How I Cultivated a Meditation Practice & How You Can Too
Meditation is a constantly evolving practice that supports your life’s journey. Combined with cleaning and prayer, it is essential to any person’s well-being. The purpose of meditation is to touch-base and connect with your soul or ‘higher self.’ It is an opportunity to listen to nature’s intelligence within and understand what you truly need and desire, what you must see or realize, and what you are to learn or do. It’s like a daily check-in with your soul and energy. But is also the container in which an individual can do deep healing and soul cultivation work.
It took me a lot of experimentation, a lot of intuitive development, a lot of listening, a lot of brutal honesty, a lot of feeling, and a lot of patience to cultivate my meditation practice.
I stumbled upon meditation as a desperate means to help me sleep at night when I was going through a life ending, which would become the trigger to my spiritual awakening process. At the time, I did not know I was about to undergo a spiritual awakening nor did I seek out spirituality. Like the average person, I turned to the internet and tried every suggestion and product listed in all the ‘how to sleep’ articles online. I created a cool, dark, zen sanctuary: I de-cluttered my room, cleared it of all screens and phones, avoided looking at screens 2+ hours before bedtime, ate my meals 3 hours before, bought a himalayan salt lamp, got an essential oil diffuser for lavender, got an air purifier and humidifier, tried calming music…but none of those things ultimately helped me fall asleep and sleep through the night. I was going through a very difficut time in my life and naturally, my mind was racing and was filled with a million thoughts and worries. It was on overdrive and I could not power it down at night. My mind controlled me.
When I started meditation, I had no guidebook, no guru, no training, no program, no apps. It simply started one random winter’s day. I woke up and was called to sit down on the floor of my bedroom, facing the window.
And so, I sat down on the floor, facing the window. I started with sitting down with my eyes closed for just 10 minutes in the morning. It was difficult and uncomfortable to sit there for so long—even at just 10 minutes; my mind jumping from one thought to another. It was the opposite of peaceful. And I felt like what am I supposed to be doing? Other than just sit here with my thoughts?
It was so uncomfortable that I started listening to ‘high frequency’ music on my noise cancelling headphones, which helped distract and ease me from the noise. This temporary distraction helped me get comfortable with the practice of sitting down and closing my eyes. High frequency music also can help clear some of the superficial lower frequencies of energy to help clear the noise a bit. I like to think of utilizing high frequency music as training wheels for meditation practice, simply to get the individual comfortable and at a more relaxed state of being.
It took me about a month to incrementally increase the time and frequency of my meditation practice. Gradually, once or twice a week turned into every other day, and every other day turned into almost every day. Eventually the training wheels came off and I no longer needed the high frequency music to sit down. I noticed it was time to remove the headphones when the music started to feel like noise and a disruption to the feelings of peace in my mind.
I would let thoughts pass and go like cars driving by on a road. I let them pass, being mindful that there was no need to react or engage with every single thought. With time, the thoughts passed. And then with times they slowed down, and eventually they would sometimes come and sometimes not at all. I suppose once I stopped giving or feeding it attention it simply saw no reason to show up. It just needed to be let out, like airing out a really old, dark and dusty attic.
By month 2, I was meditating for 30 minutes a day. Around month 1.5, I had been led to an esoteric spiritual center that taught classes on energy healing. I began to intutiively integrate that within my individual meditation practice, being guided by intution and feeling in terms of what felt right and neccessary in the moment. This allowed me to cultivate a energy mediation practice that was uniquely just for me. Around that time, my spiritual awakening process was realy underway and I had began to experience regular contact with higher energy beings for guidance and support, oftentimes referred to as archangel and angels. They helped fast track my intiation, opening, and energy purification and ascension process—not necesarily by doing it for me but my guiding me on how to do it. Although they were responsible for the heart and energy opening, cracking me open, and providing guidance and protection from other energies at the time as I was opening. For me, they were largely present within the first 7 months of my spiritual awakening process, and then they began to fall away encouraging me to learn greater self-sufficiency within as I re-learned the basic skills. You can read about what that first experience was like, here. I realize this is not necessarily normal for most people, and some may not experience that at all. I just want to manage expectations here because I think it is quite common for many people seeking spirituality to want to seek those sort of ‘divine angel experiences’ to prove that something is happening or working. The point is that they come for certain reasons and times, but they do not always come, especially all the time.
By month 3-4, I was meditating sometimes for 1 hour a day. My mind silenced and it would just be still and calm, feeling nothingness and peace. I was receiving regular information downloads and messages from ‘archangels and divine beings’. Chakra colors were active, and I was beginning to see visions, patterns, shapes, star patterns, and animals in my mind’s eye.
This regularity eventually turned into a minimum of 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night when I was deep in my spiritual awakening and healing process. But it also evolved as I was undergoing the various stages of my spiritual awakening process. I began to incorporate regular meditative floor sweeping in the morning as I was undergoing the cleaning inside. I began singing and moving my body as an extension or part of my meditation practice. And regular swimming in salt water became another form. These are examples of how meditation can take shape in many forms, and evolve naturally on its own as you progress in the process.
Meditation practices evolve as one evolves and progresses in their journey. The inherent nature of your spirit is dynamic and constantly in flux. Therefor, the ways in which you connect and communicate with your spirit will adapt. And the practice of meditation does not just take the form of sitting down, it can take many forms of stillness, movement and connection, unconsciously and consciously. It will also progress at different times for every individual, so there really should be no standard for ability in correlation to month or timing. Everyone will move at their own pace, and it will take shape in its own way that is unique for them and their process.
As we all need goals and direction, I suggest that the immediate goal of meditation is to surrender to feeling, present to ‘what is’, and in the moment by doing nothing. In this moment and in this container, allow your whole self to relax, let go of control, and accept all that passes and comes through. Trust in the process and higher intelligence of nature to help do the work for you behind the scenes. You will not find instant, immeditate gratification of peace, quiet, stillness, spaciousness, and divine connection within. There will be a process of release, inner cleaning, waste management, and purification that will need to happen first. And to go through this process, you will have to allow yourself to sit in the noise and let it rise and pass through and out of you. This process will not be quick and it will feel uncomfortable. It will need to be done consistently and with regularity; relaxing into a passive, feminine, yin state of being. Allow yourself to ‘fall’ away and ‘winter’ in your current state of what is. There are many phases of meditation (which you can read about here) and it will take time to go through the process.
While every meditation practice will be specific to each person’s needs and reflect where they are in their journey, here are some basic guidelines for how to cultivate a basic meditation practice.
Meditation Practice, How To
1. Create a safe, quiet and clean space for your meditation practice. Ideally this should be separate from any other room or space that has its own purpose (e.g. sleeping, cooking, eating, cleaning, working) or has a lot of movement and activity in it. The space should be free of distractions and clutter. Clean/sweep the floor, open a window for fresh air, and make sure the space is filled with natural light. If you can, I recommend conducting your meditation practice outdoors on the earth.
2. Roll out a blanket, yoga mat or a pillow to sit on. Sit cross legged with your hands by your side or on your knees. Hand facing downwards on top of your knees to ground; hands facing upwards toward the sky to receive.
3. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth.
4. Then ground yourself by imagining or visualizing tree roots growing from the bottom of your body, sending them downward into the earth and soil beneath you. With each breath, inhale and draw up the mother earth energy from the ground—drawing the energy up your body, and exhale to send the energy back down into the ground. As you breathe, you can visualize inhaling the nurturing, grounding and stabilizing energy from the earth filling your body (color red) and exhaling any negative energy (dark smoke) down into the earth. Or you can simply imagine this as an energetic exchange like breathing between you and the earth to cultivate a relationship.
5. Once you feel grounded or ‘plugged into the earth’ (I feel a magnetic connection to the ground), bring your energy from the bottom of your body and send it all the way up your body towards your head and then up above of you to the sky. Imagine a golden white light or thread extend from above traveling down your body to connect with the earth energy below. Continue your breathing to exchange energy back and forth between the earth and the sky. Feeling the energy move through your body. Perhaps you can feel energy pulsing or radiating from your hands.
6. Return to a natural breath and quiet your body and mind. Bringing awareness to your mind’s eye. Allow whatever thoughts ‘come to mind’ to rise and pass like cars passing on a road. Try not to suppress or control any thoughts that come. Just let them be and let it pass. This is the process of sitting in the noise and letting it all out. Eventually you will be clearing out mental junk, making space in your mind to breathe and be still.