Getting Started
Which method to choose?
There are many techniques to choose from (I myself have a repertoire of something in the region of 500!). Access a sampling by clicking on Meditation du Jour. Alternatively, look through Meditation: The First & Last Freedom, Pharmacy for the Soul (see Products to read a little about each. Both are available through amazon. com), or Meditation Inc.
We are all unique: a method that suits you may not work so well for me, and vice versa. Not only that: a method that works for you now, you may well outgrow some months down the line, just as a method that doesn't "fit" me might suddenly seem just right a year later.
There is nothing sacrosanct about meditation techniques. They are simply scientifically devised ‘tools' with which to experiment. So feel free to try out different methods until you find one that clicks with you. For example, if you like the sound of one, try it for a week. By the seventh day you will know whether it feels right for you. When to meditate?
If you are doing a method that requires you set aside a certain time of your day, try to keep that time only for your meditation. Then it becomes as much a part of your natural rhythm as that first cup of tea or coffee. If your method requires that you set aside a time, opt for when your energy is highest. You will be less likely to fall asleep if you meditate either before a meal or at least an hour after you've eaten.
Always meditate at the same time every day. It is the same as establishing a gym routine: your body-mind becomes familiar with the rhythm, and will support your practice.
Maybe early morning, before your mind starts up and the new day's agenda has kicked in, works best for you. Conversely, perhaps you feel most relaxed and ready to drop inside at the end of the day. Naturally, it is easiest to meditate when you are least likely to fall asleep, so if you are by nature a morning person, that's probably the best time for you to meditate. For how long?
Though this site features a bunch of techniques under Meditation du Jour in fact it is not wise to change your meditation on a daily basis. That would be like drilling for oil: if you drill a few centimetres here, and a few over there, then try a third place, you won't achieve anything. Choose one place and "drill" there, constantly and regularly, and your meditation will have greater impact.
So, once you've found a method you feel a resonance with, practice it every day for 12 weeks. Then, if you feel to, continue with it; alternatively drop it, and experiment with a new method.
Choose one, at the most two, techniques to do on a daily basis, and best to choose one active and one passive. Continuity is important. You can forget a meal occasionally, but unless you have come to the point where the meditation has completed its work in you, to miss your meditation to undo the weeks of work you have already done.
It's like heating water: up to 99 degrees it is still water and if you stop there it will cool down and you will have to re-heat it. But if you persevere to one hundred degrees, then the water takes a quantum leap and is transformed into vapour.
"The same happens with meditation," Osho points out. "You go on accumulating it; it is cumulative. You do it every day – you go on accumulating a subtle energy in your being. It comes higher and higher and higher: ninety degrees, ninety-nine degrees. If you stop even then, it will disappear. It will be dissipated, because the whole life is non-meditative and it is easily destroyed.
"The whole world is non-meditative. The people you will be meeting, working with, talking to, are all non-meditative. When you carry a high energy, people who are not that high simply suck you – unknowingly. It is just as if there is water – it will start flowing downwards. All energies move downward. People are just like valleys. It is natural that your energy starts flowing towards them. Their level is lower than yours.
"Hence regularity is very very significant. Otherwise you create something and if you think 'Now I have created enough; I am feeling very good', for a few days you will feel good, but then again the energy will be lost."
Where to meditate?
It's helpful to always meditate in the same place. (Of course, if you are off travelling you will need to adapt the meditation you practice accordingly). For when you are at home, and if you have a practice that requires a space in which to do it, you might like to create a space in your house – maybe it's just a corner somewhere – that is reserved only for meditation. A cushion, a particular chair or meditation stool, maybe some flowers, or a scented candle can all help create a comfortable and evocative ambience.
Music can help you stay on track when your awareness tends to wander. If you use musict, choose ambient music (that is, non-intrusive, instrumental, and non-rhythmic) and keep that track or those tracks only for your meditation. Similarly, use your chosen fragrance only for meditation. Then that music and/or fragrance becomes linked in your unconscious to meditation. By and by, as soon as you hear your meditation music or smell that certain meditative aroma, you will begin to move away from your outer world, and to drop more easily and more deeply into the inner one. When you create your own space, with flowers, fragrance, and music, you are creating outer props, which support your intention to meditate, and your practice itself.
How to Dress?
You'll feel more comfortable in loose clothing that does not restrict the flowing of your energy in any way.
Minimising Disturbances
Though you can use all potential disturbances in your meditative practice, especially in the beginning it doesn't hurt to minimise them as best you can. If you live with others, let them know you are taking some time for yourself, and that you don't want to be disturbed. You might want to put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door, or to close or lock the door. Turn off your telephone.
Posture
In the sitting methods, or for methods that have a sitting stage, you'll find it easier to be alert and aware if your spine is erect, because then you are assisted by gravitation.
If the posture suggested for your method is not comfortable – thereby creating a constant distraction – adjust your body so that you can be comfortable without falling asleep. (If you do fall asleep when meditating, no need to feel guilty about it. It takes a little while to learn how to be both deeply relaxed and aware. If you constantly fall asleep you might want to change the time you practice to when you are more alert.)
Psychological Preparation
Remember to enter your meditative practice without the expectation of any result. Just be content to enjoy the time of meditation in itself, for itself. Results will come, but only if you're not demanding that they do. Remember, demand will create tension in you. Create a climate of receptivity, openness, and relaxation. Then be willing to wait forever.
How to know if I'm making progress?
The great advantage of meditating is that, just as when you work out at a gym, results will be evident quickly. If you practice a meditative method one day, the fragrance, however faint, will be there. Given time of course, the benefits will become more noticeable. Just as when you take the appropriate medicine your pain begins to disappear, if you've chosen the right method for yourself, the result is soon evident. When to stop a method?
Just as different paths can be climbed to reach the top of a mountain, the various methods are designed, in their own particular way, to help you reach the state of meditativeness.
A method is only a device to use until you have discovered the knack of being meditative wherever you are or whatever you are doing. When meditation has become a quality in you, something as intrinsic as breathing, that's the time to drop the methods.
To quote Osho again: "Meditation is good, it is medicinal. A medicine is needed when you are ill. When you are healthy, the medicine has to be transcended."
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