Learn Powerful Meditation Techniques - Part 1 - Samadhi Guided Meditation: Breath As The Bridge

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

The Awaken The World Initiative was created for the purpose of humbly serving the awakening of humanity to its true nature. All of our content is available in as many different languages as possible, in order to ensure that the perennial teachings are freely available to all.Free Weekly Newsletter To Learn Meditation So You Can Meditate More Effectively HERE...Samadhi, or union with the true self, is the ultimate purpose of prayer, meditation, yoga, and all true spiritual practices and pursuits. Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players". When we are identified with our character, our persona, this is Maya, the illusion of the self. Samadhi is awakening from the dream of your character in the play of life.With these five Samadhi guided meditations you may find helpful, whether you are getting started in meditation, or you are interested in deepening your meditation practice. One guided meditation will be released each week starting with this Samadhi Guided Meditation Introduction: Breath As The BridgeThis series of five guided meditations is focused on the breath. It is designed to cultivate the concentration and equanimity needed to realize Samadhi. The parts are not separate meditation techniques, but part of one evolving, continuously deepening practice of observing the breath.Introduction To Samadhi: Breath As The BridgePart 1 - Samadhi Guided Meditation: Concentration and SurrenderPart 2 - Samadhi Guided Meditation: The HindrancesPart 3 - Samadhi Guided Meditation: PranaPart 4 - Samadhi Guided Meditation: Know YourselfAwaken The World - How To Get InvolvedConnecting - Online Meditation community - AwakenTheWorld.com.Join our free, live, online Drop-In ZOOM meditations. All are welcome to this supportive online community for our hour-long guided meditations.Unbelievably Easy Ways To Improve Your Life...Suffer from Insomnia?? Scientifically-proven free brainwave MP3 sends you to sleep - in just minutes.Enjoy the best night's sleep ever, with Sleep Salon! This powerful brainwave entrainment audio program uses special sounds to lull you into a deep sleep. All you have to do is listen!I used to suffer from INSOMNIA. It would take me hours to fall asleep. Then I started listening to THIS BRAINWAVE MP3. "Be the person your soul wishes you to be." - Don WeyantOffering step-by-step instructions for beginners. Try binaural beats, solfeggio frequencies, guided meditations, and healing meditation music. Our top-rated podcast, with 34 million downloads and 100,000 Spotify followers, explores the profound benefits of meditation. Visit Our Main Website: https://www.MeditationLifeSkillsPodcast.comPodcast Disclaimers: This podcast is not medical advice or a substitute for professional diagnosis or treatment. This podcast needs expert advice and independent verification to reach conclusions. Content-related losses are not our responsibility. AI language models were used to create podcast content for information and enjoyment alone.

We appreciate your interest in today's meditation life skills podcast. We sincerely grateful for your support. These guided meditations have been created to be used freely by everyone. They reflect some of the core practices at the Samadhi Center and are just some of the many techniques that may be practiced to move people in the direction of samadhi. I should point out that it may take many years to develop the concentration and equanimity

required to reach that to which the meditation's point. Be patient, determined, and most of all be equanimous with where you are on your journey because ultimately the path is the destination. There are two aspects, or you could say two dimensions,

within meditation. There's the dimension of changing phenomena which is generally thoughts, sensations, and feelings. And there's the dimension of consciousness, the one that is witnessing the phenomena. You could call these two aspects Mindfulness and mind emptiness, or yin and yang.

There are meditation techniques where you're doing something. And there's that part of the meditation which is beyond technique, beyond all doing. Together these two parts of meditation, when in balance, are like the wings of a bird, that carry you towards samadhi. Yin and yang, mindfulness and mind emptiness,

must be in balance, the way the spiral of a hurricane is in balance around the stillness in the center. The stillness within the spiral, or the jewel in the world, duel in the lotus is a perfect symbol for meditation and samadhi. The first dimension of meditation we will talk about is the yin aspect. It is the feminine aspect, surrendering, opening to the changing phenomena or energy of life.

It's allowing being a quantumist with what is. It is an effortless letting go. The Yang aspect of meditation is concentrating the mind, focusing single-pointedly. The yang aspect is the witnessing stillness in the center of the spiral, while the Yin aspect is everything that is constantly changing. Both are practiced simultaneously. There is an aspect of meditation that is effortless, and an aspect that's effortful.

Both are practiced at once, and even though this may seem contradictory, it is not. Mindfulness and mind emptiness, effort and non-effort, are practiced until they become one. Or more precisely, as they say in Zen, not one, not two. You simultaneously cultured,

the power of total focus and concentration, along with deep surrender, relaxing into the moment. Your effort to stay present becomes so great that it's a complete surrender of your being, and your effortless surrender to the moment is so complete that it becomes continuous presence.

There are literally hundreds of meditation techniques, but all techniques, regardless of the tradition, serve to cultivate two things. Your ability to concentrate or stay present without the mind wandering and your ability to develop equanimity or inner surrender. In this way, we purify the senses.

We purify ourselves of Sankara's or conditioned patterns. We'll start with the technique of observing the breath, the classic technique taught by the Buddha. Before you begin meditation, stretching can be helpful to prepare the body for long periods of sitting. If your mind is very busy, chanting can be a great way to focus and orient your consciousness inward.

Do whatever works to get yourself into a relaxed, peaceful and concentrated state. Turn off your phone, and anything that could potentially distract you. Make an intention to meditate continuously. Uninterruptedly, for whatever length of time you feel comfortable with. Observing the breath is extremely simple, the simplest thing, but surprisingly difficult to do.

Sit as comfortably as possible on a cushion, meditation bench, or chair. Your spine should be straight, so that energy can flow freely up it. An upright spine brings an alertness in the body. Once your spine is upright, relax the rest of your body. Pick a position for your hands,

such as laying them on your knees. Always start with a beginner's mind. Let go of all ideas about meditation, and just observe the breath directly, without thought, as if you've never noticed it before. If you were new to this, try to sit for 15 minutes and work your way up to an hour. If you were an experienced meditator, try to sit for as long as you can. There are three guided meditation audio files.

The guided meditations should not be thought of as separate practices or separate techniques. Each guided meditation will simply involve a deepening of the awareness of the breath. Once you've cultivated a greater degree of concentration and equanimity, then move to the next guided meditation and see how it feels. You may want to use this guided meditation for the first while until you become familiar with the practice, and eventually you can sit in silence without instruction. start with a calm and peaceful mind relaxing deeply yet being completely alert and present your outer posture should remain strong but not rigid relaxed but not slumping observe the natural breath during this meditation do not try to change or manipulate the breath in any way you're simply observing

this one thing that's already happening. Breath is happening. You are just noticing it. Cultivating the skills of concentration and allowing. As you observe the breath, don't be surprised or frustrated when your mind wanders. As soon as you notice the mind has wandered, bring it back to the breath.

Remain relaxed. The mind will wander, and you will wander. bring it back to the breath. This is the meditation. Sometimes you might get lost in thoughts for a while. The practice is to become disinterested in any thought. Planning, remembering, worrying, fantasizing,

regardless of what type of thought comes up, just let it go without judgment. You may experience thoughts that are judging your meditation. or judging your present experience as being good or bad. Just let them go. As you sit for a period of time, hindrances will arise. Hindrances can come in the form of sleepiness or restlessness, maybe boredom or pain and discomfort in the body.

When attention is diverted to any particular phenomena, the practice is to be a quantumist. with what is. Simply let it be as it is, and return to the breath. Sometimes if pain becomes too great, it may be necessary to adjust your position. But with practice, your capacity to work with the hindrances will develop. You may notice that moving away from your pain sometimes makes it come back even stronger, allowing pain to be as it is, opening to it from it.

fully, lets it arise, express itself, and pass away. Paradoxically, the way out of pain is to go into it and experience it fully. Another form of hindrance is wanting or expecting something to happen. Sometimes blissful feelings will arise, and the mind will try to cling to these experiences or recreate them. The same thing that applies to unpleasant sensation applies to pleasant sensations. Allow them to be as they are, relaxing into the moment, and always bringing focus back to the breath.

Do not look left or right. Only see your meditation object, the breath. Observe the pulsation of the breath, the in and the out, expansion and contraction. Be sharp, lucid, present. Simply abide with the natural breath. The mind may want to do something more interesting.

Don't let it become dull and repetitive. Feel the aliveness of the breath. Go into it. Notice every sensation connected to the breath. From gross sensations to the most subtle, When you observe the breath, maybe you will notice more air going in one nostril than another. Maybe there's a tightness somewhere in the body constricting the breath. Maybe in the Hara area, the center located approximately two inches below the navel,

or in the heart area, or in the throat, or any part of the body. Simply notice and allow it to be as a little bit of the navel. as it is. Notice how the stomach rises and falls. Is it deep or shallow? Is it changing in quality? Is it sometimes deep or sometimes shallow? Is it smooth and fluid or is it choppy? It doesn't matter what you find. Just notice. Don't try to manipulate the breath. Is the air going in the nostrils cooler than the air going out? Maybe there's a tickling sensation at the nostrils. Can you feel the pulse of the breath like waves rising and falling on the ocean? Let the breath be free. Let it change. Grow and evolve if it wants to. Let it become subtle or disappear completely

if it wants to. Don't miss the changes. Notice them. No matter how subtle. Continue observing, patiently, persistently. It may take some time in practice to be able to stay with the breath without the mind wandering. In deep meditation, the flow of concentration is continuous, like the flow of oil being poured in a continuous stream. egoic thoughts are interruptions in the flow of concentration towards the breath. Don't push away these thoughts. Don't repress them, or they will just come back in a different form. But at the same time, don't become interested in the thoughts.

Otherwise you'll soon be daydreaming. The middle way is neither pushing away nor grasping. Just observe the breath, and the thoughts will settle down on their own. They will lose power. The patterns of thinking will gradually lose energy when you don't feed them your consciousness. Don't feed the mind. You are using concentration on the breath to divert the energy away from the mind patterns. The breath can move unconsciously when it's not observed.

or it can move consciously. Notice if the breath changes when you put your attention on it. Notice any subtle change when you bring consciousness to your breath. Conscious breath is pronic breath. It is a live breath. When you focus continuously on the breath, your inner energy might begin to increase. This may generate friction or some,

uncomfortableness. It may increase whatever patterns are in play. You may experience friction between your intention to stay with the breath and the old patterns of the mind. This friction may make you want to move to interrupt the meditation process, but know that this friction is integral to meditation. It is the friction that creates the fire that burns up the self. It is the alchemy that transmutes the duality of your pain and pleasure into samadhi. Always be surrendering. Always be present. Let the breath anchor you in the now.

Let the breath ground you. If you want to gain mastery over the mind, master the breath. There is only one breath, the breath that happens now. Let the breath take you deep in. your being, dive deep into the ocean of breath, of inner energy, into the pranic stream. If your mind has wandered, if some thought has interrupted the continuous awareness of the breath, the moment you notice it, you will actually be back at the breath. There's actually no doing when you return to the breath. You don't do anything.

to return to the breath. You are simply noticing what the mind is already doing and letting it go. The breath is profound, mysterious, but we take it for granted. We don't really inhabit the breath. We don't really feel the breath. Like most things,

we perceive only our thoughts about it, not the breath itself. concentration and deep surrender these are the two dimensions of meditation be patient focused remain aware remain a quonymous relaxing present