Meditation simple easy and not bizarre

It somewhat amuses me that meditation is something that is popular in New Age circles and is often treated as just that, something new.  But, according to Hindu scripture meditation in one form or another has been around since about 3000 BC.

The practice of meditation is more common in eastern type philosophies, which I guess explains why we tend to treat it as a new thing. A little over two hundred years ago there was no Unites States and most of our founding fathers were a little too concerned over survival to spend much time doing anything else. Now that life is a bit more stable here we have time to branch out and see many of the things we were missing out on while our country was in its infancy.

Throughout the ages meditation has been used for various things, from supposedly controlling the gods, to becoming one with the universe and everything in between. There are many different types or styles of meditation and perhaps some funny picture of monks in weird costumes chanting while holding some ridiculous pose enters your mind whenever someone mentions meditation. But really all you need to meditate is a few minutes to yourself and relative quiet.

If you have no intention of making the gods your puppets or even increasing your awareness to the level where you can see and feel everything around you, what good is meditation? I am glad you asked. In today's modern hectic world, meditation is the perfect way to take a little time out to recharge and de-stress before returning to your regular schedule. The following exercise is a little simple and may not be the most powerful form of meditation but it involves no chanting or funny hats.

Find a place where you can be alone for a few minutes, or at the very least where you will not be bothered by others. Then close your eyes and relax your body. Feel the tension in your muscles begin to drain away as you breathe slowly and deeply. Hold each breath for a slow three count before letting it back out. 

After ten long slow deep breaths, completely empty your mind and focus on nothing for a few minutes. If you have a hard time emptying your mind completely, focus on an image of a playing card, perhaps the Jack of Diamonds. See the image of that card and exclude everything else from your mind. Continue breathing deeply and slowly and after each breath imagine a laser beam shoots across and removes an inch from the card in front of you. Keep holding that image in your mind. With each breath another inch disappears until the whole card is gone. Then hold that image of nothingness for a few minutes.

When you are ready, open your eyes, resume normal breathing and return to your day. If you make this practice a habit, I guarantee the overall level of stress in your life will go down tremendously and you will find less frustration as a result.

Simple programming for your mind

My writing from yesterday got me thinking about the awesome power of the mind.

When a mind is closed no new opportunities can arrive. Solutions to problems can not be thought up and nor can they be enacted. When you are close minded thoughts that are not in agreement with yours are automatically wrong. All barriers and obstacles are completely impenetrable. No new growth is possible.

When a mind is open opportunities arrive all the time. Solutions to problems show up by the truckload. When you are open minded thoughts that are not in agreement with yours open the door to new ways of thinking, allowing for new thoughts and beliefs. With an open mind you have the power and the inclination to test what others say and if they be true to add them to your store of knowledge. And even if they are not true they may lead you to the discovery of new truths. Challenges that were previously impossible shrink or even disappear completely before the open mind.

Also, take a few moments and think on this. Close minded people are automatically more negative people with less happiness in their lives. Open minded people are automatically more positive people with more happiness in their lives.  Close-mindedness goes hand in hand with negativity, anger, depression, sorrow,worry and a life filled with difficult problems. Conversely open-mindedness brings with it positivity, joy, happiness,freedom from worry and doubt and the knowledge that no matter what life throws at you, you can handle it. Think about all the people you know whose lives are working for them. They are open minded people are they not? Now think of all the others you know. They are generally close minded people aren't they?

If you had the choice, which would you choose to be? Open minded no doubt. Well, that's the beauty of it. You do have a choice. Having an open or a closed mind is a conscious choice that you can and should make if you want the power to make your life work for you. And it does not matter how long you have been choosing close-mindedness. You can make a new choice at any time.

Open your mind to new possibilities, to opportunities, to solutions, to new better ways of doing things. Give up the old ways that are not working for you. Each and every time new data is presented to you, give it a chance. Stop automatically discarding it. Accept what other say as possible, even if it directly conflicts with what you already believe. Take the time to test out the new data using all of the tools at your disposal. Search for evidence that it is true, more strongly than you search for falsehood.
But seek both. For a person can always find ways to disprove a theory, even one that is true.

It may turn out that in the search for truth, your original belief was wrong. The new data may be wrong. Or both. But, new growth and opportunities to better yourself will automatically occur as a result, if you search for the truth with an open mind.

The power of the negative pt2

Something else kind of interesting about the subconscious mind is, if you describe something as being not like another thing the other person's mind will associate them as being alike.The reason for this is because when you describe to another person what something is not, first they have to imagine that it is that way or they have no frame of reference for what it is that you are saying. And then once they have the image in their mind of it being that way, it is often too late to change the first impression that they have.You can logically say that you understand the difference  between a thing and not that thing but in reality, your subconscious mind never really understands or parses the word not.

If I start a business presentation with you where I compare my company with a similar company and I tell you all the ways in which our companies are not the same, the surface of your mind will hear and understand me, but the subconscious part that drives your motivation and decision making process will decide that they are the same despite my words.

I describe the ills of company A by saying that the products are shoddy the service is poor and the prices are too high. Then I describe company B(my company) by saying our products are not shoddy the service is not poor and the prices are not too high. Believe it or not, to your subconscious mind I have just stated that both companies are the same.

On the contrary, If I tell you that our products are superior, the customer service is fantastic and our prices are the best in the industry, then I have told you that my company is way better than company A. Here, I focus on what our company is instead of what it is not and it works to make a clear distinction between the two in a way that the other method could just never accomplish.

Now having said all this, I did learn one rather sneaky way to use this information, while listening to a mentor speak today. It relies very heavily on this idea of your subconscious ignoring the word not. It is true that most people hate being sold to. As a result of this, when they think that you are attempting to enroll them in your sales pitch they will naturally resist things that you tell them to do.

IF I say to you to imagine having the freedom to spend more time with your family and to imagine you are finally financially secure and imagine you are able to go on vacation whenever you want, if you think it is part of a sales pitch you will naturally resist my request. BUT if I instead say, aren't you sick and tired of not having enough time to spend with your family? Aren't you sick and tired of not being financially secure? Aren't you sick and tired of not being able to go on vacation whenever you want? It forces people to imagine those very things in order to be able to have a frame of reference to be able to answer the questions.

By using this tool you can get them to the right frame of mind to show them how your product or service can make those things possible for them, how what you have to offer fulfills a need that they have making the eventual sale a win-win for everybody involved.

Heaven, hell or limbo?

Where do you live? If you are like most people the answer will be something to the effect of indoors. Whether it be a house, an apartment, trailer, duplex, condo or whatever the answer is relatively the same. But that's not what I mean when I ask.

I mean what is the situation like where you live, where you truly live? The things that we do on a regular day in and day out basis are merely to provide creature comforts for our bodies. Although they may be what others use to identify us, our bodies are not ourselves.

Our true self is a consciousness that lives inside our mind. The body is the vehicle that we use to interface our self with the world around us. The situation that our body lives in need not and in fact does not define anything about our mind, if we do not let it.

It is what we decide to think about the things that happen to us that determine whether or not we are happy or sad. The departure of a person from our life does not in and of itself create sadness within our life. It is how we feel about that person leaving that helps us decide what emotion to generate as a response. And though we may not realize it at the time, that response can be reprogrammed. Otherwise how could you ever move on when a loved one died?

Is there an afterlife? Religion in general says yes. And most people want to believe that there is. But nobody has concrete proof either way. What if there is no afterlife and no such thing as reincarnation? They are beautiful dreams but what if they are nothing more than the fanciful creations of lonely minds?

Then, if you are ever going to live in heaven or hell, you will have to do it right here on earth, in this life.  If you had to say, right now, is your life heaven hell or somewhere in between, which would it be? I promise you that no matter where you are in life, how old you are or who you live with that your life can go from hell to heaven by simply changing the way you think. Nobody has to move out, die, or get sent to a mental ward.

It is a process though, and while it is possible for it to happen overnight, it will likely take months or longer to achieve full success. Most of what makes people unhappy about their lives is how they feel about the things that are happening. The thing itself is normally not what really matters. It is what you think about it that creates the issue. And normally, what you think isn't really what is going on.

I have one friend that quite often gets upset at another friend over a perceived issue. It has been discussed multiple times and the thing that the first friend thinks is happening the second never even thought of as the reason for what they said. A lot of times the disconnect is due to the way the one person was treated by other people in the past. When things get said that resonate along the same lines as that past treatment problems happen, even when the other person had nothing to do with those things and would never do those things.

Now if this first friend would let go of the negative attachment to the past, many issues in the present would suddenly disappear. My two friends would get along better because the first would not be blaming the second for things that other people did in the past. And the first friend would be a much happier person because that internal negative conversation about the past would not be constantly surfacing and floating around within them.

Friend A lives in hell while friend B lives in heaven. We all live in the same house though. As much as some people may wish to argue, life is about perception, not reality. And we can change our perception by changing what we think.