Meditation has been of increasing interest in recent decades. From all Buddhist traditions, to more secular mindfulness, many people all over the world have adopted it with both successes and failures. And for one reason: meditation is not an easy practice. Some may get lost in their practice, others may be missing the point or get caught in religiosity or spiritual clouds.
How to meditate? This guide will provide you with simple, step-by-step advice to start meditation in a safe and constructive way. Here are the steps:
Step 1. Understand What Meditation Is All About
Have you realized that you often act automatically and are not in control of your own habits and emotions? As we grow, we tend to rely on habitual thoughts and patterns. This is a useful thing in general but, if kept unchecked, it may be limiting or even destructive to our life. Moreover, some more subtil patterns of perception can, Little by little, hinder our awareness of what is happening around us as well as inside ourselves.
This is where meditation comes into play. Meditation is a set of exercises made to help you regain control over those unwholesome patterns, with one goal in mind: managing your life better!
It enables you to improve or correct key aspects of our human experience:
- Openness: Regain your ability to observe the world around you and face reality, free of the influence of your own conditioning (and of what others may think).
- Lucidity: Regain your ability to understand the situations you are facing, with clarity and discernment, without shortcuts, jugements or discrimination.
- Freedom: Regain your ability to act and respond happily and efficiently to the world around you. Dance with both the simplicity and complexity of your reality while appreciating it for what it is.
There are many misunderstandings about what meditation is. We will discover this later in this guide.
Step 2. Find a Time and Place that Works for You
Theoretically, meditation exercises can be done anywhere, any time. Yet, in order to better focus – and especially for meditation beginners, it is recommended to define what is going to make meditation easier to access. In order to properly meditate, you’d better set:
- A proper time, free from bargain
- A proper place, free from sensorial disturbances
Time: “I don’t have time!“
The default mode and bad habit to work on is to remove this wrong impression that we don’t have time. As everything is a matter of priorities, time can be stretched and contracted, and priorities will find a room in your schedule. As a matter of fact: We never have time. We take time!
Give yourself some time slots, (10 to 20 mn) preferably in the morning before addressing all your responsibilities of the day. Or in the evening once the bulk of your activity is done, and when you can regain your serenity.
Once you start practicing, you’ll find that the tightness of time seems to evaporate and your mental space will increase. Don’t worry, once your practice is over, you will surely still be able to manage your day… or your night … most probably even better!
Place: Avoid what could steal your attention
Place: Avoid what could steal your attention
You can meditate in the subway heading to work, or when queuing up at the supermarket. Yet, before reaching a peace of mind that would make such environments suitable and fruitful to meditate, you may want to find a more restful place to sit.
Indeed, the less disturbance you have, the easier you will be able to achieve a proper meditation session. Some disturbances could include:
- Auditory disturbances: Noises from your environment should be reduced to minimum. As the goal is to center back our attention to our most simple experience, even music is not advised. If your environment is too loud and it is hard to find a more peaceful place to sit, the use of earplugs or noise cancelling headphones will help.
- Visual disturbances: Intense light, strong colors, movements and blinks: these visual disturbances may reduce your ability to meditate. Although people tend to close their eyes while meditating, we still advise keeping your eyes open and gently facing reality.
Step 3. Keep These 5 Rules In Mind Before You Start
- 1 – Watch the thief: Your attention will surely be stolen by passing thoughts. It’s ok, that is exactly why we sit. You are just training your habit… to fight your habits! Just don’t forget to get back to the focus of your meditation as soon as you realise that the thief got you !
- 2 – Don’t expect the fruits: If you expect a specific outcome from a meditation session, you are already projecting from your own conditioning. Sit with nothing to expect and pay attention to your experience and the exercise.
- 3 – Don’t judge yourself: As any counter intuitive work, it requires discipline. It seems easy but it is not that easy. Stay away from ruling your practice out and deciding this is not for you. All good things come with a note of perseverance.
- 4 – Don’t expect to be a champion. That is not the point. It is difficult for everybody to fight the stream of our mental patterns, but, by doing it regularly you will surely get better at managing your life.
- 5 – Don’t mistake the process for the purpose: Meditation can be difficult, or other times pleasant. Keep the purpose in mind and don’t get stuck into pleasures and highs which are only temporary benefits of meditation exercises.
Step 4. The base of it all: Experience Reality, For Once (Calm Down The Labelling Monkey)
You want to know how to start meditation? Or you already had some prior experiences? Here you will find a basic but crucial exercise for beginners and experienced practitioners alike.
Option 1: How many times have you caught your mind saying “I know, I know…”. This repetition shows a sign of pattern – like a damage record – isn’t it? It sticks to our past understanding, information or colorations … our past conditioning we say.
Can you feel this little arrogant monkey mind of ours that is closing your mind?
Option 2: In your life, you have probably already noticed that there is a little voice that kind of goes “I know this, I know that” . And very often, it also immediately closes the subject with the “I know…I know” kind of attitude or mantra. This ‘I know-I know mentality’ is the first pattern to get rid of. Why? Because it is the base of our closed mind !
Thus it is the base of our first meditation exercise & experience.
(Since you have read and followed the previous steps, let’s now get it started.)
Sit in a straight position in a quiet place, with your eyes open, and (always) take the exercise with kindness and humour.
As meditation has a single purpose of managing our life better, a first meditation can be done by taking a step back and watching our flow of thoughts and this usual habitual mental pattern of “I know, I know” that we all tend to have.
Why? Because it is the base of our closed mind !
Sit in a straight position in a quiet place, with your eyes open, and always take the exercise with kindness and humour.
DO NOTHING !!!
Now take the time to look at yourself: How many times have you caught your mindself saying “I know, I know…”. This repetition shows a sign of pattern – like a damage record. It sticks to our past understanding, information or colorations … our past conditioning we say.
Can you feel this little arrogant monkey mind of ours that is closing your mind?
Take a few minutes to do nothing… Just be there, quiet, being one with the situation, like a happy baby, or like Alice in wonderland … as long as it lasts …
Very soon you will become aware and can watch Just watch the monkey of your mind at work. Itthat keeps saying: I know-I know… , or it keeps labelling: this-is-this-and-that-is-that…
Don’t worry about it, just notice and watch the thief at play…. Somehow Alice went from wonder land to worry or busy land…. Just keep watching the thief….
Now, to get rid of it, try the opposite(this): While exhaling, think or realise that: ‘pfff… I really don’t know ‘… (or this is not his, this is not that…)
Can you notice a relaxation? An openness ? A landing effect? An increased lucidity of what is around you? A return to wonderland?
Just spend a few minutes watching those two aspects of your experience that keep changing along those two opposite patterns. Which one makes sense, feels better?
At the very beginning of the meditation path and all the way to expertise you will be working with this process: Getting rid of the I know-I know mentality or pattern, and working toward the ‘ I really don’t know’ opening factor.
This process, a dual or double complementary training process, rather is what will open our spiritual discovery channel, so to speak. The channel that is hidden by the ‘I know-I know’ attitude. It will also guide us and propel us through the Rabbit Hole….
Until we have had or foster that experience and choice in our ‘mind management’, then there is no meditation whatsoever. Trust me, many practitioners, even advanced ones, have missed it. This is because they are often way too busy with the paraphernalia of their spiritual or religious dispersion. (Nowadays that meditation is in our daily life, we could say that they are too busy with their sentimental, sensual, career or business projections… but anyway, very far from the delight of wonderland. Much closer to roller coaster of wanting land (i-want-i-want-i-want)(i-cry-i-cry-i-cry)
Being aware of those flaws, just go back to ‘doing nothing’, and learn to manage the thief.
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Within our usual habitual mental pattern, there is a little voice that kind of goes “I know this, I know that” . And very often, it also immediately closes the subject with the “I know, I know” kind of attitude or mantra. This ‘I know-I know mentality’ is the first pattern to get rid of. Our first meditation exercise & experience.
Why? Because it is the base of our closed mind !
Please look at yourself for a second, look at your pattern, (you and others by the way): How many times have you caught yourself saying “I know ,I know…”. This repetition shows a sign of pattern-like a damage record … A pattern that is closing our mind and makes it stick to our past understanding, information or colorations … our past conditioning we say.
Can you feel this little arrogant monkey mind of ours that is closing your mind? ( once in a while ? or way too often to your liking? )
Please take a few minutes to do nothing… Just watch the monkey of your mind that keeps saying: I know-I know, or keeps labelling: this-is-this-and-that-is-that…
Now try the opposite. While exhaling, think or realise that: ‘pfff… I really don’t know ‘…
Can you notice a relaxation? An openness ? A landing effect? An increased lucidity of what is around you?
Just spend a few minutes watching those two aspects of your experience, changing along those two opposite patterns. Which one makes sense, feels better?
At the very beginning of the meditation path and all the way to expertise we are going to work with this process: Get rid of the I know-I know mentality or pattern, and work toward the ‘ I really don’t know’ opening factor.
This process, or double complementary process rather is what will open our spiritual discovery channel so to speak. The channel that is hidden by the ‘I know-I know’ attitude.
Step 5. Debrief On Your First Experience
Easy to catch, but difficult to maintain. Isn’t it?
Sometimes, the implications of the clarity and freedom that come with that experience can be truly life changing. Life change is not an obligation or a crunching tunnel. It is just an openness away from our limited world and limited vision, into a field of possibility about how we could manage our life differently. It is our ground zero in a way. We can always restart from this point.
‘Back to Square One!’ , I often say. A delicious reset button to keep evolving harmoniously in our personal & social situation on this planet.
(For Pierre… in case you find some part ussefull…)
Those points below are just to keep teasing you a bit … debriefing so to say…
- If we can stop this I-know-I-know pattern in our mind, we can feel the space opening in our mind… isn’t it?
- if we can stop labelling what we see with ‘this-is-this and that-is-that’ pattern, we can start seeing, hearing, feeling what there is … isn’t it?
- Not ‘knowing’ gives us so much perspective and a new way to look at reality. Right?
- I-am-like-this, I-am-like-that, this-is-like-this, this-is-like-that… look for one second at the effect of those ‘ mantras’ in our mind… isn’t it very limiting? Does it cage our experience?
- Since we can see and feel those cages and their limitations effect… then we can just drop it for a while and feel the difference. Can you?
- Truely, a different space of perception opens and that is our first enlightenment… and our first practice then ! Enjoy it for a while…
What happens when nothing happens?
…..
There is a big confusion about enlightenment linked with meditation (practices). The word enlightenment means a shot of lucidity. Your mind clicks on something, and gets the point. Like archimede saying ‘Eureka’, whenever we understand something there is a kind of liberating click in the mind: A small ah-ha moment … Ahhh got it !
As you might have experienced during meditation exercises, the experience we are talking about is very very simple, easily accessible by most of us. The spiritual and religious propaganda has sold it as a ‘big deal’ , and usually as a far away, hard to catch goal. It’s good for business we could say… or for political gain…. but the bare truth is that it is soooo simple.
Although It is a very very simple and easily accessible experience, nevertheless it can have a lot of implications for our lives. This little enlightenment is the start of the process, not the end. There will be many, many enlightenments as we move forward into the discovery channel of our human experience. Each will lead to a wider and wiser world, and a better management of it.
A very personal encounter with that extraordinary – yet very ordinary – experience that we call life… while it lasts !
