About this Book

In this book, I hope to take the actual experience of meditation and bring it out of its exotic orbit into the realm of everyday life as it is lived by each of us, no matter where or how we live, no matter who we are. What I offer here is a series of meditations that anyone can do, so that you, the reader, can have the actual experience of meditation as it takes place inside your mind and inside your body. These meditations, if followed, will help you learn to meditate, and learning meditation will bring to your life something that is often missing in our technological society: conscious repose of the mind.

Meditation is the practice of emptying the thinking element of the mind. Most people equate the thinking element with the whole mind, but it is only one part of the mind. When we quiet this aspect of the mind, we create a space for a higher consciousness to come through. In clear and direct ways, this book offers guidance, instruction and inspiration for those who wish to learn meditation and for practitioners of meditation who are ready to deepen their practice.

 

The Need for a Mind in Repose

The world we live in is continually pulling our minds and our psyches outward into intense mental activity. The pressures and stresses of daily life can strain and twist our sense of inner well-being so that it is difficult to find true relaxation unless we go on vacation, and sometimes even then we don’t find it. Over time, this lack of ease in our lives strains our relationships, distorts our needs, and dulls our vitality and our creative energy. It can drive us into behaviors and decisions we sense are wrong but don’t know how to correct.

Not only have we lost our natural rhythm, we can’t even remember that we had one. The constant, even relentless, activity of the mind is a reflection of this strained state. With our many daily responsibilities and obligations at work and at home, we rush out and keep a fast pace, as we multi-task our to-do lists and talk on our cell phones. The rhythm of one thought followed immediately by another and then another is what many people accept and believe to be the normal state of the mind. It may have become so much a part of your life that you do not believe that your mind can ever experience stillness and quiet.