Meditation, once considered a spiritual practice reserved for monks and yogis, is gradually achieving mainstream popularity as more people discover its many benefits.
Meditation doesn't have to be complicated, doesn't require you to subscribe to any particular spiritual belief, and doesn't necessitate sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting mantras. It can be as simple as sitting in a quiet room and focusing on your breath, or counting your steps while walking around your neighborhood. You can also turn everyday activities like washing the dishes or vacuuming the carpet into a meditation.
There are many different forms of meditation, making it easy for everyone to find a style that best suits their lifestyle. At the end of this article, I'll describe a few simple meditation techniques, including one method that will allow you to meditate deeply without even trying.
But first, let's talk about the top five reasons you should try meditation.
1. Your health will improve
No matter what your age, meditation is one of the easiest ways to improve your health. Research at the Medical College of Georgia found that meditation lowered blood pressure and reduced the risk of …Continue reading
This month's issue of Popular Science magazine includes a sizeable section about current brain/mind research, including an article devoted to what they call "eerie mysteries of perception" — synesthesia, out-of-body experiences, the sense of being watched, and deja vu. For the sake of this article, I'm going to focus on deja vu because I believe the research mentioned in the magazine does little to further an understanding of the phenomenon.
Deja vu, a French term for "already seen", is the feeling of having previously experienced a current situation. It often provokes a strong sense of familiarity because the subject feels with near certainty that he/she has already been through the same experience once before.
Deja vu comes in different forms. There is situational deja vu, referred to as deja vecu ("already lived" or "already experienced"), in which a person feels he has already experienced an entire event exactly as it is currently being experienced, in the same surroundings at the same time of day with the same people, the same conversation, the …Continue reading
I've been reading a new book called Left in the Dark by Tony Wright and Graham Gynn, and I'm only about 100 pages into the book but so far it has been a fascinating read. I'll be writing a review for my company's web site soon, but I wanted to post something here too because the book is so relevant to the theme of this site.
Tony Wright, one of the book's co-authors, broke the world record for sleep deprivation in May of this year as part of a personal experiment in left-brain/right-brain consciousness. For more than eleven days, he remained not only awake but fully coherent and active. He participated in interviews with reporters from local television news programs and radio stations, including ongoing video interviews with the BBC, right up until the end of the experiment. He also kept a daily diary, which was published on the BBC web site, and interacted with guests at the Studio Bar in Cornwall where the experiment took place. That kind of dedication to personal research always gets my attention, and it lends more credence to the theories explored in the book.
The first section of Left in the Dark discusses neurochemistry and the evolution of the brain — in simple explanations that are easily accessible to a layman — and posits a theory about the impact of a plant-based diet on the early development of the human brain. The authors also describe how our modern diet has negatively impacted our cognitive development, and examine the anthropological and spiritual repercussions in addition to the biological effects. The implications are so intriguing I was prompted to seriously consider returning to vegetarianism, which I'll post more about later this week in an article about nutrition and its effects on consciousness.
Left in the Dark also discusses the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and their influence on states of consciousness, drawing examples from cases of savant syndrome, multiple personality disorder, and even hemispherectomy (the removal of one hemisphere of the brain). The book explores the right hemisphere's involvement in artistic functions, healing abilities, intuition, and transcendent experiences. The authors also imply that society's ongoing favor of the left hemisphere may prevent us from accessing our full potential, and in later chapters they include suggestions for restoring your own individual consciousness.
I'm eager to finish reading the book to learn more about the authors' theories about consciousness and personal evolution. I'll post a link here when the formal review is published on my company's web site, but in the meantime I recommend visiting Tony Wright's web site and ordering a copy of Left in the Dark for yourself.
I was reading an article about brainwave technology earlier today and clicked on the Google advertising link displayed next to the article. The list of ads that appeared prompted quite a chuckle.
Take a look at the third ad in the image below. Apparently, you can now shop for brain damage. And it's "aptly affordable".
Now check out the ad directly below that one. Would you want to learn anything about the brain or about improving your memory from someone who uses "ur" in place of "your" and writes "smarted" instead of "smarter" in a paid advertisement (or anywhere else, for that matter)?
This past year brought a wave of interest in the "Law of Attraction" (which is really more like a Hypothesis of Attraction), due in large part to a DVD movie and its companion book, both called The Secret. After applying the techniques described in The Secret, some people experience amazing results while other people get few or no results, and there is a very simple reason for that.
The most important factor — one that was ignored in the movie — is that if you don't align your actions with your intent, you will never achieve what you are trying to manifest. Simply thinking about your goals and focusing your thoughts and emotions on your intention isn't enough. That is only half the "secret".
If your goal is to lose weight but you eat 5,000 calories worth of junk food every day and never exercise, you are not aligning your actions with your intent and therefore you won't lose weight, no matter how many hours you spend visualizing a slender, healthier version of your self.
If your goal is to get a terrific new job but you spend every day lounging on the sofa watching Law & Order reruns instead of filling out job applications and sending out resumes, you won't find a new job, even if you spend a full hour every day mentally projecting your intent out into the universe.
If your actions contradict your intent, guess which one will win out in the end?
Before you take any action, ask yourself, "Will this action bring me closer to achieving my goal?" If the answer is no, you will need to decide whether or not you truly want to take that action. If the answer is that not only will the action not bring you closer to your goal but instead will take you in the opposite direction, you will need to determine which is more important to you — achieving your goal or taking that particular action instead.
Practicing that technique throughout each and every day will also help you learn how to differentiate between behavior that stems from a desire for instant gratification versus behavior that grows out of focusing on your true purpose and intent. If your goal is to lose weight and you have a sudden desire to eat a candy bar, focusing on your goal and asking yourself whether or not eating the candy bar will bring you closer to that goal or will drive you further away from it can help you find the willpower to overcome the urge. In overcoming that urge, you are aligning your actions with your intent. This principle can be applied to any area of your life.
Each morning, focus on your intent and decide on at least one action you will take today toward reaching your goal. It doesn't have to be something elaborate or dramatic. It may be as simple as placing a phone call, sending an email, or attending a class. Every step you take to align your actions with your intent will result in progress toward achieving your goal, while sitting in your living room just thinking about things you wish you had or things you'd like to do won't get you very far.
The self-help gurus involved in The Secret quickly realized they had failed to address this important point. In subsequent appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live, nearly every guest from The Secret made a deliberate attempt to emphasize that the Law of Attraction requires action, not just intent. If you doubt this, watch the episodes of those talk shows and count how many times the guests say "If you sit around and visualize, they’ll come take your furniture away!" That statement became their mantra, a way to address after-the-fact what they had neglected to mention in the film.
I firmly believe in the old adage "You get what you focus on", which is the basis for the Law of Attraction. Whether it has anything to do with your intent creating quantum vibrations that resonate throughout the universe, I have no idea. I'm not a quantum physicist. I think it has more to do with two other factors instead:
1. When you focus on something, you typically spend more time on actions related to whatever you're focusing on.
2. When you focus on something, you direct your subconscious to be on the lookout for anything related to that goal. As a result, you tend to notice things that otherwise would have slipped under your radar. You suddenly begin to experience synchronicities, events and opportunities that bring you closer to your goal, but is this happening because your intent is "vibrating outward into the universe at a certain frequency" or instead because you've programmed your subconscious mind to bring to your conscious attention anything specifically related to your goal? To me, the latter possibility is just as wondrous as the former, though it sounds far less magical to some people, probably because it doesn't involve the use of the ever popular words "quantum" and "vibration".
Another thing to keep in mind is that "the secret" was never a secret at all. Books like As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel covered the same ground (and covered it more thoroughly) long before The Secret became a self-help phenomenon. Rhonda Byrne, producer of The Secret, didn't hide the fact that the inspiration for the movie came from reading a book by Wallace D. Wattles called The Science of Getting Rich, which was first published in 1910. The so-called secret has been popular, well-known, and easily accessible to everyone for far longer than anyone reading this article has been alive.
If the techniques described in The Secret aren't working for you, I recommend reading the books mentioned above and applying the methods described in those books instead. Each of the books is a quick, easy read. They emphasize not only the need to direct your thoughts and emotions toward your goals but also the importance of fully embodying your intent through your actions as a way to bring about the results you desire, and they provide advice and techniques to help you align your day-to-day actions with your intent.
This is a very simple meditation technique you can perform in any location that has enough room for you to walk around — a park, your neighborhood, a shopping mall, etc. I recommend trying it outdoors first, preferably in a place that isn't too crowded, but with a bit of practice you can use this technique even in a crowded place (sometimes with unusual results, which I'll explain later in this article).
This technique might sound a bit too "new agey" at first but give it a try anyway. It's simply a different way of interpreting sensory input, so there is really nothing new agey about it.
If you're practicing lucid dreaming, you can also try this technique while in a lucid dream.
Step 1: To begin, just walk for a few minutes at a comfortable pace. Look around and get a feel for your surroundings.
Step 2: Continue walking and begin to imagine that everything around you — trees, cars, animals, people, buildings — is made up of the same thing. Some people like to imagine that everything is …Continue reading
