Here Are Some Easy Meditation Techniques to Find Your Peace And Focus.

Many new to meditation often ask for just a few easy meditation techniques. And small wonder. Meditation has grown into a huge and daunting subject. Every second there's a new version, and nobody seems to mean the same thing even when using the same words. Rest assured; I'm here to help.

Sadly, I don't have a universal meditation translator. I can, however, clear the waters a bit by explaining the greatest common denominator between them all.

These easy meditation techniques are, at heart, about rising above the noise of life. It's about getting all the yammer and junk out of your mind. It's about getting a moment of peace and quiet. There's an old expression that the noise is so loud that "I can't hear myself think". Ironically this is more true than people think.

Most of our "thoughts" aren't really thinking. They're patterns. They are programs. We're creatures of habit. This is no bad thing; if we had to work out from scratch how to put on our shoes and make breakfast, we'd never do anything else. But, there is a price. The price is that we let our minds become a collection of patterns. Easy meditation techniques are a secret weapon to have both.

On the rare occasion that we're faced with something entirely new, we're struck speechless. Why? We don't have the mental patterns established to automate handling it. Here's one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies to illustrate. You may need to turn up the volume...

(By the way, I don't recommend this particular method as one of the easy meditation techniques. Although effective, the amount of effort involved kinda defeats the idea of "easy".)

Language is great. Words can inspire and enlighten. They can express sorrow, joy, desire, defeat, love, victory, and fear. However, they are hollow. Take the word "sad". For anyone who really, truly feels sad, the word is almost a joke. It's a hollow reflection of the truth. This is so with all words. Therefore, we use easy meditation techniques to move beyond them.

Easy Meditation Techniques Revealed.

I hear you; "Enough jabber," you say. "Give us the goods," you tell me. I understand and you're right. So, here are a few time-honored easy meditation techniques to dip your toes in. If you like the results of these, then you'll definitely want to check out the meditation system I use. Almost as easy, much more powerful results. But I digress; on with the show.

For the first technique, allow me to share a story from my childhood. In my early years we lived way out in the country. We had to drive an hour through old-grown forest to get to the nearest town of any size. So there I was, a pre-schooler, looking out the window at the trees passing us by. I kept calling them "tree" in my head. Tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree...

I'd already noticed that when I wasn't paying attention, there was noise in my head, like someone leaving the radio on in the next room. But at the moment, I was startled by what I was noticing: The more I said the word "tree", even in my head, the weirder it sounded! Eventually, the sound seemed rather alien, and had lost all meaning.

I was a little kid, of course, so I wasn't alarmed. But this was definitely something strange, so I told my parents up in the front seat. They got all excited, and I couldn't figure out why. I didn't see any use for it.

As an adult, I now understand the value of what I gained that day. You can use word repetition to move your mind out of its groove and thus make the mind babble quieter. Try it out sometime. Pick a word and just keep saying it until it seems a little odd. Don't give up! Keep going until it gets really weird. Once you get to that point, check yourself to see if there's a lot of noise in your mind.

For the second of the easy meditation techniques, I'm going to reach out to something that everybody's heard of but practically nobody actually gets: They're called koans. A koan (pronounced like the word "cone") is a riddle-like statement or question designed to glitch the brain a little bit and cause it to stop to sort itself out. Don't worry, they're not life-threatening unless you stop for one during a life-and-death scenario. And if that's the case, then it really isn't the fault of the koan anyway, is it? ;-)

Yet, if you can stay with a koan after the brain shuts up, you can often find something of value beyond where words stop. One koan that everybody has heard goes like this: "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?"

Here are a few more koans, some with a dash of humor:

• Shuzan held out his short staff and said, "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"
• A student was playing a handheld video game during a class. The teacher called on the student and asked him what he was doing. The student replied that he was trying to master the game. The teacher said, "There exists a state in which you will not attempt to master the game, and the game will not attempt to master you." The student asked, "What is this state?" The teacher said, "Give me your video game, and I will show you." The student gave him the game, and the teacher threw it to the ground, breaking it into pieces. The student was enlightened.
• Bassui wrote the following letter to one of his disciples who was about to die: "The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never die. It is not an existence, which is perishable. It is not an emptiness, which is a mere void. It has neither color nor form. It enjoys no pleasures and suffers no pains. I know you are very ill. Like a good Zen student, you are facing that sickness squarely. You may not know exactly who is suffering, but question yourself: What is the essence of this mind? Think only of this. You will need no more. Covet nothing. Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air."
• Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: "Why do people have to die?" "This is natural," explained the older man. "Everything has to die and has just so long to live." Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: "It was time for your cup to die."

Koans aren't for everybody, especially since many of the classics don't translate very well culturally. However, they are very useful and an easy meditation technique if you find a good one and let it roll around in your mind for a while.

The last of the easy meditation techniques is one I'm kind of reluctant to share. This is because I've found new levels of application for it. To put it simply: This technique can be quite advanced with practice. As a matter of fact, the Higher Balance curriculum bases an entire class around a technique which starts with the story I'm going to share now:

A year or two after my discovery of word repetition, I had the song "Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel stuck in my mind. Of course, I had no idea what the song was about, but the melody was catching. I kept hearing and thinking about the words "sounds of silence". I wondered what kind of sound silence could have. So, I picked a quiet time, and sat on my bed and just listened. First, I heard nothing. No surprise. I stayed with it, knowing there had to be something.

Now, the silence was roaring at me. Almost like a deafening noise of frightening volume, except almost in reverse. The roaring was intense, but it was no sound as such. Nervous, but knowing I was getting somewhere, I pressed on. As the roaring subsided, I started hearing a high-pitched sound. For those of you who are keen of hearing or remember hearing the whine of a cathode-ray-tube TV as children, it sounded almost like that. Almost. But it varied and was a lot firmer of presence then the passive whine of a TV screen.

I will admit that at this point, I was rather freaked out. I started jumping around and singing to myself to make the tones go away, and they did. I even forgot all about it until my meditation practice brought me back in touch.

Of all the easy meditation techniques go, this one is the most challenging. I had the advantage when I was a child because there wasn't as much noise in my head to contend with. I'd recommend starting with the word repetition and then going from there. If you're really interested in the silence-to-tones experience I had, I'd suggest going here.

Do you have any easy meditation techniques to share? Please drop me a line and I'll add it to the page. I'll see to it you get credit for your contribution!

(Thanks to Jason Gulledge for the image!)

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