.

A beginning drawing exercise is to draw not an object but the shape of the space around it. This is another example of switching one’s focus to the background rather than the foreground. Exploring the contrasts between them, where they meet and interact, lets us understand both better. It leads to a more holistic vision that embraces both.

Starhawk described the difference between this holistic vision and normal awareness as the difference between seeing with a flashlight and seeing by starlight. The starlight vision sees patterns and shapes; it brings out the relationships between things rather than separating the world into foreground (which is attended to) and background (which is ignored).

Cultivating this alternative mode of awareness can give us a different perspective on ourselves as well as on our perception of time. Normally, I have myself in the foreground of my awareness: what am I doing, thinking, feeling? What do I do next?

As Pagans, many of us are familiar with a technique known as “grounding and centering,” and although there are many different ways to do this, most of the ones I’ve encountered are essentially adaptations of this meditation technique to reconnect our selves with our contexts.

Some people prefer to ground and center by getting in touch with the Earth first, usually through visualization, and then to draw on that connection to feel calm, collected, and refreshed within themselves. Others go about it in the opposite order, by sinking into their own consciousness first, and when they’ve touched their own core, then they connect to their surroundings. Either way is valid.

When we ground and center, we recognize how we exist in concert with our surroundings, and being more firmly aware of ourselves helps us connect to our whole world, just as being present in the moment helps us connect to all moments. The extremes, self and all, connect in the same paradoxical way as now and forever. If we widen our attention to our broader context first, we also end up with a better awareness of ourselves as part of that context by shifting our focus of attention away from ourselves.

We are often prompted to “ground and center” when beginning a group working. This instruction is more than a reminder to participants individually; it’s a necessary preface to asking individuals to open up to others. What connects us, after all, is our shared context, and locating ourselves as individuals within that larger situation prepares us to recognize and connect with others in a deeper way than we could if we approached them from only our isolated point of view. Recognizing the shared context lets us see what we already have in common with others, rather than seeing them as totally separate, isolated individuals.

We filter our attention in many ways in everyday life; learning to use those filters for our own purposes gives us valuable tools. Meditation and the specific practice of grounding and centering are ways we can cultivate the holistic vision, the starlight vision, that lets us connect with our context.

Tags: meditation

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Gail Wood March, 2011

In Praise of the Creepy Crawlies:  Learning to Love the Earthworm

The March is called Full Worm Moon in some Native American lore, according to The Farmers’ Almanac.  It was so named because the warming weather and the warmer rains caused the worms to rise to the top of the soil, where they sometimes drowned.  For my college roommate, walking across campus after a rain caused a lot of screaming terror because she hated the signs of dead worms on the sidewalks.  For someone raised with a multitude of male relatives, this behavior was almost incomprehensible.  I learned early not to be repulsed by insects, worms, and other creepy animals, living or dead, that might been left out for an unsuspecting girl.

As a young person who was a little weird and then as a pagan, I learned to have a fondness and even a love for creatures with bad reputations or a less than normal appearance.  Bats, spiders, snakes, vultures and more were interesting.  Later, I learned they were sacred to various deities as guardians of the darkness, of death, and of those borderlands most preferred not to travel.  Life brings us to the edge of those borderlands and sometimes pushes us in.  If already know and understand its creatures, we then have allies and friends as we move into uncharted territories.

So what of the lowly earthworm?  Without earthworms, we would not have the fertile soil we need to plant our crops.  Even their tiny feces, called casts, provide an abundance of fertilizer to nurture seeds.  The worm crawls through the soil like tiny plows, bringing more air and nutrients to the soil.  The earthworm is essential to an abundant and productive ground.  They consume the organic matter from the fields and the resulting residue is an indication of high quality, fertile soil.

It takes some doing to regard the earthworm as a friend an ally.  The can teach us a lot, as a totem and spirit guide.  They teach us to seek moisture, to balance our lives with an appropriate amount of water; water that symbol of emotions and matters of the soul.  The worm teaches us to look to inward to tend the soil of our heart and to grow a strong, healthy soul.

The earthworm also teaches us of our bodies and helps us understand our ability to stay strong in our bodies.  The flexibility of the worm body teaches us to move in and out of barriers, to be flexible and go around things when it does not serve us to break them down, and to work persistently to knock down barriers when it serves us to do so.

The earthworm is a sure sign that spring is on its way.  In March, in the cold regions of the northern New York, it’s hard to believe that spring will come.  We are still shivering in below freezing temperature and looking to the skies for snow.  And yet deep within the awakening earth, the earthworms are working their magic and will soon rise to the top to create the new and ever-renewing fertility of the earth, of springtime.

To move in harmony with this creepy crawly, settle yourself comfortably for the following meditation:

Take a long cleansing breath, filling yourself with breath from the tip of your toes, to the tip of your fingers to the top of your head.  Exhale and let go of cares and concerns.  Take a second long deep breath and close your eyes, letting go of inhibitions. Continue to breathe deeply and connect with Mother Earth as she begins to awaken from her slumbers.

As you breathe deeply, you find yourself standing in the middle of a field in the early morning in that betwixt and between time of night and day.  The memory of the full moon’s rays is in your being and sunlight is only just beginning to peep out at you.  The field has been farmed in the past and it seems very familiar to you.  As you walk along, you recognize various things that you see, reveling in the familiarity of it.  You have been here before, in your dreams, in your journeys and perhaps in your life.

In the distance you see a woman standing in the field, looking down at the ground.  As you get closer, she looks up at you and grins.  She points to the ground and you see a mass of earth worms squirming on the ground.  The two of you watch as they dig in and out of the ground.

She looks at you and says, “Do you know why this was so familiar to you?  It’s because this earth is your body.  These worms tell us the story of you as you live in your body.  She then tells you of the things you need to know about your body and your life.  She picks up an earthworm and holds it gently in her hand before letting it go back into the earth; she whispers one word that means something to you about your body.  Remember, she says, this word and the wisdom of the earthworm for your health and physical well being.

She looks at you and says, “The earthworm speaks to you of your heart and what you need for understanding your emotions and the matters of your heart.  Watch.”  As you watch, words form in your head as the earthworms give you the wisdom you need to grow a fertile and productive emotional life.  Your heart opens to receive this wisdom.

A third and last time, she looks at you and says, “The earthworm speaks of your soul and what you need for your spiritual path.”  In your sou you form a knowing of what needs to be understood or done.  You hold this knowledge as she speaks of your soul as revealed by the worms working the ground.

Finally she looks at you and you understand the things you have felt, known and heard in this field.  Some of the things are a welcome surprise and still others have the sting of truth.  At the end, she hugs you and says “And most of all, you are a loveable and loving.”  She places her hand over your heart and you feel healing energy move through your body like the earthworm moving through the soil.  You thank her and she says goodbye.  She disappears. With a long deep breath, you are back in the here and now.  With a second deep breath, you open your eyes. With a third deep breath, you reconnect with your centeredness and reconnect with Mother Earth.

As you return to your everyday place and time, record your journey in your journal or find some other way to record the wisdom you have learned.  Make a promise to yourself to work this wisdom into your life.

May your life be blessed with vision to see the beauty in everything, including the creepy crawlies!

Tags: creepy crawlies, earth worms, meditation

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Literata March, 2011

The Opposite of Multitasking

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. That’s why last month I discussed how to measure the time of your meditation practice without letting the act of measuring time become overwhelming; you have to be able to let go of worrying about time.

When we let go of being concerned about one thing, most of us seize onto something else to concentrate on. If it’s not the time, it’s the laundry; if it’s not the laundry, it’s the dog; if it’s not the dog… We are constantly tugged on by the past and the future, and as a result, we spend very little time in the present. Author Terry Pratchett used the phrase “temporally unfocused” to describe this situation: we end up existing in a little blur around the here-and-now, smeared out into a cloud by all the worries, concerns, memories, and other things that drag at our attention.

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. Meditation practice is time and space set aside for directing our attention in ways that we choose, deliberately, instead of letting it get pulled all over the place by other matters.

It’s not that the issues clamoring for your attention are unimportant: they might be of life-changing importance or they might be totally meaningless, anything from “Did I do so badly on my performance review last week that I’m going to get fired next month?” to “I want to scratch my elbow.” The point is that these things are all temporally unfocused: none of them are in the present moment. Our hopes and fears, our memories and dreams, our regrets and anticipations, are all about some time other than the current moment. They are about our past and our plans, not about our present and our presence.

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. It’s not about what we did yesterday, or a moment ago, or about what we’re going to do later today or even a moment from now.

Being present in the moment, from moment to moment, is a process of trying not to inhabit our past or our future. This is the opposite of multitasking: when frantically multitasking, it may seem that we are always in the moment, but that is an illusion created by the frantic sense of “Do this now!” that we get when we switch between tasks. Multitasking is more a way of never being in the moment, because there are so very many different moments to be in. The more we try to inhabit all of them at once, the less we are in any single one of them.

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. Meditating is unitasking.

In order to practice unitasking, to practice inhabiting only the present moment, we try to minimize external distractions, like keeping track of the time. Even then, our minds are excellent at churning out yet other distractions, like the endless to-do lists that haunt us in our quiet moments. This is normal and is not a failure; as long as you have a mind, it will wander. Simply bring it back to the present moment. This is where having a focal point can help: whether it’s your breath, or a candle, a mantra, or a simple image, keep returning to something that exists in the present moment.

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. Meditation is a practice, not a performance.

Even with a focus, it’s easy for our minds to zip around like a butterfly that’s been drinking expresso. Practicing meditation is not about pinning the butterfly down, it’s more like casting a net around the butterfly and very, very gently decreasing the directions it’s allowed to flitter about. Eventually, if you do it gently enough, the butterfly might just settle onto the one blossom you put in the center, or at least it’ll spend a moment there. Meditation is an equally gentle process of returning the mind and attention to a central point – the focus, the present moment – and gradually reducing the amount of time the mind spends fluttering about in other directions.

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. Meditation is passive but dynamic.

Some people approach meditation as something that they do, as an active process. It leads to trying to meditate but actually spending most of their time concentrating on the idea of meditating and wondering whether they’re actually doing it yet. This mistake results from confusing “dynamic” with “active.” Being present in the moment is passive, not active, because actively trying to get to the present moment is likely to result in worrying about it rather than actually doing it. Just because it’s passive doesn’t mean meditation is a static situation where nothing changes. Meditation is a dynamic state, not a static one. The comparison to a butterfly describes how our minds refuse to stay static and unchanging: they go off in a different direction at any given chance. In practicing meditation, we use that dynamic nature to return constantly to our focus in the present moment. This gentle redirection is not so much an active process as a passive process of drawing that dynamic nature into a more centered situation focused on the present moment.

The act of meditating is mostly about not doing anything else at the same time. So what are you doing right now?

Tags: meditation, multitasking

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Literata February, 2011

Tags: meditation

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Literata January, 2011

Establishing a Meditation Practice

Meditation is something a lot of people want to try. Whether it’s a spur-of-the-moment New Year’s resolution or something you’ve been meaning to work on for a while, meditation can be a valuable practice for your mental, emotional, and spiritual stability and growth. Here are some tips on starting to meditate regularly, with the goal of making it a habit.

Do it every day. A regular meditation practice has to be just that: regular. It usually takes about three weeks to establish a new habit. Try making it your goal to keep practicing for a month: when you achieve that, you’ll have a solid basis you can build on. After meditation is an established habit, you can expand it or vary it, but at first, just work on doing something regularly. Keep that in mind as you go through the rest of these tips. Shoot for an achievable goal. Remember, just establishing the habit over the course of the month is genuine progress.

First of all, decide what you want your meditation to be. Maybe it’s a time for you to practice grounding and centering, or to contemplate a specific subject. Maybe it’s “me time” when you can’t be interrupted over your morning tea, or time for you to focus on gratitude. Maybe it’s a specific type of practice such metta meditation or zazen. Maybe it’s a time for deep breathing and clearing the mind. If you’re just getting started, concentrate on the essentials: presence and focus. The first step to meditation is not doing something else at the same time. For that, you need to set aside time and space.

Pick a time to meditate that you can have every day. For me, meditation has to happen early in the day; if I don’t get to it right before or after breakfast, it gets swept aside, and by the time I’m getting ready for bed, I can’t focus in the same way any more. Other people use meditation right before bed as a way to wind down. Maybe you’ll find the perfect time in a short walk just before lunch. It’s often easiest to incorporate a new habit into an existing one: if you always, always, always get your coffee right after you get up, then taking time for five deep breaths and a quick prayer before you drink your coffee might be the best cue to help you make meditation a regular practice. Whatever works for you, make that time specific and regular. If you need to, let others know that this time is set aside.

Pick a place. In front of the coffee machine? At your desk? Your favorite chair? In bed? Again, what’s important when starting out is consistency. Your meditation spot doesn’t have to be a retreat, as long as you can accomplish what you want there. In fact, if your meditation spot is too far away from your usual haunts, you might not bother to go there and use it. As long as you can accomplish your goal – grounding and centering, breathing, quiet time – the space is okay for it. It matters more that you’re present and practicing than whether your spine is perfectly aligned or your eyes are open or shut.

As far as space and time go, it’s easy to set an impossible goal. If a beginner promises herself twenty minutes of uninterrupted quiet time in her perfectly-appointed meditation spot with her snazzy new cushion and carefully-chosen candle, then the first time she misses that appointment, or has to cut it short after just ten minutes, she might feel like she’s let herself down. Then when she skips a day, the place and time start to become reminders of those failures instead of her goals, and eventually she hates the very sight of her meditation cushion.

Freeing yourself from that cycle of self-enforced guilt is the biggest step you can make towards a regular meditation practice. You will miss days sometimes. Accept that now, at the start, and realize that it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Progress is not linear. Count the successes – every day you do something towards your meditation practice is a positive step – and stay focused on increasing those.

Set a reasonable goal. Decide what you want your initial practice to be, then pick a time and a place where you can do that. Try to do it every day. If at the end of the month you’re still trying, and you’ve managed to be there in your time and space more days than not, congratulate yourself. You’ve made tremendous progress.

Tags: meditation

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Charlynn Walls June, 2010

Tags: balance, meditation

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Charlynn Walls March, 2010

Psychic protection is a hot button topic in a lot of circles.  Do we merely reflect what is being thrown at us or do we defend ourselves.  There is a lot of confusion as to whether the protective magick should be passive or active.

This meditation works on both levels.  It makes you acutely aware of what is going on around you and you work actively maintain it.  It also effectively neutralizes the negative energy that may have been directed toward.  The protective meditation that follows is meant to be repeated on a regular basis.  I recommend you revisit it monthly.

Visualize a spider web of stunning silver filled with protective energy surrounding yourself or the area that you want to protect.  The web, though having small openings, will not allow negative or harmful energy to pass through.  You will key the web to only allow positive and non-malicious energy to pass through unabated.  To do this you will want to reach out to the web, touch it and infuse it with your intent.  See the energy spiraling into the center of the web, reinforcing all the anchor and radial lines.

Imagine all negativity or harmful intentions becoming ensnared in the web.  Once they are in the web they become inextricably caught by the magick you have woven.  Once something is trapped in the web you will want to think of it becoming wrapped in a cocoon of spider silk.  The silk will contain it until the energy naturally dissipates or you neutralize it.

To neutralize the energy see the negativity, ill-will, or attack dissolving within the cocoon.  See the energy traveling from the cocoon down the strands of the web to an anchor line.  See the energy safely being grounded out and returned to the earth.

In order to keep the web functional, some maintenance will be required.  Over time you may notice that a part of the web has been damaged.  Recharge the web occasionally by retuning it to yourself and your energy.  Gently reach out with your minds eye and touch the web.  Pluck each anchor point. (These are the points of the web that secure it and where the radial lines attach.)

See a shining drop of silver on each anchor point as you concentrate on the strength and protection you need. See it moving toward the center of the web.  This will repair any tears or dim places in your web.  See each drop moving closer to the center until they all converge in the center or the web.

Tags: meditation, protection

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