Awareness Meditation: Part 2

Awareness of the mind enables it to become clear, calm, and still

Awareness Meditation: Part 2

Once you have practiced the basic introduction method to awareness meditation posted below and feel comfortable about dissolving into your meditation with ease, you may wish to try a deeper meditative practice.
A deeper awareness meditation may uncover deep-seated issues or desires and the key is to let them arise without judgment.

You are an observer of your thoughts and emotions and the purpose of meditation is to remain unattached to them. As you focus on whatever arises during your practices, identify it but don’t spend time analyzing or struggling to identify it if it is not immediately recognizable.
Whether it is a person, an object, or a desire for something that you wish to occur in your life, it is useful to know what it is in order to recognize the feelings and emotions that are consciously or unconsciously associated with it. With each subsequent awareness meditation, more thoughts become recognizable and therefore identifiable.
Remember to remain objective and without judgment of either the object or yourself.

If meditation is fairly new to you, you may find that interruptions in your flow of thoughts will occur. You suddenly find that your mind has gone off at a tangent. Once again remain the observer, without opinions, and return to the rhythmic flow of your breath to draw your awareness inward.
Stay with your breath as other thoughts arise and observe them without following them.
Pay attention to the emotions that appear as these will help you hone your self-awareness and introspection.

Allow all energy that arises through your meditation practice to flow.
Be open to all that you may experience
Remain the observer

As your mind settles on the space within, you discover a reservoir of energy that enables you to quietly identify aspects of yourself that you want to release, and aspects that you wish to nurture and grow.
Enter into the space between the thoughts and feel the expansion of knowledge, creativity, and compassion that emerges.

With continued practice, once each meditation is complete, you will continue to foster awareness in all aspects of your life including communications with other people and your interactions with the world around you. Heightened awareness enables you to become more alert, with renewed or enhanced desires and a sense of purpose.

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, MANTRA, CLARITY

CLARITY
There are times when we experience a mental "blockage" and struggle with finding a solution to a problem or a creative idea. This can occur because we are unconsciously holding on to outdated ideas or past beliefs and meditation enables each one of us to obtain clarity of mind by gently stripping away obstacles and confusion layer by layer, revealing our connection to the source of all creation.

MENTAL BLOCKAGES

Fr. Thomas Keating of The Contemplative Outreach Center in New Jersey Resist wrote the following words in 1998:

"Resist no thought, retain no thought, react emotionally to no thought, and when you notice you are thinking about some thought,
return ever so gently to the sacred word.
One does not think about whether to return to the sacred word or not.
One simply returns to it when thoughts are attracting one's awareness
to a particular object."

Awareness rarely emerges when forced. It comes into being when you cease the struggle and clear a path for it to flow. Concentration and heightened awareness develop with practice and carry with them additional advantages such as:

• being more receptive to listening rather than asking
• being rather than doing
• increasing your faith
  

The past can leak into the present when we least expect it, but by taking charge of the dominant brain and leading it on a spiritual path you encounter fewer obstacles and instead invite calmness, the right people, and unexpected opportunities into your life that will guide you forward instead of holding you in a place that you have outgrown.

FINDING YOUR SACRED WORD
Affirmations are useful when you are beginning meditation or need to train the mind to think more positively.
A Mantra or Sacred Word or Phrase however, has special significance and energy in part because it originates from sacred text, sacred music, or sacred tradition.
It is extremely powerful and while a whole posting can be written to describe its importance, you can begin using a word or phrase that has special meaning to you by reading a scripture and finding a passage that resonates with you. As you consider the text, read slowly and a word or phrase will stay with you, drawing your attention to it again and again.

Once you have settled into your meditation, allow the word to flow unimpeded through your mind's awareness. Focus on the word, its energy, how it feels, what it says to you. Feel its vibrations.
After your meditation session is complete notice how you feel, what your perspective is like, how relaxed your mind is, and how clear your thoughts have become.
Release attachment to the past and remain focused on the present. Cultivate sacred words and carry them with you and notice a deepening spiritual awareness and connectivity to the source of all creation.