Meditation: The Guide To Self Enlightenment

Introduction
Have you tried meditation to solve your stress and health
problems? If you haven’t done so yet, now may be one of
the best times to make that experience a reality. Meditation
is one of the most sought after forms of stress relief and is
even recommended by many doctors.
Something that valuable is something that you should be
striving to learn. If you are someone that spends your
evenings worrying, stressing about all that needs to get done
and even feeling physically bad without being sick, then
meditation may be an ideal solution for you.
In meditation, you transform the way that your mind is
working. While you can’t say that it’s a simple process,
meditation is something that you can easily learn to do and
then use daily.
In fact, studies show that when you do allow yourself
(especially your mind) to meditate for just a few minutes
each day, you can reduce the stress levels you face
improving your quality of life. Indeed, lowering stress levels
also can improve your physical self.
In this book, you’ll learn how meditation can change your
life. It is merely a guide to get you started, though.
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Most individuals that are successful at meditation are those
that seek out resources locally to help them to learn the
process as well as to practice it. Meditating with others is
something that can be powerful to the individual. With more
and more meditation clinics and classes popping up around
the country, you are likely to find one relatively close to you.
But, first, you need to learn a bit more about how meditation
works and what it can do for you.
This book will prepare you to begin meditation and take you
into a world that far too many people don’t realize exists
with such benefits. If you are skeptical, there is nothing to
lose by investing a few minutes in learning this process. In
fact, you’ll find yourself striving to learn more once you have
just one or two sessions of meditation.
Learn to meditate alone or with friends. In either case,
you’ll find many different methods to select. More so, you
could be improving your health and well being. That’s worth
just a few minutes of your time!
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Chapter 1: Exactly What Is
Meditation Anyway?
Before you can begin practicing meditation you do need to
understand what it is and why you need to use this method
of relaxation. The brain is the primary tool that you’ll use to
define this process. But, you may not realize that when the
brain is in a “normal” state that it actually is very abnormal
in what it is doing.
To help you to understand meditation, we must first break
down the different stages in which the brain functions so
that you can see the state of mind that you are functioning
in most often.
The Stages of the Mind
There are three unique stages in the brain that depicts how
it is functioning at any one time. When you consider
meditation, only going through these three stages can
actually get to you achieve the serenity that you are after
with meditation.
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Stage One: The Normal Mind
In the “normal” state of mind, your mind is working in
various directions. It is functioning as it usually does which
means it is bouncing from one idea and thought to the next.
In fact, this is quite abnormal activity for the brain because it
needs to focus on a lesser amount of ideas if it is to be
successful in resolving problems.
Stimuli from all over the place are coming in at the brain.
When something new stimulates you mind, it moves from its
previous thought to the new one. Although you feel like you
are completely in control of yourself during this type of brain
function, you likely aren’t.
You have very little control over the way that you behave
and think during this type of situation. Not only do your
thoughts move from one thing to the next thing quickly, but
your physical being is doing the same thing too. Your
emotions follow suite, too.
An example of this type of brain activity can be as simple as
seeing a child playing. If you see that child while you are
driving, your mind goes from control of the vehicle to the
child. She’s cute, playing and riding her bike. Then, your
mind moves to thoughts from your own childhood. You feel
good and smile at the happy memories.
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Of course, it doesn’t always play out so innocently. You can
go through these same thought and emotional processes
with negative images too. Consider if that child was a
teenager, doing something that they shouldn’t be. Now, you
are wondering about your own children, what they are doing
that you don’t know-