So I was wondering; does anybody have a good link to a morning mediation routine? Or howdo:Yoga or something?
I want to start doing more than just some breathing exercises while laying down in the morning, but I'd be lying if I said I knew or had the confidence to try to make it up.
Here's what I was taught about meditation. This is from a course I took 13 years ago, so feel free to think I'm a hack and ignore me. But my teacher had some serious credentials, and I really liked him.
It's not really so much about "emptying" your mind.
It's more about bringing your conscious mind as much into focus with the present moment as possible, and in the process, you are able to separate yourself from the chaotic background noise of your thoughts.
It's important to get into a comfortable position and relax your muscles. I don't remember the routine for achieving this very well. Just that it was a process - just imagining relaxation passing through you in waves, progressing a little further every time.
The part I remember best that most people never talk about when it comes to meditation is focus on the senses. Once you're relaxed, pick a sense, whether it's your hearing or your sense of touch for a specific part of your body or whatever, and focus on it 100%. Just try to wrap your mind around every single detail of information that sense is bringing in. Once you've achieved a consistent presence with that sense, try to bring in another one the same way and achieve full simultaneous awareness of every sensory detail of both at the same time. And just keep going like that.
The desired end result is that your conscious mind is completely focused on the present moment. This is zen.
And you don't stop thinking when you achieve this. Your mind doesn't empty. That's impossible. Instead, the way of describing it that really stuck with me is that your thoughts become more like clouds quietly passing by in the distance. They will still be chaotically divided between past, future, and fantasy, but you achieve stability and separation from all that through grounding in your sensory data of the present moment. Then by separating your active consciousness from the chaos that it's normally absorbed in, you can achieve greater awareness and control over the many facets of your mind, especially your ego.