Meditation Made Easy

by Lorin Roche

  If your mind wanders, don't hit it. A wandering mind is not a problem, but any effort or strain is.

  You will never experience the same thing twice. Therefore, don't expect anything in particular to happen.

  Break the rules. Make up your own rules. Customize your meditation.

  Sleep is not a problem. If you get sleepy, lie down.

  Speed is not a problem. You do not have to slow down.

  Judge by how you feel an hour or two after meditation. Notice how well you do in your essential life tasks, in work, in relationship, in nature, in sleep.

  Don't Furrow Your Brow

  Tip

  Customizing Your Meditation

  How do I choose what my meditation is going to be this day, this week, this month?

  If these were the old days, you might go to a guru and he would tell you. You would not need to have any self-knowledge. Or the priest would tell you, “Ten Hail Marys, ten Our Fathers.”

  You have instincts to know what you want and need. Think of the way you select music to listen to when you are alone, or the way you know you need water when you feel the sensation called thirst. Whenever you pay attention to your body, you will get guidance.

  Look over the list below. Each type of meditator on the list is an example of some craving, some ruling passion or instinct. What are yours?

  Twenty Types of Meditators

  REBEL: “To hell with the world, this is my time.”

  MUSICIAN: “I am going to listen to the silence and music of my being.”

  SENSUALIST: “Ahhhhh…this is like a massage.”

  CAT: “Zzzzzzz and purrrrr.”

  GOURMET: “Ah, what delicious air; this is better than chocolate.”

  SEEKER: “I am searching for the lost parts of my true self.”

  SURFER: “This is a blast, surfing the waves of my mind.”

  LOVER: “I am going to go into my heart and feel all the longing and ecstasy there.”

  BOSS: “I am going to take charge around here. Clean up that mind! Organize those dreams!”

  CRITICAL BYSTANDER: “What a mess this mind is! Whose thoughts are these anyway? What is that thought doing there?”

  GARDENER: “This is like watering the plants and pulling weeds. Maybe I'll put this thought here on the compost heap.”

  EXHAUSTED LABORER: “It is pure relief just to sit still for a few minutes.”

  DANCER: “Meditation is movement, inner worlds of movement.”

  DREAMER: “I am lying back, looking at the clouds moving across the vast sky of my mind.”

  MYSTIC: “I am going to penetrate the mysteries of life.”

  HEALER: “I have compassion for the whole world and all the wounded people walking around in it.”

  WANDERER: “Take me into new realms of experience, take me traveling.”

  ARTIST: “I meditate for the pure joy of the colors, shapes, and textures revealed to me.”

  SLAVE: “I am a speck in God's creation.”

  SCIENTIST: “I want to know how things work, and I am going to perform meditation as an experiment to gather data.”

  Notice what your approach is—or approaches. You may relate to two, three, or even more. Feel free to expand the list in any way, and mail me your additions.

  You may have one of these as your primary ego and one as your alter ego. Alter egos are like subpersonalities, each with its own needs, preferences, and style of meditating. Just ask them—they'll tell you what they want!

  They are all doorways into meditation.

  JOHN DISCOVERS HIS NATURAL STYLE

  The key to developing a meditation that fits your life is to move with your own natural tone, speed, and rhythm of attention. Follow the same natural movement of attention you engage in when you are having a good time doing something you love. Don't violate the integrity of your style, and do not repress your impulses, no matter how wild. Most of us have tendencies to repress our wild impulses; doing so is useful in the outer world but stultifying in meditation.

  Meditation is different from the waking state. It is a separate state in which you don't act on impulses but merely witness them as they move through you. If you don't let them arise, however, there is nothing to witness but your repression, and then meditation goes stale. If you find yourself struggling in meditation, inquire into the fine details of what you are experiencing. Go in there and look closely at what is there and what you think you are supposed to do, and you will find the solution. Let's look at an example.

  John had a strong urge to meditate and felt that he needed some instruction. When he came by for a meditation session, I noticed that within seconds of closing his eyes, he would start to frown slightly. He was very strong, with tremendous vitality, so I was curious to know what had him scowling. I asked him to close his eyes. A few seconds later, I said, “What are you experiencing? What does it feel like?”

  It took several minutes, then he said, “I am in a vast open space and thoughts are flying everywhere,” and he frowned again.

  Then I asked, “How many different directions are the thoughts moving in?”

  He seemed surprised as he looked inside himself to track the thoughts. “All directions, left to right, up to down, right to left…” I could see his eyes moving behind his eyelids.

  I could tell from his complexion that John spent a good deal of time outdoors, so I asked, “Have you ever stood outdoors and watched a storm blowing in from the ocean and simply enjoyed the movement of the clouds? And the continual change in the light… [speaking slowly] the cooling of the air, the first drops…”

  This turned out to be a good guess on my part, because he started smiling and said, “Yes, I have. Many times. I love rain and wind and clouds. I love to watch weather coming in over the sea.”

  So I said, “Treat your inner experience just as you would the weather. When you want to absorb the vitality of it, go ahead and stand in it and enjoy every movement.”

  What I implied by my questions and suggestion was that John could enjoy his inner experience just as much as he enjoyed the weather. This was the first step: that he just accept with pleasure something vast, unpredictable, and moving. He had been thinking of meditation as “going inside” and therefore had decided that he needed to constrict his attention somehow. I also indirectly suggested that his inner world could be as vast and unconstrained as the outer world he loves. He had been trying to condense his attention and “fix” it into a small internal space. Maybe he felt he had to squeeze his essence to fit it inside his skull. His natural sense of himself was already expanded, and he was trying to shrink it.

  My metaphor also implied that going in and facing the inner weather was like standing outside and welcoming the weather blowing in. I knew from his facial expression that he did not cower from the rain but rejoiced in it. I gave him permission to take his physical joy and “no problem” attitude in dealing with the elements and map them over to his inner experience whenever he wanted. This gave him control over how much he wanted to face. I used these metaphors to break up his old habit of attention and his model of what meditation was, since that model was violating his natural style.

  You can see from this example how people dumb themselves down in the name of meditation. John had spontaneously meditated many times, particularly when camping out. He loved to stay awake as much of the night as possible, just watching the stars and savoring the vastness of space. He was already an advanced “spontaneous meditator.” But now he wanted to be able to access that kind of feeling in town or wherever he was. The problem was in his mental model of meditation, which cramped his style. His habit of frowning and trying to corral his attention could have started in kindergarten, or the first time he had to sit in a tiny chair and read a children's book when he would rather have been outside running around.

  One of the instructions I gave John was “Breathe with the vastness. Enjoy your breathing as a gift from the world's oceans, the forests, and the sun.” This immediately made breathi
ng ecstatic to him. Meditation became a tremendous pleasure, and he could take moments here and there throughout the day to breathe, in addition to doing more formal meditations. John already knew vastness—he just needed to accept it.

  John then took the lesson a step farther, into something I had not even thought about. It turned out that he sometimes got really mad when people violated his boundaries or did something unethical. His anger would flash wildly. Since he now had the sense of his inner space as vast, the anger could be experienced as lightning. He learned to enjoy the power of the lightning and to enjoy having a choice about whether to express it. But he no longer felt he needed to repress it: it wasn't an either/or choice of flying off the handle or stuffing it. He could feel powerful and grounded when angry, then choose how to act.

  If John had kept meditating with his scowl, he probably would have had a rough go at it, then quit. And it would have been better to quit than to continue to cramp his own style of paying attention. He could have developed headaches, and he certainly would have lost vitality. Instead of carrying over his richness of experience, he was impoverishing himself by the way he was attempting to pay attention.

  Meditation is subtle internal behavior, and very few people ever get adequate coaching. It takes hours of careful instruction to undo the bad habits most people fall into, whether they learn meditation in a yoga class, from a book, in a workshop, or somewhere else. You can do for yourself what I do with the people who come to me, and save yourself a lot of trouble. Just go step-by-step, and breathe as you read the book. Have a good time and don't force anything. Meditate less than you want to for weeks or months, so that you always look forward to the next time. It is much better to take an all-embracing attitude toward your inner experience in the first place. I have so many friends who have been meditating for decades and have never undone the bad habits with which they started. You do not need to follow such a path. This book contains all the clues you need, and you will get them one at a time, little by little, as you make meditation your own.

  The Eight Acceptances

  Daily Life Meditations

  Here are some recipes for including meditation in the cycle of your day. Mix and match as you like. Pick one, two, or three from among the choices. You will invent your own routines. The exciting thing to discover is how much you can change your bodily state for the better in a brief period of time.

  To Start the Day

  Be Cozy

  Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

  Hot-Cold Shower

  Opening Ritual

  Heart Meditation

  Explore the Vowels

  Arrive Early

  To Refresh Yourself During the Day

  Take a Breather

  Slump Exercise

  What Do You Really Love

  Inhale and Hold

  Salute the Senses (especially Hearing and Sight)

  To Settle Down

  (When stress is getting to you or you feel overwhelmed)

  Do Nothing

  Tense to Relax

  Match Rhythms with Yourself

  Fast Breath

  Slow Exhale

  Ah-Hum

  Give In to Gravity

  Perfect Safety Exercise

  Salute the Sense of Touch

  To Get Charged Up

  Fast Breath

  Breathe Power

  Pause at a Threshold

  Chant the Vowel Sounds

  Salute the Sense of Balance

  Give In to Gravity

  What's Up

  To Unwind

  (At the end of the day, after work)

  Stretch

  Do Nothing

  Give In to Gravity

  Welcome a Breath

  Stillness in Motion

  Let Your Brain Go Limp

  Ra-Ma

  To Prepare for a Social Evening

  Hot-Cold Shower

  Take a Conscious Nap

  All Senses Meditation (especially Smell, Taste, and Touch)

  Heart Meditation

  Breathe Power

  To End the Day

  Review the Day

  Before-Sleep Meditation

  Be Cozy

  Slow Exhale

  IF YOU ARE AWAKE AT NIGHT

  Sometimes when we've had a lot going on during the day, our nervous system gets wired and sleep eludes us. Or we wake up in the middle of the night, begin worrying about not getting enough zzz's, and drive ourselves crazy trying to fall asleep again.

  Here are some suggestions for relaxing before bed:

  Take a hot bath.

  Don't eat a lot late at night.

  Turn off the TV half an hour before bedtime. In general, watch only comedy shows in the evening. Don't load your brain with junk information before going to sleep.

  Give yourself some transition time before going to sleep. Do the Review of the Day meditation and lay your day to rest. Get in your pj's (if you wear them) and hang out on the bed for a while. When you do slip under the covers, let yourself feel their comfort and safety welcoming you. Do a Before-Sleep or Be Cozy meditation.

  If you still find yourself waking up at 3:00 A.M., do not struggle. I recommend two complementary attitudes: get interested in your sensory impressions, and, strangely enough, get interested in your thoughts. The middle of the night is a natural meditation time, a time when life catches up with us, trying to get our attention in some way. I often have my most creative insights in the middle of the night.

  So there you are, wide awake. What do your senses tell you? What pleasure can you be aware of? Feel the soft texture of your pillow, the coziness of your sheets and blankets. There's the feeling of your body weight being supported by the bed. You can just let yourself drop into gravity, like falling into an embrace from the Earth. In the quiet of the night, most of life's creatures are regenerating; there in a velvet darkness, rich and soothing. In your body there is the ongoing ebb and flow of the breath, like the gentle swell of ocean waves, rising, falling, rising, falling…

  Maybe you feel your nerves buzzing, which you associate with anxiety. What if you recognize that buzz as life force moving through you with electricity, and let yourself ride the pathways of current? Is there something pleasurable in that feeling? The idea here is to accept what you can of your experience, so that you don't compound your sleeplessness by beating yourself up.

  One meditator writes, “I often spend hours at night in this limbo land of attention, especially when I'm hot on the trail of some creative project. So I let my body relax as much as possible while my mind does its thing. That way, I am still getting physical rest even as my thoughts are working something out. I have come to savor these middle-of-the-night meditations.”

  Beauty. Safety. Surrender. Welcome all thoughts. Bless your dreams in advance. Leap into the unknown.

  What the Word Meditation Really Means

  Meditation comes from a family of words having to do with healing, balance, music, rhythm, harmony, measure, and paying attention. The Latin word meditarai means to attend, to be present, to look after, heal, cure. This mosaic of meaning points to meditation as the process of paying attention to the underlying harmony of life so that balance is restored. Even if you think etymology is boring, check out the richness of meanings in the word meditation.

  The med of meditation is an ancient Indo-European root word meaning “to take appropriate measures.” Indo-European is the proto-language from over seven thousand years ago that gave rise to Sanskrit, Indic, Iranian, Slavic, Albanian, Anatolian, Greek, Latin, German, and eventually English. Many of the words we use every day derive from Indo-European roots.

  A number of our commonly used words are based on the root med: model, meter, medicine, remedy, meditate, modest, modern, accommodate, must, and empty (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1992, Houghton Mifflin Company).

  Meter is the beat or rhythm, and medicine is the balance. Thus meditation is the harmony that heals, the music that heals you and
restores balance.

  Being modest involves knowing exactly who you are, being neither inflated nor deflated.

  Model refers to the template you are working from to build your life.

  Modern means “just now,” current, what is happening.

  Modify is to refine the design, make it better.

  Accommodate is what we must learn to do constantly, accommodate ourselves and the world.

  Empty is the way space itself feels; emptiness is the arena for life. Things aren't crowded together—there is enough emptiness or space in our houses, our heads, between us and the movie screen.

  Just looking in the dictionary, you can see the rich spectrum of what meditation means and how the word is related to things you already know.

  Each of these meanings will become vitally important to you if you continue exploring meditation. In one twenty-minute meditation you may find yourself feeling harmonious, then feeling alternately depressed and exhilarated for a few minutes, then balancing out in a steady knowing of who you are. A minute later you are electrified by a vivid awareness of the current of your life and how exciting that is. The excitement may then turn to fear as you wonder if you are up to some task ahead of you. Then your body works through the fear and massages calmness into it. Your mind turns to focus on where you are in your life and how time is passing. You may alternate between feeling full and empty, full of memories and experiences or empty and hungry. In fact, this is a pretty typical set of qualities experienced by almost any meditator in any meditation. Meditation is accommodating yourself, being accommodating. It's being hospitable to your soul, all of it, every quality. I was very surprised to find all this wisdom about meditation technique just sitting there in the etymology section of a dictionary.