How to Meditate

Try sitting upright in a comfortable and relaxed position. Leave your eyes open and allow your gaze to be relaxed and natural. Then, simply relax your mind…

Allow your mind to be, just as it is: open, spacious, calm and yet completely aware. Simply let your thoughts and emotions, whatever arises, come and go,  without clinging to them. Just let go. Relax and remain in the pure awareness of the present moment.

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When we allow our mind to settle in its own natural peace, we discover a deep stillness that has always been with us, and whether we are aware of it or not, always will be. We begin to discover the true purpose of meditation, which is to introduce us to the unchanging pure awareness that underlies the whole of our experience. The practice of meditation is to become more and more familiar with this awareness in every aspect of our life.

Try it again for a few minutes. Just be comfortable in yourself; your body still, your speech silent, your breathing completely natural, and your mind at peace.

Allow yourself to be completely relaxed, free and open, but fully present and undistracted as well.

Remain aware of any sounds that you can hear, and let your thoughts and emotions come and go, without trying to hold onto them, or thinking about the future.

Try not to have too much hope or expectation about what you might experience or achieve.

Just rest in your natural awareness for a few minutes.

When you first begin to sit, you may find that you are easily distracted, and that your mind gets swept away by all kinds of thoughts and emotions. Fortunately, there are many different methods that we can use to help the mind stay calm and focused. Try this one first:

One of the simplest methods of meditation is watching the breath. You don’t need to change your breathing in any way. As you sit comfortably, you gently bring your attention to the natural flow of your breath.

As you breathe out, simply know that you are breathing out, and as you breathe in, simply know that you are breathing in. There’s no need for any running commentary (“Now I’m breathing in, now I’m breathing out”) or analysis.

There’s just pure knowing, pure attention and pure presence.

The main point is to keep your attention lightly focused on the breath. If you find that your mind drifts off and you get lost in daydreams, that’s not a problem. Just recognize that you’re distracted and bring your attention gently back to the breath. There’s no need to fixate on your ‘mistake’, or become tense.

Simply return to being mindful of your breath, to being aware of whether or not you are distracted, and remain, spaciously.

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