This is a nice question. I like the way it is asked, how do I meditate? Instead of asking how to do meditation? Because meditation is not a doing activity it is a state of being. A non-doing state of being. The doing and non-doing states refers to the mind and not to the body. One could go some physical activity while meditating or sit with eyes open and fixed at one spot while meditating or sit with closed eyes while meditating.
The following article teaches beginners to begin a practice of meditation.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
Can someone who has never been able to meditate learn how to do it and get results from it?
Yes you can, it is quiet simple actually. You only need to learn when you have to do something. Meditation is a practice of non-doing being. You just need to choose not to do anything. But here the activity is mental activity not physical activity. Just do the following for one to three minutes and see what happens. This is FGCB or Fixed Gazing and Conscious Breathing. Simply take a few minutes to be with this practice several times during the day for a few days. It would be even more helpful if you can practice three minutes of gentle body movements called Deep crossing after the FGCB and continue with the FGCB while doing this. It is demonstrated in the below link for the YouTube video. Selvans Deep crossing: https://youtu.be/qq6iKZquuVI After several days of the above practice, listen to the following guided meditation audio and sit with the practice of 5 minutes short open eyes meditation. Sit for the meditation after doing deep crossing. Selvans Guided Meditation – Witnessing the four simultaneous activities: If you want to go further, you may use the other longer closed eyes meditation audios in my SoundCloud profile to progressively practice with meditation. Another option is to enroll for my online mentoring program called Awareness Journey. Read about it in the link below.
The following article helps to set goals and intentions around the practice of meditation
Selvan Srinivasan · 2y
What is the goal of meditation?
For each session of meditation itself there cannot be any goal. Meditation is a practice of non-doing being when you hold a stance of a disengaged witness to all that is arising or happening in the here and now. Things are constantly happening within us and around us. Things happening within us include thoughts arising in our mind, emotions arising in our emotional mind-body and physical sensations arising in our body. Things happening around us is constantly perceived by our senses of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. All of these together is called arising phenomena in the moment. It is happening momentarily and changing every moment. We do not just perceive these but constantly react, respond or engage with it. Our engagement is in the form of mental activity which may or may not be followed by physical activity. When we choose to simply sit and witness the arising phenomena without engagement, it is called meditation. To hold a goal for this would necessitate mental activity and therefore it is not possible to meditate while holding a goal. A stance of active acceptance and allowing towards all arising phenomena is necessary to remain in the state of meditation for at least a few minutes. Therefore there is no goal of meditation. However, you can have a set of goals as an outcome of the regular habit of meditation practice. Use these goals to motivate you to continue with the practice regularly and cultivate a habit out of it. When you spare some time for a regular meditation practice you can except a lot of practical benefits arising out of this in your life. These include better sleep, improved memory, lesser stress, lesser anxiety, more confidence, more decisive, clarity of mind, peace of mind, joy, better and deeper relationships, mastery over emotions, physical fitness, higher immunity, relief from chronic disease conditions, etc. If you would like to read more about an effective meditation practice that could throw up the above benefits please read the answers linked below and the articles linked therein.
The following article guides on finding out if the meditation practice is on the right track or not.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
What are some signs that your meditation is working spiritually?
Let us first look at the question: What are signs that meditation is working. Why? Because sometimes one might go through all the prescribed steps and still never actually enter or experience the mental shift into a meditative state. Once you are sure that this is happening, then it is only a question of repeatedly, regularly and consistently returning back to the practice to experience transformation in all aspects of one’s life. But there is one unexpected problem with answering this question, which is the reason why it is advisable to seek guidance from an adept mentor. It is best to actually practice the steps and experience whatever arises without knowing what to expect and then share the experience with your mentor, who would guide accordingly. The reason why I’m saying this is that it is not possible to go through the mental shift when one is holding a specific expectation or a set of expectations. Noticing all that is happening right now within your body and mind and in the surroundings with a stance of acceptance and allowing it to be happening as it is without engaging, reacting or responding to all that is happening right now is the only way to go through the mental shift. The following answer therefore is for you to look back at your meditation practice and see if you got it right and not to hold as an expectation for the next practice. Simply drop all expectations when you practice next and go into it with an openness and innocence of a child. Now coming back to the question: what are the signs to look for? In the body during and after meditation you may experience some of yawning, sneezing, coughing, burping, farting, itching, unnoticed or mild pains in different parts of the body may start becoming noticeable or more intense, in rare cases body may experience swaying or jerking or shaking, and sometimes an intense pain may go away. All these body experiences happen because your awareness is returning back to your body. In other words, you are becoming more present and aware of your body and this causes the body to open up, loosen up and relax. What was suppressed or imperceptible in your body before, becomes open and you start experiencing them. The only way to go deeper into meditation is to notice and allow all these and whatever else that arises in the body to continue without mental intervention. For example if it itches somewhere, it’s ok to allow your hands to go there and scratch and it is ok to notice a thought that arises asking why is it itching. Simply choose to avoid engaging with the thought and going into a deep mental analysis of possible reasons. Now let us see what happens in the feeling mind and the thinking mind. A feeling of expansiveness may arise or any of these feelings; peace, stillness, quietness, gratitude, compassion. loving kindness, joy, etc may arise. Thoughts may still keep arising throughout the practice but it may now seem as if you are noticing these thoughts as they arise instead of thinking these thoughts. You have become the witness instead of the participant in the drama of thoughts in the mind. As you continue staying a disengaged witness watching the arising thoughts and not labelling, judging, cringing, liking, disliking, reacting, responding, getting carried away or engaging with these thoughts in any way, you may notice that they gradually reduce. This is just meant to just give a brief idea or gist of what may arise during the practice of meditation. The study of meditation as a subject matter of intellectual pursuit is actually counterproductive to being able to actually practice meditation. You cannot study for years and do research and write a thesis on cricket batting and become a Sachin Tendulkar. You need to pick up the bat, pad up and jump into the field and simply swing at the ball and keep doing this frequently, regularly and consistently. After that, some study along the way may help but a coach may help even more. And now to come to the second point, if meditation works, then it would also work spiritually in the long run. I do not make any difference between materialistic meditation or spiritual meditation and if at all such differentiation exists it does so only in theory or as a concept. The following quote says it all. My recently published book is a complete guide to answer all your questions around this and mentor you through a proven pathway to attain everlasting happiness, peace of mind, healing and transformation. Use the following link to check out the details and see if you are interested to read it.