CREATIVITY

Children are naturally creative.  They play, dance, sing, and paint with no inhibitions, for the sheer joy of expressing themselves.  Creativity is an essential part of human behavior that we shouldn't dismiss.

ART CLASS - As we grow up, we learn to suppress this natural spontaneity.  We dismiss our imagination as childish fantasy.

Meditation puts you in touch once more with your inner child and renews your sense of the joy and wonder of life.  Many writers, artists, musicians, and people engaged in creative pursuits find inspiration through this means.  It enables them to tap into a spring that constantly flows with fresh thoughts and ideas.

Try exploring your creative potential by having a supply of paper and coloring pencils on your table when you meditate.  After a period of stillness, allow yourself to draw or color.  Don't worry about whether you have any artistic skill.  Just go with the flow, letting your imagination be free and fully expressive.

Once you learn to link with your inner child iin this way, you will find that you become more creative in all areas of your life.  Gardening, cooking, writing a letter to a friend, or writing a report become opportunities for self-expression.  You might surprise yourself with your hidden talents.

CREATIVE KIT

Just a few pencils and

scraps of paper are enough to help you

express your creativity.  Many of us grow

up believing that we are not creative - in

fact all of us have a creative aspect.

LOOSE REINS

When you start to express

your creativity, just let your mind be free

to follow whatever path it chooses.  Don't

worry about making sense - you're just

exercising your creative muscles.



PROBLEM SOLVING

Meditation will not make your life plain sailing or remove all your

problems, but it will help you to deal with them.  Meditation can

help us to gain perspective and to make good decisions.

Practical Spirituality - Through meditation, you become more sensative and more able to empathize with others in their troubles.  This gives you a better understanding of how they think and feel, enabling you to be less judgmental and more tolerant.

When you have a problem, begin your meditation session by stating the difficulty clearly to yourself.  It may help to get things clear in your mind if you write them down.  Then go into your meditation in the usual way.  However, it is very important that you do not focus on the problem whil you are meditating, it will only become more firmly embedded in your mind.  Simply go within, seeking to find that still point of balance.

As you do this, insights may arise spontaneously.  Suddenly you might see a way out of the difficulty or realize how you can handle the situation better.  Even if this doesn't happen while you are actually meditating, don't be disappointed.  Often the answer will drop into your mind a day or two later; when you are relaxed and not thinking of anything in particular.  It might also come in a dream.

Meditation helps you to connect with your own source of wisdom and inner intuition, which contains all the answers you need to cope with life's challenges.

GOOD RELATIONS

Meditation helps us

to become more understanding of other

people.  We can then use this knowledge

in a loving and beneficial way.

INNER RESOURCES

Problems and worries

always benefit from meditation.  Write the

problem down if this helps to clarify it

for you.  Meditation as normal, without

focusing on the problem.  Even if

you don't get an answer,

meditation will help you put

the problem in perspective.

AID TO MEDITATION

There are many aids you can use to make your mediation easier and more enjoyable.  While these cannot do the work for you, they can help to create the right atmosphere for calm, focused meditation.

Sacred Smells:  Incense has been valued for thousands of years for religious and spiritual ritual, cleansing, and bringing about altered states of consciousness.  You can buy incense or joss sticks from any New Age shop, as well as many mainstream outlets.  Incense also comes in small cones.  My favorite place to get incense is PartyLite.  It may be a little pricey, however, the quality of the product is one of the best that I have purchased.

Ambient Aromas:  Aromatherapy oils, too, are an excellent aid.  Frankincense, jasmine and sandalwood are particularly suitable, either individually or in combination, but you can make up your own blends and experiment.  I love lavendar and violet essential oils - I use these fragrances most every day for the house.  I keep a curio cabinet in my bedroom with some of my favorite oils.

Heavenly Sounds:  Good music, playing softly in the background is relaxing.  There are many New Age CDs and tapes designed specifically for use as meditation aids.  Some people find that classical music, especially Mozart, raises the mind to a more spiritual level.  I have very large collection of music and I choose the music  based on my current mood and needs.

Subconsious Way:  Subliminal tapes work by bypassing the conscious level of mind which often acts as a barrier to deeper mental levels.  They are programmed with instructions which are too quiet for the conscious mind to hear; but which are received and acted upon by the subconscious.  Subliminal video tapes are particularly powerful because they combine spoken suggestions with visual images.

Flowers on the Brain:  Flower essences are increasinly being used by meditators.  In addition to the popular Bach flower remedies, there are numerous other adequate ranges now available.  These operate on a subtle level, increasing spiritual awareness.

Keys to Remember:

ATMOSPHERE - Oils, incense sticks, and

flower essences can all be used to create

a perfectly relaxing and yet stimulating

atmosphere for meditation.

HELPING HANDS - Meditation aids can

 help you to focus, but they are not a

replacement for simple will power and

persistence.  You still have to do the work.

Finding the Point of Stillness

The key to successful meditation lies in performing a delicate balancing act.  Your body must be held still, but without tension.  You have to be relaxed, but not sleepy.  Your mind needs to be receptive, but alert.

Central station - You might wonderhow you can do all these apparently contradictory things at once.  In time it will happen of itw own accord if you just hold your mind fixed steady on one point of concentration.

This can be your breath.  It can be an object, a word, a picture, such as an icon, or an idea.  Whatever it is, the point of concentration is like an anchor in a stormy sea.  For a long while the waves -- the restless thoughts -- surge around you and threaten to carry you away.  But if you can hold onto the anchor long enough, the waves subside and the sea is calm.  When this happens you experience a sublte, but important shift to an altered state of consciousness.  There are no more interfering thoughts, just a gentle peace and an all-encompassing tranquillity.

You will have arrived at the still center, sometimes symbolized as a dot within a circle.  This is the place where you become at one with your inner being.

Calm in the Storm

As you persevere, the elusive moments of total peace will become easier to reach.  This peace will impact on the rest of your life.

Sacred Space

Meditation takes us to the sacred place within us.  This is the place where mystics journeyed to commune with spiritual powers.

Sea of Troubles

The way to the center of our being is strewn with turbulence.  It takes perseverance to endure the storm.

Overcoming Mental Resistance

The breathing meditation might sound very simple, but in fact it is very difficult to perform.  You will find that, as soon as you try to concentrate, all kinds of thoughts and images flood into your mind.

Interference:  Bodily sensations become magnified.  Your nose itches or you want to fidget.  Outside noises seem unnaturally loud and startling.  You might start drifting off to sleep, or else become bored and think you are wasting your time.  Often it is the hands that want to fidget first -- craving something to do.

Don't be discouraged by any of this.  Everyone experiences these difficulties in the early days of meditation.  The rational mind, which is used to being firmly in control of your thought processes, rebels when you set it aside and turn your attention in ward.  It behaves like a child that feels neglected and clamors for attention and entertainment.

So you can overcome the problem by treating it like a child.  Be gentle, but firm.  Refuse to give into its demands.  Acknowledge the thoughts and sensations that inevitably arise, but do not allow yourself to be drawn into them.  Simply view them as if from a distance, then refocus your attention.

It may be necessary to practice this technique time and time again, and there may well be occasions when you fell it is a hopeless task.  But persevere -- it will become easier with practice.

WORLD RESIDUE - all of su have pressures and worries about our everyday lives that can interfere with meditation.  Meditation helps make these worries less troubling.

STRANGE NEW WORLD - When we start to meditate, our inner world can seem unfamiliar territory.  With regular practice we become comfortable with ourselves.

AMAZING BRAIN

The brain is an incredible organ, capable of thousands of calculations every second.  In essence, we write a book every day with our constant thinking, worrying, and planning.  Meditation puts us in touch with an equally amazing ability of our minds -- one far more rewarding than intelligence or wit.  With it we can get in touch with a spiritual level far beyond the experience of most people.

RELAXING YOUR MIND

Take another deep breath and, as you let it out, feel that you are breathing out all tension and anxiety so that you become freer and lighter.  Enjoy these moments, when you can heal and nurture yourself.

INNER LESSONS:  Focusing on your breath can help to bring insights about the essential flux of all things, from the tides of the oceans to the seasons and the natural cycles of life and death.

It is often thought that, in order to meditate, you have to make your mind go blank.  This is almost impossible to achieve and, in fact, it is not necessary to try.  It is far easier and more effective to give your mind something on which to focus.  There are numberous techniques for doing this, some of which will be described later.  A very good exercise to start with involves the use of breath.

USING THE BREATH TO STILL THE MIND

1. Close your eyes and do the progressive relaxation exercise described in the previous post.  Then let the breath fall into its natural rhythm.
2. Do not attempt to control it: merely observe.  Be conscious of the air entering and leaving your nostrils.  Note the rise and fall of your ribcage.
3. Focus on nothings but the breath.  When other thoughts intrude, dismiss them gently without haste and return your attention to the breath.
4. After a while you will notice that something strange happens.  You have the sensation that, rather than breathing, you are "being breathed."

Breathing Meditation

Mindfulness of breathing, as breathing meditation is sometimes known, is one of the oldest, simplest, and perhaps most effective forms of meditation.  It is meditation in its most essential form.  It guides us toward giving our minds totally to the act of listening.  Not to the sounds around us, but to the underlying meaning behind all existence.  In this open state, the meditator is receptive to enlightenment.

If you have difficulty with this process on your own you can pick up a YOGA CD that walks you through meditation.  After several sessions you will be able to do this on your own.

FIRST STEPS

In order to meditate effectively you need to be relaxed.  Most people carry far more tention than they realize, both in the body and in the mind.  Until this is released, it is hard to enter into a condition of stillness.

Progressive relaxation exercise:

1. Close your eyes.  Make sure your spine is erect.  Take a few deep breaths, drawing the breath deep down into your chest, feeling it expand.  Just focus entirely on your breathing, allow other thoughts to simply to come and then go.
2. Now expand your ribcage, then your upper chest.  Hold the breath for a few seconds, then let it out gradually in reverse order, first from your upper chest, then the rigcage, and finally from your abdomen.  Again, keep focused on your breathing.
3. Exhale until all the air is expelled.  Hold the outbreath for a few seconds, then breathe in as before.  Do this until you establish a comfortable, steady rhythm.  Focus on your breath as it touches your lips and then reaches deep into your chest.
4. Now bring your attention to your feet.  Tense the muscles of your toes, then relax them.  As you do so, mentally command your toes to relax.  Do the same with your feet and legs.  Work your way up, tensing and releasing all the muscles in turn.

The relaxation procedure is very simple -- but most meditation students find that it takes a few weeks of practice to get it right.  You might need to go through it several times before you fell it has really worked.  Don't hurry over this.  Even if all you learn in your first few sessions is how to achieve a fully relaxed state, you will have learned a valuable lesson.