Sparkling Breath Meditation

Find a comfortable posture to maintain for 10 to 20 minutes. If you are lying down, lie in Savasana (shah-VAH-sa-nah) - heels together, toes apart, legs relaxed**, spine long, shoulder blades tucked under, back of the neck long, chin slightly tucked, squeeze arms to your sides but stretch them down as far as you can, palms face up. (If you are seated in a chair, feet are flat on the floor, back is straight, neck neutral, chin level with the floor, hands rest on legs either palms up or down. Please refer to the end of the article for additional suggestions on what you may need to be comfortable.)

Establish an easy, rhythmic breathing pattern; breathing out and in for equal lengths of time (count slowly to 4 each way). Breathing soft and steady, easily and deeply, a pattern smooth and strong emerges.

Your eyes close gently. Behind your eyelids is darkness - total and complete. You are enveloped and surrounded, comforted and soothed by the absolute absence of light. Breathe it in, become with it as one. Darkness/blackness - you breathe it in, you breathe it out.

Gradually you become aware of a glowing light hovering over your face. It glows warmly growing and expanding. It sparkles brightly with golden and silver pin pricks of light almost seeming to dance and roll in place hovering over you. This light is pleasantly warm - just the right temperature.

As you lay gazing at the glowing and sparkling energy, think about all the 'things' that lurk inside you that you no longer have need of. Consider any negative emotions such as hatred or bitterness, anger or envy, fear or resentment. Let them bubble up in you. Let them really roil around. Also consider sadness, stress, disappointments, disease that might manifest or that has manifested, any pain or hurt you feel physical, emotional or spiritual. Let it all come to the surface of your consciousness. Let it pulse and throb in your body.

Take a moment to fully realize all of these sensations.

Now, as you exhale, visualize these emotions being pulled from every cell in your body starting with the farthest reaches from your lungs - the top of you head, the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes - see these 'things' streaming out of you as your breath - black and sooty; smoky and thick.

Next, gazing with your mind's eye at the warmly glowing and gently pulsing, sparkling silver and golden energy hovering lovingly above your face, breathe in this healing concoction of energy, oxygen, vitamins, minerals, positivity, healing, relaxation, happiness and light. Draw it deeply into your lungs and throughout your body it flows into every cell from the top of your head, down the arms to the tips of the fingers, through the torso and down the legs to the tips of the toes. This energy fills you completely infusing every single cell right through to the smallest, deepest one.

As you breathe out, this loving energy takes with it any negative energy lurking within you. It pulls out the sooty, thick, smoky undesirables. Whoosh, they stream out as you let them go.

Breathing in, the sparkling energy floods your body to maximum capacity.

Breathing out, the undesirables depart.

With each and every inhale your body is healed, invigorated and renewed.

With each and every exhale your system is unburdened, purged and refreshed.

Breathing in, you sparkle and heal and glow.

Breathing out, you release and let go.

Breathe in, sparkling energy.

Breathe out, let go.

Breathe in, heal and rejoice.

Breathe out, let go.

What You Will Need:

- 20 minutes, undisturbed - schedule it in your planner
- A 'place' that is comfortable and (what you consider to be) safe and private, maybe there is a lock on the door, soft lights, soft instrumental music or just silence for optimal concentration
- Warm socks or a blanket to keep you cozy, non restrictive, non bunching clothing
- Patience/kindness/forgiveness/love

Please email/contact me (seabelle7@gmail.com) if you have any questions regarding this meditation. Please visit my website for more information on yoga and meditation. http://www.yogazoebella.ca/

Thank you. May you find peace and fulfillment.

**alternatively the knees can be bent, feet flat on the floor and wider than hip distance, lean knees together so that legs can relax and stay in position

Original article

Buddhist Are the Inventors of the Meditation Techniques

It seems to be very near the truth, if we say that Buddhist were the inventors of the meditation. The Buddhist meditation techniques are the best and worldwide recommended for the stress relief. In fact, meditation is a top priority element of the Buddhism. You will find dozens of meditation techniques based on Buddhist phenomena. The holy script of the Buddhist reveals complete details of meditation techniques. Lord Buddha adopted these meditation techniques for peace of mind during his life.

Practice is an essential part of the meditation and important than theoretical knowledge of its techniques. There are two basic techniques which are commonly used in these days due to their best productivity.
Tranquility or peace is the first method in the Buddhist meditation techniques. The main purpose of this technique is concentration of mind. The learner can choose any subjects from the 40 topics. It includes ten stages of concentration lessons, like discs of different colors, candle flame or other lights, water, etc. It also includes a variety of bodily decay such as rotting corpse. Breath control is usually the next technique including deep breathing exercises. This mindfulness breathing technique is fundamental and compulsory meditation exercise for every student. There are many benefits of this exercise. It helps to calm the mind by removing the inner chatter. The student feels much confident and pays accurate attention. With the help of this technique, students gain control over many mental hindrances of their life, such as sensual desire, doubt and sloth, anxiety, and ill-will. The next stage is the final stage where the student feels actual happiness.

Insight is the next method in the Buddhist meditation techniques. In this technique, the students learn to see the things as their actual existence. The students get rid of aversions in this technique to reduce the effects in rational judgment. They learn to accept the truth, even if it is not according to their taste. This is the initial stage in this technique and called as bare awareness. The students also needed three existence marks, which are essential in the phenomena. These three marks are suffering, not-self, and impermanence. The breath meditation exercise is also a part of this technique which helps them gain the enlightenment.

However, many people use both Buddhist meditation techniques at the same time in their practical life.

Next stage is the developing of kindness and loving. This technique directly changes the emotional habits of the students and helps them become more positive in their emotions. The students become more patient, kind to others as well as to themselves, and keen to understand others. This technique also teaches them to forgive others on their mistakes.

Mantra meditation is adopted by the every student of the Buddhist meditation techniques. In this technique, the followers use a simple phrase of their choice and repeat it at even-pace whether loud or internally. It helps them to calm their mind against any damage and pain due to any mischief. Most of the people think that this technique is only consist of spiritual phrases, but it is not true, you can select any poem as mantra to calm your mind during anxiety.

Original article

Shaktipat Meditation and the 12 Levels of Spiritual Growth

Shaktipat meditation uses Divine, living energy to carry teachings from the mind of the teacher into the mind of the student. It's the fastest path to realization, and it forms the most highly evolved teacher/student relationships on our planet.

Shaktipat is a type of subtle energy -that is particles of energy too small for modern science to observe or detect. However science can observe the effects of subtle energy. The experiments of Clive Backster, the inventor of lie detector machine, demonstrate the effects of thoughts and subtle energy on plants.

It's essential that the Shaktipat meditation teacher is not only fully realized, but is also completely clean and clear. It's simply not possible for any teacher to give anyone a state of meditation that they don't already have themselves, and realization, or enlightenment, is the goal of Shaktipat teaching. As the Shaktipat energy flows through the teacher, it picks up the teacher's essence. If the teacher is polluted with cravings or suppressed emotions, these detrimental energies will be passed on to the student along with the beneficial teaching. If the teacher full of love, peace and bliss, that is what the student will experience.

Realization is defined here as having experienced all of the twelve levels of consciousness listed below. These twelve levels are taken from the writings of the great Yogi Vivekananda and rewritten here to render them more understandable to present day readers. The complete writings of Vivekananda are available on the internet.

Shaktipat Meditation can leap frog students through these levels, allowing them to go directly to the higher levels such as god realization, oneness and emptiness. This is accomplished by the teacher putting his own state of meditation directly into the student. It is then the student's responsibility to meditate dedicatedly in that state until it becomes anchored in him. If the student fails to do his meditation work, the great gift his teacher has given him will be lost quickly, leaving behind only a beautiful memory.

These twelve levels are usually experienced by most practitioners. It's common to be growing in several levels at once. Levels may be experienced in a different order than listed here. Some practitioners never consciously experience some levels. Some traditions focus completely on God while others ignore God and go into Oneness. There are many differences in opinion about the higher levels of Samadhi. The levels are presented here as a general guide.

1. Understanding the purpose of our existence. We are Spiritual beings enjoying an earthly experience, not human beings searching for a Spiritual experience. You attain this level when you consciously begin your Spiritual work.

2. Seeing the suffering of others. When you begin seeing past your own selfishness to the needs of others, you begin wanting to help them.

3. Removing the suffering of others. Consciously working to heal and teach others gives you the fastest growth.

4. Finding passion, peace and love. When we work selflessly for others we become very passionate about our practice and work. We also discover peace in ourselves and universal Love, love with a capital L.

5. Conversion of negative energies to positive. Anger, fear, sadness, negative thoughts and entities striking your aura are transformed to Love by the Love emanating from you.

6. Opening the Third Eye. Your psychic abilities awaken.

7. Bliss. You experience limitless joy. You become able find happiness in all circumstances because bliss wells up from your internal being and is not dependent on external circumstances.

8. The Source. You experience your direct connection to the Supreme Being, also called Allah, Jehova and God the Father.

9. Becoming The Source. You become an inexhaustible source of energy exactly like God.

10. Oneness. You experience that our entire universe is one conscious, living, intelligent organism with no division or separation. Everything is one very alive energy field.

11.Nothingness. Your complete being, all your experiences and creations dissolve completely into blackness. All egoic mind structures disappear. You become able to experience reality and create real structures.

12. Nirvana or nether being or non being. There is much debate about this state and if anything lies beyond it. It can only be experienced. It cannot be explained in understandable terms.

Completing these twelve levels can be compared to graduating from a Western university with a Bachelor's degree that prepares the student for post graduate work. Attaining realization allows people to experience reality and to begin learning how to work in it.

This process of learning how to working in reality goes on for the remainder of the person's life as they go deeper and deeper into meditation. Once again, Shaktipat meditation teaching from a person ahead on the path can speed learning greatly.

Richard Crown has spent more than thirty years in Asia. Living in diverse cultures has allowed him absorb their Spiritual practices in a first-hand, useful way. Shaktipat meditation is the fastest and best of all the many meditation techniques he has experienced. You can experience Shaktipat meditation with Richard & Remedia Crown at http://shaktipat-meditation.org/. They are both realized meditation teachers who share their abilities with loving compassion.
You will also be able to download a free PDF of Richard's book Ascension In Love: Our Spiritual Journey, a true account of their own Shaktipat awakening presented in the form of easy to read conversations.

Original article