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Meditation (Bhavana)
All meditation techniques begin with stillness. Go to a quiet place.
Close your eyes, begin by relaxing your body and your mind. Take a deep
breath, and exhale, each time you exhale feel your body relax into a
weightless state. Focus your mind on kindness towards others. This is
the simplest form of meditation that can help you cure your mind and
body. In
Meditation the focus of attention is often the meditator's own breathing
Advanced Meditation
There's more
to meditation than just closing ones eyes and an understanding of this
technique demands an understanding of our mental realm. The
subtle state of mind, which is the ultimate stage of meditation,
requires a tremendous amount of energy to reach. An absolute harmony
between our gross physical realm, sensual realm and our life energy is
the prerequisite of a meditative state of mind.
Meditation, especially passive meditation, brings us face to face
with our subconscious. Not unlike opening up a Pandora's box full of
mischief, if we are not ready to encounter our inner selves, it could
end up being a disastrous experience instead of an enlightening one! And
the most vulnerable seem to be-people with overwhelming anxiety, who are
emotionally or psychologically disturbed, those who have problems
accepting reality, people who suffer from acute paranoia and even those
who develop delusions of grandeur from the altered states of
consciousness that meditation tends to produce.
Ways of harnessing the ever-changing, ever-shifting mind are as
varied as the different techniques of meditation. But by and large, they
all practice mental exercises, which aim at capturing the very nature of
our minds. The meditator need to be mindful of: the body, feelings, the
mind and mental objects with concentration.
Meditation has not only been used as an important therapy for
psychological and nervous disorders, from simple insomnia to severe
emotional disturbances, but lately physicians have also prescribed it
for curing various physical ailments as well. It is useful in chronic
and debilitating diseases like allergies or arthritis, in which stress
or hypersensitivity of the nervous system are involved. Regular
meditation practices have also been known to help in dealing with pain
and a number of painful diseases, whether chronic or acute.
The act of meditation comes in useful because it helps the mind
to detach itself from all material and physical attachments—and that is
the ultimate cure for all diseases or at least the way to transcend them
when we cannot avoid them.
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