Meditations

Meditation is a word that is used often, and in more than one meaning. Linda Chrisman at answers.com defines meditation as „a practice of concentrated focus upon a sound, object, visualization, the breath, movement, or attention itself in order to increase awareness of the present moment, reduce stress, promote relaxation, and enhance personal and spiritual growth.“[1]
Originally, the word comes from the Latin word „mediatio“, which meant physical or intellectual exercise, but later was used more specifically for „contemplation“[2].
Personally, I differentiate three different things that are commonly called meditation: meditation, contemplation and pathworking. I use the word meditation for the classical version I have described already. It means emptying the mind, shifting the focus of our attention away from the everyday chatter of the conscious mind. There is a difference between the centre of ourselves and the voice that talks on and on constantly. Most of the time, this voice is our filter, our reporter, our commentator. We observe the world through this filter. However, through mediation, we can still this voice or turn our attention away from it. This enables us to experience the universe directly, completely, without an intermediate. This experience is something that brings us closer to the divine universe.
There are a great variety of methods to achieve this state. One is breathing meditation and I talked about that last week. Other possibilities include walking meditation, candle meditations, variants on the breathing mediation, za-zen. This week, I will introduce you to a variant of the breathing meditation. This type of meditations, especially breathing meditations, are often used to calm the mind in preparation of other activities like prayer, contemplation, etc. This is a perfectly valid application of breathing meditation. Calming your mind before you begin helps to focus all attention, our mind, our will on the following activities. It helps us to anchor ourselves here and now before we go flying off, and makes sure all of us is going into the same direction.
However, keep in mind that this type of meditation has a lot more potential. Practising it regularly will not only increase your ability to „switch off“, it will also help you to gain the direct perception of the universe described above. But to reach this state takes patience and practise.

The second type of meditation is contemplation. I use it for meditations that are focused on specific topics. If you get the instruction to meditate about peace, how do you do it? You cannot use meditation the way I described it before. You use contemplation instead: You start out with a short meditation, to empty your mind. Then, and this is the important difference, you bring the topic of your contemplation to the center of your focus, your attention. There is nothing left that could distract you. You are completely focused on the topic, i.e. peace. The result is varying, actually depending on the topic. You will find that you get a lot of associations connected to the topic. Those can vary significantly. With peace, you might associate a white dove, a wondering why a bird is used to symbolize peace, you might realise that it also symbolizes freedom, and that freedom is possible only in peace. Do not try to think things through logically. Just focus on your topic and see what happens, what intuitive connections you are building automatically.
An additional effect that might happen is that you experience what you are meditating on, especially if you are focusing on strong emotions, like love, peace, joy. To a certain extent, this is great. However, you should take care not to be swept away. This is especially important if you try to meditate on less positive emotions like anger.
The topics for contemplation can be very general, like the examples already given: peace, love, joy. However, they can also be much more specialised. An example would be „Every man and every woman is a star“. Mediation is a way to learn more about the universe in general. Contemplation is a way to learn more about special parts of the universe. During this course, I will include some topics for contemplation every now and again.

The third type of meditations is what I call pathworking, which is in some cases also called guided meditation. A pathworking is a journey of your mind – or soul – that is guided by a script. Most often, this script is given by a facilitator who leads through the journey or recorded on tape or CD and played back to actually perform the journey. Typically, a pathworking starts at some safe place and leads you somewhere. There you can interact with your surroundings and the people or entities you meet. Depending on the actual journey, you might search for something, or ask for advice, or make an experience. The messages gained on those journey might come from our subconsciousness, but they might also come from the Gods. Finally, you are guided back to the safe place and the journey ends. The major difficulty is to provide enough guidance that you can really travel to the intended place/situation, but leave enough freedom and time for interaction that you can actually get messages, have some interactions, visions, inspirations. That is true for somebody actually guiding others, and it is even more important for a recording done before the actual journey.
During this course, I will give a lot of pathworkings in written form. I recommend that you record them yourself for your own journeys if you want to try them. The alternative is to memorize the journey by heart and do it without any external guidance. However, I have found this to be more difficult. It is easier to get lost on a side track and loose the focus of the journey. If you memorize the workings, I advise that you set an alarm to remind you to get back after a certain amount of time. Once it rings, return to your safe place and from there to your body.
There are other concepts somehow related to the three types of meditation described herein. An example is shamanistic journeying. However, that would probably go beyond the scope of this year. Additionally I do not feel competent enough in this area to say much about it.
Of course, the presented distinction is not a generally accepted one, but my own perception and definition. It tells you how I am going to use these words – meditation, contemplation, pathworking – in this blog.
To summarize, I distinguish between three types of meditation: meditation, contemplation and pathworking (guided meditation). We will encounter all these types in the next exerceises frequently. As a start, you have one of each type of meditation as an exercise for the next weeks.


[1] Linda Chrisman, „Meditation“, http://www.answers.com/Meditation, 04.11.08
[2] Wikipedia, „Meditation“, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation, 04.11.08