Meditation Practice

Introduction to Meditation with Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz

Each time you meditate you have the possibility of completely changing your life. If you meditate with your whole heart and your whole soul, you will eventually become aware that you are light itself. These tips will help you get started.

When to Meditate

Sit and meditate a couple of times a day.
Morning: Meditate as soon as you get up. Your mind is most receptive at this time, even though it may seem more difficult to meditate because you are a little sleepy. The mind is quiet as you haven’t been thinking, so you’ll find it easy to meditate. When you meditate in the morning you pick up a lot of energy, focus, and awareness that will be with you throughout the day.
Evening: Try to meditate before you start your evening. If you’ve been out in the world working, meditation will clear off all the variant energies you’ve picked up during the day. It’s very easy to meditate at sunset. There is a doorway that opens between the worlds at the time of the setting sun.

Before You Meditate

Try to shower before you meditate. If you don’t have time, at least wash your face and hands. Water has a very pure consciousness. The subtle vibrations of water neutralize the negative energy your body accumulates. Wear loose and clean clothing. If you are very hungry, drink some fruit juice or eat something light.

Where to Meditate

Meditate in a clean and quiet place. Most people find it helpful to find an area of the house where they meditate on a regular basis. Over time you build up a force in that location that makes it easier to meditate. The important thing is to sit up straight – on a rug in a cross legged position or in a chair. Don’t meditate lying down. Your body will relax too much and your attention will waver.
Sometimes it’s fun to meditate outside – at the beach, on a mountaintop, in the desert. When you go to a place of power, if you are able to quiet your thoughts and meditate, power from that place can enter into you.

Length of Meditation

If you are a beginner sit for 15 minutes; after a while, a half hour, then 45 minutes maybe after a year or two. Eventually bring it up to an hour, hopefully twice a day.
Once you are sitting for an hour and there is no rush to get to that point – then what you want to do is work on the quality of your meditation and not worry about increasing the time.
Never judge your meditations. At the end of each meditation session, bow your head toward the ground. Give your meditation away to eternity.

Meditation Session

A simple meditation formula: Start with a Mantra; then use an outer form of concentration with the eyes open; then focus on a chakra with the eyes closed. Details on each echnique is below.
Change your point of focus from time to time to keep your meditation at a high level. Use Enlightened Music to make it easier for you to buffer out the noise and vibrations from the world and to quiet the mind.

Mantras

A mantra is a word with a powerful vibration. Chanting a mantra at the beginning of your meditation helps you clear the mind and takes you deep within the self. Chanting a mantra at the end of meditation helps you seal the meditation. It helps you bring the awareness of the meditation into your daily life. It is good to chant Aum or Om or another mantra seven or more times before and after each meditation. When you chant a mantra do so softly and gently. Extend the sound. Focus your awareness on the sound and become absorbed in it.

Concentration

Pick an object to concentrate on for part of your meditation – hopefully an object that’s beautiful or powerful. You might use a candle flame, a brightly colored rock, a flower, a yantra. Yantras are designs of power that tap into other levels of attention. two Yantras provided by Rama to his students were the Lakshmi and Kali yantras.
Sit in front of the object of concentration with the eyes open. Focus on one point and hold your attention there. The mind will waiver, you’ll think a million thoughts, but each time bring your mind back to the point of concentration, seeing it visually. We use sight because it is a dominant sense. Using sight makes it easier to interrupt the flow of thought.
By disciplining and training the mind to focus on one thing, we gain control of perception; we learn to grab it and put it someplace where we want it to be.

Chakra Meditation

In Buddhism we make our minds quiet by learning to focus on the chakras to release internal energy that we call kundalini, and bring ourselves into high states of consciousness. Each of the seven chakras which are in the subtle physical body – the body of energy which surrounds and protects the physical body – references different dimensional planes.
If you are trying to increase your power level, meditate on the navel center. This chakra is located about two or three inches below the navel. The heart chakra, anahata, is located in the center of the chest. It is the central chakra with three chakras above and three below. The heart chakra symbolizes balance, happiness and love. To increase happiness, practice smiling for five minutes during your meditation which is a very powerful time and focus on a feeling of happiness. To develop wisdom, meditate on the third eye, the agni chakra, located between the eyebrows and a little bit above.
We need all three aspects – power, balance and wisdom – to develop as a being. Focus on one of these three chakras each day or rotate them in an individual meditation session, starting with the navel center, then the heart center, then the third eye. However, you don’t want to focus on a chakra for the whole period of meditation.
There should be a point where you let go.

Progress

The first stage of meditation is simply to ignore thought; to become conscious that there is something beyond thought. Your mind is turbulent because you’re filled with desires, frustrations. You want too many things. You are afraid of too many things. It is necessary to overcome both attraction and aversion to still the mind.
The second stage of meditation begins when you can successfully stop thought for long periods of time. At this point you move beyond the awareness of this world.
The third stage is no thought. No thought is not the end of meditation. It is the beginning of higher meditation. When your mind is tranquil and at peace with the universe, when it has become void of all thought – you become meditation.

Free Meditation Music

To meditate in this age where there is a great deal of human aura, Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz created electronic music. He infused this music with enlightened energy. The music created by his band Zazen can be used as a point of focus during a meditation session, to assist you to quiet your mind and enter into a meditative state. We are honored to make this music available for free download.

Talks by Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz

Rama – Dr. Frderick Lenz recorded dozens of talks on meditation practices available for free download from this site:

A collection of talks on meditation by Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz in book form, How to Meditate, provides a full range of meditation techniques, knowledge, and wisdom to deepen your meditation practice and help you to understand meditation’s role in daily life.