An Easy Guide to Meditation by Charlene Jones

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An Easy Guide to Meditation by Charlene Jones

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Charlene Diane Jones/@charlenejones18

“Before Enlightenment, suffering. After Enlightenment there is suffering but no one suffering.” Gautama Buddha

“If you understood suffering, you would not suffer.” Carl Jung

Photo Credit: Google Images bandarockstar.tripod.com

The recent terrorist attack in Paris serves as a stark reminder of the senseless, horrific tragedies that permeate our world. Barbarism has been around for a long time but we now have instant access via social media to a constant barrage of bad news. The ability to train one’s mind to focus on a specific topic and be present to oneself in the moment when chaos and violence surround us is a skill worth exploring. I am honored to feature author, poet, psychotherapist and life coach Charlene Jones in the post about the basics of meditation. Charlene and I met on The National Association of Memoir Writers Facebook group. Her new book, The Stain: A Book of Reincarnation, Karma and the Relief From Suffering was published on 11.09.15.

Welcome, Charlene!

Charlene Jones

An Easy Guide to Meditation

Meditation! It’s everywhere proclaimed as the latest, greatest way to improve brain function while helping you relax.

As a meditator with 45 years of practice, and 35 of teaching meditation, I can testify to both increased relaxation and improved brain function as the outcome of even as little as twenty minutes a day.

Then how? How to meditate follows a very simple understanding which is best kept foremost in your mind: meditation does not stop your mind chatter.

People frequently say, “Oh I tried meditation but I couldn’t stop my mind from going on, chattering, talking…”

The nature of mind is to chatter, to sing, repeat commercials, skim over topics in exactly the way waves appear and disappear on a lake’s surface when the day is fine.

Just little waves, all day and all night. What then is the purpose of meditation?

The purpose of meditation is to increase Awareness. It is Awareness, that most precious of human facilities, that increases both brain function and the ability to achieve and remain calm.

Here’s how meditation works to help improve Awareness:

Start with the same time each day, experimenting to discover if you are a morning or an evening sitter. Evening sitters find meditation slows them down after a long day, easing the way to a deeper sleep. Morning sitters like the calming, but insightful effects of transitioning from sleep into a day time body and mind rhythm.

You will only know which of these you are by trying. If you meditate for a few evenings in a row and find it keeps you awake, then switch. Likewise if you try sitting in the morning and find yourself regaining entry to dream world, change to evening.

Sit for about the same time every time. It’s better to make the commitment to twenty minutes a day and achieve this than to begin with fifteen, move to thirty, feel discouraged and move back to fifteen and so on. You are looking for stability and consistency in your practice before you extend the time, so twenty minutes to start is about right.

Begin your practice always with two or three deep slow breaths, just enough to help you focus and relax.

Whatever meditation practice is yours begin by establishing a moment of awareness of your body. Then allow your mind to rest gently and easily on the object of choice.

Your mind will wander. That is its job, its responsibility, what nature intended for your mind to do. So let it. And when you realize you are wandering, gently bring your mind back to the meditation focus you have chosen.

That’s all.

With practice in Vipassana you will find insights arising. These may not be pleasant as we tend to see the challenges and obstacles in ourselves first. For this reason I encourage beginners to take an object, something you already own that brings you a sense of peace and ease, as your first meditation object. Then watch as your mind wanders, bring it back, it will wander again, bring it back etc.

This is called Shamatha meditation and provides for you the increased calm with which most Western people are best equipped to cope with our fast paced lives.

While Neuroscience has begun studying meditation, what is being extensively examined is Mindfulness Training. Mindfulness does bring an immediate sense of relaxation, as muscles, sinews, tissues follow the increasingly elastic state of Mind toward deeper and deeper presence.

What Neuroscience has not yet begun to study deeply is the Tibetan Meditation Practice of Vajrayana Tantra.

Aligned with the mystic side of Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana means “Diamond Path or Vehicle” and refers to the sudden eruption of results that increase cognitive ability and rouse the system from relaxation. Yes, this is the opposite of the results shown by Mindfulness.

These two polar extremes, deepening relaxation and increasing arousal, both rise from the capacity of our minds to focus and grow in Awareness.

Awareness, knowing when to relax and when to gear up for example, allows us to flow more readily and eagerly with each and every day.

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Thank you Charlene for sharing and enlightening us about the various forms of meditation techniques that have the capacity to help us “flow more readily and eagerly with each and every day.” Any time or way we can distract ourselves from the chaos that surrounds us and be present in the moment is a bonus. Prayer is my form of meditation but I appreciate learning about other methods.

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Book Synopsis:

Three women, their lives bound by a single, horrifying event, replay madness, betrayal, brutality, and loss until one of them finds a way to clear them all from the karmic suffering of The Stain.

Amazon link

Author Bio:

Charlene Diane Jones M.Ed/M.A has published poetry in many magazines including Prairie Schooner, Canadian Women’s Studies, Quills and many more. She co-authored two books of poetry, Uncritical Mass in Consort (out of print) and Bliss Pig and Other Poems with her performance partner Linda Stitt.

Out of her over forty five years of meditation in Tibetan Vajrayana tradition she wrote about Karma and Reincarnation in her novel The Stain.

Her non-fiction book Medicine Buddha/Medicine Mind verges on being released before Christmas 2015. In it Jones explores the seam between the much hailed Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice called Medicine Buddha and Neuroscience. Medicine Buddha/Medicine Mind is available in podcast on iTunes under Soulsciences Charlene Diane Jones.

Ms. Jones hosts and produces her own radio show called Off the Top where she often interviews other writers such as Eva Stachniak, Massimo Marino, Apryl Pooley and Kathy Pooler.

She is about to begin structuring her memoir, called My Impossible Life.

When she is not involved in these activities she uses her understanding of dreams to help people in her psychotherapy practice, enjoys her life mate, and dotes on her two granddaughters.