Meditation

Exploring and resolving difficulty in practicing meditation

a spiritual practice requiring effort and surrender, that reveals your essential nature, refreshes your mind and heart, and nourishes your being

One common thing that many folks say is their key to maintaining balance and inner harmony is meditation. A daily meditation practice, even if it is for fifteen minutes, can be amazingly effective. Meditation is so simple that many of us think it couldn’t possibly help.

Every day we clean our teeth, yet how many of us clean out our minds on a regular basis? Meditation is sitting quietly and detaching from our thoughts.
Meditation is a simple, natural part of life. Scientists have found that children naturally meditate. Every hour or so a child’s eyes will glaze over as his or her gaze turns inward for ten to thirty seconds. The child is present, yet detached, and usually will not respond right away if you speak to him or her. This is a natural phenomenon.

As we grow up we learn to be more engaged in doing or accomplishing and we lose this natural tendency. We learn that we should constantly focus on everything outside, and we forget how to look within. If we sit in meditation for just fifteen minutes a day, we can recapture the feeling of refreshment and restore a sense of harmony to our lives.

When we meditate on a regular basis our lives seem more manageable. After meditating we feel refreshed, we are able to detach from worries and concerns and we are usually restored to a sense of balance. We become more finely attuned to our inner Self and we learn about our true nature. When we meditate consistently, we become used to looking within to receive inspiration and answers that solve important problems or decisions.

Meditation requires the desire to go deeply within and the discipline to show up for the practice. Each of us may have our own specific challenges to creating a meditation practice. Happily, flower essences can support our intention and desire to practice meditation.

Flower essences will not make you meditate. However, they can help mitigate or change thoughts or behaviors that keep you from easily practicing meditation. Following are a few challenges common for many people when they attempt to establish, or re-establish a meditation practice.

Detaching from What Your Mind Thinks

If you have difficulty detaching from what your mind thinks, Rainbow Cactus flower essence is helpful. When you meditate, you do not stop thinking but you allow your focus to go beyond your thoughts. Rainbow Cactus helps you to move from focusing on what you are thinking to becoming aware of what is beyond the thought.

Fear of the Inner World

If you distrust your intuitive, inner sense, Queen of the Night Cactus is the essences to use. This night-blooming flower provides an essence that supports you in turning your focus deeply inside, through the inner corridors of darkness, to find that you are connected to all of creation through sensing and feeling. It awakens your qualities of receptivity, subtlety, intuition, psychic impression, and deep feeling. It is excellent for fear of meditation or fear of the inner void.

Fear of Losing Control

Since meditation is the process of letting go, some of us may fear losing control. Sacred Datura is the essence of choice to help you let go, or surrender, into meditation. It is through letting go that you attain everything. It helps you feel safe and protected as you release your hold of the known or familiar. This flower essence helps you to find comfort in formlessness. It supports you in dissolving your ideas about reality so that you can widen your experience of life and yourself.

Fear of Being Overpowered by Dark Forces

If you find yourself afraid that you will be overpowered or taken over by dark forces or the unknown, Scorpion Weed is the essence to use for these fears. It establishes trust in your essential goodness and light and calms the fears that are created by your mind.

Letting Go of Limitation

In normal consciousness, you are confined by your limitations of being human or by your thoughts. It can be scary to let your sense of structured existence go so that you experience a state of meditation. Thurber’s Gilia flower essence addresses your fear of letting go of limitation. It supports you in moving beyond the concept of limitations.

Meditation is Too Hard

If you find yourself believing that meditation is too hard or has to be a real struggle, Indian Root can help. Many of us have an ingrained sense that the things in life that are worthwhile can only be obtained through struggle and hardship. Indian Root helps us give up this perspective and find that meditation is incredibly simple. When we let meditation be simple, it is.

Receiving the Bliss of Meditation

When we meditate, sooner or later we begin to experience a deep bliss that we soon recognize as a natural state of being. Some of us believe that we have to pay a price to experience bliss or love. Crown of Thorns can bring you the realization that love and life’s blessings are freely and unconditionally available when you are open to receive them.

A Balance of Effort and Just Being

While effort is required to create the discipline to show up for meditation, you also need to let go of doing to surrender into the meditation. If you focus too much on the technique of meditating, it is counter-productive. Integrating Being & Doing Formula helps you find the proper balance between efforting and simply being.

Contemplative Exercise

Take a few moments and ask yourself the following questions. At first, answer each question with your mind. Then, thank your mind for its input and ask your heart the same question. Allow an intuitive impression or feeling to arise as an answer.

What is stopping me from practicing meditation?
Do I really want to know myself better?
What fears arise when I think about turning my attention within?
Can I find ten minutes a day to devote to this spiritual practice?
Do I really want to commit to a meditation practice?

To Meditate

If you want to begin or renew a meditation practice, you can take four drops of each essence that seems appropriate for you in a glass of water, and then just sit quietly for ten minutes. At first you may just hear your mind thinking all of its thoughts. That’s normal. When you meditate your mind does not stop thinking, but you can learn to go beyond your mind’s thoughts, to just observe them and not be engaged by them. Even if you sit and listen to the thoughts in your mind for ten minutes each day, congratulate yourself. This is how the practice begins. After time, the desire to meditate will arise spontaneously. In the beginning it takes effort to commit to sitting, but after some time it will come naturally.

It can be helpful, but not essential, to sit for meditation at the same time every day. If you want, you can extend the time you sit to fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, and then half an hour. Don’t worry that you will spend too much time meditating. Before you sit for meditation, tell yourself how long you want to sit. You will naturally come back from meditation in precisely that length of time.

Within a few days or weeks you will find that you naturally want to sit for meditation. It will become easier to let go of your thoughts, and you may find that as you let go you begin to experience “nothingness.” As we go deeper into the “nothingness”, we ultimately experience great bliss and joy.

Selecting the Most Appropriate Flower Essences

Not every flower essence mentioned above will be appropriate for every person’s specific needs. Different people have different issues with meditation. The process itself of exploring and contemplating your relationship to meditation is important. It is the foundation for successfully selecting the most beneficial flower essences. Usually, careful self-examination can clearly show you which of the above flower essences are most appropriate for the root of your issue with meditating.

Though you can use more than one flower essence together, you probably will not need to use all of the ones mentioned here. After contemplating your relationship to this issue, select the flower essences that apply for you, or use an intuitive method to select among them. (For more information on how to do this, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.) A general guideline is to use four drops at a time, four times a day, in water. However, it is fine to follow your intuition and use them as often as you like. Most people find that they tend to use them more often in the beginning and less often towards the end of the cycle. Unless otherwise indicated, a cycle is usually two to four weeks. [more]

For information on how to clearly evaluate the effects of the essences you have used, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.