How to be Natural with Yourself in Meditation

Meditation happens spontaneously when you have the right conditions and you allow the natural process to unfold. You don't have to force anything. The body, in its wisdom, seizes the opportunity to heal and balance if you give it half a chance. Meditation is that half a chance.
When meditating, you have marked the time out and said to the nervous system, "You are free. I won't make you do anything else right now."

The goal of all training is to be natural with yourself so that meditation does not feel like a technique at all but rather just a way of being with yourself. There is something wonderful and almost miraculous in how meditation works. If you do the simplest technique, in the easiest manner, you tend to enter a state of profound physical relaxation and regeneration.

When you are natural and unaffected with yourself, your experience changes continuously and your senses pulsate. You feel as though the knowledge of how to meditate is your own, that this wisdom comes from inside you.

Practising Meditation at Work

With tight deadlines, performance reviews, and the threat of downsizing, today's highly competitive work environment places extraordinary pressures on employees and managers alike.

Even practitioners of traditionally stable occupations like teaching and medicine are experiencing unprecedented work stress. But whatever your job situation, you can reduce your stress by following these tips for meditating while you work:

• Each morning before you leave, you can reinforce your resolve to stay as calm and relaxed as possible. If you can, meditate briefly before you head out the door to set the tone of the day.
• Have lunch with people you like or have a quiet lunch alone. You can also take a walk or do some other kind of exercise during your break; a great way to relieve your stress.
• Instead of hanging around the coffee machine and adding caffeine to your long list of stressors, use your breaks to meditate quietly in your office or cubicle.
• Once every hour or two take a few minutes to stop what you're doing, take a few deep breaths, follow your breathing, and get up and stretch or walk around.

Initiating the Flow of Unconditional Love Through Meditation

The following steps will allow you to initiate the flow of unconditional love, also known as loving-kindness through meditation. To distinguish this kind of love from conditional love, imagine the love of a good mother for her baby. She gives her love freely and unconditionally, without expecting anything in return except her baby's happiness and well-being.

As with all the meditations, you may want to begin with five or ten minutes of a mindfulness practice like counting or following your breaths in order to deepen and stabilize your concentration. Once you get the knack, though, the cultivation of loving kindness itself can be an excellent way to develop concentration.

1. Begin by closing your eyes, taking a few deep breaths, and relaxing your body a little with each exhalation.

2. Imagine the face of someone who loved you very much as a child and whose love moved you deeply.

3. Remember a time when this person showed his or her love for you and you really took it in.

4. Notice the gratitude and love this memory evokes in your heart. Allow these feelings to well up and fill your heart.

5. Gently extend these feelings to this loved one. You may even experience a circulation of love between the two of you as you give and receive love freely.

6. Allow these loving feelings to overflow and gradually suffuse your whole being. Allow yourself to be filled with love.

Meditation and the Third Eye

There is a huge significance in concentrating at the point between the eyebrows. The point between the eyebrows is known as the Christ center. It is here that the meditator, when deeply concentrated, beholds the spiritual eye or third eye, a phenomenon that has been known since ancient times.

Legends thousands of years old describe this third eye as being located right in the center of the forehead. Artists often depict it as a half moon. Modern scholars dismiss the entire concept as fanciful, or as merely symbolic. But then, few scholars know much about meditative practices; the understanding they admire is intellectual.

The spiritual eye is a reflection of the astral light in the medulla oblongata. The Christ center, where it resides, represents the positive pole of the medulla which is the seat of ego-consciousness. When this light is beheld perfectly, it takes the form of a five-pointed star set in a field of deep blue or violet light, and circled by a shining ring of gold. In a state of ecstasy, the consciousness penetrates the spiritual eye and enters the inner realms.

The consciousness of most human beings is centered in the medulla oblongata. Everything they do, think, and perceive, being centered in ego-awareness, originates from this point of awareness. The consciousness of enlightened beings, on the other hand, is centered in the Christ center between the eyebrows. All their actions, thoughts, and perceptions originate from that point.

It is good to deepen your awareness of the medulla, since it is the point through which consciousness and energy must pass in order to reach the Christ center. The goal, however, is to reach the Christ center. To remain blocked in the medulla would be to feed ego-consciousness. In meditation, concentrate at a point midway between the eyebrows. Raise your gaze upward—not crossing the eyes, but focusing them on a point somewhat beyond the forehead at about the distance of your thumb when you hold your arm extended above you. However, don't be too exact in this matter. The important thing is that your attention be focused at the point between the eyebrows.

Be Consistent with your Meditation Practise

Meditation, in some ways, can be compared to sport. If you train for a day and then do nothing for a week, you won't make a lot of progress. You may actually end up hurting yourself because you have not conditioned your body gradually, as most fitness experts recommend.

When you practice meditation, you are developing certain mental and emotional muscles like concentration, mindfulness (ongoing attention to whatever is arising, moment to moment), and receptive awareness. Here too, consistency is the key - you need to keep it up and keep it regular, no matter how you're feeling from day to day. In fact, your feelings provide the fodder for your meditation practice, as you expand your awareness from your breath to include the full range of your experience. There's no special way you need to be - just show up and be yourself!

As one old Chinese Zen master used to say, "Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha" - by which he meant, happy or sad, energetic or tired, just sit as the being you happen to be.