Natural Meditation
Posted by Luminakisharblaze on March 8, 2011 at 3:36pm in Meditation Group
Spring is on its way, and so is the beautiful, colorful and sunny weather. It is a wonderful time to hone your meditation abilities. When I was 14, as part of a PE class, we learned meditation. Or at least, we were supposed to learn how to meditate. Personally, I could never get past the "Now, close your eyes and clear your mind of everything..."part.
"Wait, clear my mind? How can I clear my mind of everything? There has to be a picture. And even black is a picture, but then again, is black clearing your mind or would that be white?"
This is what happened to my mind. And it just kept going and going like a little alien energizer bunny. By the time I started listening again they were somewhere involving relaxing every part of your body, which only made me focus on it and so made me itch everywhere. That, in turn, made me ultra aware of the noise my now complete fidgeting and scratching was causing. I also, then noticed how loud my breathing sounded to me. By the time I straightened out the itching problem and tried to regain where the class was, I heard something about how well everyone did and then the lights came on.
"Wait! We are done? I just got done adjusting my clothes and finally got that itch to go away and you are telling me that THIS is meditation? What is the point? This is only aggravation."
Not the best way to start out, and for many years, I believed meditation was a complete waste of time. Then I went through my own awakening and found that I had been meditating my whole life and never realized it. That is how it should feel. Like when you are walking through a forest and you spot one random, small detail in the forest and it catches your attention and holds it until your gaze, fixed, becomes a train of thoughts that quickly, yet gently, grace the edges of your mind and massage away the stagnated places in your consciousness. Then you blink and never realize that you just meditated. This is how it should feel.
Or when you have to walk to work in the city and while the noise of the traffic drowns out any semblance of quiet, yet you stop because you see a single bird fly from the branch in front of you to somewhere on the far horizon, and just for that moment, you find yourself lost in the mechanics of the bird's flight and what its life might be like and how free it would be to be a bird...and then it flies out of sight and you return to your daily routine barely aware of the moment you just let yourself have. This is meditation.
But, admittedly there are times when you need to force it upon yourself to focus. After all, isn't that the real purpose behind meditation? To focus and recalibrate your inner self with your outer self. Each of us can achieve this in as many ways as their are beings. I have found that if you are scattered and constantly off in other planes and thoughts, the best way to bring yourself into a state of inner syncronization is to find a crystal or a rock or some other piece of nature that happens upon the ground around your feet.
Find a place to sit comfortably, or lie or dance or whatever position is most comfortable for you, and take your piece of nature (I will use a crystal for ease of explanation) and begin to look closely. Start really searching the crystal for the inner story. Read it as it were and look deep within any of the clear parts or valleys or chips. Try to imagine that it is really a giant mountain and picture yourself as a small lone climber at the base and see if you can trace a climbing path with your eyes. Or you could see if you could unfix your gaze on a clear part to see truly within.
You will find that if you give your point of view over to nature and visualize yourself very small, you can see yourself achieving huge things. And therein lies the foundation of meditation.