Meditation - Saigaim Nick

Meditation can come in many forms. I could be sitting on the ground with a straight back humming to yourself. It could be taking a moment in your office chair, breathing deep and taking a quick rest period. It doesn't matter how long it takes or lasts. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the outcome is. Meditation is there to help us relax, reset, and find clarity. It is great for shadow work, connecting with the universe, and our self reflection. In some faiths, it can help you connect with a deity which you are trying to reach.

Grounding is a key factor in letting go of our minds, letting them think and register naturally. Not forcing our thoughts. Anything we receive from meditation has to come naturally. Not from the subconscious either. It is hard to explain but when you finally feel it, it will be clear. Ill get more into this later. 

In order to ground we need to use our 5 senses to bring us back down to the element of earth. Feeling the earth beneath our bodies, attaching to specific feelings like a strand of carpet or the roughness of a hardwood floor. Listening to all the sounds around us. Smelling any fragrances that are in the air, and finally taste. Focusing on what we can taste. While grounding it is important to us all 5 senses. When meditating and shutting our eyes, we still need to focus on what we can see. While doing this exercise, name at least 3 things from each sense that is noticed. While doing this, our minds become familiar to our surroundings so that we can release our minds to let them work. It releases the distractions that are brought on by these things. 

The first step of meditation is grounding. Much like how electricity needs a ground in order to operate, our body does as well. Think of the mind as a super computer. All kinds of wires, doo-dads, buttons, and things that we will never understand or know what they do. In medical science, our brain needs electricity to survive. We need electricity for our bodies to operate correctly. It needs to be grounded to something solid in order to function correctly. Have you ever heard the term “you have a screw loose”? That screw is what is grounding our internal electricity.

In a pagan setting, being one with nature. We are from nature. It created us. It is the most basic, yet the most complex existence in life. With us as beings connected to this earth, being born from this earth, we need to remember to connect back with it now and again. The ideal situation would always be connected with it and feel the peace that is generated from it. The sun and the moon charge the earth consistently. It never stops. A huge amount of the energy we use comes from the earth and items that have been created from it.

So how do we connect? How do we attach that grounding cable to bring us into a more energized and smoothly running machine?    We sit. 

Let’s talk about the element of air for a moment. Air is the connective element. It connects everything together. It is the space between all things. Some say that while we are standing on the earth, we are still far away from it. We are lifted up away within our mental planes which makes it even harder to connect with it’s energy. The space in between is air. The energy we create, and use is carried through the air into the universe. 

We use air to breathe. Oxygen is required for our physical bodies to survive. It is also changing. Temperature and movement. It can also feel stagnant, smelly, and old. ‘A breath of Fresh Air’ is a saying that brings many forms of communication together both mentally and physically. It opens our lungs as we breathe in allowing an easy passage for our bodies to connect with other elements and energies. Air can be manipulated. We can add fragrance, we can maneuver it. Push it and taste it. Though mostly invisible, it is one of the strongest elements that is most recognized by our physical senses. 

During meditation, we use the air to keep us calm. We notice it from all senses while we are relaxing and becoming one closer to earth. When our minds are going a million miles a minute, we are agitated and can’t calm down, Air is there to carry energy away, bring positive energy inside of us, and help our minds and bodies to slow down.

At the beginning of any mediation or grounding exercise, I like to use 3 very deep breaths. I breathe in as long and as hard as I can. Having this fresh air inside of me I'll hold onto it for 5 seconds. Let it gather the energy inside of me that is causing the agitation, the mess, the mental poison. Then I blow it out slowly and until I cannot breathe out anymore. Again I will pause for 5 seconds. Let my body reset from the intense release of energy. Then breathe in again.While breathing in the next 2 times, I will breathe in the energy I need to receive. Holding it and trading the energy for that I am ridding my body of.

During this time, one's heart rate will lower. Concentrating on breathing like this in such a particular manner will bring a sense of calm and quiet to our minds so we can connect with the Earth and everything else we are trying to become in tune with. It will bring the peace we are looking for.

Meditation in the beginning and even at times for those who are very familiar with it can be a challenge to get our minds and bodies to slow down and to calm down. It can be, we are just meditating to quiet those things. To ground and become more connected with the present. It takes some practice and some self discipline to accomplish this even when we need peace, answers, and a sense of calm the most. It is how you look at it. It takes focus and it takes letting go both physically and mentally. Being in a comfortable position is most important. A position where we can keep still and not focus on those things that are distracting. Allowing our bodies to sink into the elements around us without worry of posture, a smell, or a normal noise that happens around us. It eliminates distractions, and lets us reach a more heightened sense within our minds.

Meditating outside, whether that be in the park or the forest next to a stream. Even in the high desert on the top of a mountain. MEditating in those places can help us become even more connected to the elements. We can feel the actual earth, the air shifting and changing. We can feel the heat of the sun and feel cool moisture from plants or  water as it passes. The things we hear can be therapeutic as well. It’s all nature we are hearing. Nature is one of the most basic forms of life. As we bathe in it. We are in it fully.

After getting familiar with grounding and basic meditation, it is important to start working on posture and body placement while meditating. It allows energy to flow freely with out much resistance. If we can achieve posture while being still and letting go of our bodies, it greatly increases the amount of power that the mind is able to consume and utilize.  Not only keeping us physically healthy as well, we are able to also gain physical confidence in ourselves and let our subscious take hold of that. In return, our posture can stay good from our day to day lives without even thinking about it. It’s pretty magical really.

While staying physically still and allowing our bodies to give up physically some distractions will arise. After having a very hectic day, my mind was not in a good place at all. I was getting some help and guided meditation from the Beautiful Miss Fox. My brain was going rogue, I was having a really hard time slowing down and listening to the universe and the world around me. I was so far gone, that I couldn’t even listen to my own body. While in the very beginning, my body developed an itch. I was getting very irritated that it was there. My hands were held down and I was unable to reach up and scratch. With everything else going on in my brain at the time, that small itch consumed my whole body. It hurt, it was so bad. No matter how much I fought to get my hands free, I could not move them. I had to submit to the itch. I had to surrender to it. Accept it was there. It was very hard to do and it got to the point where I was finally able to release my body because my mind was in such disarray, The itch was gone. I had an awakening moment from this. My body at the end of this meditation collapsed onto the bed we were sitting on. I was silent for over an hour. Did not move, did not speak. 

It’s Good practice to avoid physical disruptions that seem to come on to our physical bodies. uncontrollably Our minds will get agitated, desperate, and frustrated. But it is all self control. The more we focus on the issue and the more intense the issue becomes, that self control will allow whatever it is to slowly release itself and dissipate. When we are processing deep shadow work and are in a deep meditative state, these types of distractions aren’t quite as apparent as they may seem at a beginning moment. They can also appear in our meditation in some other form. A very hot bath can make our bodies feel like were in the midst of a giant energy field. Those sensory deprivation tanks at the float spas. This is another great example. The water is heated to our body's core temperature. There is soo much salt in these, that our bodies will literally float on the surface. Once we are in a completely dark space, we float. Our minds perceive that we are floating in nothing. Quite an incredible experience I suggest anyone should try. 

As we become more familiar with meditation and we start getting into more depth and more intense factors, it is very important we start to recognize what is our subconscious talking and what is not. Our subconscious is what we feel we can hear. It is what we feel is a forced answer or thought. Meanwhile, the things we need to pay attention to the most come from a place past our subconscious. These are felt. We feel the answer, we feel a task, we feel a thought. Our brains are not mentally creating something for us to hear. It is something that is not forced upon our process when we believe it is not.  While we may ask questions we are not aware of or we feel we are speaking an answer, this is our subconscious speaking. Feeling a very light presence of one big thought, this is not. These can be messages coming from the universe, the earth, or depending on our belief systems. From your Diety. 

It is not a bad thing for our subconscious to work and make its presence known. Honestly in a lot of cases it’s exactly what we need. Especially while doing shadow work. It is also important in asking questions, figuring out the algorithm that is kicking us in the butt. While we are in a meditative state, we need to focus on all these feelings. It is important to recognize what they are and how they present themselves. It will then give us a further explanation for whatever we are trying to accomplish.

Healing. Using meditation to heal. This is a very common practice. It allows us to dig deep inside of ourselves to find worry, fear, negative energy, and thoughts that have hidden away within ourselves. We learn to accept, feel, and surrender ourselves to these thoughts in order to heal. It can come as quite a surprise as old memories that we didn’t even know existed start to come up. They are coming up for a reason and we need to learn to recognize what is is they are doing there. Same with different thoughts. Healing through meditation is very powerful. It can be very scary and worrisome. In the end, the outcome we get from it, is more powerful than any energy inside this universe.

 We use meditation along with things like sound baths, herbs, different feelings like hot water or a certain taste or smell. I like to use incense, oils, or herbs from the very beginning to get a neutral grounding standpoint. If there is a particular smell or herb that is used for energy work or casting, I always have them ready at the beginning. I never come out of a meditative state to utilize items. I like to always use incense while I meditate or have herbs burning on a piece of charcoal. I am gaining the energy from these things, I am smelling them and it helps keep me neutral during my meditation. It’s good to have the intense feelings of something like hot bath water at the beginning so our bodies are used to it and the feelings and smells slowly dissipate as we are in a meditative state.

Sound bathing is a very intense and magical tool. Our energies, subconscious and different areas within ourselves can react to different frequencies of sound. Our sexual stimuli, Chakras, mental feelings, moods. Some frequencies can reach our higher self and connect us to the universe. Having a frequency based meditation playlist can bring a great benefit to what we are trying to accomplish or what we are working with. Chakra cleansing uses these frequencies to clear and reset. It’s truly amazing how our minds can connect to so many different things in order to heal. 

It is important to realize how meditation is the key factor in healing, letting go, and surrender. Our whole path is based on finding those fears, that anger and not running from it. Not avoiding it and creating mental illusions so it doesn't exist, but to feel it, surrender to it and let it go. All of us have had things happen to us that are scary, things that we don’t want to think about very much or completely avoid thinking about together. WIth doing that, we create illusions inside of ourselves to distract our minds from those feelings and uncomfortable thoughts. 

When those things start coming to the surface it is important to know what to do with them. Yes you will feel them. You will have feelings so intense that you can’t handle it. YOU CAN!!!! The only way we can clear and reset is by letting them in and not hiding from them. You need to be able to cry, to be angry. Feel frustrated and mad at the world. Feel that fear and the terror that comes with any experience that comes up. While feeling these emotions, you are processing them. They are happening. They are natural. They will flow in and take over and once you have felt all the power from them, they will flow out.

Do not avoid anything. Don’t use your mind to push them out or push them away. They need to come into your mind to fully process. You need to be able to think clearly about why they are there and where they came from. Those answers will come to you. Then it takes the thought process to accept them. Those things happened to you. You have this emotion. This feeling is really there. You need to be able to accept all of this. Once you accept it, you surrender to them. You let them fix upon you. You cannot change the past or that anything that has already happened happened to you. Once you accomplish this feeling, the negative will float away and you will feel at peace with these feelings, They no longer become hidden shadows. The energy that was being used to keep these tucked away is now free and is able to be used for a greater purpose. I will be starting a series on shadow work and healing meditation in the near future

I can guarantee that most in this world are not awake. They are sleeping. THey are so desperate to find things that are positive to distract themselves from fear, sadness, anger, and despair. This is called creating an illusion. Those thoughts they are staying away from get pushed back to very back of the subconscious. They never leave. They are still a part of you and do control our actions, our ego’s, the way we think. They control our emotions rather strongly. Have you ever started having some sort of negative feeling or thoughts that you have no idea where they came from? They came from those ideas that have been pushed back and forgotten about. 

Trama is a great example of this. About a year ago from when I wrote this, My oldest sister got killed in a drunk driving accident with her 11 year old daughter. My sister never drank a day in her life. I remember getting the phone call about an hour after I fell asleep. I was living alone, had debilitating anxiety and depression even before I got the call. I was numb. My whole body was numb. It didn’t know if it was going to panic, needed to run a mile, collapse, and cry. The next two weeks following this were the hardest of my life. Our family was close, they all had someone to hang onto the weeks passing while we were grieving. I was alone and had no one by my side.

I no longer wanted to feel these feelings that I didn’t understand. I had other things going on with my brain and my body that were already causing me grief. So I went to work. I worked long hours and stayed incredibly busy, I would get off work, drink until I fell asleep. When it was time to wake up again, I would fill myself full of heavy caffeine and nicotine so my brain would overlook the emotions that I had. 

This lasted a few months. During those few months, I noticed that I was becoming short with people easily. My road rage was out of control, I was threatening people. I was more miserable than I was before this all happened. I begged for answers, I begged for relief. I Prayed. I did things really fast so that I could keep those feelings away from myself. Dad jokes became my favorite thing of all time. They are pretty apparent. Any part of myself that I could utilize to embrace the positive and distract from the negative I did it. As time went on, I got more irritable. I was no longer myself. I knew that and was making rash decisions based on how I felt and what would ease the pain the quickest. Little did I know how much I was hurting myself. 

In times of turmoil or disillusionment from self, People become desperate. Desperate for the light, desperate for help. When that help is not found, nothing makes sense, we start having consistent mental breakdowns that cannot be stopped, We hurt ourselves and we hurt others even more. We can ask for help, we can pay for “professional” help. We can find distractions and make demands to ourselves and the universe. But we cannot stand up and feel sorry for ourselves. We cannot stand there and think ‘What did I do to Deserve this?’ Some will even go as far as making demands to the universe. Bad idea.

Each and every one of us has a path. The universe helps us along this path. It helps give us answers, it utilizes the energies of the world to light the way around us. To take care of us. The universe knows best.  It knows what is best for us. It has unconditional love for us individually. All we have to do is listen. It’s as simple as that. 

In order to best connect with the universe is through meditation. Meditation defined by Marriam Webster is as follows: To engage in mental exercise for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness. Or to focus one’s thoughts: Reflect on or ponder over. Meditation allows us to explore our minds. It allows us to center and ground. It allows us to slow down and think. To think and feel clarity. It gives us the ability to recharge, to reset, and to find the awareness we need in order to connect truly with the universe.