What is Meditation?

• The first part of meditation is a practice of finding comfort and ease in your physical body and your breath so that the parasympathetic part of the  central nervous system can activate. The parasympathetic system is the system that says "you are safe, you can relax and breath fully". This is opposed to the sympathetic system that says "danger, danger, be ready to fight or flight". When someone is having anxiety, Their fight or flight system is activated and will stay activated as long as they are shallow breathing and muscles are not relaxed. Once the body begins to relax through effort and the breath begins to deepen, one can move into the rest and relax mode. This effort will begin to be less and less each time you sit to meditate. Meditation is a practice. And relaxing in your own body is the key to Santosha and happiness.

• Then when the body has become quiet and content, the mind will find quietness and you will be able to move into the more subtle states of the mind or the more subtle states of consciousness. When this happens, it is as if you can see the mind from a distance and see all the layers of the mind from the most gross thoughts to the most subtle hint of cosmic consciousness. When you are aware of the mind doing mind stuff (thinking, judging, story telling) you begin to see where your thoughts and actions are derived from (past experiences, TV, stimulants) and how those thoughts and actions want to define who you are. When a person can move into more subtle states of consciousness, one can relate to these subtle states more closely as really who we are rather than connecting to the thoughts as who we are.

• Meditation is a state in which the mind is aware of the ego and thus can distinguish the ego from the real self. The ego is the part of self that makes up your personality. It is derived by what we are here to learn in this lifetime but it is also derived and driven by your patterns formed throughout your life, your past experiences and the thoughts you choose to hang onto. Even a constant steady dose of media can shape your personality and ego. Your ego can drive your addictions and your addictions become part of your ego. What if you could become aware that your ego was separate from who you really are. And therefore if you can see it out there, you could choose what parts of the ego truly served you and your spiritual maturity and see which parts that do not serve you. Would it eventually lead to better choices and decision making?

• Meditation erases the grooves of the mind. "I am not good enough, I am not good enough, I am not good enough.' It is a mantra. Thinking it over and over puts a groove in your mind. Like a deer path in the woods. The more deer that take the same path through the woods, then the path becomes a rut. Once there is a rut, more and more deer will take the same path. The more ruts you have in your mind the more the mind keeps going back to the same thoughts that got you in the rut. A consistent meditation will help erase those ruts so that the mind gets to think a new thought. "Oh, I am just a fine person, it was my mind that thought I wasn't good enough! Hooray, I am free!"

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How does meditation help with addictions and allow Santosha into your life?

• 'When I let go of who I am, I become who I might be' ~ Lao Tzu

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How to use this page: There are several guided meditations below. Each one has the technique in written form and in most of them there is a recorded guided practice also. The recorded guided practices guide you into the meditation and then concludes without a verbal ending so that the participant can end whenever they wish. 

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How to end a meditation: It is nice to bring yourself out of meditation slowly and intentionally by just bringing your awareness back to the body with a couple deep breaths. And then just as you would wish a person farewell and thank them for their kindness before parting from them, you could end your meditation with some kind of simple salutation. It could be as simple as Namaste or Om shanti. You could give thanks for the insights and clarity that your meditation brought to you. The point is try to move slowly from one conscious state back to the physical world and to do so with ritual or intentional action. This way you can gently bring your meditation life into your daily living life. That is important and that is the goal! My Spiritual teacher, Goswami Kriyananda would say "All Life is sacred." It is not good enough to sit in calm on the meditation cushion and then go out and cuss at your neighbor. The goal of meditation is to find tranquility and happiness in your meditation, then in your daily living and then go share that happiness to others just by being you!!