Meditation is a natural experience of healing. The word ‘meditation’ comes from the Latin mederi, ‘to heal’: the call of spirit to the peace within. Meditation enables us to experience peace, heals us from suffering & stress from daily living and leads us to the ultimate destination of the freedom of our spirit.
Inspirations: Meditation draws together spirit, our conscious; mind, our faculty of creation that shapes our lives; and intellect, our inner eye that turns our inspiration into reality. Realization: Meditation leads us to create inner peace through self-realization and by casting aside our many false identities. Meditation teaches us to contemplate ourselves using our purest thoughts (such as, I am a spirit, and, my original and eternal nature is peace).
Compassion: As our spiritual self-awareness becomes stronger, our ability to discern, to remain calm amid life's turbulence and the capacity for empathy and compassion toward others improves.
Revelation: A simple exercise demonstrates the capacity of meditation for revealing what is true. Bring to mind your name, but do not associate it with yourself. Hold the image of its letters in your mind and speak it silently to yourself. What does it mean? Does it connect with your true identity? By focusing your mind fully on the essence of the word, you experience a fundamental truth: our name has no importance and no true relation to who we are; it is merely a practical convenience.
Expansion: Expanding meditation to whole thoughts, experiences or actions will expand our spiritual awareness; enables us to sense suffering and decency in the world. Detach from sorrow and pain around us to deepen the connection with life. This meditation is of the most practical kind.
Meditation: It is best to find a quiet, empty space. Start with ten or fifteen minutes per day with a guided commentary - a recording by an experienced meditator who can lead you into ‘soul consciousness’; lengthen the time, if you wish when you can comfortably do so without the guided commentary. Soft lighting can help the ambiance. At the end of the session, reflect on your experience, and note how your mood has changed, and how valuable the meditation has been.
The deepest, most empowering form of meditation will gently focus on the self as a spirit that is a point of radiant spiritual light. In this gentle illuminating awareness, we can truly experience our self as the master of every thought and action with inner peace radiating and permeating through everything we do and say.
Along the ‘meditators path’ many have reported an opening to a higher power, a divine power that touches, teaches and transforms.
Action: Take ten minutes each day this week to relax your body, gently concentrate your mind and meditate on two simple thoughts – I am the light of spirit and my true nature is peace.
Adapted from Mike George’s article© 2010, Walking the Meditator's Path.
