Changing Your Thoughts and Emotions

A New Pathway is Possible

Thoughts and Emotions
In a 1997 study, researchers at Duke University found that negative thoughts altered emotions and caused physical symptoms leading to ischemia of blood vessels. The study summarized that positive emotions reduced the risk of ischemic attacks.

Since then, additional studies in the field of PsychoNeuroImmunology (PNI) have examined the role of thoughts and the mind on the body, right down to the cellular level. Despite the wealth of information available, it is hard to simply start thinking positive thoughts all the time.

However, changing the way that you think is possible.

New Pathways
For this to happen, new pathways, i.e. thought patterns, have to be made in the brain and the most efficient method of creating lasting change is through breathing and meditation.

Constantly dragging the past or concerns about the future around with you keeps the body in a negative energy state. Applying the right thoughts, emotions, and behavior comes after creating space within the mind for new patterns to emerge. Aversions and preferences fade away until you remove the patterns of the past to create space for a new present to occur.

It takes energy to produce energy and this is true for all actions, including meditation.

Creating Change
During meditation, with the mind still and centered on the breath or your choice of focus, the brain works at keeping the breath slow, calm, and steady. As the breath slows, the mind becomes steady and less prone to random thoughts.

Meditation creates neurological changes that help you during your every day life. The changes are then reinforced each time you meditate, and each time you follow the new behavior.

Over time, thinking positively becomes your normal way of thinking. You are able to catch yourself as each negative thought occurs, and change it quickly to a positive one. Eventually you only think good thoughts.

Intuition
This does not mean that you cannot see danger or when a situation or person is harmful. Rather, your intuition is heightened.
It helps you to:
see when situations are bad for you, whether it is in the form of gossip or being in the company of someone
recognize when your behavior is reckless
hear when your thoughts are unkind either about yourself or directed at someone.

Making a Miracle
You “make a miracle” by creating good vibrational energy and sending it through your body. This restores much needed balance to both the body and the mind.

In the silence of a stilled mind, you move into a meditative state with grace and ease, creating the vital space within for new knowledge to emerge.

Peace transfers to the body and mind
You gain health and vitality
You create the life you really want.

Make meditation a part of your life and experience peace, happiness, and improved health every day.

A World of Possibilities

River Ganges, India

“What is seen as reality is simply what the mind prefers.”

A Course in Miracles

Life has ebbs and flows and can change direction when you least expect it.
When change occurs that you desire this is usually cause for celebration because you’ve been looking forward to it, yet when life seems to take aim at you and drops one problem after another into your lap you may feel like running for cover until the deluge has passed.
This does not necessarily mean that the path you have been following up till now is wrong; rather it may simply mean that it has run its course and life is sending you not-so-subtle hints that the time for new growth, challenges, and opportunities has in fact arrived.

Plans and strategies are useful to help each one of us focus and form clear, definitive objectives in order to dodge obstructions that might appear in our way if we are not observant. However, observation is important not only in what is happening around you but what is happening within you as well.

Meditation is a wonderful method of reflecting, gaining insight, and learning about yourself. Some revelations though can also bring feelings and emotions to the surface that you were unaware of.

Intuition
Through a regular meditation practice you will learn to trust what you sense deep within you. Your sixth-sense, intuition, will mature and strengthen through use, just like any other skill that you want to develop.
In the tranquility of your meditation, you will be able to quieten all other voices and impressions and listen only to the still small voice that exists inside you and hear with clarity what it is saying.
Trust comes when you know that something is reliable.
Likewise, trust in your intuition occurs with continuous use and endows you with the skills and confidence to embrace new challenges and adventures in life.

But how do you choose what’s right for you?

You are the person responsible for choosing how to act and react to changes. You are fortunate to have the freedom to decide when and if you are going to move away from the negativities of the past and move forward.

Unless you cease to be concerned about the past

you will find that it has become your future.

Emptying The Garbage
Meditation is my preferred method of promoting conscious awareness of myself and the world. In addition it helps me discover who I am and what I need and want.
A regular meditation practice will let you not only BE yourself, but also let you KNOW yourself too.

In knowing yourself fully, you can let go of the thoughts that you don’t want to use anymore, dispose of them permanently, and empty yourself of all the garbage that has been sitting around, tripping you up, and basically creating a stink.

A World Of Possibility
Meditation will help you release what you no longer need or recognize what is no longer good for you. Don't hold yourself back because of habit or fear of the unknown. Uncertainty about what the future holds is common and meditation gives you the ability to remaining accepting and calm with any changes that occur around you.

It helps you remember who you are even when faced with challenges and instills in you a deep, lasting peace and the knowledge of how special and phenomenal you are. No matter what you have endured in the past, these events are behind you and you can begin life anew.

A world of possibility awaits you.

Meditation
Inner knowledge arises from the quiet tranquil place that DOES exist within each one of us.

If you are new to meditation, there are a variety of guided meditations on this blog page that you can use to help train your mind to focus.

Meditation begins as a single-pointed focus that evolves and transitions until you experience bliss and complete understanding.
Even if you only hold your inner attention for a few seconds, it IS meditation.
Continue practicing and distractions and intruding thoughts WILL lessen while a sense of peace will fill your mind and body.
It is normal in the beginning for thoughts to intrude but they DO diminish.

With fewer unnecessary thoughts, greater clarity emerges.

Use this clarity to help you make decisions, great and small.
Use your new ability in every decision.
You will discover that you think before you act, and that your actions are better for you and the world around you.

Meditation affects your perception, your awareness of time, and by promoting a positive mental state enables you to be free from the negativity that creates disorder and chaos.

Life has a lot to offer, and you, with your unique potential, will recognize opportunities and know that you do indeed have a lot to offer life.

Create a new reality; a reality that your Self desires.

Awareness Meditation

A bird house is hidden in the asters.

Look deep within yourself and see what lies beneath the clutter of the mind.

Meditation has been used for thousands of years for self-reflection, self-awareness, healing, and enlightenment. Today’s technology enables us to see the physiological and chemical changes that occur throughout the whole body.

Varied health professions now teach meditation as a means of stress management and improving a patient’s overall quality of life in a wide-variety of diseases such as cancer, hypertension, and back pain.

Meditation is also a means of reducing the symptoms and discomfort of depression, anxiety, and anger, as well as increasing energy and vitality. People who meditate regularly are clinically shown to have fewer overall symptoms of stress, fewer cardiopulmonary and gastrointestinal symptoms, less emotional irritability, and cognitive disorganization.

Awareness meditation draws your attention away from a particular object or illness to an overall knowledge and feeling of inner calmness and peace. During this specific method of meditation, the mind concentrates less on individual problems or issues and settles instead on promoting an inward focus, enabling the mind and the body to experience a profound state of restfulness. In turn, the brain becomes balanced, while the mind and body move beyond thinking, to simply being.

Awareness Meditation: An Introduction

• Prepare your meditation room as outlined in previous postings
• Ensure there are no distractions that will disturb you for the next 10 to 20 minutes
• Allow all energy that arises through your meditation practice to flow.
• Be open to all that you may experience
• Simply observe

Sitting or lying down, depending on your physical abilities, close your eyes and focus on creating a rhythmic flow of breath.

• Relax and focus on an object of meditation that you prefer, such as the breath or a candle flame.
• Observe without any judgment.
• If the mind moves away from this object, return to it when you become conscious of it.
• Notice any feelings of relaxation that occur such as the breath slowing down, muscles relaxing,
• Notice the growing space between thoughts and your meditation object
• Stay with your growing awareness of inner peace
• If any other feelings occur, allow their energy to flow through you.
• Notice what rises up through your meditation
• Release what you no longer need.
• Allow the focused attention to dissolve into awareness
• Enter into the space between the thoughts.
• Draw the inner stillness to you and fill yourself with tranquility and silence.

When you conclude your awareness meditation, know that you can return to the feelings of peace simply by returning to the flow of your breath. Awareness and self-knowledge grow with each meditation enabling you to think with precision and act from a source of love.

MEDITATION: A NEW AWARENESS

The Mind is Vast and Limited Only by Your Own Beliefs

Meditation: A New Awareness
Taking time every day to reflect quietly on what is required of you through meditation, through maintaining a still and peaceful mind, and through developing a slow and rhythmic breath allows you to release from your mind, and thereby your life, the issue that you no longer need and brings your mind into a deeper connection with God.

Spring-Cleaning the Mind
Meditation is a gentle but efficient means of cleansing and purifying your mind by helping you to be in control of all thoughts and the intention behind the thoughts. When space is achieved by clearing out the clutter you enable new and more beneficial thoughts to enter and a deeper understanding of your spiritual path to develop.
Here you have a unique opportunity to gain wisdom and understanding through the guidance that is freely given to you if you decide to take it. You remove the impurities of your thoughts and permit the cleansing energy of the light of the universe to flow through you, nourishing your soul.

Direct Spiritual Connection
Through the silence of meditation and prayer you receive answers through the knowledge that flows within you from your direct connection with the Creator. Other thoughts may interrupt the quiet exchange when you are in contemplative silence and you should permit them to pass through without judgment. By focusing on the space between each thought you teach your mind and body to experience the peace that passes all understanding and to feel the presence of God in your life.

Knowing Your Self
When you nurture your Spiritual self, you gain power to overcome obstacles. With thoughtfulness and openness to everyone around you, you know that as your intention shapes your actions you have within you the power to use your actions to heal the world, one person at a time.

Knowing Your Needs
This means freedom of mind, of body, and of soul. How can this be?
When your mind is no longer focusing on acquiring more items, no longer desiring extras, and no longer watching what other people have, worldly standards no longer tie you down. You rise above this and instead move toward seeing how you can use what you have for the benefit of the world.

Humanity’s Struggle
When the leaders of one nation refuse to share their country’s wealth with even its own people, the greed of the leaders promulgates downwards spreading disaster for individuals, the nation as a whole, and negatively impacting the world’s resources. A united attitude benefits everyone; both the individuals and the groups that are responsible for ensuring that the needs of those who want help are met.
Perceiving that what we have is ours and ours alone separates us from seeing how we can share what we have with those who need our help.

Create Space Within and Let Your Self Sail

Meditation and Awareness
Creating space is a liberating experience because you cannot receive until you release.

When one person initiates positive change for another person, we move closer towards achieving a balanced and objective society. Generosity spreads upwards and outwards, initiating global transformation in our neighbors. When you are generous, you know that God blesses you in line with the size of your intention and your kindness.

The more you hold onto, the less you are able to move, figuratively and literally. Letting go of all that you hide away in your thoughts, your lifestyle, your closets, frees you to allow positive energy to flow to you and from you. Your awareness heightens and your perceptiveness grows. You are liberated, you are able to move around, explore ideas, experience peace that you are doing no harm to the environment, to others, and to yourself.

Meditation on Awareness
During your meditation practice, focus on lingering on the space between each breath. Notice the peace that resides deep within.
Enter it without any reservations
Free the mind from all restrictions.
Know that you are safe in the space between each breath
Keep focusing on the space.
You will discover that you will be able to spend more time in this peaceful state.

After Your Meditation
During your everyday activities, listen for the guidance that comes from within.
Look for ways to share your gifts with others, whether it is in the form of a kind word, a smile, or in sharing a material gift.
Let your meditation practice transform you and everyone you come in contact with.

LEARNING TO MEDITATE

LEARN TO MEDITATE BY TRAINING THE MIND TO MOVE BEYOND OBSTACLES

LEARNING TO MEDITATE is achievable by anyone in a few simple steps.

The mind is in the habit of following a random train of thoughts and when you are learning to meditate you are effectively teaching it to follow a single-point of focus. In other words, what you are doing is training the mind to meditate.

Concentration
Concentration of the mind can last from a few seconds to several hours. When you perform any task you are focused on it, whether it is tying your shoelaces or following a recipe, and as you know, if the mind is distracted the task takes longer or steps may be missed and mistakes occur.

When a beginner is learning to meditate, it is not easy for the mind to concentrate on the breath or the space between the breath when it is trying to meditate. The beginner mind often needs an object to focus on, then with practice, the mind enters into a meditative state with ease and can focus on light, space, and connect with the Supreme Consciousness.

TRAIN THE MIND TO MEDITATE BY FOCUSING ON A SINGLE OBJECT

Steps for Concentration for Meditation

• Find a pleasing object that holds your interest such as a flower, a lit candle, a rock.

• Sit in a comfortable seated position that you can stay in without fidgeting.

• Gaze at the object without any eye strain. Notice how beautiful it is. Marvel at it's creation.

• After a few minutes, close your eyes and hold the memory of the object in your mind's eye.

• If it disappears, gaze at your object again for a little while longer then close your eyes and concentrate on your chosen image.

• With practice, you will be able to close your eyes and bring the object to mind instantly.

• Now you can focus on more subtle objects such as the breath, inner light, healing sound such as OM.

Benefits of Concentration
Whatever you focus on, your mind forms thoughts, emotions, and actions around a particular stream of thinking.
For example, if you focus on a strawberry, notice the colors and the perfume of the fruit, your mouth waters in memory of how sweet and juicy the fruit tastes and so you decide that you must have one.

During Meditation, when you are able to focus not on physical objects but on pure objects such as love or God, you become like the essence of what you are concentrating on.

You Can Do It
Meditation takes practice, but it is easily doable. Many people struggle because they try it once or twice by attempting to empty the mind, but that is too challenging because the mind is not under control. It keeps on leaping around.

The simple steps above will help you to achieve concentration and take control of the mind.

In turn, you will find that you progress very quickly from holding an external image in your mind to one where you enter into meditation and find the peace and bliss that emerges as a result of meditation.

Meditation Methods

Meditation Creates Expansion of the Mind

Meditation Methods

Finding Time to Meditate
Meditation is a means of bringing the mind into a singe point of focus until after many months of practice you eventually transcend beyond the point of concentration and all awareness dissipates and you emerge into complete bliss.

The journey to bliss is wonderful and need not be time-consuming. While a regular practice is to be encouraged, your whole life should be a meditation.
The mind loves to be in meditation and the results bring you to a more relaxed and peaceful state of mind and body.
Stress dissipates and you are more creative, happy, healthier, and productive and take an optimistic view on life.

Places to Meditate
You do not need to be seated at home or another quiet place.
I encourage people to practice drawing the mind into a meditative state whenever they have a few minutes to spare e.g. waiting for the kettle to boil, standing in line waiting to be served, when out walking or when you are participating in any other activity that you can think of.


The meditative experience can occur anywhere.

This does not replace your regular daily practice though. It is in addition to your practice to reinforce what you have learned from meditation and to see that meditation is not separate from your life but an integral part of it.

Controlling the Breath
We all breathe, but many people do not breathe correctly, only half-filling the lungs and not absorbing the essential nutrients and energy contained within the breath to enable daily tasks to be performed with vitality and clarity.
Practice slowing the breath down and keeping it slow and steady. This may take only a few breaths or it may take several minutes depending on how experienced you are at meditating.
As the breath becomes slower and deeper, feel the different levels of relaxation that are occurring in the body and mind.
Feel stress ebb away with each exhalation.

Monitor Your Thoughts
During your quiet moment, notice your thoughts then allow them to pass without becoming attached to them. As you practice focusing on the breath, you will notice that the body is relaxed and the mind peaceful.

Over time you will discover that during your daily activities, if disturbed or angry thoughts emerge you will become aware of them as they occur and will be able to replace them with more appropriate thoughts and subsequent behavior.
This results in a more enjoyable and peaceful environment that keeps you tranquil, happy, and more prepared to face what life sends your way. All your interactions become pleasant and devoid of extreme emotional reactions.

Music
Listening to gentle music has been clinically proven to induce relaxation, slow the pulse, and lower blood pressure. It also enables you to enter into a meditative state with ease. If you can walk outside, listen to the sounds of nature and absorb the natural sounds and colors that the world provides.



Natural Sounds enhance the Meditative Experience

If you spend most of your time indoors, a small water fountain that trickles softly can also generate a relaxed response and help you to remain calm and peaceful.

Make Space to Meditate
Remove any items that disturb your environment. Keep the temperature comfortable.
Fill your space with objects that promote serenity and tranquility.
In time, your whole life will become a meditation, free from anxiety, stress and filled with hope and love.

Meditation: Inner Peace

Peace

Noise is everywhere; in the streets, in shops, even inside your head when you keep replaying past conversations. Sounds of laughter, crying, shouting, and music can affect your mood even when it is in the background and you are not aware of paying it very much attention.

So when life gets so hectic and fast paced and you say to yourself, “I just want a break. I need some peace,” where do you go to find it?

A spa? A sacred place of worship? A stroll in the park or by the ocean? A library?

Finding peace can be a temporary fix. When you leave the confines of your special haven, relieved of stress and anxiety, you return to the noise and disruption you faced earlier and before too long you find yourself longing for both the peaceful feelings that you experienced and solitude again.

True lasting peace will not be found if the tranquil place is an external one.

Lasting peace is cultivated over a period of time, provided it is given the right environment so that you can first recognize it, and then enable it to deepen its roots and strengthen over time.

When to Find Peace

Now is the best time. Don’t wait until you think you’re life is so organized that you can step straight into a tranquil existence.

It is through meditation that you experience serenity and tranquility. You create a memory for it within your mind and body.

When feelings of anxiety or stress come upon you, you can draw on the skill-set of meditation and return the breath to a slow and steady state. In doing so you calm the mind and the body, creating a situation that promotes calmness and freedom from worry.

Make Time to Meditate

Meditation is like any other skill, whether it’s tying your shoes or driving a car. It takes practice to learn how to do it. Over time, your meditation practice helps your concerns to dissolve and gives you the knowledge to know how to stay calm in all situations.

You learn how to release the issues that prevent you from experiencing joy and as you go deeper into your meditative practice, you learn how to free yourself from fear and worry.

By tapping into the calmness within, you move into a meditative state with ease and carry the inner peace with you in all your activities.

Meditation leads to peace.

If you have any suggestions for meditation articles please write to me from the website (there's a place at the end of each posting to do this) and I'll be happy to write on this subject.
New meditation information is added to the site every week with links to my additional articles on how to meditate, reduce stress, and gain inner peace.

Meditation:Concentration

Taking control of the thoughts is central to meditation. The world in which we live in is an instant world, which moves very fast. Expectations are placed upon us to achieve what we set out to do very quickly and this only adds to pressure, stress, and worry. The mind gets used to juggling many tasks and when preparing to meditate it should come as no surprise that the mind is still leaping around and thoughts are hard to still.

Your Meditation Practice
No matter what your ultimate aim of a meditation practice is; greater peace, insight, intuition, connection to God, increased spirituality, or relaxation, if the mind is constantly being pulled in different directions following a seemingly endless trail of thoughts, then your meditation practice ends with disappointment and you may even be tempted to give up.

Train the mind
You can successfully train the mind with a few simple steps.

Before you sit down to meditate, teach the mind to concentrate on ONE single task. Given the multitude of things we do every day, ONE object should be easy. Choose one method and stay with it until it becomes so easy that you can enter into a meditative state with ease.

• Practice mindfulness in all activities e.g. dressing, bathing, pouring water, chewing food. Each activity that you participate in should be examined fully and you will in turn experience not only concentration, but an enhanced appreciation and enjoyment of what you are doing.
• Focus on your breath whenever you have to wait on something or someone. Don't sit gazing around you. Draw the awareness inward to the breath and notice its rate and flow. Expand the breath and slow it down.
• Maintain single-pointed focus by studying a word or phrase in a religious or spiritual book. What does the word or phrase mean to you?
• Relax the mind by gazing at nature elements such as clouds drifting by, waves rolling in the ocean, ripples in water, leaves rustling in trees, and any other object where you can allow the mind to relax and follow without any thought.
• Focus on the space between your thoughts. This is more challenging but with practice the space becomes larger and you can truly focus on the highest spiritual energy.

In a meditative state, the mind is not empty, but focused. Each time you prepare to meditate the mind is more and more familiar with what is expected of it and enters into meditation with grace and ease.

If you have any suggestions for meditation articles please write to me from the website (there's a place at the end of each posting to do this) and I'll be happy to write on this subject.
New meditation information is added to the site every week with links to my additional articles on how to meditate, reduce stress, and gain inner peace.

Meditation: Increasing Your Intuition

Meditation has multiple uses and end results. When practiced regularly, the mind enters into a field of awareness that awakens latent abilities.

This highly developed level of concentration enables you to develop continuous understanding, lack of desires, and bliss. Your subtle life force lies within your body and you can choose how to direct this flow of energy for creating healing, happiness, or positive outcomes in all your endeavors.

Intuition
Subtle awareness brings into being a sixth sense; that of intuition. Represented by light and the color violet, intuition manifests when the five basic senses reach a heightened state of development and you undergo a transformation in your responsiveness to and perception of people, situations, and yourself. When you have practiced Meditation regularly, you know that you are not your thoughts and that you can in fact monitor and control what you are thinking.

Focus on the Breath
Intuition flows as a direct result from completing an inward focus on the breath. Your mind releases your intuition whereupon it manifests itself slowly in some individuals and as a sudden rush of knowledge in others. You understand what reality is and your role in life.

With the mind still and centered on the breath, or your attention point of choice, the body and mind are working to keep the breath slow, calm, and steady while the self remains at rest. The space between the thoughts magnifies and you abide in the true nature of your self. It is in this inner space that inner calm and clarity resides and the clear mind returns to its original source. In this way, the flow of consciousness remains continuous.


Meditation transfers Peace
Feel peace wash over and through you. Retain this feeling when you slowly open the eyes and carry it with you throughout your day.

Meditation is for Life.