Meditation

Meditation

Meditation is the natural way to live life to the full. It is natural, because meditation teaches people to breathe properly and to have the correct posture. Co-ordinating all the levels of the personality through the practice of mediation, one becomes more integrated in everything and anything.

Meditation becomes a way of life when a decision is taken to meditate twice daily in the morning and evening for twenty minutes. The morning meditation helps to give a calm and integrated direction to the day, while the evening meditation allows all the various experiences, emotions and frustrations to be integrated positively before sleeptime. In this way mediation creates a living rhythm of life-giving energy, actively linked to one’s breathing and body posture.

As is evident, the body takes on the posture of the prevalent emotion embedded within our psyche. Meditation corrects this by its constant emphasis of proper breathing and posture.

This is just a very simplified way of understanding meditation, but I hope that people become encouraged to take it up as a way of life, of becoming peace.

Tips for Meditation

Just as in any new activity we are learning, it takes time to develop the habits and strength needed to grow in our new endeavor. The same is true with the art of meditation.

With meditation, we are learning to still our body, shut out the world, and still the mind. These are new exercises, and it takes time to develop new habits.

Here are some tips for your meditation practice.

• Try to meditate at the same time each day. Early in the morning after you have rested is best before you begin the day.
• Find a spot and sit in the same place every time you meditate. Make this a sacred place, a place of prayer.
• Meditate when you are wide-awake and do not meditate on a full stomach as this may cause you to be sleepy.
• Set a spiritual atmosphere before meditation by reading from the scriptures, singing a spiritual song, saying a prayer or poem. Try to put yourself in the mood of devotion and longing for God.
• Sit with all humility knowing that it is God's will to bless you with divine experiences.
• Start with shorter sittings and build to a half hour, an hour, and eventually two or more hours.
• Leading an ethical life creates the conditions conducive to meditation.

The Year of Transition - The Year of Transformation

2012 is a life-changing event for those of us who chose the spiritual path of transformation. But it is also a year of transition. From the old vision of ourselves and the world and of who we perceive reality to the new vision of a reality which sees us taking full and unconditional responsibility for our lives and to share this unconditionally as service to others.

As a group we will be experiencing together all these different dynamics. I am sure that together we will be able to keep a very high level of consciousness so that the group becomes the space where people can safely move forward in their own transformational process. For those who will take this seriously, I will dedicate more time, but for me, it is also obvious that time is short and that the best possible use of it is part of the process, so I invite those who genuinely wish to engage in this path to come forward.

Many seminars are in the pipe line and these will be in line with the in-depth needs that this tremendous process entails. More information on these will be forthcoming very soon.

May you have a peaceful year and may all your efforts be blessed!

Godwin

Morning Practice

In the morning we should notice what windows have opened up for us in our psyche. For example, if we wake up fearful or angry, we will attract these situations that will magnify these feelings.

1. First it would be a good idea to do a body scan and note where we are.

2. Next we should make a commitment to live the day in the highest consciousness we can manage. This can be done during morning meditation.

3. Ask for the protection of the angels at a fifth dimensional level.

If during the day we meet up with someone who will pull us down, it will be easier to lift ourselves back up because of the commitment we made in the morning. Gossip lowers the vibration and opens the door to the memory of our own experience which might be similar.

The Spiritual Aspect of Tenacity

Being tenacious means that we know where we want to go although we do not always see the path clearly. How tenacious are we in our life right now? We have to be comfortable in our chosen path so as to be tenacious. We have all chose a path to achieve wellbeing in mind, body and spirit. What other tools can we use to smoothen our path?

To be tenacious we need to be flexible as well as soft (the part that helps me to see very clearly with deep vision). By connecting to the soft side of the heart centre, we access that energy that is welcoming, opening, transparent and non-judgmental. There is no fear but a sort of child-like strength.

The Heart chakra generates love. Hard love or tough love sometimes entails that for a brief period in a difficult situation the role of being tenacious is taken over by a third party until the person concerned is able to be tenacious himself once again.

Our soft side has vision. We can see clearly and far away. It teaches us clarity and depth. The hard side wants immediate results. The softer side does not generate love only but also compassion which is unconditional love. Tenacity cannot be attained without compassion which respects and motivates the reason to grow and gives us stability. Compassion is generated by a clear mind and open heart. A sense of flexibility which is flowing and child-like. There are no emotional blockages. Compassion totally accepts without any condition. It is the refined love of the spiritual person – the God DNA.

The Spiritual Tool of Letting Go

We are like the serpent, removing old skins as well as old habits and discarding old ways of relating. What comes out of this process is yet unknown. This process, like that of the serpent has to happen slowly and fully. It has to respect our psychic openness. If we let go a little, we can only receive a little and the process will be stifled and we will experience ourself in fits and starts and this will depend on the degree of our openness and letting go, to allow for the new us to enter. For sure, if we make the commitment with ourself to change and put in the effort, it will happen and we will receive. However, if during this process of receiving we put up blockages, that which we receive might upset us.

Primarily we have to do the process of letting go which has to be a smooth one that respects our rate of progress. For some, letting go sometimes happens in times of crisis, but do we have to go there? The spirituality of letting go is the spirituality of humility – of acknowledging. The way we experience the Divine is the way we shape our path.

We need courage to let go of some of the spiritual ideas we have which might have been instilled in us when we were young and for which we might not have been psychologically prepared. We have to know ourselves so well that we take steps in our life that are respectful of our psychology. Spirituality has always got to be open to life and respectful to who we are. Like this, our spiritual process is faster because it is totally respectful of who we are.

Our discernment on our experiences in life will form our spirituality and stabilise us. If our spirituality is always pulling the carpet from under our feet it is of no use to us. We have to integrate our spirituality with our personal experience. This will teach us how to let go. The spirituality that places us in a box with one set of rules is not respectful to the evolvement of our own spiritual experience. Our spirituality grows from our reflective experience which we test with the spiritual tools that we have learnt, thus becoming a source of growth in our spiritual life, helping us to experience the love of the Divine which is expansion and our experiences are always new which then work to build us up. The experience of Life is not the same , so we cannot stick to the same ways of dealing with it. The more we allow and the more we let go, the more we will experience things in a different way.

How Do We Integrate Things That Bother Us

We can integrate things that bother us by unlearning learning. As we start to change spiritually and become more stable, we start to allow what had been repressed to come out. We suppress because we always try to find a balance (sometimes dysfunctional) in our situation for which we pay a price by suppressing what is legitimate. This dynamic makes us weak because we decide to prioritise balance in a dysfunctional way.

Usually by prioritizing peace we suppress our true feelings in our subconscious. The women’s role in society is usually to coalesce things together for which she pays a very high price to keep the peace at all times, sometimes at the cost of self-sacrifice thus giving women a lot more to unlearn.

Since women have now taken responsibility for their own happiness, the result is quite dramatic as all the suppressed emotions a woman kept to keep the peace will now unleash.

Female psyche has two aspects. That of the Destroyer and that of the Giver of Life. We will begin to notice that women will take a stand which is not wrong as their spiritual progress depends on their taking a decision to be true to themselves which might cause conflict. This is all part of the process to find a new balance whereby she can express herself with power thus seeking relationships on a basis of justice and respect. Guilt destroys our spiritual life because any spiritual path grows only when there is a space of free responsibility. Remorse is different and builds the spiritual life in a constructive way.

Solving Problems with Shape Shifting

How do we normally deal with problems and challenges? Is it not often done through stubborn determination as dictated by our mind? And what about an alternative way ....

As westerners we usually get deep into the nitty gritty of the issue and try to figure out how to solve it. By doing so we get sucked into its energy in a downward spiral often leading to frustration and depletion of energy – having solved nothing. We use our minds for solving the problem and get aggressive with controlling the outcome trying hard to find a solution.

If we are in tune to Nature we can learn a better way of dealing with problems. Shamans know very well how to tap into the archetypes of animals and plants to read between the lines of what these can teach us.

Take for example the panther - a fast runner but it instinctively knows when to slow down when need be. When searching for prey such as a deer what does it do? It is expert at shape shifting itself into a trunk, blending with it so that it could be inconspicuous and ready for action when appropriate. It can walk slowly if its prey is a slow animal and at the right time is able to run fast after it. The panther does not force itself into controlling the situation and is ready to take its time as long as need be. It knows that in the dark reality changes from that in the light and it uses this fact also to get its prey.

From this we can learn that the universe is more fluid, nothing is fixed as we think it to be. Like the panther, our psyche can expand and contract accordingly and be able to see a problem from a different aspect. Every problem has an exception to the usual patterns and we can appreciate this fact to deal with it, knowing that it is not a fixed entity needing force to crack it down.

We lost the skill of adaptation due to thinking that our mind needs to get in the way. Like the panther we need to be aware that reality is fluid and not fixed (as when seen through dark or light) - like the panther we can shape shift to what is required - and like the panther we can integrate with an environment making it less hostile and more manageable.

Article and Photo by Mary Attard