Meditation Help.

[SohaliaGrimorie]

I'm not really a newbie, but since I've gone back to basics... I have a newbie question that I hope some of you could help me with.

I have a lot of trouble meditating. And when I manage to achieve meditation, it's it very shallow. I used to attend a group meditation circle weekly when I was still living with my parents, however I wish to start working more on my own to develop, and am reluctant to find another group. I could meditate fairly well in a group... I would achieve meditation quicker and it was a little deeper than it is now (though, not very deep most of the time).

I'd like some sugestions on exercises and things that way help me achieve a deeper, more productive meditational state than I'm currently getting. I've have seen little to no change in my meditational skill in the last 2 years, and shortly gave up on it. I'm currently making an effort to be regular in my practice, however I don't see to be getting anywhere and would apreciate some help.

How I currently meditate if to mind some quiet and comfortable, and count my breathing untill everything becomes still. I usually achieve this within 5 minutes. Then I try to focus on something, say a flower. I can never visualise the flower itself, and never in my years of practice have been able to visualise anything. So I try to focus on it's colour, and texture more than it's image. It doesn't seem to be working. When I do "guided" meditation.. they tell me to visualise the beatuful tree.... and I can't visualise the tree. I sit there seeing black. And while I am relaxed by the exsperience I feel i'm not gaining what I should from it...

My sister is a visual person. She sees a LOT. Spirit guides in full detail, visulations... She's built for platform work, really. I myself, are the oposite. I'm a natural empath and healer (and through my laziness and depression, I've lost my natural knack for both these...) therefore I feel a lot more than she does. I sense how spirit 'look', or choose to show me what they look like. I sense feelings and energies. If it's very dark, I can vaugely see energy, both as static and as colour occasionally. I've lost my connection to even that level of reception at the momment, and I'm back on track and trying to bring it out again.

So, in short and without the rant... Does anyone know how I might achieve better meditation, and work on my visualisation skills? They are two things I'd really like to become 'skillful' at.

[Jenett]

I'm not a very strong visual person either.

One of the exercises I had to do early in training was working with a whole bunch of different senses - so we worked on recreating a particular taste in our mind, different kinds of sounds (starting with something like a bell, moving on to more complex music or combinations), different kinds of textures, different kinds of visuals.

The first question is, what are your goals?

You can be skillful at a number of types of meditation without having good visualisation skills. You can be good at creating something in your mind without very strong visual skills as well. Do you need to create an actual visual image (or a strong visual image), or is creating it using other senses or emotional contexts going to also work? (If you want visualisation skills to help with magical working, you may or may not need the visual component: some people find the emotional or other sensory components work just as well for creating in your mind whatever it is you want to create/manifest/etc.)

That said, if you want to improve your visual skills, I found that as I worked with the other senses, I got better at the visuals too. Start with the stuff you're stronger at.

So, for example, you might create a scene - say that you're standing somewhere. (I'm better at creating impressions of what's around me than what I see, so that's where I often start). I start with the least visual detail, and move from there.

What's the ground under my feet like? Is it an inside floor? A meadow? Mud? Frozen ground? What's the temperature like? What kind of sounds do I hear around me? Is a particular sound relevant to whatever I'm doing?

I then move to spatial relationships: what kind of space am I in? Big meadow, small room? Are there walls nearby or big open spaces? If there's something near me, what kind of general shape does it have? What kind of texture? (So I may just get as far as 'tree shaped' or 'cottage shaped' or 'person shaped' before I work on details.)

Usually, at this point, the visual details start popping in, or get much easier, but you can keep working with that kind of thing - what are the specifics of the shape? What's the texture of clothing or bark or the ground? Is it moving? What kinds of movement?

It's taken several years, but I'm a lot more confident about the visual work I do now. I also found that breaking down concepts in the senses I'm more comfortable with (sound, spatial relationships, texture) helped me figure out how to do the same thing with visual details.

[Sibylle]

Hi SohaliaGrimorie,

Jenett made some excellent points. I'd like to add, if you're looking for some beautiful ideas for guided meditations, Marian Green has a few excellent ones in "Natural Witchcraft" and "A Witch Alone". They're my personal favourites.

Another thing you could do is, take a specific aspect of a deity you'd like to meditate on, like the maiden aspect of the goddess, and set this as a "theme". Give yourself 10 minutes (set an alarm clock), and don't give up if you find your thoughts straying after a few minutes. It's alright. The point is not to feel like a failure... view intruding thoughts as clouds, they drift by... just let them go, don't attach any emotion to them (the worst thing you can do is think: "Dang, I'm having a thought again! I'm no good at this!" because by attaching emotion to the thought, you're making it stronger).

Next, you could meditate on each of the elements in turn... or whatever you are interested in, there really are no limits. Bottom line: it takes time and LOTS of practise, so have a little patience with yourself and don't give up!

Hope this helps a bit :)

Hugs!!

[SohaliaGrimorie]

I've been meditating at least 4 years. I know my lack of improovement comes from lack of practice outside my old meditation group, but like I said I'm working on it.

Jenett, you're tips sound like they will be very helpful. I seem to do things similar to you in regards to sensing what things are like before seeing what they are like. Thank you both for the sugestions, I'll try them all and see if they click with me. Don't worry, I'm not giving up just yet :) I know this will be a long process, but I think it's worth wild, and I'm planning to practice meditation and visualization everyday (recording my progress so I can see if I'm getting better over time).

[Bethra]

Try usuling pictures, photos any images you can really get inside. Look long and hard at the image and build the picture around you. Make the picture come alive so that is becomes a 3 dimentional thing. Consentrate on one of your senses at a time build the image first with your visual sense making it solid to the minds eye, seeing it move and be real. Move on to the sounds sense, listern to the sounds that go with the image build them up slowly. Say you are looking at a picture of a river running through a wooded glen what sounds would you hear in this place? The river running, the birds singing, insects going about their daily business. Just build it up slowly like a layer system. Keep on adding to the image in your head and making it real. Once you have filled the image with one lot of sense move on to the next and build that up in layers again.

I'm not sure this is what you are looking for or if you are actualy looking for the type of meditation where you achieve a state of no mind so I can only advise on this part for now. If you are aiming for another aspect of meditation please explain so that I can maybe help more.

[Jenett]

Glad I could help! (It's a subject near and dear my heart, as you could probably tell)

During the day, I thought of a couple of other things you might consider.

One is to explore some kinds of moving meditation - that can be anything from mindful walking to yoga to tai chi to dance or song meditation (in the latter two, I've gotten some good ideas from Gabrielle Roth's book "Sweat your Prayers" and Shawna Carol's book "The Way of Song" thoguh I don't normally work with the full process of either book.)

Erm. Had another thought, forgot it now (way past my normal bedtime). I'll post it again if I remember it.

[SohaliaGrimorie]

Glad I could help! (It's a subject near and dear my heart, as you could probably tell)

During the day, I thought of a couple of other things you might consider.

One is to explore some kinds of moving meditation - that can be anything from mindful walking to yoga to tai chi to dance or song meditation (in the latter two, I've gotten some good ideas from Gabrielle Roth's book "Sweat your Prayers" and Shawna Carol's book "The Way of Song" thoguh I don't normally work with the full process of either book.)

Erm. Had another thought, forgot it now (way past my normal bedtime). I'll post it again if I remember it.

Thanks! I plan on encorperating Yoga into my daily plans as well as a seated meditation, for variety and practice. I really like yoga and tai chi (can't find a decent tai chi instructor around here though...)

Thank you Bethra for you sugestions! I have tried similar things... like looking at a flower, or candle flame in detail, then closing my eyes and trying to visualised the flower/flame in my mind... but I dont think it was practiced often enough to make much of a difference. I'll try all the things sugested and see if I can find something that works for me.

[blueangel]

I don't think this is a traditional meditation technique but I get really easily distracted by noise. What i like to do is listen to the noises far away/outside the room. I really concentrate on them. Then i move onto any noises in the room itself/close vicinity. I really focus on them. Then I move onto my breathing and heartbeat and really listen to them. I often then get into that really great meditative state and the noises around me totally disappear.

[Ben Gruagach]

If you are trying to develop your visualization skills, then my suggestion would be to start with very basic things first instead of trying to visualize real objects. Try to visualize a shape -- a circle on a dark background, for instance. Once you've got that mastered, add another detail to it, like a particular colour. As you get better you can move on to more complex things.

If the goal is more about meditating rather than visualizing, I'd second the suggestions others have made to try other forms of meditating such as movement meditation. One of my favourite ways to achieve one-pointed awareness is not to try and imagine something that isn't necessarily present, but instead to focus on a particular sense awareness of something that is present. For example, I'll lie in a dark room and will place a pebble on my third eye (on my forehead) and then will just lie there with my eyes closed, and try to do nothing but focus on the feeling of the pebble on my forehead. The goal is to focus attention so much that everything else just dissolves away.

Another way that's worked for me is to just stare (but not forcing my eyes to stay open -- it's ok to blink) at something like a candle flame or a dot on the wall or something like that. Eventually I find that I forget about everything else but that one thing. It's a matter of concentrating and just not paying attention to anything else. But it does help to make it easier by doing it in a place where you can try and make sure there are as few distractions as possible.

If you're more moved by music, try listening to the same recording in a comfortable place where you won't be disturbed, with as few distractions as possible. Close your eyes. Focus on the music and nothing else. I find it works best for me if it's music without lyrics, and repetitive. It works best if you use the same music all the time for this exercise rather than using different songs each time. There are CDs of shamanic drumming that are designed especially for this type of meditation, or for trance work or ritual work. Find what seems to suit you and stick with it!

Meditation is, after all, largely about discipline and learning to relax and be receptive. It takes a lot of practice to get the benefits.

[SohaliaGrimorie]

If you are trying to develop your visualization skills, then my suggestion would be to start with very basic things first instead of trying to visualize real objects. Try to visualize a shape -- a circle on a dark background, for instance. Once you've got that mastered, add another detail to it, like a particular colour. As you get better you can move on to more complex things.

If the goal is more about meditating rather than visualizing, I'd second the suggestions others have made to try other forms of meditating such as movement meditation. One of my favourite ways to achieve one-pointed awareness is not to try and imagine something that isn't necessarily present, but instead to focus on a particular sense awareness of something that is present. For example, I'll lie in a dark room and will place a pebble on my third eye (on my forehead) and then will just lie there with my eyes closed, and try to do nothing but focus on the feeling of the pebble on my forehead. The goal is to focus attention so much that everything else just dissolves away.

Another way that's worked for me is to just stare (but not forcing my eyes to stay open -- it's ok to blink) at something like a candle flame or a dot on the wall or something like that. Eventually I find that I forget about everything else but that one thing. It's a matter of concentrating and just not paying attention to anything else. But it does help to make it easier by doing it in a place where you can try and make sure there are as few distractions as possible.

If you're more moved by music, try listening to the same recording in a comfortable place where you won't be disturbed, with as few distractions as possible. Close your eyes. Focus on the music and nothing else. I find it works best for me if it's music without lyrics, and repetitive. It works best if you use the same music all the time for this exercise rather than using different songs each time. There are CDs of shamanic drumming that are designed especially for this type of meditation, or for trance work or ritual work. Find what seems to suit you and stick with it!

Meditation is, after all, largely about discipline and learning to relax and be receptive. It takes a lot of practice to get the benefits.

The music actually worked for me well... I seemed to top using it when I fleft my fave/most effective CD at my ex boyfriends house and we broke up before I could get it back. I think I'll get another copy of it and try with music again.

Thanks for the tips, they are all really great. :smileroll