http://educate-yourself.org/lte/meditation18dec08.shtml
December 18, 2008

Interested in Meditation, The Basics (Dec. 18, 2008)

----- Original Message -----
From: Rod
To: Editor
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008
Subject: Re: Orgone Protector Pendant Info.

[snip]

Can you also send me info. on meditation techniques? I'm was in the first Gulf War veteran and I need to restore my health as it has deteriorated over the years.

Regards,

Rod

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Hi Rod,

Meditation is a big topic. There are many books available and undoubtedly many articles already posted to the internet. Basically, it requires quieting the mind and body . You find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed by any sounds including telephones, etc. It's best to sit in a position so your spine is straight up and down, and not sit slouching with a rounded back. It's easiest to do it on a straight back hard chair (don't lean against the back) that has a cushion on it or sit cross legged on a cushion on the floor or on top of a thick blanket folded over many times. Your butt needs to be comfortable. You close your eyes and you relax every part of your body by starting at the top of your head and FEEL your focus is there and tell every cell in your skin, brain, and eyes, etc to relax and LET GO. You'll have to spend 4 or 5 minutes on your head alone telling all the parts, the muscles in your neck and face, etc to RELAX and let go. They won't listen to you at first, but if you keep it up and gently urge the cells to let go, you will notice that the tension begins to drain away from your face, slowly. It's rather amazing to realize that you can have conscious control over parts of your body that are normally under involuntary, subconscious control. After you've gone around your head and relaxed every area, you move down to your shoulders and do the same thing. From there, you go to the chest and arms, then the stomach area, then down and down until to you finally cover the feet. The relaxation part could easily take 15 -20 minutes by itself--in the beginning. After a time, you can shorten it down to 4 or 5 minutes for the whole body. It takes practice to get better at it.

After the body is more relaxed, you now quiet the mind. You want to stop the constant chatter of random thoughts flying in and out of your mind. There are many ways to do that. Some people focus their attention to the end of their nose and focus on their breathing going in and out of the nose. As thoughts come into your head, you gently let them pass out and not concentrate on the thought, but only the air moving in and out of your nostril. You try to regulate the breathing rate by counting (in sync with your heartbeat is best) the same count going in as the exhale breath going out. Your breathing will become slower and more relaxed. You keep it up for at least 20 minutes.

Another way is to use a word or a sound and repeat it in your mind softly and push out extraneous thoughts as they try to come in. The word or sound is called a mantra. Tibetans say "ommmm-pad-me-ummm" as one well known mantra or just "ommmmm" by itself. . There are many of them. Using a repeated mantra helps you take the focus off fighting incoming thoughts and gives you the job of focusing on the mantra and often you can "forget" yourself and find that you have a "blank" period in which you seem to lose track of time. You will notice that you feel very relaxed and refreshed after this blank period, which might only last for a few seconds or sometime many minutes. You shouldn't expect this to happen right away, nor does it happen every time, but when it happens, you had a brief glimpse of "being in the now" or "being-ness" which is quite different from the normal state of waking consciousness.

Get a few books and you'll learn much more.

Regards, Ken

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