Flowing with Change Meditation

We've had several requests for a meditation having to do with coping with change, and here it is.  

Just looking at my own life over the past couple months reveals a staggering amount of change.  I'm sure any one of you could report the same. 

Change, of course, is in the nature of life.  It's constant.  Life is movement.  Life is one thing morphing into another.  We don't realize how many changes we are experiencing all the time. The weather changes, our moods change as our hormones fluctuate, relationships, technology and institutions are constantly changing -- it's endless. 

Change can be exciting, but it can also be challenging.   Whether it's a major life change or a myriad of other smaller changes, change is constant and change takes time and energy.  What's more is that it can be mentally and emotionally challenging.  We need to develop mental clarity, emotional stability and adaptable bodies to deal with all the change.

Meditation is one of the best ways to surf the waves of change.  The Flowing with Change Meditation can help with change in several ways.  First, it helps us relax into the reactions that we have to change so that we can be more clear mentally and have more emotional stability. The second is that the deep relaxation of meditation helps us recharge our batteries so that we have more energy for dealing with change.  And finally, the meditation helps us connect with that which doesn't change -- the unchanging nature of our own awareness which is present throughout all our experience.  That awareness is wakeful and intelligent.  It is unchanging and constant, and recognizing it helps us to feel anchored in the midst of change.

Trust Guided Meditation Podcast

Our latest podcast episode is about trust in life and trust in oneself.  It's about a very fundamental kind of trust.  It doesn't have to do with trusting people or things, but with a basic sense that everything is all right just as it is in each moment.  Most importantly, it has to do with the sense that we are alright, just as we are.  This trust allows us to relax into the flow of life and living, rather than resisting what is happening. We can learn this kind of trust in meditation as we learn to relax into whatever comes up in our experience.  You may notice that at times you resist what is happening.  You may feel your mind shouldn't be filled with thoughts, and a resistance comes up.  Or you might try to push out a particular emotion.  You may also find there are times when you try to be a certain way.  Often people feel that since they are meditating, they should feel peaceful.  There can be an attempt to try to feel peaceful.  A kind of struggle comes up, a struggle with ourselves and with life.  This struggle comes from a lack of trust.

Everything that we experience is an expression of the natural flow of life.  The energy of life flows as thoughts, emotions, sensations in the body, sounds around us.  As we meditate, we can learn to let that flow happen without interference.  We can develop a basic sense of trust in life as we learn to trust what happens within ourselves.

You already know how to meditate!

I just received an email from a woman who said:  "Most importantly, your guidance also helped me recognize that I already knew how to meditate, but that I just thought of it as 'being still' or 'paying attention.' "  Eureka -- that's it!  When we experience a meditative state during meditation, we tend to think it's something special that happens only in meditation.  In fact, it's something we all experience from time to time outside of meditation, but don't notice.  We could actually think of it as the mind's "natural state".  It's a very simple form of awareness, uncomplicated by the mind's habits of judging and comparing.  It's a state that's there when we are neither resisting or trying to change what is naturally coming up in our experience.  It's a state of "simply being".

Much of the time, we are "simply being" but don't make note of that, because the mind isn't in the mode of standing apart and observing our experience at that time.  Sometimes, however, we'll notice a dramatic shift into the simply-being-mode.  As I mentioned in the previous post, meditation often happens spontaneously when something we see or hear or touch jars us out of the preoccupation with the past and future.  The sight of a hummingbird at my feeder always does it for me.  What does it for you?

Discovering Love -- Advanced Guided Meditation

I'm calling our latest podcast episode "advanced" because to experience the love that the meditation points to requires that your mind be settled enough to notice some subtle experiences. The meditation prompts you to become aware of tendencies to resist what is happening in your thoughts and emotions, and even further to the feeling that underlies those tendencies -- a sense of things being not quite right. It's a sense of not being alright as you are. It's a sense of life not being alright. It's at the core of the suffering which is part of the human condition. Of course, we all like some feelings and experiences more than others. That's natural. But suffering results when we feel that things should be different, that we should be different -- that we should feel differently than we do. When we are able to let go of the resistance to how we feel and stop trying to make ourselves be or feel something else, then what is left is love.

I'm not talking about love in the way we usually think of it. When we say love, we are usually referring to a sentiment or feeling. The feeling of love can be mixed with affection, respect, gratitude, infatuation, passion, all sorts of things. What we usually identify as love is something we feel in response to someone or some thing. The love I am talking about is not an emotion, and it is not dependent on anything. It is the very essence of our existence and reveals itself when we let go of resistance and attempts to manipulate our experience. It is the natural state of our own awareness, of our "beingness", which is always there in the background but is largely ignored. My hope is that with this meditation, you will be able to recognize and enjoy it.

You may need to use this meditation a number of times before this love is clearly experienced. If you are new to meditation, it might help to try the podcast episode one (Relaxation Break) or the Breath Awareness Meditation until you are able to settle down enough for this meditation.

I'd love to hear your experiences with this meditation. The feedback we've received here and at the meditationoasis.com website has been really helpful. And, as always, we welcome your questions.

Relax and float down stream...

We named our podcast Meditation Oasis. The name came to Richard early on. Then we spent a lot of time brainstorming to find the "best" name, but Meditation Oasis stuck. We didn't realized that the name would have a life of its own. I recently did a search on iLike.com in order to "claim" our artist pages. Not only were we listed as Mary and Richard Maddux and Mary Maddux, but Meditation Oasis was there as well. When we started a page on MySpace a couple weeks ago, the only kind of page we could fit into was a "band" page and now we're a band called Meditation Oasis on MySpace! Instead of just "going with the flow", I found myself saying hey, whoa, is this really the name we want? Let's sit back and think this thing over. Maybe there's a better name. It's something about how I was raised. It's always been a challenge for me to buy the first thing I see. I can find the perfect pair of jeans right off, but end up having to try on all the rest "just in case". I measure my progress sometimes by my ability to go with the first thing that comes along when it feels just right. But this one really challenged me -- the name our work is coming to be known by. Life once again is challenging me to walk my talk (or I should say follow my own meditations!)

"Meditation Oasis" has a life of its own. Life itself is a life of its own. It's not mine to direct in what I may think is the "best" way. It happens. And once more, I'm learning to go with the flow.

As Lennon and McCartney once sang it, "Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream...".