Robert A. Williams - Guided Meditation For Sleep: Meditation, Relaxation And Mindfulness Techniques To Improve Your Life and Sleep Better

Guided

Meditation For Sleep

Meditation, Relaxation And Mindfulness Techniques To Improve Your Life And

Sleep Better

By Robert A. Williams

Copyright 2018 by Robert A. Williams - All rights reserved.

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Introduction

I t is time to have a real talk about meditation and to learn what it means exactly to meditate. You might be on the beach, thinking that you just need to knock back a few margaritas and wave your fingers around your head in the V-gesture while saying, "Peace, brother. Sounds corny and it is. Meditation has become a bit too clichd, with all of the hype and it being so popular nowadays. So, with all that noise going on, it is difficult to truly understand and learn how to meditate correctly. But why is this even important?

Let's first see what meditation really is? How do you actually meditate? Do you really have to disguise yourself as some new-age spiritual evangelist by putting on white clothes, going around barefoot, denying yourself all material belongings and maintaining a saintly face all the time?

On the one hand, many people think that meditating is some sort of artsy-fartsy marketing scam, and on the other hand, that it is something only Buddhist monks do and, or something done by hippies on drugs who preach eternal peace and lovemaking.

Meditations is being able to observe your own thoughts and feelings without judging yourself for them. Its not about ignoring your feelings and emotions, it is about you allowing yourself to have them without holding on to them, judging them or clinging to them, let them come in and out. Every time you realize you have gone away in a train of thought and shake your head and refocus your mind in what you are doing, then you are meditating, letting your mind refocus on the now and let thoughts go.

Buddha explained things better than me, so I refer to a Buddha story where he taught his student Ananda how the mind works and invited him to observe it.

"One day when they were walking through a mountainous region, Gautama Buddha, when he was older, told the disciple Ananda under the midday sun. I'm thirsty, when we crossed the mountains, we passed a stream, and can you go back and bring me some water?

Ananda, who respected his teacher, went back and reached the stream. But when he got there, he realized that some carriages had gone through it, damaging everything. The dead leaves that floated in the bottom were on the surface of the water and it was full of mud. The water was no longer drinkable and, of course, he could not take it to Buddha. Ananda decided to return to his teacher because he knew that a few miles beyond the place where they had stopped, a great river of crystal-clear water ran.

But when he saw Ananda, Buddha, who was very strict, told him to return to the stream again because he said I remember that when we passed that water it was pure and crystal clear. Annoyed, Ananda responded, I understand but in the meantime, since we arrived here, a carriage passed through the stream and the water is no longer drinkable.

I know, said Buddha, but go and sit on the shore for however long it takes. Go and sit down, but do not get into the stream because if you get in, you will dirty it up again. Just wait, watch and do nothing, those dead leaves will disappear, the mud will settle, then fill my bowl and come back.

Ananda went back to the stream again because he could not disobey Buddha and there he sat waiting. And waiting until he saw how everything began to settle down, leaving the water as clean and pure as before, in just the way nature had intended. He filled the bowl and, on his way, back understood what Buddha was trying to tell him. Ananda do not get in the river, do not follow the flow of your mind, wait on the shore and simply observe the true nature of your mind. It is that crystalline clarity unpolluted by transient thoughts and emotions that make us err from our paths.

Meditation is putting your mind where you are standing, focusing on what surrounds you and how that makes you feel, what you experience. When you make your mind focus on the present, you are no longer on autopilot, you are meditating; you will see that meditating in essence does not take time.

There is a lot of talk about meditation, even people working for Google have their daily meditation space to improve creativity, humor, performance, and group connection...

What makes meditation so difficult is being conscious, meaning possessing the ability to take only the useful stuff the head tells you and discarding all of the useless thoughts.

When you meditate, you should not seek to leave the mind blank. Even if this could be achieved, it will not help you relax or reach happiness. Instead, it just makes you feel void and insipid, without being able to have any meaningful thoughts, rendering you like a black and white faded photo. Instead, meditation is learning how to appreciate color, vitality, and feelings. Its about living in the now and living well.

Living implies a thinking mind that does not shut up and a body that does not stop feeling. Meditating is the ability to be aware of this and take the useful thoughts and leave be what does not contribute anything. To achieve this, you do not have to stop to reprogram your thoughts or embed positive thoughts. Positive thoughts will come as often as negative ones, you just have to shift your focus and stop fixating on every negative thought that comes through your mind, acknowledge them and let them go.