A DAILY MEDITATION EXERCISE

1997 By Lewis N. Foster

(Record this exercise so you can just listen as you relax and meditate.  Read slowly in a pleasant voice with long pauses frequently.  It should take from 35-45 minutes.)

 

Sit it in a chair that is comfortable to you.  It seems to work best when your feet are flat on the floor, providing some space between where your leg touches the chair so that blood circulation is not interrupted.  It works best when your back is well supported and your arms are on the arms of the chair or rested across your lap.  Take a deep breath; fill your lungs with air.  Hold it for about five seconds. 

(PAUSE) 

When you let the air out, let your eyes fall shut and allow your head to gently fall forward, stretching the muscles in the back of your neck and let your head rock from right to left identifying unique tension that is in the muscles in your neck. Work them gently, stretching those muscles.  If you decide to let your head go all the way around your shoulders, do it very slowly and very carefully because the backbone and the neck muscles are sensitive.

(PAUSE)

When you release the tension in your neck, with your eyes closed, find a place on your shoulders where your head balances itself naturally and let it rest there.  Take another deep breath, filling your lungs with air and when you let it out, let all the tension in your chest cavity come with it and allow the upper half of your body to become progressively more relaxed.  Notice the difference in tension. 

(PAUSE)

I invite you now, with your eyes closed, to pick your feet up off the floor, stretch them out in front of you, point your toes away from your head and then point your toes in the direction of your head.  Now begin to wiggle your toes and your feet and work your feet in circles, back and forth and up and down allowing all the muscles in your feet and your ankles to begin to release tension that is there. 

(PAUSE)

Release any tension that is in your shin muscles and your calf. Work those well.  Wiggling your feet and ankles until all the tension in the lower legs have been worked out.  Once you have worked the tension out of these muscles in your feet, ankles, shin bones and shin muscles and calf muscles, place your feet flat on the floor, take another deep breath, fill your lungs with air and when you exhale begin to pay attention to the sensations that are flowing up your leg and relaxing those muscles below your knee.  Follow the sensations as they drift upward to all parts of your body. 

(PAUSE)

Scan your body now, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, and if there are any muscles that are tense, do what you need to do now to relax them.

(PAUSE)

Placing your attention on the conscience or front part of your mind, allow any thoughts that are there to simply evaporate and do what you can to keep the front part of your mind clear of any thoughts so that you can place yourself in the presence of your higher power, the God of your understanding, just to listen and be in the presence of God.

(PAUSE)

Should any thoughts come to the front of your mind, let them drift through, one by one, as though they were a parade of thoughts.  If any thought repeats itself several times, it may be an indication that you just need to stop and let it rest there and do what it needs to do until it is ready to join the parade.

(PAUSE)

Internally begin to focus on your spiritual center, wherever it exists.  Chinese say that our center is just below our navel button and they call it, or the energy there, Chi.   Your spiritual center can be wherever you find it. 

(PAUSE)

Once you have found to your spiritual center, allow yourself to visualize a light, a purple light, a green light, or a yellow light, or a golden light and imagine that the light gently, slowly begins to expand to all parts of your body, gradually, carrying a message of love, a message of serenity, a message of peace, a message of hope, to all molecules and cells found in your body, from the inside out.  As that light expands, you will eventually get to the base of your spine and imagine in your mind's eye that when this light reaches the base of your spine that it turns into a laser beam and shoots up your spine, out the top of your body, with a hook on the end, like a hanger in the closet, and it goes high into the heavens and hooks on to the God that you understand, the God that you know.  There, detached from this earth, hanging connected to your God, connected to your God's power, energy, and love, without the use of your five senses, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting, or seeing.  All without the use of your intuition or will.  You see yourself detached, maybe as though the way the astronauts saw the earth from the moon, detached, alone, but connected to the greatest source of power and energy and love.  Separate from any systems to which you belong.  Separate from any systems that have any claims on you.  Separate from any hats that you wear in this life, like mother or father or daughter, son, employee, employer.  Detached so you can be totally in the presence of the God of your understanding and hooked up to that God in a spiritual way to your soul, as you exist there.

(PAUSE)

There is no need now for you to pay attention to this voice, if you choose, and you can allow your meditation to go where it will.  Do nothing to guide it.  Simply allow it to happen.  Be a participant observer, allow colors to surface, images to surface, lights if they do, maybe they won't.

(PAUSE)

You may notice that your skin temperature is feeling more warm because the little blood vessels that carry the blood, nourishing the surface area near the skin have got more space, because, your muscles are relaxed, more blood can get through to them.  You may notice that your breathing has slowed down and become shallower.  Your heartbeat is slower.  The salivation glands in your mouth have stopped producing. 

(PAUSE)

As you sit, gently in peace, the front of your mind continues to keep itself free of thought while the back of your mind monitors those automatic systems in your body, sympathetic systems.  The back of your mind knows what your really need.  In meditating, the key is to focus and allow your brain to be as free of thoughts as possible so that you can be available to listen to the God of your choice, the God of your experience, the God of your understanding.

(PAUSE)

Some people choose to use a mantra that they say over and over again to help them be focused.  If you choose a mantra, whether it is Jesus or God or Yaway or Allah or Buddha, choose only one and stay with it for the rest of your life, so that you won't be using different mantras, digging many shallow wells to your soul, you will be using one mantra, digging a deep well to your soul.  After a while, that mantra will begin to repeat itself in your mind and you will find that you will be waiting at a bus stop and your mantra will be repeating itself or you will find that instead of smoking a cigarette you repeat your mantra.  Instead of drinking, you will repeat your mantra.  Alternatively, using drugs, you will repeat your mantra.  To be at work, this can happen, all day long, and eventually, if you do it long enough, it will even happen in your sleep.

(PAUSE)

You can also choose thirty minutes in the morning, early, to meditate and begin to do daily spiritual disciplines to help you focus that could include other types of prayer; maybe you will choose to do one of the five different prayers.  There are prayers of adoration, prayers of repentance, intercessory prayers (where we pray for other people), pray for ourselves, or prayers of thanksgiving. 

(PAUSE)

You may review a daily inventory or read some type of meditative material to get the day started. 

You will find that some type of daily exercise improves your daily spiritual discipline.  Your body is the temple of your soul. We know that we are not our bodies.  We are not our minds.  We can be in harmony with our God.  Daily spiritual disciplines help us to focus, to see from ourselves to others, that all souls are pure and we can see directly into someone’s soul even though we do not like their behavior. 

(PAUSE)

It helps to know some prayers like the Prayer of St. Francis or the Serenity Prayer.  Stay involved with other people in a spiritual way so you can have a sense of belonging and meaning and comfort.

(PAUSE)

Your meditation can take place in the evening, you can lay your head down on your pillow and repeat your mantra until you fall asleep (or you can memorize and pray the Rosary).  If you say the mantra enough at bedtime you will eventually be able to lay your head down and say the mantra just a few times before you fall asleep.  I like to use the Jesus Prayer:

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

(PAUSE)

You can be in the middle of a crisis or a high stress situation and immediately begin to say your mantra and your body will go back to it's center and become relaxed and at peace with itself.  That is a promise, if you will take the time, beginning now, to identify that mantra and begin saying it, at every free moment that you have throughout your day, each day, each week, each month.  Now, for the rest of your life, you will reap rewards eight years from now that you never knew existed.

(PAUSE)