HJ: Meditation helps us look within and clear away what no longer serves us, which ultimately helps us find the happiness, peace, abundance and joy we all seek. The problem most people have is that they put the cart before the horse — they expect the happiness, peace, abundance and joy to show up first at which point they will be in the ‘proper state of mind and place’ to do the inner work. However, this is not how finding emotional peace works.
You must have tools to pull yourself out of the ’emotional mud’ when you suddenly find yourself stuck in it. The process of doing so is how you find emotional peace — it’s a learned skill that takes practice and experience. The good news is that it’s not terribly difficult. In a few weeks, you can have a set of powerful skills that will last you a lifetime and will enable you to be able to instantly heal your emotional state in a matter of minutes… Now, that’s priceless!
The powerful 3-step breathing meditation outlined below is a technique that accomplishes all of the above and more. We recommend using it whenever you feel yourself overcome with unpleasant emotions that keep you from feeling happiness, peace, abundance and joy that exist at the core of your being, just waiting to be expressed.
– Truth
Breathing Meditation For Self-Realization
By Brandon West | Project Global Awakening
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This article is in essence a guide to breathing meditation that will help deepen your practice. There are three practices in meditation (once you have established a solid meditation posture) which will help you get deeper and deeper into your meditation, and into a new awareness and experience of yourself and the universe. These three practices are:
- Following your breath into the universe. By paying attention to our breath and experiencing it fully and consciously we are able not only to achieve a deep sense of inner peace, but also a more relaxed, aware, and energetic state.
- Practicing patience. By patiently bringing our attention back to our breath every time our mind wanders we develop our attention and increase our personal mastery. The third practice is …
- Letting go and allowing. When we meditate we connect to creative consciousness and to our higher selves. With consistent practice, and ample patience, we can learn how to let go of our egos and our need to interfere and instead learn how to allow our infinite nature to express itself through us. This is the highest achievement in meditation, and is the true meaning of power and mastery. When we can reach this stage our lives will transform and we will find ourselves living an inspiring, blissful, peaceful, loving, and beautiful life – in short we will find ourselves to be living in a perfect world.
In my previous articles of meditation I have covered topics such the meditation posture, meditation tips for establishing your practice, and how to meditate, but this is the next step once those specific areas have been somewhat mastered (or at least have become natural).
There are many different forms of meditation for many different purposes. In some you recite mantras, or visualize, or gather, channel, and circulate energy. This article is not necessarily a guideline for meditation per say, but a way to use meditation for self-realization. That is, instead of using breathing meditation to do things, this outlook on breathing meditation is about experiencing your true nature – universal consciousness – directly and allowing it to be the creative source of your life which you live from.
Following Your Breath Into The Universe
The breath is the teacher which guides you into your body and aids you in the mastery of your mind, helping you to transcend its seduction and consciously unite with spirit. Every breath we take is literally a breath of life. The only time this body ceases to breathe is in death. Simple enough. Yet how often during the day are we actually paying attention to our breath? Is it shallow or deep? How does it feel to breathe?
Are we appreciating each breath for how it feels and the life that it provides us?
The fact of the matter is that the majority of people barely pay any attention to their breathing. Yet if we use our breath as a focal point, it is the fastest way to bring our awareness into the moment, as well as to cleanse and calm our minds. Our breath acts as a continuous flow of higher energy that will wash away our negativity, pain, and disease in the same way that a river washes impurities from our clothes and bodies.
Whenever you get too stressed, or are about to explode in rage and need to calm yourself down, just breathe. Feel your breath and focus on it to the exclusion of all else. Inhale energy, peace, and awareness, and with the exhale let go of all your tensions and worries.
Our breath has a magical quality of instantly getting us into a deeply aware meditative state, if we consistently practice breathing meditation. It can act as a trigger for higher states of consciousness and meditative states so that the moment we remember to focus on our breath, we balance and center ourselves in spirit. That it is one of the most fundamental meditation techniques, regardless of what type of meditation you are practicing.
Breathing is a perfect representation of the yin & yang aspects of the universe, and is a testament to the universal state of change, harmony, and balance. As we attune to our breath, we tune into the flow of the universe and the sea of energy, prana, or chi which we are breathing and moving through in each moment.
As you practice breathing meditation, with your tongue on the roof of your mouth and your eyes looking between your eyebrows, breathe in and out deeply through your nose. You don’t need to count your breaths, just experience them and allow them to teach you about your body as your breathing takes you deeper and deeper into the stillness within, and your inherent connection with creative consciousness. They are directly related.
Breathe from your stomach like a child, and do it naturally without effort or struggle. Focus your attention on your breath, and feel the tensions that arise in your body as you inhale, and release them as you exhale. If you have any pain or injury then breathe energy into them, and feel the energy of your breath releasing those pains. At first it may feel ridiculous to do this, but in time it will become profound. As you cleanse your body with your breath, so too do you cleanse your mind.
Your mind will wander off on its own away from your breath, but don’t get frustrated or angry, just calmly return your attention to your breathing as many times as necessary. As you progress your eyes will become clear, and you will be radiant as your mind calms down and joy erupts from the silence. This is the exquisite feeling of being truly alive.
Practicing Patience
At first your mind will be chaotic and thoughts will appear seemingly from every corner of your mind at a rate that is unbelievable, frustrating, and potentially overwhelming. As a result you will want to move around and open your eyes to distract yourself from it, but don’t allow yourself that indulgence. Move if you are in physical pain or if there is a fire, but otherwise, do not get up.
Even those who have cultivated peace within themselves for years will still sometimes close their eyes and enter into a world of loud and chaotic mental chatter and disturbance. This is one of the byproducts of life.
We cannot always control what happens to us in life, and that is not the point. We do however have complete control over how we react to life, and that is our true power.
Experienced meditators experience internal conflict just like the rest of us. The difference is how they react. An ordinary person is effected by the world and thus enters into an internal state of conflict, and when they do, they become slaves to their unconscious thoughts and emotions and become unbalanced, confused, stressed, and frustrated. Then they look outside of themselves for the cure in food, drugs or alcohol, shopping, relationships, or in anything that can distract them temporarily from what they are feeling.
An experienced meditator on the other hand is not effected by the world and can live in gratitude, peace, and loving kindness because they are connected to source instead. When they are effected by the world, or when the reach a point of internal conflict, they are conscious of it, and instead of running and distracting themselves, they sit down to meditate.
They face their internal world, breathe, and connect to creative consciousness. As they practice returning to source they are flooded with higher energies – peace, love, kindness, inspiration, and so on – and these energies dissipate lower energies, and thus their internal conflict. All conflict and suffering is the result of being disconnected with spirit, and thus breathing meditation (and meditation in general) is a practice of returning.
Experienced meditators are masterful not because they never experience conflict or stress, but because they know how to realign themselves with spirit and consciously return themselves to an experience and perception of perfection, peace, and balance.
Face your mind with as much attention as you can gather and detach yourself from your thoughts. You are perfect and you are pure in your natural state regardless of what you’re thinking. Identify with that pure awareness by observing what the mind has to say without getting attached to it, and then letting the words wash away.
Your mind will be chaotic at first but over time it will become quiet as all your suppressed thoughts, memories, impulses, and emotions have the opportunity to surface so that emotional processing can occur. As they surface, this will occur naturally if you remain emotionally detached from them.
The only reason our minds are so cluttered is because we don’t take the few minutes each day which is necessary to take out the garbage. That is what breathing meditation is – the process of taking out our mental and emotional garbage. Looking within is all that it takes to empty our minds, because in time as we look within ourselves we will learn to process and let go of our thoughts as they come, instead of allowing our minds to become cluttered in the first place.
As you observe your mind, realize that your mind is not who you are. Notice that you are not your thoughts, and that you are actually the conscious awareness that is observing your thoughts. Your mind is only a tool, it does not define you. Your true nature is above and beyond the mind and if you are quiet, patient, and have simplified your mind impeccably over time, you will get an opportunity to experience that other aspect of yourself.
Let Go & Allow Yourself To Be
One of the most wonderful benefits of meditation is that it is a practice of self-discovery. When you sit down to meditate you are learning to master your mind, but more importantly, you are learning to be yourself again and embody your divine nature which is unlimited potential.
Accept that you are not currently being yourself because if you were you would be infinitely blissful, loving, kindhearted, balanced, and peaceful. If you are … then please email me so that I may learn from you. But if you are not, then you have to accept that you do not know everything about yourself, and that you are not being completely honest in how you perceive, and express yourself.
Meditation will be different every time, and it is not always what you need to have an absolutely silent internal reality. Thoughts come to the surface because they need to be dealt with in some way or another. Become conscious of all that comes through your mind, but remain detached from it by becoming an impartial observer.
As an impartial observer you are free from the emotions that come with certain thinking patterns which gives you the opportunity to think and live consciously. You can then choose how to feel, act, think, and perceive the world so that you are completely independent of the circumstances of your life. Things in life only become negative or positive once you see them as such. You get to choose, and that is the true human worth.
This is the only way to dissolve our egos and all our mental limitations. By not being affected emotionally by your lower level thoughts you negate their power over you which is the path to true freedom and self-realization.
Allow what is within you to come through you because it is what you need to process to become yourself again. Allow everything that is within you to come through you, and then choose to focus on that which is pure and a reflection of your eternal divine self, then cultivate it through silent contemplation of this superior aspect of yourself.
“If you bring forth what is inside you, what is inside you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is inside you, what is inside you will destroy you.”
– Jesus of Nazareth
Just patiently observe it all streaming through your consciousness and know deep in your heart that the permanent aspect of yourself is the pure awareness you are using to observe reality. Accept the knowledge and inspiration you are being presented with as guidance for your life path of embodying infinite potential, but always remember that your divine self is the awareness which you create your life with, not the manifestations of your magnificence.
If negativity comes through you, you can waste your energy battling it, or you could just allow it and practice non-attachment, and then readjust your mind to a positive perspective. In place of the negative thoughts you may want to then consciously think some positive thoughts and affirm your desire for positive thoughts in your mind. Then when positive thoughts come, thank them! This is programming yourself to become a more positive, optimistic, and joyous person.
Instead of trying to control everything that goes on within you, make it your focus to become aware of everything that is going on within you, and allowing the inspiration, the love, the happiness, and the potential to come through you and prosper instead of fear, negativity, and self-doubt.
(Self-doubt is the most crippling force that a human can experience, so learn how to eliminate it in my article about how to gain confidence.)
As you develop your breathing meditation practice using these meditation techniques that I have here provided you will learn how to be yourself once again. When you are yourself you will have no limitations, and you will live a blissful, abundant, serene, invigorating, and inspired life because you will have tapped into all those qualities and allowed them to come through you. In the words of the sage Pantanjali:
“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
This great, extraordinary purpose that you are inspired by is returning to your true, infinite nature, and when you look inwards through the practice of breathing meditation you will “dormant forces, faculties, and talents” within yourself that you did not know were there. Then all conflict and suffering in your life will subside because you will cease to resist the magnificence that you really are by pretending that you are small.
You are a master of creation, and breathing meditation is the realization of that fact.
