Oxford Meditation

A Twenty-First Century Seeker

by | May 10, 2017 | Getting started

3D-Twenty-First-Century-Seeker_sliderA Twenty-First Century Seeker is a practical guide to learn meditation and find greater spiritual and meaning in our everyday life. It is authored by Dr. Pradhan Balter, who has practised meditation for 45 years and offered meditation programs in more than forty countries.

“Maintaining spiritual principles in a very hectic world.”

If you are seeking to look beyond the stresses and strains of modern life, this book will help re-connect with your own inner source, whilst maintaining our daily activities of work, leisure and family. The book will give practical guidance and the confidence to find the inner stillness which helps to deal with the turmoils of life.

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Finding time for meditation

Finding time for meditation

by | Dec 2, 2016 | Getting started, How to meditate

One of the challenges in developing a regular meditation practise is finding the actual time to meditate. We have 24 hours at our disposal, but finding 20 minutes for quiet reflection can be surprisingly difficult! However, to give ourselves the best chance in getting the most out of meditation, we need to cultivate a regular daily practise. As we get into a daily routine of meditation, it becomes much easier to find time. We start to enjoy meditation so much, we want to do it before anything else; but in the beginning we need to make quite an effort to make sure we can always find 15 minutes in the day.

To find time for meditation, these are a few tips that we might consider.

  • Give it a high priority. The most important thing is to give meditation a priority in our life. If we feel the importance of meditation, then we will make sure we find the time to meditate. It is like anything in life, what we value, we give ourselves time for.
  • Set a weeks challenge. It is very helpful to set targets. For example, we could set ourselves a challenge to meditate for 20 minutes everyday for a week. This target is quite achievable and not too daunting. After we have managed it for one week, it will be easier to make it a second week. Then we can set ourself the challenge to meditate for a month, and see how different we feel at the end.
  • Don’t give up. Don’t be discouraged if you find meditation difficult. One of the biggest problems beginners face is that meditation is often more difficult than we would like. We sit down with the best intentions to keep the mind calm, but it isn’t as co-operative as we would like. However, even if we don’t feel we are doing a particularly good meditation, we should remember we are still getting a great benefit from it. Sometimes, we need to put in quite a few hours of practise, before we can take it to the next level. Sri Chinmoy suggests for absolute beginners to meditation, it is useful to get in the habit of simply sitting still for a few minutes a day. We shouldn’t expect too much in the beginning. Our capacity will increase the more we meditate. (more…)
What happens in meditation?

What happens in meditation?

by | Nov 15, 2016 | Getting started, How to meditate

only-deep-meditation-truly-know

Meditation is a simple exercise where we try to quieten the mind and enter into a more peaceful and illumining consciousness.

If you have never meditated before, you might wonder what will happen in meditation. At first, not much may happen at all! But, even if you find meditation a little difficult, hopefully you will feel a new sense of happiness. As you progress in meditation, you will feel a deeper sense of peace and happiness.

Stages of meditation

Firstly, you just become aware of what it’s like to sit in outer silence. We try to keep the body as still and calm as we can; we try to forget all about our usual worries and concerns, but focus on a particular meditation exercise.

At our first attempts, we may be surprised at how persistent the mind is. Even though we are trying to keep the mind quiet and blank, thoughts still appear. Some people comment that they never realised how many useless thoughts their mind could produce in a short space of time!

After some preparation and letting go of the first thoughts that come into the mind, we may see that our mind is slowing down. We become aware that there is more to us than our surface consciousness. It is when we can distance ourselves from our own thoughts that we feel a sense of peace and well-being.

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