How I Cultivated a Meditation Practice
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 yourself and your higher intuition. It is an opportunity to listen to yourself and understand what you truly need. It’s like a daily check-in with your soul and energy.
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 very difficult time in my life. I 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, got an air purifier and humidifier…but none of those things ultimately helped me sleep through the night. 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 intention to cultivate a long-term practice, I was just willing to start. I had no guidebook, no guru, no formal training, no program. All I did was just sit down on the floor in my bedroom, facing a 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. It was so uncomfortable that I began 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 helps clear some of the lower frequencies of energy so you can slightly raise your vibration. I like to think of utilizing high frequency music as training wheels for a meditation practice.
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 a disruption to the peace of 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 slowed down and eventually they would sometimes come and sometimes not at all. Once I stopped giving or feeding it attention it simply saw no reason to show up.
By month 2, I was meditating for 30 minutes a day. By month 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 started receiving information downloads and messages from the celestial realm and spirit guides. I would see chakra colors in my mind’s eye. And sometimes I would see patterns, shapes, stars or animals.
I was fortunate to have been relatively fast tracked in my spiritual awakening process and received a lot of guidance from angelic and divine energies that came to me primarily in the first 7 months of my higher journey. They guided me in the meditation practice and helped me access wisdom people normally would not have access to. I was able to download divine and ancestral wisdom about the purpose of this planet and human beings, our star ancestors, where we all come from, our evolutionary process, my previous lives and karmic lessons, my role in lightworking, etc. It allowed me to dive deep into the mysteries and questions of the Universe and understand our role to play in the larger fabric of life. And so, it is a part of my purpose journey to teach and pass on the gifts, knowledge and wisdom shared with me. It gives me great meaning and joy to support and guide others in their higher journeys, knowing that so much power and potential lies in all of us.
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. There are also many phases of meditation (which you can read about here) and it will take time to go through the process.
Cultivating this knowing and energetic connection to yourself and to the Universe is not something that is easily and quickly forged. It comes from a deep commitment and self-discipline to create all the space and time you need to connect with yourself as you are. Being brave to let go of control, to be open, to be honest, to question, to not know, to face all your fears and inner demons, to feel every emotion inside of you, to shed everything that does not truly support your well-being, and to push your limitations and continuously move past your comfort zone.
The immediate goal of meditation is to learn how to let go of control and resistance, to quiet your mind, and to find peace, spaciousness and stillness within. Once you achieve that, you can begin the work of cleaning, excavating, healing and reprogramming. Alongside meditation work, you can perhaps learn how to channel energy to raise your energetic vibration when the time is right.
While every meditation practice should be specific to each person’s needs and reflect where they are in their journey, this is how I started my 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.