Meditation Instructions

What is Meditation?
Meditation is a technique of the body and mind to achieve a state of mental and emotional clarity. This leads to an understanding of yourself and your environment. It's actually difficult to imagine true clarity without ever having experienced it, so it just has to be practiced for a while by following some instructions before it can be understood. Only after finally experiencing it, will your practice take off.
What you are trying to achieve is an awareness of all thoughts, emotions and sensations while at the same time not being attached to any. It can also be thought of as no thought, and this is a good goal to begin with. You want to dissolve and simply be. There are many paradoxical explanations of this state of mind.

Instructions:
- Timer
A timer is a very useful device to use for meditation. This will prevent your mind from questioning how long you will sit or having to decide when to stop, and you will simply wait for the sound to signal the end. To begin with, start with 5 or 10 minutes, and over time as you get better at it, 30 minutes would be all that's necessary for regular practice. Sometimes longer sessions would also be powerful and enjoyable.
- Seating position
An ideal meditation position will be comfortable, with no pressure points, as well as balanced. It is important that your spine be in a natural position. This is best done with a meditation cushion to sit on with your legs crossed so you balance on your two knees and butt. Hands should be relaxed and you should maintain good posture. Your eyes should look at a spot around 10 feet away on the ground.
- Begin by breathing
To begin, take a few deep breaths and focus on your posture. A good way to begin is to focus on your breathing. Count for every inhale and exhale up to 10 or 20, then start over. Do nothing but focus on awareness of breath and keeping count. You're training your concentration at this point. Depending on how predisposed your mind is for this kind of thing, you might not be able to concentrate to even make it to 10. This is all part of the process, and then you simply start over. Keep this up for the duration of your short initial sessions until it can be maintained.
- Focus
Another option instead of breathing or as a follow on, or both, is focusing on an area of vision in front of you. It can also be a sound, or repeated sound you make yourself. The point is to have something simple and repetitive to focus on until your mind stills. It's a crutch to begin your practice, or session, but you should try to stick with whatever it is for a while.
- Thoughts meander
When you begin practicing the technique you'll begin to notice that thoughts will arise and your consciousness will attach to various thoughts that arise spontaneously. You will realize that you are interrupted by thoughts beyond your control, and your consciousness shifts abruptly. When a thought interrupts your concentration you will eventually catch yourself, accept it, and refocus on concentrating on breathing.
- Clarity
Over time, be it weeks of practice, or then just a few minutes into it, you will begin to notice spaces in your consciousness where there is nothing. At this point you can advance and be more free in the process. This is where there is no thought and often occurs between inhales and exhales. Begin to focus on this space and try to expand that kind of awareness, until you no longer need to focus on anything else. What you're trying to achieve here, is a mind that is not attached to any of the thoughts that come and go, and extend this stillness longer. All these depth levels of state of mind overlap during a session sometimes, and you just return to whatever level you can maintain.
- Blissful awareness
The ultimate purpose though, is not having a complete blankness, but a still yet complete awareness. As you move from active attached mind to stillness, many thoughts that were either denied or repressed will arise and will be viewable not as a You but as a process within you. You will learn from them. Thoughts that were too active or unnecessary will also come and go but will be given rest. Obsessions and worries will take a back seat, and this will provide a blissful relaxation. When you learn not to attach but observe thought you can have awareness as well as stillness.

Progress
The important thing to keep in mind when beginning meditation practice is to not be too goal oriented and let the practice itself guide your progress. In the beginning it's important to focus on the technique and things will just happen on their own. At some point a key moment will occur when you suddenly understand what it's all about. I vividly and clearly remember the exact moment when I got it. I remember the leaves on the tree, the ground and what I was looking at when I fell into a perfectly clear state of mind when everything made sense. There was no past or future, only the present moment. It was sudden jolt into complete and still awareness. In Japanese Zen this is called a Kensho moment, which is the first perception of Buddha Nature or an "awakening".

Consequences
The first Kensho moment is a life changing experience, that will always stay with you. It makes me smile every time I recall it. Achieving this point took me about 3 months of daily meditation, and different minds with different levels of experience in mental states will take different lengths of time, but you should never try to force yourself into this imagined state until you naturally come to it with regular practice.
Many great things will happen in your life just as a result of practicing regularly and won't be apparent until some time later. Very subtle but profound things will occur when you practice stillness, and the best way to describe it is that your life will simply improve. Achieving proficiency in Meditation is only the begining. The real work starts with the discipline to doing it every day, because it's easy to fall back into darkness again when practice stops. Many, many books and words have been written on the philosophy to describe these experiences and attempt to explain and guide to a better understanding on what has been achieved. Reading this deepens the understanding but it all revolves around the simple concept of sitting in clear awareness.