How to Meditate for a Limitless Life
11.10.16
"Would you invest half your wealth to learn how to spend the other half?"
If your answer to that question is yes, this is going to be a very helpful read for you. If your answer is no, then this is a must read for you. Sounds like bullshit right? Anyway, read on.
So what exactly is meditation? It isn't 'concentration'. Neither is it 'trying hard to empty your mind of thoughts'. Meditation isn't attention or calmness or Yoga poses. So what the heck is meditation?
1) The Only Prerequisite
Is Meditation tough? No. Meditation is much easier than sitting in place with closed eyes for an extended amount of time. You just need to fulfill one simple requirement. The desire to meditate. The inner motivation to balance your mind and body, rather than fulfillment of a mechanical routine.
Untangling your mind's wires, clear increase in concentration levels, ability to remain calm in tense situations, etc are easily achieved through meditation. But there's a "but". Meditation is the most effective when you learn to meditate for the pleasure of meditation itself. Its a pretty great alternative to getting high. (not kiddin)
2) The Relax Button
Let me turn back time, to the good old days,
when the mamas sang us to sleep, but now we're stressed out.
Did you sing those '21 Pilots' lines? Then High five. Half the time we're awake, stress eats our brain. The other half, just flies away, because time is too fast.
Of course there're innumerable methods to beat stress. Google it once, and you'll be reading stress busting tips all day like comics. You could do either that, or you could just program a button using which you can flush your stress away in 3 seconds. Fortunately I'm not joking.
The Idea
"Whenever you join your index finger and thumb like this you immediately get relaxed." Imagine you are talking to an out-of-your-league crush and you are nervous as hell. All you need to do is use that button, and you're instantly calm and relaxed to think clear.
The idea is down. Now, what's left is to program that button.
Programming the button
No matter, how stressful a person you are, you have your seconds of calmness. It could be while listening to relaxing music, watching the night sky, or any time that you're relaxed. Whenever you are there, just join those two fingers and experience the calmness along with it.
What you're doing is programming the joining of these two fingers as your brain's relax signal. Your relax button is forming. The more you use it, the more effective your button will be. You can use it to enter a relaxed state, anywhere, anytime.
3) Sound meditation
If you think you aren't listening to 7 separate sounds, then listen again. A fan whirring consists of more than one sound. Separate them. Dig deeper for sounds. With a bit of practice, you'll be able be separate silence from all the sounds and silence will become a separate sound for you.
It would be an oddly brilliant feeling to give undivided attention to your ears. And did I mention that you'll start developing the superpower of an increased ability to concentrate? Play the game often. It's pretty fun too.
4) The Breathing
Now, before you go and Google for Pranayama or Breathing exercises, let me stop you. This step has got nothing to do with that. Pranayama, involves controlling your breath, which you don't need to do here.
Sit in a quiet comfortable place and breathe. Continue breathing the same you you were before sitting. Breathe easy and comfortable with no effort involved. Don't try to control the length of breaths. Your only job is to observe.
Start observing each breath as it goes In and Out. Be aware of each breath entering and leaving your nostrils. Be aware of the direction of the air. Observe the temperature of the air as it goes in your nostrils. How its warmer when you exhale. Curiously observe each breath in its normal state. Try to experience its journey in and the journey out.
Try this every now and then, for about 10- 20 minutes.
5) The Thought Train
Right now! Do not think about a hot girl.
What're you thinking about now? "A hot girl?" Yeah, I know that was a cliche. But it tells you how hard it is to force thoughts out of your fickle mind. If you're doing it for meditation, then I'm here to tell you, you don't need to push thoughts out of your mind. There's a better way. It's called watching the thought train.
"Thoughts, once they start, are trailed by other thoughts, each giving birth to new ones, which all turns into a long thought train."
Close your eyes. You don't have to wait much, before you get a thought in your mind. See what it is and move on to the next thought. See the next one and again move on to the subsequent one. Don't pursue any thought. Just see what it is and move on to the next one without indulging in any one. You are a silent spectator, just watching your thought train run by.
By swiping each thought away for the next one, you feel the pleasure of detachment from thoughts. After a bit of practice, you reach the point where you see the thought train completely run by, leaving your mind free of thoughts. Relish it. If you haven't experienced pure peace, then this is it.
6) The Killer Combo
If you ever played the old Tekken games, you know that its combos which win battles. That rule basically applies to every skill in your life. Here I'm going to scribble down an efficient combo. This is going to be the most systematic step of this read. I've tried to be short as I've explained most of the steps in detail above. Be consistent with this and shoot for atleast 3 days per week. If you have gotten familiar with the above steps, this is going to be a breeze for you.
Choose a calm place to sit with your spine straight. Close
your eyes
a) Keep your body steady, and listen for 7 different sounds
and try to identify them separately. Don't stop until you have all your 7 sounds. After hunting for the sounds, try to separate the silence which sleeps among all the sounds.
b) Next, be aware of your body. Relax each body
part, moving your focus from toes to your head. Feel the temperature
around you. Observe every subtle or loud sensations on your skin and inside your body. Observe your physical body with your mind's eye.
c) Turn your focus to breathing. Take effortless, normal breaths.
Observe the air coming and going in and out of your nostrils, and the oxygen filling your lungs. Be aware of the coolness or hotness of the air
entering you. Spectate it from third
person. Whenever your breath is longer
or shorter, be aware of it. Breathe this way for a short while.
d) Now shift your attention to your thoughts. Let them play
out, while you move on from each thought one after the other. Never pursue a single thought. Change
it like changing TV channels. You'll start feeling the power of controlling your own mind.
e) Now try to see who you are, from the inside. Don't ask
yourself, just try and see yourself. Try to see the 'you' who is free from thoughts, forces and pressures. This is a brilliant experience. A mixture of euphoria, calmness, knowledge and freedom.
f) Open your eyes, go
for a walk. See how beautiful and different everything is. Smile.
7) Just Do It
Meditation like any other skill, requires you to do it again and again to get a hang of it. In simple words, you need to practice. You need to hop the above steps every now and then. Every time you do it, you learn something new. It's a lifelong progression.
The one thing I haven't specified in the steps above are when to do it and for how long to do it. Because, thats something that you should figure out. A little will is all you need. Perseverance can win your anything.
So now do you know what mediation is?
Yeah, bye...
