Meditation In The Digital Age
With technology growing at such a incredible rate, it is not any surprise that even traditional practices, such as mediation, are becoming more enhanced through the digital plane. However, the basis of meditation is to simplify your thoughts and feelings, as well as objects surrounding your person, so many say that meditation simply cannot be enhanced through methods such as technology. Meditation, yoga, and other forms of inner healing are becoming more and more popular, does technology have any role in practicing these procedures?
Meditation is a mental discipline included in the practice of many world religions. Meditation’s intent is to induce a state of profound relaxation, inner harmony, and increased awareness. Most people know meditation as just a simple way to relieve stress. The loose, more common, form of meditation, which includes prayer, daydreaming, and simple guided imagery, is the easiest and quickest way to just let go and relax. It is when you allow the mind to rest and go quiet. When our bodies are worked really hard, we get aches and pains. We need to rest the body so it can recuperate from the stress and physical strain we have put onto it. If we do not our bodies can become ill which can lead to neck and back strain. When this happens, we are forced to take it easy. We must have a good night's sleep and in the morning, we feel rested and relaxed. With our minds, we are always thinking, even in sleep the mind is working because most of us dream while we are asleep. As one can see, the mind never rests. However, with meditation we can slow the mind down and relax it to such a level that it gets the chance to have a good rest. After practice, you will be able to stop the thoughts altogether for a short time. When we learn to slow our minds down and think of nothing without any help, we are able to bring ourselves into a state of total awareness. In this state 100% healing can take place. We are able to totally bring into us, our inner child and higher mind. We learn how to listen to our body and what she has to say. If something is off balance or not right, we are able to talk to our bodies and find out exactly what is the problem. Through meditation, we learn how to make true contact with ourselves. We learn to train our mind to function the way she was meant to. Instead of the mind controlling us, we control our mind. The soul becomes in charge once more. All our extra sensors become open and we are able to access all our hidden knowledge and gifts that are blocked from us because the mind is stopping them coming through. Meditation provides all of these powerful healing tools. Even if most people do not realize that they are meditating, they are slowly going though the same steps as the meditators who use the Universal form of meditation. This form of meditation is the same form that the Tibetan Monks use when they are trying to achieve enlightenment. The universal form of meditation requires a great more concentration as the entire basis of this version revolves around the practice of “suspending focus.” This essentially means that one must not focus on anything. By doing this, the meditator may awaken to a higher state of consciousness. “There is only one way to enlightenment - to total, conscious realization of our real nature, God, and universal processes - and that is to awaken from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, super consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness, and transcendental consciousness.” (Davis, 44) To awaken to the next levels of consciousness, the meditator must go through each layer of Maya. Maya is the individual layers of earth and everything it is made up of. The contents of these layer include physical barriers, such as anything that one can use the basic five senses to perceive, but Maya layers also include barriers that one can only sense, such as electromagnetic fields, or anything else that gives off a certain wavelength, like other people‘s energy. By getting past these individual layer, the meditator can get closer and closer to reaching enlightenment, also known as “The Silence.” “The Silence” is, essentially, where God lives, and no one may be with God until they have rid themselves of all the Maya layers. So where does technology fit into all this? Well, technology, when combined with the more commonly used “loose” form of meditation, can be quite an effective combination. Many technological advances have been made in order to help one relax during their guided imagery. Electric Zen waterfalls, noise canceling headphones, and calming music from a CD player are just a few of the digital enhancements that the technological age has provided to help out the practice of meditation. The most advanced piece of technology on the market at the moment is not a digital enhancement to achieving meditation, but rather a means to learning how to meditation the correct way. A video game, “Journey to Wild Divine”, uses a separate component to measure the biofeedback of the player’s body. Developed by Dr. Deepak Chopra, this game’s controller (Figure 1) consists of three electrode fingertip sensors that monitor the player’s heart rate, breathing rate, emotion levels through biofeedback, and to progress through the game, the player must learn to control these and other aspects of your body. Biofeedback is scientifically proven to have a powerful, positive effect on your emotional and physical well-being by teaching you to alter your brain activity, blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate, and other critical bodily functions. “Journey to Wild Divine’s” innovative biofeedback hardware platform measures skin conductance levels and heart rate variability (a cutting-edge measurement of cardiovascular health) through the three “Magic Ring” sensors gently attached to your fingers (as seen in Figure 1). The measurements are registered through the game’s “Light Stone” and fed back to you through biofeedback “events” on the screen. Characters within the game help you learn to control your body’s reactions. By increasing, decreasing, or synchronizing body rhythms, through various levels of breathing, relaxation, and meditation techniques, like the “Heart Breath”, you’ll quickly learn to master the “events” and progress in the game. The knowledge you gain will help enhance your personal growth and well-being. The graphs (Figures 2 & 3) illustrate the dramatic physical changes that occur when a person plays “Journey to Wild Divine.“ The first graph (Figure 2) shows the decrease in Skin Conductance Level, which signifies a state of relaxation, during a biofeedback event in the game which requires the person to calm themselves in order to float a feather to the bottom of the screen. The second graph (Figure 3) depicts the simultaneous harmonies occurring between the decrease in Skin Conductance Levels (the pink line), the even wave of the heart rate variability (the purple line), the steady strength of the pulse (the red lines), and the peaks of the pulse rate (the green dots). This graph was charted during another biofeedback event where the player is asked to perform a yogic breath to help “heal the planet.“ Once the player has mastered the techniques, and beaten the game, the person can no longer use technology to go any further into universal meditation. However, while “Journey to the Wild Divine” is the most advanced piece of technology to teach meditation, the most commonly used piece of the digital age for learning is, of course, the internet. The internet has such a wide range of information services that any one person can easily find prayers, sutras, and mantras over the web to help further their search for inner healing. Many websites are devoted to meditation, and others even offer information on local meditation groups, healing seminars around the country, and helpful hints from others who might have broken through a few of those Maya layers. So, while technology can be great for learning the meditation techniques, to actually achieve a higher state of consciousness, one must discard the hindrances of these digital devices. By trying to use machines and technology to get into trances and meditate, one only increases the Maya layers and therefore makes it even harder to awaken to the next level of consciousness.
The youth of the Westernized culture, namely America, are becoming more and more interested in the meditative arts, as polled on the “One Spirit” website. Of course, most of the youth of America only practice the “loose” form of meditation, and rely heavily upon technology to help relieve stress. Yoga is the one of the main types of meditation that many people in America practice, and many people also enhance their yoga exercises by including some form of technology into the formula. Most of the time, the technology is a simple radio or CD player, but sometimes “meditators” will hook up more advanced technology to monitor heart rate, breathing, cholesterol burn count, and other similar exercise surveillance equipments. Music, games, and the internet are just a few of the digital enhancements that youth feel help them meditate. Most are so integrated with technology as part of their normal lives, that using digital enhancements for meditation is like a second nature to them.
One of the most famous healing techniques of the Tibetan Monks is the colored sand arts mandala. (Figures 4-10) A mandala, a Sanskrit word meaning “circle”, is a multicolored, two dimensional sand painting, and are symbols of the Universe and its energy. In Tibet, this art is called dul-tson-kyll-khor, which is translated as “mandala of colored powders“, and each mandala is a archetypal template to remind people of the cycle of life and death. Millions of grains of sand are laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days or weeks. Formed of a traditional prescribed iconography that includes geometric shapes and a multitude of ancient spiritual symbols, the sand-painted mandala is used as a tool for re-consecrating the earth and its inhabitants. The blueprint of the mandala is not new or improvised, but rather one found in the ancient Buddhist scriptures, as all mandala blueprints are. The monks map out the mandala with string, chalk, and a wooden compass. They will spend the next two weeks filling in the pattern using special tools called chak-pur. These instruments are used to place and sculpt the mandala. The monks each hold a chak-pur, which is essentially a long metal funnel from which the different colored sands are poured from, and run a metal rod on the funnel’s grated surface, creating vibration, which in turn, causes the sands to flow like liquid. (Figure 8) The mandala is meant to bring positive energies and healing to the community. When the mandala is finished, it is tradition for the sand mandala to be destroyed shortly after completion. This is done as a metaphor of the impermanence of life. The sands are swept up and placed in a urn; to fulfill the function of healing, half is distributed to the audience at the closing ceremony, while the remainder is carried to a nearby body of water, where it is deposited. The waters then carry the healing blessing to the ocean, and from there it spreads throughout the world for planetary healing. This entire process is a major type of meditation for the monks. Since the monks cannot make even one mistake during the entire process, intense concentration is required for the full completion.
I, Ian Kaszans, attempted to do a mandala for a project in New Media Art History, only my mandala was not sand, it was digital. Being a youth at the time, I, of course, thought that everything could be solved if enough technology was applied to the challenge. So using as many technological achievements as were relevant to the creation of the mandala and my own meditative studies, I set out to create a digital mandala. Setting up with my CD player, complete with Sony headphones and a relaxing pan flute CD, and using my Windows Presario laptop and a program similar to Photoshop, I started the creation of my mandala. I tried to use all the same techniques that I saw the Tibetan Monks use when they came to the Telfair Museum. The main technique that the monks used was to slowly lay down a little sand at a time. I processed this technique mentally and applied it digitally by using a 1 pixel brush for the entire mandala. This digital process, as one can imagine, took quite a long time to complete. And, needless to say, I got bored very quickly. I felt drained, and after a few hours of mandala pixeling, I found that using the Fill tool sped the mandala creation process exponentially. But this sacrifice in technique, also cut my meditation experience in half. True that I was young, inexperienced in the meditation ways, and impatient, but I thought for sure that somehow, by working on this project, I would be able to meditate and become closer to God. Of course, by cheating the technique, I was neither able to meditate neither find myself any closer to relaxation or God. After the experimental digital mandala was complete, I realized that technology just should not be applied to this aspect of meditation. (Figure 11)
Meditation is so easy that it only takes up a small part of your day, so it can be done first thing in the morning and last thing at night. You could be on a bus, in a park, or even at the office in your lunch hour. It does not matter where you are, if you have a spare 5 minutes, you can meditate. Now we will look at doing a simple meditation first thing in the morning. When you wake up in the morning, take a few minutes to wake yourself up. Do this by giving yourself a good shake, then find somewhere, where you can sit without being disturbed. It can be on the floor with a couple of pillows or even sitting up in bed, out in the morning sun, in fact anywhere where you feel comfortable. You can then, if you feel it helps, have some soft music on, even just have silence. When you are comfortable, you need to focus on your body, starting with your feet, and focusing on your breathing, then you should notice your breathing, slowing the breath, bring your awareness to your feet and traveling up your whole body from your knees to your hips, from your hips to your stomach, from your stomach to your heart. Now notice your heartbeats, breathing with the rhythm of the heartbeat, try to stay focused, but if you find that your mind wanders do not be alarmed, with time and practice, you will be able to stop this! Breathing with the heartbeat will help you to understand the rhythm of your body and this is the start of learning to listen to your natural body language. When you have mastered this art, you will be able to read the warning signals in your body when something goes wrong. When you are ready, bring your focus back to the body. Focusing on your shoulders, breathing slowly, bring your awareness to your neck, and then, still breathing slowly, bring your awareness to your head. When you have reached the head, slowly bring your whole awareness to all of your body. Now take time to listen to your whole body, listen to the sounds coming from your body and breathe with those sounds. After you have done this bring yourself back to reality, slowly allow your mind to start its thinking process and your breathing to go back too normal. Now just sit for a few minutes and feel how calm and relaxed you are, when you are ready get up and start your day.
You will notice by doing this morning meditation that your whole day will feel more peaceful and there will be less stress around you because you will have given your mind a rest. You can also use meditation to help you with any problems you may have in your life. Before you enter into your meditative state, focus on the problem and then ask your higher mind to help come up with answers. Go into your meditation and after you have finished, see if you receive any advice or hidden insight that could help you. It may be that you will see the problems in a different perceptive. If you are after some emotional healing within yourself you can also focus on the issues that are causing you pain, grief or worry before you go into your meditative state. Ask that your inner child help you heal these situations. After the mediation, you may well find that you see your pain, fear and worries in a different light also.
There are countless forms of meditation that can be used ranging from, Zen, Yoga, Buddhist, Christian, and Shamanic. These forms have forms within them. Shamanism is a 100,000 year old tradition of knowledge. The Shaman is the keeper of an ancient tradition and body of healing knowledge. They were the first healers, responsible for the health and well-being of their community. A Shaman is a medicine man or woman, a healer who workers with spirit and mediates between spirit and our ordinary world. The Shaman enters the non-ordinary reality through meditation and connects to his or her own power source and power animals. A Shaman will heal on many levels; the mind, the body, and the spirit. Unlike Western doctors, who identify a problem and treat a symptom, the Shaman works with the whole person on many levels at once, integrating the mind, body, and spirit in the healing process. The act of diagnosis and healing are one and the same for shamans. Mystical meditation is practiced by the shaman world. Mystical meditation is used to cultivate psychic knowledge, using the third eye and totems, and to gain self-knowledge. Meditation itself will not accomplish these goals, but will assist the Shaman in developing their powers to do so. The goal of humanistic meditation is to achieve mystical states of consciousness. Posture is important, while the shaman’s mind concentrates on a single object, such as breathing control, mantra, yantra (a patterned object), flames, or the beat of a drum. These help the shaman to detach their awareness. The shamans can use meditation to talk to the Gods/Goddesses, spirit guides, or to use the third eye in healing. By meditating, the shaman may connect to their inner self: instincts, memory, attention, creativity, and spirit. By applying consistent effort, the shaman frees themselves from their limiting habits. Dr. Rosemary Kaszans, a modern shamanic chiropractor, gave me her view on the issue of using technology to help meditate, Zen or otherwise. “Adding technology with meditation is just silly… Meditation is supposed to be all about simplifying what is around you, not cluttering up the space around you with technology that won’t help you anyways. The most perfect meditation one can do is to sit alone, in silence, and not focus on anything. If you add anything, even music, you defeat the purpose of true meditation.” (Kaszans)
Technology, for the most part, is counterproductive of universal meditation. Meditation is about stripping away the complicated layers of Maya in order to achieve enlightenment. By using technology, this only adds to the layers, instead of taking them away. Even such technological advancements, such as noise canceling headphones, cannot help much, as it adds a stronger layer of electronic Maya very close to your body, even though it seemingly erases the layer of sound Maya. Even modern shamans, who are not affected by the Maya layers to get into a healing trance, would rather not use technology as it gives a sense of artificial achievement to a spiritual journey. However, there are times when using technology with everyday meditation can be quite useful. The two instances where technology fits in well, is with loose form meditation and when learning meditation. With loose form meditation, any technology that helps soothe the body and mind, such as music, is especially useful. The same situation fits with learning how to meditate. Using such technology as Dr. Chopra’s “Journey to Wild Divine”, learning meditation becomes much easier, and then one can try Universal meditation once they have learned the basics. So, technology does indeed play a part in meditation. Mostly with learning and the loose form of meditation, the digital age helps out greatly. However, when one is ready is actually achieve a higher state of consciousness, technology can no longer be a crutch.
;)
With technology growing at such a incredible rate, it is not any surprise that even traditional practices, such as mediation, are becoming more enhanced through the digital plane. However, the basis of meditation is to simplify your thoughts and feelings, as well as objects surrounding your person, so many say that meditation simply cannot be enhanced through methods such as technology. Meditation, yoga, and other forms of inner healing are becoming more and more popular, does technology have any role in practicing these procedures?
Meditation is a mental discipline included in the practice of many world religions. Meditation’s intent is to induce a state of profound relaxation, inner harmony, and increased awareness. Most people know meditation as just a simple way to relieve stress. The loose, more common, form of meditation, which includes prayer, daydreaming, and simple guided imagery, is the easiest and quickest way to just let go and relax. It is when you allow the mind to rest and go quiet. When our bodies are worked really hard, we get aches and pains. We need to rest the body so it can recuperate from the stress and physical strain we have put onto it. If we do not our bodies can become ill which can lead to neck and back strain. When this happens, we are forced to take it easy. We must have a good night's sleep and in the morning, we feel rested and relaxed. With our minds, we are always thinking, even in sleep the mind is working because most of us dream while we are asleep. As one can see, the mind never rests. However, with meditation we can slow the mind down and relax it to such a level that it gets the chance to have a good rest. After practice, you will be able to stop the thoughts altogether for a short time. When we learn to slow our minds down and think of nothing without any help, we are able to bring ourselves into a state of total awareness. In this state 100% healing can take place. We are able to totally bring into us, our inner child and higher mind. We learn how to listen to our body and what she has to say. If something is off balance or not right, we are able to talk to our bodies and find out exactly what is the problem. Through meditation, we learn how to make true contact with ourselves. We learn to train our mind to function the way she was meant to. Instead of the mind controlling us, we control our mind. The soul becomes in charge once more. All our extra sensors become open and we are able to access all our hidden knowledge and gifts that are blocked from us because the mind is stopping them coming through. Meditation provides all of these powerful healing tools. Even if most people do not realize that they are meditating, they are slowly going though the same steps as the meditators who use the Universal form of meditation. This form of meditation is the same form that the Tibetan Monks use when they are trying to achieve enlightenment. The universal form of meditation requires a great more concentration as the entire basis of this version revolves around the practice of “suspending focus.” This essentially means that one must not focus on anything. By doing this, the meditator may awaken to a higher state of consciousness. “There is only one way to enlightenment - to total, conscious realization of our real nature, God, and universal processes - and that is to awaken from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, super consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness, and transcendental consciousness.” (Davis, 44) To awaken to the next levels of consciousness, the meditator must go through each layer of Maya. Maya is the individual layers of earth and everything it is made up of. The contents of these layer include physical barriers, such as anything that one can use the basic five senses to perceive, but Maya layers also include barriers that one can only sense, such as electromagnetic fields, or anything else that gives off a certain wavelength, like other people‘s energy. By getting past these individual layer, the meditator can get closer and closer to reaching enlightenment, also known as “The Silence.” “The Silence” is, essentially, where God lives, and no one may be with God until they have rid themselves of all the Maya layers. So where does technology fit into all this? Well, technology, when combined with the more commonly used “loose” form of meditation, can be quite an effective combination. Many technological advances have been made in order to help one relax during their guided imagery. Electric Zen waterfalls, noise canceling headphones, and calming music from a CD player are just a few of the digital enhancements that the technological age has provided to help out the practice of meditation. The most advanced piece of technology on the market at the moment is not a digital enhancement to achieving meditation, but rather a means to learning how to meditation the correct way. A video game, “Journey to Wild Divine”, uses a separate component to measure the biofeedback of the player’s body. Developed by Dr. Deepak Chopra, this game’s controller (Figure 1) consists of three electrode fingertip sensors that monitor the player’s heart rate, breathing rate, emotion levels through biofeedback, and to progress through the game, the player must learn to control these and other aspects of your body. Biofeedback is scientifically proven to have a powerful, positive effect on your emotional and physical well-being by teaching you to alter your brain activity, blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate, and other critical bodily functions. “Journey to Wild Divine’s” innovative biofeedback hardware platform measures skin conductance levels and heart rate variability (a cutting-edge measurement of cardiovascular health) through the three “Magic Ring” sensors gently attached to your fingers (as seen in Figure 1). The measurements are registered through the game’s “Light Stone” and fed back to you through biofeedback “events” on the screen. Characters within the game help you learn to control your body’s reactions. By increasing, decreasing, or synchronizing body rhythms, through various levels of breathing, relaxation, and meditation techniques, like the “Heart Breath”, you’ll quickly learn to master the “events” and progress in the game. The knowledge you gain will help enhance your personal growth and well-being. The graphs (Figures 2 & 3) illustrate the dramatic physical changes that occur when a person plays “Journey to Wild Divine.“ The first graph (Figure 2) shows the decrease in Skin Conductance Level, which signifies a state of relaxation, during a biofeedback event in the game which requires the person to calm themselves in order to float a feather to the bottom of the screen. The second graph (Figure 3) depicts the simultaneous harmonies occurring between the decrease in Skin Conductance Levels (the pink line), the even wave of the heart rate variability (the purple line), the steady strength of the pulse (the red lines), and the peaks of the pulse rate (the green dots). This graph was charted during another biofeedback event where the player is asked to perform a yogic breath to help “heal the planet.“ Once the player has mastered the techniques, and beaten the game, the person can no longer use technology to go any further into universal meditation. However, while “Journey to the Wild Divine” is the most advanced piece of technology to teach meditation, the most commonly used piece of the digital age for learning is, of course, the internet. The internet has such a wide range of information services that any one person can easily find prayers, sutras, and mantras over the web to help further their search for inner healing. Many websites are devoted to meditation, and others even offer information on local meditation groups, healing seminars around the country, and helpful hints from others who might have broken through a few of those Maya layers. So, while technology can be great for learning the meditation techniques, to actually achieve a higher state of consciousness, one must discard the hindrances of these digital devices. By trying to use machines and technology to get into trances and meditate, one only increases the Maya layers and therefore makes it even harder to awaken to the next level of consciousness.
The youth of the Westernized culture, namely America, are becoming more and more interested in the meditative arts, as polled on the “One Spirit” website. Of course, most of the youth of America only practice the “loose” form of meditation, and rely heavily upon technology to help relieve stress. Yoga is the one of the main types of meditation that many people in America practice, and many people also enhance their yoga exercises by including some form of technology into the formula. Most of the time, the technology is a simple radio or CD player, but sometimes “meditators” will hook up more advanced technology to monitor heart rate, breathing, cholesterol burn count, and other similar exercise surveillance equipments. Music, games, and the internet are just a few of the digital enhancements that youth feel help them meditate. Most are so integrated with technology as part of their normal lives, that using digital enhancements for meditation is like a second nature to them.
One of the most famous healing techniques of the Tibetan Monks is the colored sand arts mandala. (Figures 4-10) A mandala, a Sanskrit word meaning “circle”, is a multicolored, two dimensional sand painting, and are symbols of the Universe and its energy. In Tibet, this art is called dul-tson-kyll-khor, which is translated as “mandala of colored powders“, and each mandala is a archetypal template to remind people of the cycle of life and death. Millions of grains of sand are laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days or weeks. Formed of a traditional prescribed iconography that includes geometric shapes and a multitude of ancient spiritual symbols, the sand-painted mandala is used as a tool for re-consecrating the earth and its inhabitants. The blueprint of the mandala is not new or improvised, but rather one found in the ancient Buddhist scriptures, as all mandala blueprints are. The monks map out the mandala with string, chalk, and a wooden compass. They will spend the next two weeks filling in the pattern using special tools called chak-pur. These instruments are used to place and sculpt the mandala. The monks each hold a chak-pur, which is essentially a long metal funnel from which the different colored sands are poured from, and run a metal rod on the funnel’s grated surface, creating vibration, which in turn, causes the sands to flow like liquid. (Figure 8) The mandala is meant to bring positive energies and healing to the community. When the mandala is finished, it is tradition for the sand mandala to be destroyed shortly after completion. This is done as a metaphor of the impermanence of life. The sands are swept up and placed in a urn; to fulfill the function of healing, half is distributed to the audience at the closing ceremony, while the remainder is carried to a nearby body of water, where it is deposited. The waters then carry the healing blessing to the ocean, and from there it spreads throughout the world for planetary healing. This entire process is a major type of meditation for the monks. Since the monks cannot make even one mistake during the entire process, intense concentration is required for the full completion.
I, Ian Kaszans, attempted to do a mandala for a project in New Media Art History, only my mandala was not sand, it was digital. Being a youth at the time, I, of course, thought that everything could be solved if enough technology was applied to the challenge. So using as many technological achievements as were relevant to the creation of the mandala and my own meditative studies, I set out to create a digital mandala. Setting up with my CD player, complete with Sony headphones and a relaxing pan flute CD, and using my Windows Presario laptop and a program similar to Photoshop, I started the creation of my mandala. I tried to use all the same techniques that I saw the Tibetan Monks use when they came to the Telfair Museum. The main technique that the monks used was to slowly lay down a little sand at a time. I processed this technique mentally and applied it digitally by using a 1 pixel brush for the entire mandala. This digital process, as one can imagine, took quite a long time to complete. And, needless to say, I got bored very quickly. I felt drained, and after a few hours of mandala pixeling, I found that using the Fill tool sped the mandala creation process exponentially. But this sacrifice in technique, also cut my meditation experience in half. True that I was young, inexperienced in the meditation ways, and impatient, but I thought for sure that somehow, by working on this project, I would be able to meditate and become closer to God. Of course, by cheating the technique, I was neither able to meditate neither find myself any closer to relaxation or God. After the experimental digital mandala was complete, I realized that technology just should not be applied to this aspect of meditation. (Figure 11)
Meditation is so easy that it only takes up a small part of your day, so it can be done first thing in the morning and last thing at night. You could be on a bus, in a park, or even at the office in your lunch hour. It does not matter where you are, if you have a spare 5 minutes, you can meditate. Now we will look at doing a simple meditation first thing in the morning. When you wake up in the morning, take a few minutes to wake yourself up. Do this by giving yourself a good shake, then find somewhere, where you can sit without being disturbed. It can be on the floor with a couple of pillows or even sitting up in bed, out in the morning sun, in fact anywhere where you feel comfortable. You can then, if you feel it helps, have some soft music on, even just have silence. When you are comfortable, you need to focus on your body, starting with your feet, and focusing on your breathing, then you should notice your breathing, slowing the breath, bring your awareness to your feet and traveling up your whole body from your knees to your hips, from your hips to your stomach, from your stomach to your heart. Now notice your heartbeats, breathing with the rhythm of the heartbeat, try to stay focused, but if you find that your mind wanders do not be alarmed, with time and practice, you will be able to stop this! Breathing with the heartbeat will help you to understand the rhythm of your body and this is the start of learning to listen to your natural body language. When you have mastered this art, you will be able to read the warning signals in your body when something goes wrong. When you are ready, bring your focus back to the body. Focusing on your shoulders, breathing slowly, bring your awareness to your neck, and then, still breathing slowly, bring your awareness to your head. When you have reached the head, slowly bring your whole awareness to all of your body. Now take time to listen to your whole body, listen to the sounds coming from your body and breathe with those sounds. After you have done this bring yourself back to reality, slowly allow your mind to start its thinking process and your breathing to go back too normal. Now just sit for a few minutes and feel how calm and relaxed you are, when you are ready get up and start your day.
You will notice by doing this morning meditation that your whole day will feel more peaceful and there will be less stress around you because you will have given your mind a rest. You can also use meditation to help you with any problems you may have in your life. Before you enter into your meditative state, focus on the problem and then ask your higher mind to help come up with answers. Go into your meditation and after you have finished, see if you receive any advice or hidden insight that could help you. It may be that you will see the problems in a different perceptive. If you are after some emotional healing within yourself you can also focus on the issues that are causing you pain, grief or worry before you go into your meditative state. Ask that your inner child help you heal these situations. After the mediation, you may well find that you see your pain, fear and worries in a different light also.
There are countless forms of meditation that can be used ranging from, Zen, Yoga, Buddhist, Christian, and Shamanic. These forms have forms within them. Shamanism is a 100,000 year old tradition of knowledge. The Shaman is the keeper of an ancient tradition and body of healing knowledge. They were the first healers, responsible for the health and well-being of their community. A Shaman is a medicine man or woman, a healer who workers with spirit and mediates between spirit and our ordinary world. The Shaman enters the non-ordinary reality through meditation and connects to his or her own power source and power animals. A Shaman will heal on many levels; the mind, the body, and the spirit. Unlike Western doctors, who identify a problem and treat a symptom, the Shaman works with the whole person on many levels at once, integrating the mind, body, and spirit in the healing process. The act of diagnosis and healing are one and the same for shamans. Mystical meditation is practiced by the shaman world. Mystical meditation is used to cultivate psychic knowledge, using the third eye and totems, and to gain self-knowledge. Meditation itself will not accomplish these goals, but will assist the Shaman in developing their powers to do so. The goal of humanistic meditation is to achieve mystical states of consciousness. Posture is important, while the shaman’s mind concentrates on a single object, such as breathing control, mantra, yantra (a patterned object), flames, or the beat of a drum. These help the shaman to detach their awareness. The shamans can use meditation to talk to the Gods/Goddesses, spirit guides, or to use the third eye in healing. By meditating, the shaman may connect to their inner self: instincts, memory, attention, creativity, and spirit. By applying consistent effort, the shaman frees themselves from their limiting habits. Dr. Rosemary Kaszans, a modern shamanic chiropractor, gave me her view on the issue of using technology to help meditate, Zen or otherwise. “Adding technology with meditation is just silly… Meditation is supposed to be all about simplifying what is around you, not cluttering up the space around you with technology that won’t help you anyways. The most perfect meditation one can do is to sit alone, in silence, and not focus on anything. If you add anything, even music, you defeat the purpose of true meditation.” (Kaszans)
Technology, for the most part, is counterproductive of universal meditation. Meditation is about stripping away the complicated layers of Maya in order to achieve enlightenment. By using technology, this only adds to the layers, instead of taking them away. Even such technological advancements, such as noise canceling headphones, cannot help much, as it adds a stronger layer of electronic Maya very close to your body, even though it seemingly erases the layer of sound Maya. Even modern shamans, who are not affected by the Maya layers to get into a healing trance, would rather not use technology as it gives a sense of artificial achievement to a spiritual journey. However, there are times when using technology with everyday meditation can be quite useful. The two instances where technology fits in well, is with loose form meditation and when learning meditation. With loose form meditation, any technology that helps soothe the body and mind, such as music, is especially useful. The same situation fits with learning how to meditate. Using such technology as Dr. Chopra’s “Journey to Wild Divine”, learning meditation becomes much easier, and then one can try Universal meditation once they have learned the basics. So, technology does indeed play a part in meditation. Mostly with learning and the loose form of meditation, the digital age helps out greatly. However, when one is ready is actually achieve a higher state of consciousness, technology can no longer be a crutch.
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