Discovering Love -- Advanced Guided Meditation

I'm calling our latest podcast episode "advanced" because to experience the love that the meditation points to requires that your mind be settled enough to notice some subtle experiences. The meditation prompts you to become aware of tendencies to resist what is happening in your thoughts and emotions, and even further to the feeling that underlies those tendencies -- a sense of things being not quite right. It's a sense of not being alright as you are. It's a sense of life not being alright. It's at the core of the suffering which is part of the human condition. Of course, we all like some feelings and experiences more than others. That's natural. But suffering results when we feel that things should be different, that we should be different -- that we should feel differently than we do. When we are able to let go of the resistance to how we feel and stop trying to make ourselves be or feel something else, then what is left is love.

I'm not talking about love in the way we usually think of it. When we say love, we are usually referring to a sentiment or feeling. The feeling of love can be mixed with affection, respect, gratitude, infatuation, passion, all sorts of things. What we usually identify as love is something we feel in response to someone or some thing. The love I am talking about is not an emotion, and it is not dependent on anything. It is the very essence of our existence and reveals itself when we let go of resistance and attempts to manipulate our experience. It is the natural state of our own awareness, of our "beingness", which is always there in the background but is largely ignored. My hope is that with this meditation, you will be able to recognize and enjoy it.

You may need to use this meditation a number of times before this love is clearly experienced. If you are new to meditation, it might help to try the podcast episode one (Relaxation Break) or the Breath Awareness Meditation until you are able to settle down enough for this meditation.

I'd love to hear your experiences with this meditation. The feedback we've received here and at the meditationoasis.com website has been really helpful. And, as always, we welcome your questions.

Relax and float down stream...

We named our podcast Meditation Oasis. The name came to Richard early on. Then we spent a lot of time brainstorming to find the "best" name, but Meditation Oasis stuck. We didn't realized that the name would have a life of its own. I recently did a search on iLike.com in order to "claim" our artist pages. Not only were we listed as Mary and Richard Maddux and Mary Maddux, but Meditation Oasis was there as well. When we started a page on MySpace a couple weeks ago, the only kind of page we could fit into was a "band" page and now we're a band called Meditation Oasis on MySpace! Instead of just "going with the flow", I found myself saying hey, whoa, is this really the name we want? Let's sit back and think this thing over. Maybe there's a better name. It's something about how I was raised. It's always been a challenge for me to buy the first thing I see. I can find the perfect pair of jeans right off, but end up having to try on all the rest "just in case". I measure my progress sometimes by my ability to go with the first thing that comes along when it feels just right. But this one really challenged me -- the name our work is coming to be known by. Life once again is challenging me to walk my talk (or I should say follow my own meditations!)

"Meditation Oasis" has a life of its own. Life itself is a life of its own. It's not mine to direct in what I may think is the "best" way. It happens. And once more, I'm learning to go with the flow.

As Lennon and McCartney once sang it, "Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream...".

Effortless Meditation

True meditation is by its nature effortless. A meditative state is a state without effort. The basic nature of life itself, actually, is effortless. So what is trying in meditation all about? That's something worth investigating! Of course, we can't become effortless by trying. Hopefully our latest Effortless Meditation podcast will support you in being effortless.

Much of what I wrote about the Letting Go meditation applies here. This is simply another angle on the same theme that runs through all of my meditations and blog posts, and yet I truly feel the less said on this the better!

Meditation: Life without Endings

I just finished watching a mini-series on DVD. It was one of those that has a cliff-hanger at the end of almost every episode. I couldn't wait to to find out what happened next and, of course, I wanted to know what would happen in the end. But this series didn't really end the story. There was no knowing "how it all turned out". Obviously the last episode was made without the producers realizing it would be the last. Otherwise, the loose ends would have been tied up and the characters would have lived happily, or not so happily, ever after. At first this really bothered me. I didn't like the feeling of everything being up in the air. But when I thought about it, I realized that this is how life actually is -- a series of events, some favorable, some unfavorable, with no end. Something about that feeling of being left up in the air felt so unsettling, and yet so alive. The end of anything is a stopping point -- the end of movement. Everything must end for something new to emerge, but when we hold on to endings from the past or are fixed on how things will end in the future, we stop the natural flow of life. We stop the aliveness.

Meditation can help us give up our attachment to endings. Letting go of outcomes, letting go of having certain experiences and not having others, letting go of the attempt to make it "turn out right", allows us to experience the aliveness that is present moment to moment.

Let go of all your ideas about how to meditate!

When you listen to our Meditation Oasis podcasts, it's best to leave all your ideas about how to meditate behind. Forget about what you think meditation is or how you think it should be done. Most definitely let go of any expectations of what the experience should be like. Let it all go and listen with a "beginner's mind" and open heart!

One goal of my guided meditations is to create a space where you can be effortless, allowing the natural flow of life and living. Coming to the meditation with the idea that you have to breath in some special way, that you should not be having thoughts or even that you should feel a certain way during meditation can make meditation into a struggle.

I recently received an email from someone who said she was having a "hard time breathing" during the meditations. It soon became clear that she was trying to breath deeply and do it "correctly". I responded that she didn't need to breath in any particular way, but simply to allow the breath to go on its own naturally.

In a sense, my guided meditations are about being in the "allow mode", not resisting what arises. Thoughts, emotions, sensations in the body come and go. Noise happens around us. All of this is part of the natural flow of the energy of life. The instructions are just gentle suggestions which are not meant to be followed in a rigid way. If the attention wanders, that's fine. Just bring it easily back to the meditation.

There is no "correct" experience. There are no mistakes in these meditations. If there is a sense of strain or struggle, it's just a sign of effort and the formula is to let it go. Take it easy, take it as it comes!