Helping You Love Yourself into Success and Less Stress! Helpful Hints for Meditation Part VII: Some Working Definitions by Ilenya Marrin, DSS HOME FREE NEWSLETTER PRODUCTS SERVICES ABOUT ME TESTIMONIALS RESOURCES CONTACT Meditation Some Working Definitions The following working definitions may help as you begin or expand your exploration of meditation. To me, these are fundamental qualities for life, but often you simply don't think much about them until you begin some sort of inner process like meditation. Loving The basis of loving is love, that quality from romance to caritas that is the subject of countless books and movies and is the matrix of our lives from birth to death. In a small inspirational book called Loving Each Day, John-Roger says, "Love is living in the spiritual heart." What I have learned over the years is that loving is an active process. The word ends in "-ing." Living in Loving Holding an intention to be Living in Loving will support your meditation practices. For me, Living in Loving is both an intention and a choice. It has been an intention, although perhaps unconscious, since before I knew about meditation or spiritual growth. To love and be loved seems to me to be the most natural and logical activity around. Of course I step out of loving many times, into upset, blame, self-judgment, righteousness, and so on. But my overarching intention is to choose back to a place of loving as fast as I can. Meditation helps me stay calm and neutral enough throughout the day to make the choice to come back to my loving and personal peace much more quickly than I ever used to. I talk much more about Living in Loving in my ebook A Way of Loving Intention, which is a great adjunct to meditation. Intuition: Listen, Look, Sense and Know When you stop your outer activity and focus inwardly during meditation, you may find you automatically see things on the "screen of your mind." Or, you may hear conversational voices inside your mind (a normal phenomenon quite different from hearing voices outside yourself as in hallucinations). Or, you may naturally feel or sense "good vibes," things that "feel right" or "feel off." Your body may produce sensations such as "gut-level" instincts that inform your choices. Or, you may simply know something with a direct kind of intelligence that isn't connected to seeing, hearing or feeling. You can greatly enhance your ability to receive answers from your own spiritual essence simply by practicing listening, looking, sensing or knowing. We all have all these inner abilities and use them in a mix and match sort of way. It's fun to begin to notice which inner senses you most rely on, and to develop and strengthen all of them. In paying attention to these inner senses, especially during formal meditation or spontaneous quiet meditative moments, I may follow a thread of thought or vision to a deeper understanding. You don't need any special training. You need not be "psychic." All you need to do is become aware of the signals, the messages, from your inner senses. Making brief notes about these discoveries in your journal can be very helpful as you observe your own process over time. Consciousness This is simply a working definition that may help you to be more comfortable with your experience of meditation. In meditation, you start to access your larger consciousness. What I mean when I refer to "consciousness" is that very large intelligence that is part of the real self, the spiritual essence of each of us. This consciousness, to my way of thinking, includes awareness - both conscious and unconscious - on many levels: physical, imaginative, emotional, mental, unconscious, subconscious, spiritual and more. I have learned that my thinking mind, although very useful, is only one small part of my overall consciousness. By working with the concept of consciousness as I do, I believe I give myself freedom to receive information and understanding from all the arenas of awareness within and around me. Soul I don't presume to be able to define the Soul, but one of the traditional aims of meditation is to awaken your awareness of your Soul. Here is a description I enjoy, that may provide inspiration for your meditations: "The Soul is an extremely dynamic, forceful, creative unit of energy. It is alive in the truest, most pure sense of the word. It is the part of every person that never dies, always exists, always is. It is an extension of God and a spark of the Divine. It is your truest reality. The body, mind, and emotions are the vehicles through which your Soul gains experience in this world. They are not who you are. They are illusionary and transient." (John-Roger, 1997, Inner Worlds of Meditation) Go to Part VII: Holding Your Focus Back to Welcome Page and List of Recent Articles Meditation

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