Why is meditation so complicated? If we rely upon our intellect to “make something of it,” meditation can become a complicated exercise. Rather than releasing us from stress, this adds to it. As a result, many think it’s just too much of a bother; best practiced by “gurus.”

Many agree that the mind does not understand Spirit. The intellect attempts to describe Spirit; tries to make us believe that we can achieve a true meditative “state” if we follow certain intellectual guidelines. In my experience, this does not work. The mind is limited by the human condition. Spirit is not.

What we may achieve in meditation is the awareness and experience of unity with Spirit, Being, Light…one another.

Most meditation coaches that I follow ask us to “breathe;” to “inspire.” The medical, physiological definition of inspire is to breathe air into the lungs. Inspiration…spirit in; expiration…spirit out. Repetition is called respiration.

The purpose of breathing meditation is to calm the mind and develop inner peace. We can use breathing meditations alone or as a preliminary practice to reduce mental distractions. When the mental “noise” is reduced, other meditation techniques are easier to employ.

So, to begin we sit comfortably. Some prefer to meditate lying down. Either works fine. In any case, we close our eyes and deeply relax the body. Focus on one breath. We can focus on only one breath at a time. The last breath is memory; the next has not yet arrived. At first, our mind will be very busy, and we might even feel that the meditation is making our mind even busier. In reality we are just becoming more aware of how busy our mind actually is. If we practice patiently, following one breath at a time, gradually our distracting thoughts will subside and we will experience a sense of inner peace and relaxation.

In his book, Discovery of the Presence of God, David Hawkins talks about three basic styles of meditation;

• Psychological insight or self-examination.
• Employing thought as our guide.
• The simplest: bypass the mind. Simply go to “Awareness,” and experience our Being without mental assistance.

The first two are educative, require mental exercises and may be complicated.  Style three is simple and direct. Once we have achieved the state of inner peace as above, Dr. Hawkins invites us to witness the visual field (eyes closed, of course), merely focusing on what is witnessed. Within the darkness, notice numerous tiny bits of dancing light phenomena, called phosphenes. Become aware of the visual field. In due time, our awareness merges with the field and the separation of the observer and the observed vanishes.

Eventually, only awareness itself prevails. All is spontaneous and non-dual. Awareness is all that there is. We experience that Spirit, Life, Being, Now are One. The mind is bypassed. With practice, breathing meditation leads to an experience of this unity with awareness whenever we call upon it. This state can be maintained with the eyes open. We then live joyfully within the silent state.

What sometimes occurs is that the mental chatter will pull our attention away from focus on the visual field. We are once again focused on mental chatter. Simply return to the awareness of the field. We do this as often as required. With practice, it becomes effortless.

Meditation can be very simple…Breeeeathe!