An effective formula for daily meditation practice.
For many people there is a challenge involved in developing a consistent daily meditation practice. In a meditation class or during meditation retreat, it can seem relatively easy to meditate as everyone around us is meditating also, and the environment is generally supportive of our focus. However, once we get back into the maelstrom of our daily routine, sitting still all by ourself for 20 or so minutes can be intimidating to the point that we may subconsciously avoid it, even if we do have the time in our schedule.
So, in order to help begin to establish regularity in your meditation routine, I am going to suggest a simple formula that goes like this: 5x3x5.
This formula basically means five minutes of meditation, three times a day, five days a week. Rather than trying to sit down for a full 20 minutes each day, try and create five minutes in the morning sometime, five minutes over lunch, and five minutes during the afternoon or evening where you commit yourself to creating a meditation space in your routine.
The particular meditation form that you choose in those five minutes is up to you, in some ways the simpler the better. For example for that time you could simply focus on using your awareness of your body and your breathing in order to release tension in your body an mind, and re-center yourself around the core of your being. Another simple breathing form that you could try and place within some of these five minute periods is the core body breathing or core cellular breathing that I outlined recently in my Qi Gong blog.
Initially just try and do this five minutes three times a day routine on your weekdays, and take the weekend as a ‘holiday’. However, once you start to see how enjoyable and productive inserting these short meditation breaks is to your daily life, you may find that you want to insert a little bit of spontaneous meditation into your weekend routine. The important thing is to set yourself a routine that is enjoyable, doable, and that does not become just another box to tick off in our list of things that need to get done during the day!
So, you might like to remember this little formula, and see if you can integrate it into your routine over the next few weeks and months….
Lucid sleeping.
The long term benefits of regular, consistent meditation practice, even when practiced in the 5x3x5 format above are really immeasurable. However watching the development our meditation practice is a little bit like watching a plant grow; when you look at it from moment to moment, day to day, there does not seem to be a lot happening! The benefits of meditation are therefore really best noticed incidentally, that is to say you set up a daily/weekly meditation practice or routine, and then just get on with it. If you can do this, then every now and again, without necessarily looking for it, you notice that your mind has changed. Old issues that used to send you into a spiral no longer seem to have such power, we are more accepting of ourself and our ‘imperfections’, warmth and connectedness towards others seems to arise more often and more spontaneously than before…
One of the longer term benefits of meditation that I have recently started to notice in my own inner work is what I would call ‘lucid sleeping’. There are lot of books out there that describe how do develop the ability of lucid dreaming, which is where we are basically able to remain conscious and aware during the dream state, and are therefore able to manipulate our dreams to a greater or lesser extent. ‘Lucid sleeping’ is the ability to remain conscious when our mind dissolves onto even more subtle levels of consciousness, where all forms (physical, dream or otherwise) have dissolved into the vast, luminous empty space that lies beneath or beyond the dream state. This vast luminous empty space is called by various names within different meditation traditions; In Tibetan Buddhism it is called the Dharmakaya, in Kabbalistic mysticism is called Kether, other names include the clear light, Shunyatta, the causal mind.
Anyway, the main point here is that, after about 15 years of consistent meditation, I have noticed that quite naturally and organically, my ability to remain lucid whilst simultaneously in a relatively deep sleep has suddenly improved substantially. As a result my ability to meditate at the same time as lying down and going to sleep has become very much a part of my daily reality. This obviously has huge advantages in the sense that substantial periods of time that previously were spent in unconscious slumber have now become actively available for spiritual development.
So, I thought I would mention this as an illustration of the longer term benefits of dedicating a portion of time each day to meditation and cultivating inner peace. What starts out as a 5x3x5 weekly routine, if practiced over months and years will naturally bear much positive fruit without an unnatural amount of effort!
© Toby Ouvry Jan 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.
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