When I write that we need to practice compassion in our daily lives, you may wonder how exactly to do this. After all, you're probably a pretty compassionate person, so is there a need to do anymore than to simply be who you are? Read on...
The "effortless" part of learning to meditate comes from getting to know your meditative mind, again and again. And that comes more frequently when you let go of all of the ways that you think you should meditate.
Meditation is a process of gradually coming to know your own mind, coming to rest in a state of non-distraction where you release all sense of hope and fear, cease to alter your mind with thoughts, sensations and emotions, and learn to simply be, mindful, aware and spacious.
When you hear the name, Michael Imperioli, many of you may think of the actor who played the part of Christopher Moltisanti on the hit series, The Sopranos. What many of you may not know is that Michael is also a committed practitioner of meditation and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism.
How do we meditate on compassion for politicians when we’re completely fed up with politics as usual, or when our preferred party doesn’t seem to be getting it right (or maybe our least preferred party seems to be getting it “wrong!”) Try these four steps:
For many of us, when we begin to meditate (or even if we've meditated for a while), we can experience a certain amount of "failure" while trying to meditate. Even if we've been successful in the past, our efforts may be met with what we believe to be failure. But, what if failure weren't an option? What if there was no such thing as "failing" at meditation? What if meditation included failing to meditate?
What is most wonderful about this whole process is that even when you find yourself getting swept away and coming back to your meditation after what seems like hours, you can use that "coming back" as your meditation practice. That is, the practice of meditation means getting used to practicing even as your thoughts and emotions arise and you find yourself getting distracted.
Do your feelings and emotions rule you? If you're like me or if...you're human, then you've probably experienced anger, sadness, jealousy (or envy?), or emotional exhaustion. And, if you're like me, you're happy and grateful when those emotional states and feelings go away, right?! What do you do when you experience strong emotions? How do you deal with difficult feelings that just won't go away? What do you do when these experiences persist even when you try to push them away?
What is meditation anyway? (Do you get tired of me asking this?) Do people even know what meditation is? What I hear when I talk with people in my day-to-day life are things like, "Learning to meditate takes too long," and, "I tried but couldn't stop thinking," and, "I'm not religious." Yikes! People don't know what the hell meditation is! Here are a few things meditation isn't. If any of them are familiar to you, welcome to the club. If some of these seem obvious, read on. Most people get hung up on what they believe meditation is and never [...]
This post is inspired by my friend Erric Solomon, blogger and administrator on the site, What Meditation Really Is. His post, Ten Reasons Why We Should Never Meditate, inspired me to write a similar post. I know that this site is loaded with advice and how to meditate, where to meditate and why you should meditate. But...maybe you shouldn't meditate. Maybe meditation is really a waste of time, a waste of time that you could be using for other things like surfing the internet, watching TV or playing video games (the list goes on, doesn't it?!) Here is a list, [...]