Meditation Techniques – An Overview

 

I have come across hundreds of meditation techniques in the last 10 years or so, during which I have been interested in the practice of meditation.

Just like each of us is a unique individual, similarly there are so many different ways to access the mind-field and raise the level of our consciousness. The ways differ but not the purpose.

The purpose is just this: to tune into higher frequencies of awareness.

You do it by consciously raising your own vibrational frequency. Actually what you do is just leave the lower frequencies behind and the higher ones automatically move towards you.

Think of this in terms of high pressure-low pressure areas. Just like the high pressure winds are always moving toward the low pressure areas, similarly the higher energies of the cosmos are always moving towards the low pressure areas of the human soul to balance the things out. 

So basically you do not do anything, per se, you just allow yourself to receive those higher signals.

All the meditation techniques, fall into four groups. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic and contemplative.

Visual meditation techniques further fall into two subgroups. Subjective Visual and Objective Visual.

Subjective Visual Meditation Techniques

Subjective visual meditation techniques use the imaginative powers of your mind. When you are doing such a meditation, you close your eyes and imagine yourself in a peaceful place directing your thoughts toward certain experiences as if in a movie.

Chakra meditation techniques that use the mental creation of lights of the spectrum, corresponding to different chakras, for increasing your field-flow fall into this category, and so do the meditation techniques for creating bio-scalar energy for self healing.

Objective Visual Meditation Techniques

Objective visual meditation techniques use objects to help you fix your attention and develop concentration. The object might be anything agreeable to you, like the soft flame of a candle, a cross or the picture of a sage etc.

Think of it this way. Love is a subjective experience but the person you love makes you feel that emotion in his presence just by being with you in person.

Once you progress, however, objective meditations will lead to subjective experiences automatically because all experience is "inner experience". Its all in your mind.

Auditory Meditation Techniques

Auditory meditation techniques like Japa use the power of sound. The repetition of the sound of the name of the Divine or a verse from the scriptures.

You select a word, a verse from the scriptures, an affirmation or a sound like OM, Allah, Jehovah and repeat it either verbally or mentally to achieve concentration.

The vibrations emanating from the repetition of the sound (every sound has different unique vibrational frequency) raise your consciousness, and with that momentum your soul is propelled upwards. The doors of awareness open.

Words are powerful vehicles of thought. Your mind is programmed to immediately react to them. Just recall the last time someone praised you by calling you beautiful. How did you feet? Your whole physiology changed, didn’t it?

On the other hand a simple word ridiculing some aspect of your personality puts you in a low mood.

On the surface the words code and decode thoughts but in the background they are vibrations of varying frequencies that interact with your mental vibrations and produce different results.

Kinesthetic Meditation Techniques

Kinesthetic meditation techniques use the power of postures and breath to awaken the Kundalini (Serpent Power) that lies at the lower end of your spinal column, in your first chakra.

Yoga exercises were specifically developed for that purpose. Kundalini is a spiritual current that once awakened, runs up and down your spinal column from the root chakra to the crown chakra and helps open the doors of awareness.

Breath is life energy without which you can’t exist physically. It has a pattern that is intimately linked with your emotions and thus thoughts.

How you breathe when you are emotionally excited? Your breathing rate goes up as your heart beats faster and blood rushes up in your veins.

Conversely, you breathing rate is slow and rhythmic when you are calm and thinking steadily. Same thing happens when your are concentrating.

A simple change in your breathing pattern changes your whole physiology and with it your thinking pattern. Try taking slow, deep breaths when you are angry and within minutes you’ll be back in control of your thoughts.

Contemplative Meditation Techniques

Contemplative meditation techniques use your intellectual faculty to understand a spiritual concept that has the power of liberating your mind from the lower and slower frequencies of the ordinary world of matter.

The paradox involved is that you use your reason to go beyond reason in order to comprehend concepts which are beyond the boundaries of logic.

Such meditation techniques help your mind to achieve a break through in consciousness. A sudden leap into higher energy patterns.

Nisargadata Maharaj, an illumined soul from India who passed away in 1980 used to ask a powerful question from people who sought spiritual guidance.

The question was," Where were you 7 days before you were born?"

That is an example of contemplative meditation technique. Although the question seems to be aimed at your logical left-brain but it forces you to break open the mental boundaries of logical thought patterns.

Similar meditation techniques are used by Zen masters.

No matter which meditation technique you use, the underlying concept is to still the thought-waves of your mind, make it one-pointed and raise the level of your consciousness.

Once you progress in meditation, however, the meditation techniques seem to merge together. Just like there are 10 people taking different paths to reach the top of a mountain, as the top comes closer their paths start getting closer too and finally there is no path, there is only the top, the peak. The unity.

You don’t focus on the vehicle so much, you focus on the journey.

Different meditation techniques produce different results depending on your intentions.

There are specific meditation techniques used for specific results. Meditation techniques for calming your mind will be different from meditation techniques for chakra balancing, although the latter will also help calm your mind. Those general benefits are implied.

Similarly meditation techniques for clearing your emotional blockages will be different from meditation techniques for creative problem solving or healing or energy balancing.

Preparatory Meditation Techniques

Before you start any meditation your body and mind must be prepared for that experience. The results are dramatic.

Remember the warm up procedures that athletes go through before exercising? By doing so they prepare their body for higher levels of exercise.

Similarly when you intend to practice higher meditations it helps a lot to prepare your field for that experience by doing warm up meditations.

Preparatory meditation techniques, when practiced take away the stress out of your body, increase your field flow, and put your mind in a receptive mode.

As you progress on this journey toward Silence, all that you need will show up in your life. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Believe in that.

Behind all creation is silence. Silence is the essential condition, the vital ingredient for all creation and all that is created.

It is a power in its own right. The artist starts with a blank canvas – silence. The composer places it between and behind the notes.

The very ground of your being, out of which comes all your thoughts, is silence.

The way to silence is through meditation. When you arrive in your own silence you will know true freedom and real power.

Stop, take a minute, and listen to the silence within you today. Then be aware of what disturbs your inner silence.

It could be negative thoughts, memories, sensations. And when you are aware, you will know what is draining your creative power, and you will know what needs to change, on the inside.

- Unknown

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