Meditation 1

Dreaming the Dance, Pt2.
Meditation.

Meditation has always been practiced by the
"First Nations" European people, it is an integral
part of all their rituals. The meditative state
cannot be reached until repressed anxieties are
released. In all natural human societies people
express anxieties, they don't repress them.

The immediate expression of anxiety is not
acceptable in Western culture today so the hardest
part of learning to meditate is starting. When I
began meditating distracting thoughts flooded my
mind, I couldn't ignore them because they were the
anxieties of my waking life.

I needed to address them, I got a meditation
diary, a school exercise book costs cents. For the
first meditations I was advised to stay awake
enough to write the distractions down in my diary
as they flowed through my mind.

"Through my mind" is the key, literally in one
ear and out the other! As long as I write them down
as they pass through I can honestly tell myself I
am addressing the problems.

With the disturbing thoughts recorded I am in a
position to address their issues. Even on the first
attempt the flow of thoughts slowed and I began to
relax.

Another exercise recommended to me when I began
meditating is to follow my anxieties back to their
source. "Don't just think about it, meditate on
it, record it in your diary, go right back as far
as you can, ask friends and relatives for their
recollections".

"Work back through your life at the rate of
one year of your life per day. Your problems now
were caused by 'this' last year and they were caused
by 'that' the year before and so on".

"Most people can go back to age two or three,
some can go back to before their first birthday. Not
to mention past life regression!"

"So now you know! Its time to turn around and
come back."

"All that you know about yourself at 'year dot'
enabled you to achieve 'this' the next year, which
supported you in achieving 'that' the year after and
so on until to the present day."

What I achieved by this is to regressively
disempower all the negative influences in my life
and to successively empower all the positive
influences in my life. "OK, so who am I really?"

"You've recorded the major issues in your life;
you are now in a position to change things for the
better. Have the courage to change what you can with
the wisdom to accept what you can't. Some paths in
life are mutually exclusive, its one or the other and
did you really have a choise?"

"Yes! If, metaphorically speaking, you look up
and you're in front of a speeding train, why stop the
train when you can step off the track? For any given
circumstance you can be standing in the right place
or the wrong place, the choise is yours."

After some time I'd made changes in my life that
resolved many of those issues, but I then found those
issues had been replaced with new disturbing thoughts.
The deeper I delved into that inner pit of repressed
anxieties the more relaxed I became in my waking life.

It took a couple of months of regular practice but
I found that after 10 or 15 minutes of meditation I
ran out of disturbing thoughts and got my first taste
of inner peace. Total physical and mental relaxation!

The meditation countback technique is the one most
used by beginners, professionally recorded CDs and
computer CD roms are available from "New Age"
bookstores. Some recordings are good and others are
incredibly bad, some are purely for entertainment and
some are for "therapy", if you need therapy take it
up with a doctor or priest(ess), not a bookstore!

These are some of the teachings on meditation as
I recieved them "Somewhere safe to meditate is the
first goal, is it cool to meditate publicly in the
city's central park only to find half way through you
get "rolled" for your watch and sneakers! Peace and
quiet soon becomes the most precious commodity on
earth."

"What about high on a mountain top, deep in a
National Park; Mozzies can spot a student of
meditation a mile away (that's a lot more than a
kilometre!). It soon becomes apparent why the
hermits of old preferred caves or purpose built
hermitages."

"Good, safe, quiet meditation sites are at a
premium, good hunting and when you find one tell
nobody. The only word of advice I can give you is
don't use your bedroom, its association with
meditation will eventually disturb your sleep."

"Prepare for meditation by doing some moderate
exercise to work out any tension in the muscles,
a brisk halfhour walk is adequate, you could also
loosen up your joints with a brief yoga routine,
then relax. Take slow deep breaths, see the anxiety
stored in your muscles flow out of the body on the
out breath and replaced by life force on the in
breath."

"Your body constructed your mind to co-ordinate
its movements and speach, it controls the mind. The
mind also controls itself so if you imagine the
anxiety flowing out of the body with the out breath
that's exactly what the body sees in "it's" mind, and
believes it!"

"A gentle massage of the joints of the body will
greatly aid relaxation, its not effleurage, this is
to comfort the joint. The nerve that originates in a
joint also serves the muscles that control that joint.
By relaxing the joint you also relax all the muscle
groups that control the joint."

"Ensure that you are comfortable either laying down
on a yoga mat, seated on a cushion or in a chair, are
not excessively hungry or over-full and have recently
emptied your bladder and bowels. Continue the deep
breathing, if you're new to meditation record the
anxieties as they flow through your mind, if not then
you already know them well enough, just let them flow."

"The count-down given here is a structured and
easily memorised system of progressive relaxation in
7 steps, each of at least 30 seconds, take longer if
you need to. Soothing music helps enormously and
masks distracting noises. Word of mouth is the best
recommendation and try before you buy.

1 ....right foot, calf, thigh and buttock.

2 ....left foot, calf, thigh and buttock.

3 ....genitals, abdominal muscles and lower back.

4 ....right hand, forearm, upper arm and shoulder.

5 ....left hand, forearm, upper arm and shoulder.

6 ....diaphragm, ribs, upper back and neck.

7 ....jaw, face, scalp and the rational mind;.....
now, open your inner eye. Just let it open, what you
can imagine in your mind is what you see with your
eye closed, just let your inner eye see anything,
that's what's there. Don't try to understand it."

" When its time to return simply reverse the
proceedure, while meditating your consciousness loses
contact with the body to some extent. Feel your
consciousness re-inhabit your body, the face and head
first, then the chest, arms, abdomen and legs."

You can do it the easy way and just roll over
and go to sleep, you will awaken in the physical
world. To use meditation in conjunction with the
lucid dreaming technique described in pt. 3 of this
series then go through the 7 steps above in reverse
order, if this process gets sloppy it won't work
with dreaming."

"The fun starts once your consciousness
leaves your body, if you're going to see anything
that frightens you it will be here on the material
world, that is everything below the Moon. Friendly
spirits also inhabit the material world but they
are not bound to it. Next is the firmament and above
that is the spiritual world where most of the action
takes place."

"You are now in a state of deep relaxation. To
venture further you can rise up the ladder of
planets. From the material world the order of the
planets in the firmament is; 1....the Moon,
2....Mercury, 3....Venus, 4....the Sun, 5....Mars,
6....Jupiter and 7....Saturn. The outer planet are
respectively the higher octaves of Mercury, Venus,
Mars etc., they can only be perceived through a
skrying crystal (telescope)!"

"Beyond the planets are the constellations,
this is the lower spiritual world. Don't get the
impression that there is any clear demarkation
between any of the worlds, it is one continuem
which includes the physical world. The names relate
more to what man can experience there."

"To work with matters that are ruled by a
planet you need only travel in the firmament as far
as that planet." This scenario conforms exactly
to the ancient Celtic world structure as described
in the "Vita Merlini", which was translated by Bob
Stewart and published as "The Mystic Life of Merlyn".

"There is an ancient European tradition that
says that the Sun and Moon are doorways. The Moon
is the doorway from the Physical world to the
Underworld and the Sun is the doorway from the
Physical world to the Heavens."

I started out working within an eclectic group of
"New Agers", it had many advantages. Most importantly
I had access to a network of like minded people and
they knew what worked, it also meant that I wasn't
tied to any one school of thought. This was in
the 60s, before the "New Age" was taken over by drug
dealers!

Meditative practice usually starts with someone
reading a script to bring about physical and mental
relaxation. The next stage was the reading of
scripted journeys which include searching for gifts
or the retrieval of information from a book. It's a
form of divining.

The conversations with others during meditation
are interesting, don't think about it, just listen.
Some are other meditaters, some are dreamers, some
are spirits, others are your ancestors. "Your
ancestors are innate within you," I was told.
"they have a vested interest in your safety."

It pays to give your ancestors a right of veto
over your guides. An ancestor might even take on the
job of training you, that's the traditional path of
the shaman.

"Ask one of your Otherworld 'friends' to act as
guide while you start out writing and memorising your
own scripts", was one bit of advice. "A competent
and trustworthy guide won't work with you on drugs and
many, not even legal drugs like alcohol", was another.

It takes all types to make a world, involvement in
some groups might expose you to sexual, emotional or
psychological abuse. Do the names Charles Manson, Jim
Jones or David Coresh ring a bell?

What do you think happened to these people? Try
meditating while on drugs and you'll know! That's
exactly what some spirits want, the drugs affect them
too! Don't you join them?

When you reach this stage you will be taking
meditation seriously, it is now a self rewarding
activity. Perhaps too seriously, remember these
words; "get a life!"

Why you want to learn to meditate is important, is
the meditation a therapy or a foundation subject in a
larger course of study. Many universities teach
meditation as part of formal studies.

The group leader will influence your perspective
on meditation, a diviner will orient you towards
divining, a healer to healing and an abuser towards
abusing. Group leader is a position of responsibility,
not authority, and definitely not power!

The health benefits of meditation are many and no
religious tradition or school of medicine condemns it.
The stress reduction it brings demonstrably assists
the healing of body, mind and spirit. When combined
with a healthy diet, moderate exercise and a craft to
express your creativity it becomes the corner stone
for a fulfilling life.

"Dreaming the Dance, pt2" contains elements common
to many cultures. No Cultural property rights exist so I
gift the copyright of this work to the Public Domain.


(c) Hawkins 2004.