Meditation

Meditation is a form of relaxation. As Scott Cunningham says, "It's a quiet time where we can commune with the Goddess and God and ourselves, relaxing the conscious mind's hold on our psychic awareness."

Raymond Buckland describes mediation as quite simply listening..."listening to the Higher Self or the Inner Self, the Creative Force, the Higher Consciousness, even the gods themselves.

"Properly used, mediation opens the door to individual growth and personal advancement. Of All the techniques of advancement in the psychic and spiritual fields, meditation is by far the most effective. Coincidentally, it is also the most simple."

Meditation should be done before ritual or any magickal workings.

Ask a hundred Witches how to meditate and you'll get a hundred answers. Like everything else, it is something personal. You set your goals and you know what you need to relax. You can meditate with nothing but yourself, or you can use aids such as a candle, incense and/or music.

Here are some basic guidelines for meditation. Adapt them to suit your needs. There is also an abundance of books, videos and cassettes available to help you reach your meditative goals.

The first step to good meditation is to find a place where you will be undisturbed for the duration of your meditation, and secondly, to find a comfortable position. You want to minimize as many external distractions as possible.

Once you are settled in, close your eyes and take some deep, cleansing breaths. Imagine all your worries, tensions, problems and negativity leaving your body with each exhale.

When you have reached a state of calmness, open your consciousness.

Several things can happen at this point: You can just sit and "be," feeling your connection to the universe; you could toss symbols around in your head and see where it leads, you can chant or you can commune with the Goddess and God.

Don't expect wondrous Technicolor journeys or the answers of life to hit you when you meditate. For some, this might happen once meditation becomes ingrained in their life. But for most of us, this is a method to create relaxation in our mind and body.

Yes, sometimes by reaching that state of relaxation you can open yourself up to the universe and find the answers to your questions, experience past lives, discover hidden truths, meet your spirit guides, etc.

However, do not be upset if this doesn't happen immediately. Like anything else, meditation is a skill. It is something that needs to be practiced and perfected.

It is recommended that you meditate daily, even if only for a few minutes. The more you practice, the more you can gain from your meditations.

It is recommended that you keep a log of your meditations, including what accessories (candles, music, etc.) you used. Write down any thoughts or experiences you had. Make notes of things you might want to learn more about or go back to in your next meditation.

Sometimes, the line between meditation and visualization is a very thin one. Many of the meditation exercises you will find (including some of them here) also include visualization. Simply remember that meditation in its most basic form is just relaxation. Once you reach that, you can move on to visualization.

Four Stages of Meditation

1. The first is your ability to close your eyes. Jonny says when you are tense, this is difficult to do.

2. The second is your ability to observe your breath. It takes a calm and quiet mind to notice the subtleties of your breathing.

3. The third is your ability to notice the tiniest movements or changes in your body. At first the grosser movements will manifest, such as fidgeting or itching. As your mind and body quiet down, subtler sensations, such as the pulse and heartbeat, will be discernible.

4. The fourth ability is your capacity to remain calm, "non-reactive in the face of all that arises," whether it be strong feelings, thoughts or emotions. In meditation the goal is to stay calm and balanced.

Meditation is not blocking out your thoughts and feelings, but allowing them to arise, letting them go, and remaining calm. Whatever is going on in your life is likely to surface when you are meditating. During the fourth stage of meditation, you stop feeding the thoughts and emotions. When you stop throwing logs on the fire, the fire starts to die. The goal is to remain in equipoise.

- Yoga Chicago

Stages of Experience in Meditation

(Excerpted from "Stages of Experiencing in Meditation"
copyright 2003 by George A. Boyd.)

When you first meditate, you may not see anything inside yourself. Usually, the first sensing to arise is that of kinesthesia, or feeling. When it is very quiet, you may begin to hear the vibrations within your inner vehicles. Next, your visual sense will begin to operate. At first, you will see colored lights, patterns swirling. This will give rise to clearer vision of the inner worlds of consciousness. Ultimately, you will be able to see into the essence of another person.

The seven stages of experiencing in meditation are shown below:

Level - Phenomena
1. Kinesthesia/Feeling - Feeling movement, bliss, and waves of energy
2. Audition/Hearing - Hearing inner sounds within vehicles, resonance of the inner stream of the Nada, and Nadamic tones in space
3. Sight - Witnessing colors, white light, and patterns of light
4. Forms - Observing the visual forms of your own vehicles
5. Panorama - Observing the content and environment of the Inner Planes
6. Entity - Observing the inhabitants of the Inner Planes, ability to carry on dialogue with them; visual, auditory and kinesthetic communion with the Inner Guide
7. Essence - Ability to "see" the attentional principle, the spirit, the ensouling entity in yourself and others

The faculties of clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience – the ability to see, hear, smell, taste and touch on the Inner Planes – arise only after sustained practice of meditation. At first, your experiences are vague, fuzzy and dreamlike. Later, they become sharp, focused and palpable.

If you practiced meditation in one or more past lives, you may find that you may begin to have the more advanced visual experience in mediation right away. If you do not have them, do not become discouraged. Regular practice of meditation, particularly mastery of inner transformation techniques and Raja Yoga methods, will rehabilitate your faculty of metavisional seeing, and will activate each of your subtle senses.

Each new breakthrough into a new dimension of inner sensing will bring you excitement, and will whet your appetite for new spiritual adventures. The adventure of consciousness exploration is the Great Frontier within, and will yield ever-new vistas of discovery and insight to your inner travels. Persist in meditation and, in time, all of the stages of meditation experiencing will be awakened inside of you.

Tratak Meditation

With this meditation you are trying to train your mind to focus on a single point or object, thereby harnessing and accumulating the minds energy and power. By staring steadily at a single point or object, without blinking, you can train your mind to stay focused and alert. Where the eyes go the mind follows. With your eyes you lead your mind into "One-Pointed Meditation". By staring steadily at an object first, then closing your eyes and visualizing that object, visually then mentally, back and forth, you can gradually train your mind to focus its attention.

Any object maybe used as long as it remains still, and it is relatively small to the gaze. A candle is the most convenient and most recommended object for this purpose, as it is easy to evoke its image when you close your eyes. Stare at a candle in front of you, without blinking, as long as you can then close your eyes and try to see the image in your mind. When it begins to fade from your mind, open your eyes and stare unblinkingly at the candle again.

Start with a 5 min session, then gradually increase the time to half an hour, and then up to an hour.

- Eden Multi Media

Eight Levels of Trance Work

Traces are states of deep meditation. States of trance have been practiced by spiritual and magickal people all over the world. This is just one trance system. There are many different opinons of the gates of trance.

1. The Gate of Healing: This is where you get your daily astral shower, so to speak. Imagine yourself standing in a big shower or under running water. As soon as you step under the water, all the negativity of the mundane plane washes away and all the damage done to you was washed away. This shower should be taken daily to enhance abilities and maintain good health.

2. The Gate of Dream and Creation: This level includes dream workings of all types. This is where ideas and the passions of creation flourish.

3. The Gate of Knowledge: This level deals primarily with communication, including telepathy, astral projection and conversations. This also includes guides, guardians, teachers and masters.

4. The Gate of Memories: This is where you access your personal history, including past-life experiences and the lessons you have or have not learned.

5. The Gate of History: This is the hall of Akashic records.

6. The Gate of Purpose: This is where the mechanics of anything are revealed. It also reveals the purpose of the Universe and your place within it. It is the gate of what is yet to be.

7. The Gate of Unity: The home of perfect love and perfect trust; the thread the binds the universe together. The realm of perfection in all things.

8. The Gate of Divinity: Few are able to go here. This is the place of the union of all selves with the Divine.

- Silver Ravenwolf

Daily Meditation Ritual

Need: 1 large white candle, incense (any calming sent of your choice) and 1 black candle

Cast a circle, light your black candle and say:

"I cast away bad energy all, into good energy may it become."

Repeat as many times as you feel needed.

Light white candle and say:

"Flow to me good energy, fill my with warmth and light."

Repeat as you feel needed.

Meditate for at least 15 minutes daily too feel relaxed and refreshed.

(If you feel needed, invoke goddess of choice.)