7 Lets meditate correctly... starting to experience the Awakening Meditation

In this podcast we are making sure we are meditating correctly.  This will be a balance of principles of meditation and meditation itself. More meditation in the next podcast.

These podcasts are meant to supplement your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. They are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years on my path of awakening. I feel these podcasts are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last.  Though they, also, all stand on their own.  Since we are each a bit different, if anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy.  If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support.  You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

William: 0:00

Hello, this is William Cooper. How are you doing today? Well, I hope. Welcome to Awakening Together. Today, let's actually do a meditation together, or at least let me talk you through it. If you've been meditating for a long time, it might be a nice tune-up, or maybe you just want to skip this one. But I'm going to cover some things that you may or may not be doing. For those of you that are just beginning to meditate, I know that when I first started, I did it all wrong. It was painful. I didn't know what I was doing, and it really just didn't work out too well. So let's get started off on the right foot. Build confidence. By the way, if you want to time your meditation, maybe you already have a meditation timer. If you don't, I recommend the Insight Timer. Insight Timer. I have a link to it on my website under Resources, as well as another timer. I think for starting out, the Insight Timer is the best, probably. But I have another one, because it's got a yogi on there that I like, who goes through these exact meditation instructions right before each meditation, and he spends only about 15 seconds on it. He says it very concisely. It's just a nice reminder before you start meditating. So you'll see that timer too. Either one you can download to your phone, or both. I use both. Now about meditation. Rumi, the poet, said something like this. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. In meditation, we're actually going to do a little bit deeper than that. We're going to do two things. We're going to let go of all of the barriers to who we are, all of our barriers to love, because we are love, all of our barriers to peace and calmness and well-being and happiness, because we are. Those are the qualities of our being. We are love. We are peace. We are happiness. We're all the things that we're looking for. In fact, one observation is you are what you're looking for. We try so hard in life to get love or get peace or get well-being or get happiness, but really that's what we are already. So in meditation, we're going to experience that. Meditation is simply sitting still and becoming, not becoming, but knowing ourselves, being ourselves. You can't not be yourself, but you sure can put a lot of barriers and blocks in front of you. So you don't really experience your life. And perhaps you live somebody else's life rather than your own. So in meditation, we're going to just settle down and experience who we are direct experience. There are two things that go on in meditation. There's the part of me that is aware of everything. You have that. You're aware of my voice. You would be aware if I quit speaking. You're aware of how your body feels. You're aware of sounds. You're aware. So there are two things. There's awareness and there's everything else. There's awareness and there's that which you're aware of. Only those two things, everything falls in that category, awareness and everything else. So in meditation, you close your eyes, you get yourself into a comfortable position, whatever that is, you close your eyes. You let your eyes just gaze forward, begin to relax. Why don't you do that right now? Close your eyes, relax and do nothing. Simply don't block out stuff. Blocking out stuff is doing something. You're actively blocking. You're actively repressing. You're actively resisting. In meditation, it's acceptance. You're with whatever happens. You're aware of it and you just let it do its thing. Remember, it's like a rubber band unwinding. You want it to do its thing so it can expend its energy. So here you are. Your eyes are closed and you just watch thoughts. You feel feelings and you watch them, but you don't jump into them and get involved. Oh, that thought says I should go to the grocery store. It's great. You just watch it. You don't jump into it. Yeah, I need to go and then I need to get butter and I need to do that. And where's my pen? And where's my pencil? I need to write something down. You don't do that. You just watch it. Now, remember, we're addicted to our thoughts. So it's going to be very hard for you to just watch them for a while. Slowly, that addiction will fade. So I'm talking a lot. You just do it just from awareness. Let everything do its thing. I'll get back to you in about a minute. OK, I don't know if that's a minute or not, but here I am. So what happens in meditation as you let everything do its thing? And it's very important that you feel it. Let it happen. It's not you don't do it from a detached place. You feel it. If your stomach is tight, you feel it. You don't hold on to the tightness, but you do feel it as it's unwinding. You're not adding to it, but you're allowing it to really for your muscles to really unwind, for your thoughts to really unwind. Now, as you feel it over time. These thoughts and emotions and the tensions underneath them will start to dissipate. And what will be left? They will dissipate, and all that's left is that which is watching the awareness. Now, when the tensions dissipate, the tensions under the thoughts and emotions, there's a great opening. And when there's a great opening, something will happen that perhaps you've never felt before. This awareness, that which is watching you, you, that will shine forth in a radiance and it will become very powerful. And that's this energy I'm talking about. This atomic bomb energy. It will become very powerful and radiant. You know, in the pictures, when they show Jesus with a halo around him or Buddha with a halo, people could see the light. They're that radiant. And that's what happens when you meditate. It takes a while for all that poison to go out because our cultural norm is to be bogged down and to be covered over and crusted over. That's what we're used to. That's what we think is normal. It's very unhealthy and abnormal, actually. So as it burns off, you'll feel so good. Just as a thumbnail, quick thought, like if you get a massage, you know, at the end of it, you're so relaxed and that feels so good. But you are walking around all day so tight that after a while, that's what you're used to. That's the cultural norm. But really, really how you are naturally would be how you are at the end of the massage. But your consciousness would also be that way. Just a radiant, ongoing, cascading atomic bomb of bliss and wellness and well-being. We'll meditate together from time to time in these podcasts, because this time I know I talked a lot, but I wanted to guide you through and give you some guideposts. So I've mentioned it before. How long to meditate? Well, just think about this. What is meditation? That's five minutes. If you do it for five minutes of just sitting still and being yourself. Which implies the other 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day. Are you being cut off from yourself? So most of the day you spend living a life that's not yours. What you're asking yourself now is self-love. Can I live from a whole place, a place of wholeness for five minutes? Really, it's not a fair question because in our addiction, it would be like asking somebody not to drink for five minutes. It's really hard. It really, and at first it's super hard. You'll see. Anyway, we'll talk about that more. But start small. Start because you're going to be changing neural networks, old habits, old patterns. So start small, start easy. It's good that you're even listening to this podcast. We're going to go places that you've never been before likely. And that you've never heard before. Even if you've listened to a thousand podcasts, I know because I have. And what we're doing is filling in some overlooked areas along with those that have been so beautifully highlighted by so many other people. You know what? On the next podcast, let's do another meditation. I was pretty chatty in this one. I think it was necessary, but I'm going to be a little bit chatty on the next one, but not as much. Mostly we'll do more meditating because I want to make sure we get this. Uh, it's so crucial to get it right. OK, have a good day. We'll talk soon. Bye.