People are drawn to meditation for any number of reasons. If they stay with meditation, what they can build is a wonderful connection with their inner selves. Over time, this deepened connection helps improve their everyday life in subtle and noticeable ways.

Meditation can help to release stress and prevent it. It can lead to relaxation and a sense of peace and well-being. Meditation can enable a person to put life’s challenges and problems into perspective and even sometimes be the source of solutions. Meditation can help us live life with a sense of balance and peace. This in turn can help us be more effective at life, as well as help us experience a rich, inner life. And if we want it, meditation can be the doorway to so much more.

There are many methods and schools of meditation. Fulfilling meditation though is actually fairly straightforward to achieve, bearing in mind the following ten points. By putting into practice some or all of these, high quality meditation experiences are possible.

1) The place. Choose the place where you feel happiest meditating. For some people it is completely appropriate to meditate on the bus, train, or underground train (I used to do this sitting or standing up when I first started as it seemed a great way to pass the time). However, there are those special places, and special times that are very conducive to good quality meditation. Having a special part of a room, or an entire room dedicated to the sole purpose of meditation helps in a number of ways. For one, being in a dedicated place tells your body and mind it is meditation time. Secondly, the meditation energy builds over repeated use and there grows a meditative atmosphere.

Make the space how you want it. Some people like a small table with flowers and a candle, crystal or picture. It all comes down to personal preference. Some people like an uncluttered space, with just a rug to sit on or a chair.

You can get a sense of what place feels the best for you, and it is good to go with that sense. There might be ley lines running through the house or there might be energy spots, which can be either positive or negative. The more beneficial and positive a place feels, the better for meditation. This applies to meditating outdoors, too. Some places will feel great, which is a sign of positive energy, and others wont; trust your feelings on this rather than any one else’s opinion. Going into Nature off the beaten track you can find pristine, clean energy places. Being outdoors such as on a beach at dawn or sunset can be very inspiring.

2) Clear the energy of the space around you. If you are out in Nature in a place that feels good then you won’t need to do this. There are various techniques for clearing the meditation space. First of all, keep the place as clean as you can; vacuum, dust and polish. This shifts quite a bit of the energy that should not be there along with any physical dust or dirt. A simple way to clear a space is to say out loud, “I claim this space for God, may the Father’s Will be done”. There are other techniques that are more detailed that can be used as well.

3) Length of Meditation. Decide how long to meditate for. If you are a beginner, 20 minutes is a good time to go for. After a few weeks you could build up to 40 minutes or 60 minutes or stay on 20 minutes. It is what feels right that counts. Everyone is different so different times apply. Also, it’s quality rather than quantity.

In meditation you may find yourself going into a space where perception of time changes. A lot can happen quickly in meditation as time is experienced differently on the inner planes compared with life in the external world. If you wish, use a timer to tell you when the meditation time is up.

Having a set time is good rather than letting the meditation go on and on. In the West, meditation is supposed to be a time of going inside and into your inner world, and to regenerate to help with living in the 3-dimensional world. Meditation is not well used if it is just an escape from life and uses up too much time. Spirituality is about balance, living an outer life and an inner life in a way that helps life happen beautifully and lovingly.

4) Good preparation. A good meditation usually comes through good preparation. There are a few aspects to this. An essential one is grounding and rooting yourself into the Earth. In meditation your awareness can go up as far as it can go into the light. The light can be powerful and affect you. People who meditate can become ungrounded and out of touch with life around them, which defeats the object of meditation. It is possible to become merely blissed out and miss out on all the other gifts of meditation. With good grounding and by anchoring yourself into the Earth before meditation it is actually possible to go up higher, handle and absorb more energy and light, flow on top of the energy rather like a surfer can ride a wave, and be aware of what is going on.

Good grounding comes with enough sleep, rest, time outdoors, exercise, and eating foods that produce a solid feeling (steak and chips or baked potato is good). Some foods are ones that are thought to go with a lifestyle that in some people’s minds is considered spiritual. It’s just opinion. But really it is always best to expand your options and go with what feels right to your body, or feels intuitively right and be true to yourself, rather than another person’s opinion. Choose for yourself foods that help you feel healthy, vitalised, and with both feet on the floor.

Good grounding can involve “rooting in”, which means imagining growing roots out of your feet and the base of your spine deep into the Earth, through the granite layer, through the magma and iron core and all the way to the centre of the Earth. Have the roots branch out as they go down. Imagine the roots growing from every part of your body including the organs and bones, through your feet and spine. Notice how this feels.

5) Clearing your energy. Next comes clearing your energy so the energy you receive in meditation can have a clear run in your system. Clearing can be done with light flowing from a white/gold star or flat disc directly above you, like the midday sun, and slower frequency light or energy coming up from the Earth. If you have your roots down, imagine the Earth’s slowly vibrating energy that is nourishing, restful and healing, flow up through your feet to the top of your head. Then some of this slow frequency energy splashes out of the top of your head to wash over your skin and the space around you and falls back to the Earth. The rest recedes back through you into the Earth. Let a few more waves of Earth energy rise up and flow back down. The Earth’s energy will take with it any slow frequency energies that don’t need to be in your body.

Next, light from the star or disc pulses down through the top of your head and flows down through all parts of your body, through all your organs, your bones, and into the ground. The light pulses down several times. This combination clears your system.

6) Focus on your heart. In our society and in the busy world we can spend too much time and energy being in our heads. Being in your head tends to block the flow of energy in meditation. A good balance is 50% head and 50% heart, though more heart energy than this is acceptable.

Focusing on the heart is straightforward and involves noticing how your body feels in the centre of your chest where your heart chakra is for a couple of minutes. If your attention drifts, just bring it back to your heart chakra. You could visualise a white or pink flame in it. Other colours may come with practice though these two are good to start with. You may find the flame seems to expand with repetition.

7) Be Still… During meditation you might get the urge to move, itches appear, thoughts may flit into your mind, and emotions may come bubbling up. What you are after is silence and stillness.

Some people beat themselves up because they are experiencing, and getting caught up in, internal interference rather than experiencing total calm. The trick is to give none of the thoughts, feelings or physical sensations any importance.

Calming ourselves can occur through using rhythmic breathing. There is also another way to help us now with this. There are some new, evolved devas who are special types of silence and stillness that are highly conducive to good meditation. The silence feels like absolute soft, silky peace, like being in a comfortable darkened room. The stillness is like absolutely everything still and unmoving. It creates an energetic open space in which everything good can happen. You can ask for, and focus on these energies or qualities of silence and stillness, and immerse yourself in them.

8) For a beautiful meditation use a rose. A way of producing a beautiful meditation is to then imagine a pure white rose which is a very powerful symbol, coming down from the gold/white star or disc, in through the top of your head (your crown chakra) and down into your heart. Place your awareness on this rather special white rose. It will radiate light and energy. What happens next depends on the moment. You may find the white rose stays there, or it grows, or radiates out a variety of colours, or replicates with roses going around your body. At this point you can go onto the next stage which is:

9) Let go. We often try to control what is going on with our heads. In meditation, once it is set up well and feels good, we let go and let the meditation happen. Every meditation is unique; it’s like an inner plane adventure every time. Meditating like this, life will give us messages in words, pictures and objects which we can notice if we are alert to them. Life will give us information which may spontaneously have relevance for us in our meditation. This sounds strange but will make sense after a while spent meditating.

10) Back in your body and protection. When the meditation comes to an end it is important to go through a procedure to come back fully into your body. This can be done by breathing deeply, feeling and stretching all parts of your body, and becoming aware of your roots again.

A lot of people don’t close their centres properly after they have opened up in meditation. It is good practice to close the centres in order to take good care of your energy. There are a number of ways to visualize closing your chakras. One is to see them as having double doors that need closing and locking. Another is to see the doorway to the centre like the front part of a camera that spirals in or out to control how much light gets in. This can be closed up completely. It is useful to know the chakras of the body, and starting at the crown chakra at the top of the head, close that tight and seal it with a protective symbol; the white rose would be a good choice. Then work down each chakra, finishing at the base centre. In this way, the energy and any healing that came about in the meditation gets to stay in your system.

2019 Jonathan Barber

Revised 2021

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