Meditation on FixYourThink.com

Your mind is on autopilot---Here’s proof and how to seize control

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Feel like your mind’s out of control? It’s on autopilot—stressed or stuck in thoughts you can’t escape. That’s not you—it’s your automatic mind, running the show. You’re pure consciousness, able to think clearly and choose freely. I’ll prove it’s on autopilot, share steps to take charge, and show how to build a better world. Ready to lead? Let’s start.

The Automatic Mind: Why It’s Running You

Your brain’s built for quick fixes, not truth. It grabs sights, sounds, and feelings, spinning a flawed reality. Optical illusions prove it: you know it’s a straight line, but it looks bent.

MistValley, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This illusion tricks your brain—proof it’s autopilot controlled.

Your thoughts can trap you. Try meditating: want to focus on your breath? Your mind’s blabbing about work or lunch. That’s the autopilot keeping you stuck, not choosing.

Your body’s part of it. Eat bad food, and your stomach takes over—panic, nausea, no logic. Injuries, fear, and others cloud your mind. It’s hard to think clearly when your autopilot’s loud. But you’re more—let’s meet the real you.

You Are Psyche

You’re not your body or thoughts—you’re a Psyche, pure consciousness that is watching your mind and body: sensations, emotions, that inner voice. You’re self-aware and insightful, improving conditions quickly. You’re a natural leader, meant to guide your body’s parts—stomach, heart, brain—each with its own demands. You can harmonize them, rising above the noise.

Try this: intend your arm to rise. No words—just intend it. I bet it goes up! That’s you commanding your body, not your inner voice. Ever feel trapped by stress? That’s your body, not you. A psychic person is calm, focused, and intends their next step. Let’s build that power.

Proof Your Thoughts Aren’t You

Your inner voice is the autopilot’s tool, not you. Genie, a girl isolated until 13, found in 1970, couldn’t speak sentences due to no language exposure, yet was conscious—her inner voice was her brain’s creation, not her. Learn more about Genie, Schizophrenia’s similar—the brain floods the mind with false voices, the autopilot out of control.

Language makes it worse. Alfred Korzybski, in Science and Sanity (1933), showed words like “always” trap us, making life seem fixed. Say “the sky is blue”—it sounds permanent, but the sky changes. “All politicians are corrupt” overgeneralizes. Your autopilot blindly creates these traps, twisting your thoughts into confusions. You as self aware consciousness can catch them, as you’ll see in the steps.

How to Seize Control

Awaken your Psychic abilities with these steps, like living meditation—calmly observing and leading your daily activities, starting small:

Spot the Autopilot: Words? That’s your inner voice. Hunger? Your stomach. Fear? Your lizard brain. Name the source to seize control and guide it.
Use Intentions: Intend your arm to rise—no words. Now intend to stay calm or ignore distractions. I bet it works! Intending steers your autopilot.
Guide Like a Parent: Your body’s parts—heart, lungs, brain—are emotional, low-awareness. Intend calm or let your inner voice soothe them. Guide like a kind parent, and they’ll cooperate.
Guide Your Mind: Stumped? Intend your inner voice to act like an AI chatbot—guide inquiries, pick the best.
Question Words: Catch “always” or “never”—ask, “Is that true?” Words like “good”, “bad”, “true”, and “false” indicate absolutes which don’t occur in real life. Test beliefs like “I’m not enough.” Only your awareness can outsmarts word traps.
Know How You Know: Logical conclusions are not always the best. Practice your insight and intuition, evaluate and improve them.

These steps train you to be self aware, calm, and focused—like a perfect meditator. They’re not just for you—they’re a revolution. If we all led as Psyches, we’d end chaos: no wars from fear, no greed wrecking the planet. For more on word traps, see my article: AI Is Rewiring How We Think About Thinking, Igniting an Unprecedented Age of Enlightenment.

Create Your Future

As a Psyche, you are a natural leader. Question everything, improve your psychic abilities, thinking, and organize your mind-body into a high-performance team. Psyches can build a better world—clear minds creating safe and prosperous cities, and helping others awake. AI’s a tool, like your inner voice—your in charge.

Increase your intentions through out the day—share it with a friend! Post: “I’m guiding my autopilot! #Meditation” Organize with others to make a heaven on Earth, one mind at a time.

How to go beyond meditation and mindfulness to protect your sanity

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

You are constantly running across psychological land mines that are almost impossible to detect and disarm.

Just consider how many people lose their wealth, mind, or life to scams involving relationships, investments, medicines, and politics.

In our modern world, meditation and mindfulness are not enough to maintain your sanity against advanced and vicious psychological attacks.

People limit themselves to meditation because they don’t know what else to do.

Then, even their mindfulness skills are at risk if they don’t extend their abilities.

To progress beyond meditation, read the explanation below of what meditation does, and what it cannot do.

But most importantly, you need to understand the mental upgrades beyond mindfulness.

The superficial benefits of meditation

If you meditate, you will notice the following symptoms of your altered mind.

There will be a significant reduction in the number of random ideas that pop into your awareness. They call this quieting of the mind.

With fewer thoughts, your mind will be calmer and more relaxed.

A calm mind can focus on the subject of its choosing. This increases awareness and concentration.

Then you can perceive and understand your world with greater accuracy.

The result is, you can make better decisions.

If you are not getting these results, or you are a beginner, I recommend reading, "10 Bad and Good Meditation Secrets You Need to Know to help you achieve greater mindfulness."

Now, let’s look at the deeper mental changes provided by meditation.

The deep mental changes

Meditation develops skills for watching your thoughts and emotions.

You become familiar with what your mind does. You learn to let go of ideas and emotions.

Your beliefs about your mind get turned upside down.

You no longer believe your thoughts are you. You now live outside and separate from your thoughts.

You manipulate your ideas as easily as you move physical objects.

Now you observe, analyze, and change thoughts at will. This article explains how to meditate and achieve these skills, "A revolutionary meditation guide: Match techniques to your abilities."

These abilities change people’s lives so drastically that they try to extend meditation to get more benefits.

The limitations of meditation

People often have so much success with meditation, they try to add mental activities to get more benefits.

The problem is, these added mental activities do not help. Instead, they prevent a person from quieting their mind.

Meditation is perfect for developing skills for calmly watching your thoughts and emotions.

That is where meditation takes you and where it ends.

Do you know what is missing?

What meditation doesn’t do

After meditation gives you better control over your thoughts, then what do you do?

Well, you could decide to simply not think. That might work if you lived thousands of years in the past.

But, in our modern world, thinking is absolutely necessary.

You must execute complex procedures, make detailed plans, and when your plans go awry, invent some way to fix it.

You need to be an expert thinker.

Otherwise, you will make big mistakes and cause a lot of damage.

But meditation is a passive activity of watching your mind and letting go of your thoughts and emotions.

Meditation doesn’t teach you how to be an expert thinker.

Mindfulness is necessary but not sufficient for handling our modern mental challenges.

Going beyond mindfulness

Now that you understand the limitations of meditation and mindfulness, you can take the next step.

The next step is to learn how to improve your thinking processes.

The first thing you need to know is the difference between subconscious thinking and conscious thinking. If you don’t understand that difference, you won’t get very far because they are quite different and you have to work with them differently.

You can recognize subconscious thinking as thoughts you don’t control. These thoughts pop into your consciousness without you inviting them. They come with emotions and physical reactions that you cannot stop.

You are the unwilling victim of subconscious thinking. The reason you can’t control these thoughts is they come from instincts and conditioned behaviors programmed deep in your subconscious mind.

The majority of psychological attacks work on your subconscious thinking because they are normally beyond your control.

Once you learn to recognize these rogue thoughts, you can learn to control them with your conscious mind. But first, you must understand what conscious thinking is.

A conscious thought is a thought you control completely. You choose, when it appears in your consciousness and you choose when it goes. You also choose the connected emotions, physical reactions, and mental reactions.

Once you learn to recognize which thoughts are subconscious and which are conscious, you can use your conscious mind to isolate a single subconscious thought. Then you can use all the intelligence of your conscious mind to analyze it and figure out how to correct its emotions and reactions.

For more details about how humans think and how to improve your thinking, I recommend the article, "Why you are making big mistakes and how to fix it."

Take control of your sanity

Now you know that meditation and mindfulness give you the ability to watch your thoughts and calmly let them come and go.

Now you know how to recognize which thoughts are subconscious and which are conscious.

Now you know that you can isolate a subconscious thought and correct it by using your conscious mind.

These are the tools you need to handle the modern psychological attacks on your sanity.

Now you can live a saner and happier life.

A revolutionary meditation guide: Match techniques to your abilities

Sat, 17 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

You worry about the well-being of your family, friends, and country. You feel enormous stress about how to protect and care for them in this increasingly dangerous and deadly world.

Unfortunately, you are struggling just to make it through the day.

You want to improve your mental condition, abilities, and your productivity. But how?

This article explains how meditation techniques can speed up or slow your mental growth. Each technique works best for certain mental abilities and condition but could be harmful for others.

Choose the best technique for you. Fine-tune it to fit your abilities. Then apply what you learned about how techniques work to quicken your improvement.

Let’s begin.

What is holding you back?

Your success or failure at everything you do depends on how well you manage your mind.

But, you probably have little education or training on using your thinking processes.

Your thoughts and actions are often beyond your control and driven by subconscious commands hidden deep within your mind.

You need help.

Meditation techniques can manipulate your mind and create positive mental states, so you can improve everything you do.

To get the best results from meditation, you need to understand how subconscious mechanisms are paralyzing you.

Let’s look at those mental barriers.

The problems with your brain

Your brain is the product of billions of years of natural (haphazard) selection of responses, now programmed into your DNA as subconscious commands called instincts. All humans are born with a truckload of instincts.

Instincts are ancient, automatic and subconscious commands that control your thoughts and actions.

I’m sure these instincts were necessary for survival in some past millennium, in some jungle or more primitive environment. But in our modern complex world, these simple instincts can destroy your life.

Instincts don’t consider all the new and changing conditions in your fast-paced modern world. They don’t use logic or weigh all the opportunities or ramifications. They don’t research or develop intelligent long-term plans.

Instincts are just dumb.

Even worse, instincts are wide-open doors for sociopaths to hack into your mind and control you like a puppet.

I’ll explain this serious vulnerability next.

Psychological attacks build mental prisons

Your modern world floods you with psychological attacks flowing from every TV, computer, and smartphone. Examples of attacks are sexual innuendos, bullying, and phishing probes intended to manipulate and abuse you.

And what are the targets of these attacks? Your instincts. Why not? Everyone knows your instincts and how to push your buttons. Instincts haven’t changed in thousands of years.

People use your instincts to hold you back and prevent your improvement, so they can take advantage of you.

Attacks on people’s instincts have changed the course of nations and peoples throughout history, creating every detail of your culture and relationships.

Psychological attacks are a fact of life. Your only defense is to take back the control of your mind.

Next, I’ll explain why your hard work to succeed might end up crippling you.

Habits are your silent masters

Even when you design fantastic action plans that reward you with successes, you may still trip yourself up – if your actions become habits.

You start with a conscious, intelligent, and beneficial response. When that response is successful, you keep reacting in the same way.

When you repeat a response often and the feedback is positive, your brain will memorize it. Then it becomes an automatic and subconscious habit.

Habits are fast and efficient. Sometimes, only a habit will work. For example, in a game of baseball, a pitched ball moves so fast that the batter must swing his bat before his slow conscious mind realizes the ball is approaching. The batter must rely on his fast subconscious habits to hit the ball.

So, habits can be the perfect solution. Except, when your world changes, causing the habit to produce bad results. Let’s say a baseball pitcher develops a new way of throwing that makes the ball move strangely. The batter will strike out every time.

When a habit produces bad results, you have a big problem. Since a habit is subconscious and automatic, retraining your brain could take a lot of time and effort. In the meantime, a habit could do a lot of damage.

Habits can gang up with instincts and psychological attacks to hold you back as described next.

Your mind is a house of mirrors

Whenever you think, you only see reflections of your thoughts. You don’t notice this limitation. You cannot detect the size, shape, and nature of your confinement. Reflections of your thoughts prevent you from thinking outside the box, forcing you to repeat your same old mental mistakes. This invisible enclosure imprisons your mind.

Add some psychological attacks and damaging habits into your house of mirrors and you have a really big problem.

Ancient ascetics hoped they could escape from their torturous confinement within primitive, morbid thoughts. They desperately tried anything and everything. Many died from their efforts.

For most of humanity, escape was impossible. But a few ancients stumbled onto practices which released them from their prison.

Now, I reveal their discoveries.

Alter your mind with meditation techniques

How can your mind improve itself?

A crippled or chaotic mind cannot heal itself. But meditation can transition a mind to a mental state where self-healing is possible.

The miracle of meditation is that it alters your mental state by using the only tools available. The same debilitating instincts, habits and other subconscious mechanisms of your brain that crippled you.

How is this possible? Read on.

Control the environment

The most obvious tactic for altering your state of mind is to control your environment when meditating. Eliminate all influences that might slow your improvement.

Beginners should meditate in a quiet, safe, and isolated room to minimize distractions, social stresses and undesirable stimulation of instincts and habits.

Advanced practitioners may require an environment with some distractions to challenge their abilities.

Before you meditate, make sure you have the right conditions for you.

Next, the most powerful method.

Pit instincts against instincts

Conflicts between instincts happen all the time and you feel these as anxieties or stresses.

Beginners can’t stop or even reduce the damaging thoughts.

The surprising solution is – don’t try.

Instead, use a meditation technique that stimulates only instincts that create a better mental state. Then boost the power of those beneficial instincts to drive all other thoughts out of your mind.

No more conflict.

When you use the correct series of meditation techniques, you will gradually move your mind to more positive mental states, like climbing a ladder.

Now for additional tactics.

Steamroll instincts over habits

All your life you are learning cultural habits about what you should think and do. And you teach yourself many beneficial habits.

Habits are subconscious, automatic, and difficult to change. Habits oppose change, and therefore, oppose your improvement.

But, some instincts are strong enough to suppress habits. So, in your meditation session, trigger instincts that suppress habits and move you to a more positive state of mind.

Meditation techniques can empower instincts to subdue habits and other destructive instincts, corralling your mind into the least destructive corner of your prison. But this corner is a weak position. You cannot fight off psychological attacks forever.

Your rescue comes from an unexpected ally with the next tactic.

Dealing with your slow-changing brain

Habits and other automatic responses are stored in neurons and connections between neurons. To change your habits, you must delete old connections and grow new ones. These changes cannot occur unless you frequently repeat a training pattern with positive feedback. But this takes a lot of time.

If you meditate frequently and consistently, your brain learns new habits that automatically shift your mind to new mental states and help you stay there.

You need these habits to quickly move you to your target mental state and stabilize you.

Now you need to know the target mental state.

What is the least damaging corner of your mental prison?

Most people are traumatized and crippled by emotions, instincts, habits, and psychological attacks.

For beginners, focusing on the present-moment is a much better mental state.

Being in the present-moment is less harmful than being stuck in traumatic events of the past or paralyzed by anxiety about the future.

When you are in the present-moment, your conscious mind uses its intelligence to observe, feel and respond to what is real. You have the ability to make intelligent decisions and improve everything you do.

Daily meditation builds helpful habits and reduces harmful habits. But you need a power boost from the next tactic.

Push power to the conscious mind

Meditation techniques stimulate helpful instincts to shift your attention to the present-moment. Beginners spend most of their time in session stimulating these helpful instincts.

Frequent meditation weakens bad mental habits and develops new beneficial habits. Eventually, you spend less time stimulating instincts.

Now your conscious mind has more time to watch and understand your mental activities. Slowly, your conscious mind learns how to help stay in the present-moment. The more it helps, the less time you spend stimulating instincts. Eventually, your conscious mind has most of the session time to learn how to control everything your mind does.

Go beyond the present-moment

Remember the baseball player and his habits for hitting the ball. Sometimes habits and instincts are the only solutions. A person who knows how to manage their mind will choose the best mental state for the situation. The right response could be instinctual, habitual, intellectual or just plain conscious observation.

Being in the present-moment is not the ultimate mental state. A better mental state is using your conscious mind to analyze and select the best mental state for the current situation. Then you shift your mind to that state to achieve your best performance. I call this higher state – managing your mind. This is one step beyond being forever stuck in the present-moment, like an animal.

Managing your mind means that you consciously shift to the best mental state for the current situation.

Now your conscious mind can manage your habits. It can research what is the best habit, plan a training program, run a training program and then test the habit to make sure it performs according to plan.

You can even change instinctual reactions. You can create new points of view to trigger new instincts and get new reactions.

But these topics go beyond this article.

When you manage your mind, you are working above the mirrored walls of your mind. You can analyze your thinking processes and the world beyond. You can optimize how you think and respond to the world.

Now you need to understand which meditation type is best for you.

Get results when you understand your techniques

Choose your meditation technique by difficulty

Your progress will be faster and easier when you match the difficulty of a meditation technique to your current mental condition and abilities.

Overwhelming techniques land on you like a pile of bricks and do more damage than good.

Easy techniques don’t develop new abilities. Eventually, you will quit.

If you don’t know your abilities, experiment with several meditation types. When experimenting, use short sessions at first, five to ten minutes, to get a feel for how well a type fits you. If you can’t handle a short session, then try an easier technique.

You should not move to a harder technique until you can meditate in your current technique for twenty or more minutes with little mind-wandering and no dozing off.

The technique descriptions below start with the easiest and end with the hardest. Now you can match your current abilities with the right meditation technique.

Match your mental condition with a technique

Your special mental condition will work with some techniques and not others. To find the best fit for you, read the subsection of each technique called, “Who would benefit.” I also recommend reading all the types before choosing.

Understand meditation types

There are thousands of meditation techniques. Understanding these techniques would be difficult, time-consuming and not productive.

In the list of meditation types below, each numbered meditation type represents many techniques that alter the mind in the same way. This reduces the number of techniques to just a few types. Selecting the best type for you is easier.

Prepare for your meditation session

Select a quiet, safe, relaxing environment. Make yourself comfortable sitting upright on a cushion. If sitting for long periods is a health issue, select the best compromise for you, somewhere between sitting upright and laying down. Keep in mind, sitting upright helps you stay alert and not doze-off while laying down is more difficult.

Choose your meditation type

1. Guided meditation

What you do

Make yourself comfortable by sitting or laying down. Close your eyes and listen to soft soothing music. Your meditation guide will speak to you in a pleasant voice. The guide talks you through a series of beautiful visions, happy experiences, imaginary spiritual experiences, focusing on body sensations or any combination of these.

You may also hear advice on how to relax, let things go, and to focus your mind on the present-moment.

Your guided session could be a group event or you could listen to a recording in private.

What the technique does to you

The music, voice, and visions presented by the guide captures all your attention and helps to push all other thinking out of your mind.

This technique is similar to hypnotic suggestion.

Who would benefit?

People with high levels of stress, anxiety, and uncontrolled or chaotic mental activity.

Improvement goals

This practice allows a person to ignore or forget their problems during the guided session. Provides needed relaxation and healing from stress and anxiety. Guided meditation may be the only way some people can unplug from their anxieties.

Problems

This technique cannot help a person with serious psychological difficulties and they should pursue a more direct and powerful treatment from a qualified psychologist.

On rare occasions, guided meditation can recall traumatic memories and cause dangerous emotions. If this happens, seek professional help.

Guided meditation tells people what and how to think and trains them to follow suggestions. This practice may weaken a person’s self-determinism and/or inject false beliefs.

The guide may end the session without a strong refocus of attention on the present-moment, leaving a person in an imaginary reality.

Strategy for improvement

The pleasant music, speaker’s voice, and visualizations use a person’s habits and instincts to glue their attention on suggestions from the guide and expel negative thoughts.

The guide manages the mind of the listener. This technique does not challenge the listener to develop self-managing mental skills. I recommend more difficult techniques as soon as you are able.

2. Single breath meditation

What you do

Use this technique at work or whenever you can take a short break. Stop what you are doing and close your eyes. Focus your attention on your breathing. Then inhale deeply and exhale slowly while relaxing all your muscles. Repeat this deep breathing cycle as many times as you wish. Do this technique several times a day.

What the technique does to you

This quick, simple and easy technique can interrupt and disconnect a person from negative thoughts and emotions. Resets the mind to a relaxed state. It enables a person to rethink a difficult situation from a fresh and calm point of view.

When used several times a day, it prevents the build-up of negative emotions and anxiety.

Who would benefit?

This technique works well for everyone.

Improvement goals

Improves mental performance for short periods. Not difficult enough to develop new mental skills.

Problems

No problems or complications.

Strategy for improvement

Neurological connections in the brain will relax the mind when they sense slow deep breathing (see scientific research). This technique is also an old folk remedy that has helped people for ages.

Using this subconscious mechanism of the brain provides short-term benefits but no lasting improvement of mental skills. I recommend more difficult techniques.

3. Mantra, prayer, walking meditation, yoga

What you do

Walking meditation, doing yoga poses, mantras, and prayers are grouped into one type of meditation. All these techniques strongly attract a person’s attention and expel all other thoughts by repeating interesting mental and physical activities.

There are endless variations of spoken words and physical actions. You can find information about variations at Live and Dare.

For the rest of this description, I will use the mantra technique as a representative of all the others.

What the technique does to you

The mental and physical activities of a mantra trigger your instincts and habits to focus your attention on interesting present-moment events and suppress all other mental activities.

A person will remain focused on the present for a while after the session.

Who would benefit?

People stuck in negative thinking, easily distracted or can’t focus on tasks that require attention for over ten minutes.

Improvement goals

This technique can stop negative thinking, cut off a person from their anxieties and redirect their attention to current events. Focusing on real, present-moment events is relaxing and more productive.

This practice increases a person’s ability to disconnect from worrying and concentrate on positive activities they can do right now.

Problems

People should avoid mantras, prayers, and other practices that suggest false ideas or unverified concepts.

Strategy for improvement

Physical events such as mantras, prayers, walking intently, and yoga poses trigger strong instincts that focus attention on current events and expel other mental activities. Now you are altering your mental state by using instincts against other instincts and habits.

Use physical activities that strongly attract your attention to make the technique easier. For example, you can easily focus on a beautiful mantra recited out loud with other people so it echos in the room and in your chest. A much more difficult exercise would be a foreign language mantra you don’t understand, recited silently in your mind-while alone in a quiet room.

Meditation should challenge, but not overwhelm. For your fastest progress, start easy and gradually increase the difficulty as your abilities increase.

When you can silently recite a boring mantra for twenty or more minutes without mind-wandering or doze-off, you are ready for a more difficult technique.

4. Counting breaths

What you do

Put your attention on the sensations of inhaling and exhaling. After each inhale and exhale, count up by one till you get to ten. Then count down by one after each breath cycle until you return to the number one. Keep breathing and counting up and down throughout your meditation session.

If you forget what count you are on, or doze-off, restart the process without self-criticism and continue till the end of your planned session.

What the technique does to you

The sensations of your breathing keeps some of your subconscious mind busy. Counting breaths keeps your conscious mind busy with a simple activity. These activities help shift your attention to present-moment events. Errors in counting give you obvious and early warnings when you lose focus.

Who would benefit?

People who have developed at least a little ability to act as an executive, monitor what their mind is doing and control its activities.

Improvement goals

This technique is for experimenting, discovering, improving and training abilities for self-directing attention, preventing mind-wandering and eliminating dozing off. These new skills let you shift your attention to the present-moment and stay there.

Problems

No known problems since this technique is simple and directs a person’s attention only to current events.

Strategy for improvement

The sensations of breathing and the mental task of counting breaths attract attention with weak stimulation from instincts. This technique is much more difficult than a mantra and demands the development of new mental skills or else the mind wanders or dozes off.

Beginners could start with only a few breaths per session and have many sessions in a day.

If you can do this technique without mind-wandering or doze-off, increase the difficulty by increasing the length of the session.

This technique develops and trains new mental skills which enable you to focus on the present-moment for long periods. These skills are permanent and beneficial for everything you do.

Advance to a harder technique when you can meditate for twenty to thirty minutes with little mind-wandering and no doze-off.

5. Attention on your breath

What you do

This type includes several meditation techniques where you focus attention on one body activity at a time. The most common meditation object is breathing. Most techniques allow you to shift focus to a new meditation object during your session.

What the technique does to you

Putting your attention on a single boring body activity triggers instincts and habits that distract and disturb you instead of helping you focus. This increases the difficulty and forces you to develop new mind management skills.

Who would benefit?

This technique type is beneficial only if you already have considerable mind management skills.

Improvement goals

You develop skills to control your attention against strong instincts and habits which normally distract and disturb you. You will develop powerful skills for managing the activities of your mind.

Problems

The extreme difficulty causes many people to quit.

Strategy for improvement

Before you begin your session make sure you are ready. You will have a difficult session if you are hungry, tired, have an immediate problem, or feel distressed. If you do things to increase your alertness and calmness before a session, your session will be easier.

You should make your initial sessions short so you can end the session on a positive note and not have a big loss. Then gradually increase session length as you improve your skills. For example, you could start at two minutes and work up to thirty minutes.

Begin your session with the counting breaths technique. After you have focused on your breath and counting, stop counting and just focus on your breath.

When you focus on your breath, amplify every sensation in magnitude, importance, and emotional feeling. Select one sensation of breathing, magnify it and split it into more sensations and amplify each of those. Example: the sensation of air flowing in your nose could be split into sensing the air flowing in your nostrils, nasal cavities, and sinuses.

If other body sensations appear, use them too. Fill your mind with sensations to focus on present-moment events and expel all other thoughts.

As you increase your ability to control your focus, reduce the exaggeration of sensations.

The above brute force methods help you keep control of your attention while you gradually develop methods to detect and correct mind-wandering and doze-off.

When rogue mental activities arise, recognize this as the challenge you need to learn how to manage your mind.

The simplest response to rogue thoughts is to acknowledge their presence as an event separate from you (you are pure awareness of passing events) and refocus on your breathing.

If a rogue thought persists, analyze the distraction, name its disturbance type and realize its unimportance and it will usually fade away. Examples of types are, worrying about future events, trying to solve a problem, and sorrow about events of the past.

When a rogue thought returns because it is important, become a manager. Make a mental note of the problem. Promise yourself to handle the issue after session and return to watching your breath.

After the session, write down the problem and schedule time to work on solutions. Some of these problems may take months or years to solve. Some problems are so big, you can only contribute toward a resolution. But if you know you are doing your best, this will help you calm your mind and allow you to do what you can do to resolve the problem.

A meditation session is where you increase your mental abilities, not where you solve world problems. You have to assign the right amount of time to each activity. Know that you cannot solve problems if you cannot focus your mind.

If you notice your mind is wandering, following rogue thoughts, or dozing off; train yourself to detect and correct these conditions in their early stages before they grow in strength. Then you never lose complete control.

Improve all your skills until they are automatic and your session is easy.

When you can easily sit through a twenty to thirty-minute session with no major loss of focus, try a harder technique.

6. Attention on your mind

What you do

You can start your meditation session with any of the easier techniques. Then when you are doing well, stop focusing on the meditation object. Now do nothing but watch whatever mental activities and body sensations occur. Acknowledge them and then let them go.

What the technique does to you

This is the most difficult technique of all because there is no meditation object to hold your attention. It also challenges you to let go of all mental activities. Your mind becomes quieter and your awareness under your control increases significantly.

As you improve your ability to let things go, you appear to have a paradox – to be aware of nothing.

Who would benefit?

People proficient with the previous technique or have excellent awareness and control of their mental processes.

Improvement goals

Your ability to acknowledge, identify and dismiss mental activities allows you to spend most of your time discovering more subtle mental phenomena and working to understand what they are.

You are increasing your ability to manage and improve your mental skills. You can apply these powerful mental skills for solving problems and making your life better.

Problems

The enormous difficulty is the primary problem.

Strategy for improvement

The paradox of being aware of everything and dismissing everything creates many new experiences, new challenges, and more questions. These questions are educational and worth investigating. Don’t get discouraged when you can’t find the answer. This research into the unknown parts of your mind takes time. Just keep doing the technique and you will make discoveries.

When you become proficient at this exploration, it can be fun and interesting.

When not in a meditation session, you can practice using your new mental management skills. Interaction with the external world is many times more complex than meditation and you must learn how to use your mental skills to handle real-world problems.

To help you understand the complexities of life you can read the article, "How to untangle Buddhist No-Self riddles to create powerful life strategies." Other articles on the website will also be helpful.

Design your meditation for your fastest progress

Now you can choose the meditation technique that best fits your mental condition, abilities, and goals.

Then you can fine-tune the difficulty to match your abilities so you can optimize your progress.

You understand how each technique works so you know exactly what you have to do to get results.

But you also get a big bonus here. This explanation of techniques allows you to design your entire improvement path. As your mental abilities improve, you can select your new best technique and fine-tune the difficulty for your fastest progress.

You now possess the easiest and fastest path toward greater mental performance.

With your new mental powers, you can make major improvements to how you manage your mind.

Meditation teaches you how to manage your instincts, habits, emotions, and conscious abilities so you can constantly improve your performance. (Click the link to tweet)

Because your mind management skills improve everything you do, you are much more productive, you can solve more problems, and make greater improvements to your life.

What are you waiting for?

Master your mind and change your life.

Meditation moves your mind from chaos to peak performance when you know these facts

Tue, 08 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Are you tortured by worry, stress, and anxieties but are afraid to try meditation because the marketing hype feels like a scam or even cult lunacy. Or maybe you’ve tried meditating, and it didn’t help, so you quit, and now you don’t know what to do.

Well, you are not alone.

The problem is, most meditation instructions give people the wrong goals, causing them to get stuck or detoured away from the life-changing benefits they could get from meditation.

This doesn’t have to be your story.

In this article, you will get an explanation of meditation that can really help you.

Plus, the important stuff that most gurus leave out.

You will learn how to properly use your new skills to change your real life outside of meditation.

With this new understanding, you can learn to reduce your mental chaos, stress and anxieties – and much more.

Meditation basics that deliver aha moments

Meditation is a controlled experiment where you sit comfortably in a safe, quiet place, close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath.

Limiting your attention to your breath is very boring and precisely the opposite of how you usually spend your day. You are in the habit of watching exciting movies, thinking about your current problems, opportunities, plans, and your regrets.

When people first try meditation, they always lose their focus on their breath and their attention wanders, or they get so bored they fall asleep. These difficulties are common.

You should calmly refocus your attention on your breath without self-judgments or emotions.

So what are the aha moments?

Meditation is a simple experiment that everyone can easily experience.

Meditation quickly reveals that you habitually think about exciting, emotional, and stimulating topics, or you fall asleep.

Your subconscious mental habits are stronger than your strongest conscious intention.

What a humiliating, if not frightening experience.

Your subconscious mind is so powerful, it might hijack you and drag you through an endless house of horrors, full of your worst fears — a panic attack.

At this point, most people give up, quit meditation, and never face the fact that they are not self-determined.

This reaction is regrettable because it is precisely the wrong decision.

The first aha moment you get from meditation should be that you are not in control of your mind or life. And if you want to have control, you will need to continue meditating.

When you build up the courage to take control of who you are, meditation can help.

Meditation can help you take control of your mind

Meditation is not only an educational experiment but also a training exercise. By meditating regularly, you will gradually increase your ability to focus on your breath.

Meditation is not about fighting your subconscious habits. When you meditate, you are practicing new habits. You are practicing how to direct your attention to the here and now, your breath.

The more you meditate, the more you learn new conscious skills to replace your old subconscious habits.

As you get better at meditating, you are not just increasing your ability to focus on the here and now. You are improving your ability to focus on whatever you choose.

So how does this reduce your troubling worries, stresses, and anxiety?

Now, don’t ever think that meditation changes your social and economic problems, your future, or your regrets about your past. Nor will meditation allow you to ignore real problems by always focusing on your breath. Only a small number of your problems are imaginary and disappear when you are in the here and now.

Meditation changes you, not the facts you must face.

The first benefit of meditation is it increases your ability to direct your attention. Then you can decide when and how you think about your problems. Your problems no longer cause constant mental chaos and worry. You are gaining control over when and how you think, increasing your ability to solve your problems.

But to solve your problems, you must develop additional powerful mental skills like those described in the following sections.

The big mistake gurus make about how meditation changes your life

Most meditation gurus tell everyone that meditation teaches you how to be in the NOW and that is the ultimate mind state for success.

WRONG!

Your real life is not a meditation training session.

Your days are filled with activities like driving a car and responding quickly at work when competing with others. Life comes at you at 70 MPH on a freeway and sometimes just as fast at work, or at home. On any day, an inadequate response by you could cost you your life.

I’m not trying to be negative; it’s merely a fact of life.

The important take away is that a significant portion of your life and many life-changing events depend on your fast, automatic, and subconscious responses.

Your quick responses are you operating in the “flow.” You know, that mental state where you respond so quickly, smooth and flawlessly that you feel like a God.

Well, the truth is, you’re frequently in the flow, but you don’t feel like a God because your flow sucks and you crash and burn. But you were still in a flow.

And being in the flow means your responses are automatic, habitual patterns straight out of your subconscious mind.

Don’t confuse a flow situation with a meditation session.

In meditation, your subconscious mind obediently follows your conscious mind and watches your breath. You are in the here and now with your conscious mind managing your thoughts.

But flow situations are where your conscious mind steps aside and lets your subconscious mind do its thing. Yes, you are also in the here and now, but your conscious mind is not calling the shots because it’s too slow.

Don’t turn your life into a meditation session, that would look like a train wreck.

So how does meditation really change your daily life and your flows? That’s next.

The proper way to use your new skills from meditation

Continued meditation, increases your understanding and control of your subconscious and conscious minds.

Then you know when to use your fast response subconscious mind instead of your slow methodical but smarter conscious mind.

To prepare for a flow situation, you use your conscious mind to design a smart flow pattern. Then your conscious mind manages the training of your subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is responsible for the entire project of creating a new flow pattern that won’t crash and burn.

But this flow training process hints of other skills you can learn from meditation.

The big picture most gurus don’t get

Between meditations, you think about your minds, how they work and how you can manage them.

When you consciously think about how your whole mind works, you are looking at the big picture, called meta-cognitive thinking.

Meta-cognitive thinking develops new high-level mind management skills that are much more than merely being in the flow. Much more than being in the here and now. Much more than not being emotionally disturbed. Much more than not making negative judgments. Much more than not suffering from stress, anxiety and other mental health problems.

Your new mind management skills include all the above plus the ability to work at a higher level of consciousness. To be aware of all parts of your mind. To increase your understanding of each part of your mind so you can integrate, organize and optimize their performance as a single powerful organism.

Then you will learn about new mental states and when to use them. You will know when the best approach is a habitual flow, or mind wandering or even worrying. You will be able to go in and out of any mental state at will. You will reap the benefits and avoid the disasters of each mental state.

Meta-cognitive thinking is far superior to limiting yourself to any single mental state.

So what does this mean for your future?

You can change your life with meditation

Now you have a clear, useful explanation of the immediate and easy mental improvements you get from meditation.

Now you have the big picture of how continued meditation will help you develop whole mind management skills.

And you have a glimpse of the unlimited opportunities for improvement of your conscious abilities.

No matter where you are in your meditation practice, this knowledge will point you in the right direction and improve your mental abilities. Then you can better manage your problems, eliminate mental chaos, worries, stress, and anxieties.

Your new powerful mental skills will help you efficiently and effectively solve all your problems and move you toward a happier life.

Now you know how to take charge of your mind and your life.

To learn advanced methods for accelerating your meditation progress, read the article, "A revolutionary meditation guide: Match techniques to your abilities." Other articles on the website will also be helpful.

8 Ways to Reduce Stress and Anxiety Fast (Using One Breath Meditation)

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Is your stressful job filling your head with fear, anger, and hopelessness?

Are you worried about making enough money, paying the bills or a stock market collapse?

And how about your persistent conflicts with your co-workers, family, and friends?

These crippling mind problems are serious, and if you don’t find a fix, your physical and mental health will suffer, not to mention your ability to perform your best in your tough situations.

Well, the following quick, easy and powerful techniques will help eliminate negative emotions and thoughts.

These techniques are a combination of scientifically verified methods and Buddhism meditation practices.

These mind hacks are instructions on how to relax and change your mental state instantly. Meditation beginners and experienced people will benefit from these methods.

#1 How to calm your mind instantly

Has anyone ever told you to take a few deep breaths when having a panic attack or experiencing some extreme emotion?

Well, it really works, and recent scientific research has determined why.

Scientists have discovered special neurons in the brain which sense a person’s breathing pattern and then send messages to the arousal center of the brain to change the person’s mental state. Slow, deep breathing will automatically cause a person to relax while shallow, quick breathing can increase anxiety. So these brain cells will change your mental state according to your breathing pattern.

These brain cells can also sense the person’s mental state and change the breathing pattern to fit the mental state, creating a two-way connection between your breathing rate and your mental state. So you can be aware of your mental state by analyzing your breathing.

Instantly changing from an emotional state to a calm and relaxed state by breathing slowly and deeply will help you handle stress.

And the next suggestion will make this slow, deep breathing technique more powerful.

#2 How to enhance your mind-calming breathing technique

We can improve the power of slow, deep breathing by learning meditation techniques from ancient Buddhist monks. They suggest you put all your attention on the sensations of breathing in and out when meditating.

By focusing all your attention on your breath, your mind cannot think about the past, future or even problems in the present.

Your mind will only be aware of the incoming, flowing sensations of breathing.

It’s like an instant vacation, a disconnect from all worries. No past, no future, not even concerns about the present.

This instant mental reset is a powerful tool for you to improve your health and well being.

You can read many scientific studies that prove meditation reduces stress and anxiety at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This article also provides scientific information, 20 Scientific Reasons to Start Meditating Today.

But if you’re a beginner, you may need the following suggestions to improve your focus.

#3 How to increase your focus

The quickest way to learn how to focus your mind on your breath is to use the advice of Buddhist monks about how to meditate. They suggest you study every subtle sensation of your body as you slowly breathe in and breathe out.

When you breathe in you may notice how the air feels flowing through your nostrils. You may feel the cooling sensations in your nasal cavity from the passing air. Or your expanding lungs and chest. Notice any sensations in the entire body as the oxygen flows everywhere including how your brain feels.

Also, notice any emotional changes. The incoming oxygen might make you feel more energetic, aware and happy.

On your exhale, you can feel the air flowing out, the chest moving down, and the diaphragm muscles relaxing. This is a good time to notice any tense muscles and to relax them, which also helps relax the mind.

Your exhale can be through your mouth or nose, whichever you prefer.

If you have unpleasant sensations or emotions, that’s OK. Just be aware of them, don’t add to the discomfort by struggling to force them out of your mind.

To minimize any worldly problems that enter your mind, vowing to work on these after you finish your meditation and gently return your attention to your breath.

Conscious control of your breath and your attention are powerful tools for changing your physical and mental states so you can perform your best.

But how long does this mental state switch take? The next sections will help you get instant results.

#4 The instant meditation everyone can do

Most people have the wrong idea about meditation. They believe that meditation requires enormous sacrifices and suffering for years. And even then, only a few exceptional people achieve important benefits.

What you may not know is that for centuries, Tibetan Buddhist monks have recommended meditation in “Short moments, many times,” according to Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Also, Eckhart Tolle said, “One conscious breath in and out is a meditation.”

Yes, that is right, one breath cycle is meditation.

If you are busy, one breath meditation is all you can do. But you can do it anywhere, anytime and as many times a day as you like.

Single breath meditations can allow you to change your mental state several times a day and keep your entire day balanced, productive and enjoyable.

Tibetan monks say that short moments many times can be more helpful than one single meditation session for a long period.

The next technique will help motivate you to do these short moments many times.

#5 Make wins not losses

Whenever you want to create new positive habits, you must always discover and associate good feelings with your new desired behavior.

For one breath meditation, there are several immediate and good experiences.

You can immediately be calm and peaceful.

You can enjoy the energizing yet relaxing feelings in your body.

You can be proud of achieving each one breath meditation.

You can appreciate each moment of peacefulness like a valuable gift you now own.

You can look forward to the positive state of mind it creates and your higher performance.

You can appreciate that these benefits take so little time from your busy day.

Don’t make losses. Don’t compare your meditation to that of famous monks. Don’t have grandiose and unreasonable expectations of meditation results. Don’t think that you failed if your meditation is not perfect. Such thoughts will associate negative feelings with your meditation. Focus on your positive improvements.

When you associate only your wins and improvements with your meditation, then you will look forward to meditating again, and meditation will be easy.

But, there are still more benefits.

#6 How to instantly switch to your best state of mind

Life is tough. You are often under pressure to perform, and only your best will handle problems.

The stress and anxiety of these moments do not prove you or your meditation are failures. Stress and emotions may be necessary to engage all your mind-body energy to handle a crisis.

Like a fire-fighter in a burning building, you need the adrenaline and fear to get the job done. But when the job is done, you need to switch to a calm, relaxed state quickly to enjoy family and friends.

With one breath meditation, you can quickly reset your mind. Then you can calmly choose the most suitable state of mind for your next response.

One breath meditation for instantly switching states may take practice and the next technique will help.

#7 How to meditate like a monk

What allows a Buddhist monk to focus? He doesn’t think about how long he meditates or how many breaths he takes. Whether the monk takes one meditation breath or a thousand, each breath is independent of the past, future, and present.

To help you meditate like a monk, imagine each breath creates an infinite, eternal universe where absolutely nothing else exists but you, your awareness and your attention on your breath. Each breath will create a new and different universe. So, whether you take one breath or a thousand, each breath is a unique and individual event. You can revisit and enjoy any universe you created.

If you think about how many breaths you take, or how long you meditate, your mind may think about how difficult it is or about important things you need to do.

Focusing on one breath at a time eliminates thinking about all past and future breaths. Then each breath is as easy as the first.

And each breath can create an aha moment as explained next.

#8 Aha moments from one breath meditation

From the stories that you have heard about the ancient Buddhist monks, you may believe you will not have an aha moment unless you meditate for decades. Also, only special people are blessed with revelations.

Well, I want you to know, that it is not true.

I will give you one valuable example. But before you read the following explanation, repeat the one breath meditation until you are completely focused on your breath.

OK, so now you have completed a one breath meditation. Let me ask you, did you hear your inner voice talking to you? You know, that voice you hear in your mind speaking to you as if it was one of your parents.

If you focused on your sensations, your inner voice was quiet. Think about that. If you exist and are functioning without your inner voice, then what is the inner voice and what is it to you? Obviously, you can exist independent of the inner voice.

You can have many more revelations that change your viewpoint, launching unending explorations into your mind and how to improve it.

Instantly reduce stress and anxiety

I have shown you how you can instantly relax your body and calm your mind.

How you can change your mental state fast.

How you can instantly increase your awareness and focus.

How you can quickly put your attention on the present and drop regrets, anger, and fears about the past, present or future.

How you can calm your mind and relax your body in an instant even when you have waiting problems.

How you can improve your meditation practice significantly.

How you can make these new techniques your daily habit even if you are very busy.

I have also shown you how you can have ah-ha moments even with one breath meditation.

All these meditation techniques improve your mental abilities, performance, attitude, and your viewpoint of everything you experience.

These are powerful techniques, and if you apply them, you will instantly improve your life.

10 Bad and Good Meditation Secrets You Need to Know to help you achieve greater mindfulness

Sun, 03 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

When I first started meditating, I felt like I was hitting my head against a brick wall.

In this article, I share my unique experiences and knowledge to help you make progress.

I’m sitting in a full Lotus position, meditating on a thin pad. My back hurts, my butt hurts, and my head hurts so bad it feels like I’m banging it on a brick wall.

Hey! What happened to the serenity and happiness everyone promised? Now I feel like I am going to vomit!

“Oh, you will get to serenity once you work through your early difficulties of meditation,” said my instructor.

Why didn’t someone tell me this before I started? Anyway, I continued meditating.

When I first started meditating, I had some real problems, and I didn’t understand why. That was over forty years ago when I thought meditation was mystical, spooky and spiritual. Even today, many people think meditation is mysterious.

What people don’t know about meditation can cause difficulties. Beginners may quit and never try again. Experienced people can get stuck and stop making progress. Many people miss the unbelievable benefits of meditating.

Over the years I have meditated a lot, made many mistakes and earned several breakthroughs. In this article, I share my unique experiences and knowledge because I think it will help you.

#1 My bad meditation beginning

Now, when I look back at my first experiences with meditation, I understand a secret about why it was so difficult. A secret that even my instructor didn’t know. Recently, there have been several scientific studies into the effects of meditation on people’s brains. Medical doctors using double-blind research studies and brain scans have proven that meditation causes specific locations of the brain to grow. This surprising ability of brain cells to grow and reorganize is called neuroplasticity.

But that medical discovery is not the secret that I want to expose. The secret is, when you first try to meditate, there is no way that you can do it. It’s impossible.

You don’t have the brain cells to meditate!

You are not born with the brain cells for meditation, and they don’t automatically generate at puberty or any other time. You have to put effort into meditating to make your brain grow those brain cells.

It’s like learning to ride a bicycle. The first time you get on a bike, you are going to crash and burn. You have to fall several times to learn how it feels when you are crashing. Then you try doing something new to stop yourself from crashing.

Bingo! Now, you are growing new gray matter in your brain. But you will continue to crash and burn until you grow enough new brain cells to balance yourself on a bike.

No wonder I felt like I was hitting my head against a brick wall when I first started meditating. Each time I tried to meditate, I would crash and burn. I became a freaking expert on how to crash. I could describe every stage of my mind crashing in obnoxious detail. Only then could I begin to learn how to stabilize my mind.

So, if you are a meditation beginner, it’s going to be bad.

And I am here to tell you that you just have to work through your early difficulties that stimulate your brain to grow new cells.

#2 Creating good mind tools

To meditate, I had to develop new mind tools.

Again, the process is similar to learning how to ride a bike. You have to fall over a few times before you learn to detect when you are off balance and how to correct the problem.

When meditating, I had to detect when I was falling asleep and then create a massive mental jolt to wake me up. I felt silly when my body would jump up from this jolt because others might see me.

Eventually, I improved this mental wake-up call to fire even sooner, at the slightest decrease in awareness. And I used a subtle shift in attention to thoughts of my mind instead of a massive mental jolt.

When I first created this tool, I was not fully conscious of what I was doing. I subconsciously created this function just like a child learns how to ride a bike.

But now, thanks to greater awareness of my mind, I consciously design and refine new mind tools.

#3 The good and bad moments of serenity

Serenity at last! Yes, I did find serenity after years of meditating. Well, not all the time, but often. I would be able to meditate for long periods and feel quite peaceful.

These skills did carry over into my normal life and job but not as much as I had hoped. My job was designing computers. My technical and management challenges were stressful. I also had family responsibilities. Meditation did not solve all these problems.

I often felt I had to place meditation at a lower priority.

#4 My bad meditation balancing act

There were many times when I did not meditate regularly. I was sure that I could calm myself whenever I wanted to. After all, I had reached moments of serenity many times. I knew exactly what to do, and so I was confident I could easily do it again.

But something odd happens when I don’t meditate regularly. The next time I would try meditating, it was much harder. I had relapsed to a lower skill level. I accepted the correlation between practice and skill level and didn’t think much about it.

Once again, our modern understanding of neuroplasticity can provide a useful explanation of what happens in the brain. If you do not meditate regularly, and you are learning new multitasking skills and emotional responses for your daily activities, your precious meditation brain connections will be cannibalized for these new tasks. That’s neuroplasticity.

So the lesson here is that you must find a balance between your everyday chores and meditation or else your meditation and special mental skills will disappear.

#5 A bad mind state needs a good reset

Criminals or desperate and confused people often threaten our lives and families. Also, our relationships can be maddening. I sometimes find myself emotionally disturbed by these problems.

When my mind gets locked in a cyclone of thoughts, fears, and emotions, I need to break the tight grip it has on my mind by meditating. Quieting the mind may take a little more time because of the extra stress, but I can do it.

The key to achieving a meditative state when under stress is to tell yourself that you are not seeking a solution to the problem that is disturbing you. The goal is to break the emotional grip and quiet the mind.

Later, when you are calm, rested, stronger and more objective, you will find it much easier to solve your problems.

I recommend using meditation to power down and reset your mind when it gets locked up.

#6 More good mental skills

Meditation allows you to create new mental skills. Far too many for me to explain here. So I will just present the one that I appreciate the most.

Before I started meditating, my mind was one big, flailing, thrashing, whirlpool of emotions and thoughts. I was constantly submerged and swept in all directions by irresistible mental currents.

With the help of meditation, I can now think about my mind from a detached and objective viewpoint. I can study my mind as if it were an onion. I can peel that onion and examine the different parts.

I can’t say that I have peeled the onion to its core or that I am completely unmoved by the currents of my emotions and thoughts. But I do have much more influence over what my mind does, and I am increasing my mental skills.

#7 The bad inner voice

Early in my life, my inner voice was out of control. It would constantly spew out all sorts of ridiculous and crazy ideas. Many of those ideas would hurt me or hold me back. But at the time, I considered the inner voice to be me. I was the inner voice, and there was nothing else to my existence beyond whatever the inner voice said.

Then one day, in meditation, I quieted the inner voice. It was mum, nada, kaput. Eventually, the absence of the inner voice became normal.

Then a question occurred to me, “Who am I?” What a shocker! I obviously was not the inner voice because I was still there, even when the inner voice was gone.

This realization revealed a whole new area of self-discovery and self-improvement. The next paragraph continues with this idea.

#8 Awakening to more bad mental habits is good

When meditating, you may see your mind do things that are not good. This is normal. Don’t panic.

Don’t try to force it to stop. Just watch it. Become familiar with what it is doing and why.

Once you understand the why, you can make corrections to this purpose and then make corrections to what your mind is doing, without mental conflict or stress.

#9 Awakening to the limits of meditation

No matter how much you meditate and improve your mind, there will always be a whole world out there beyond your control.

Meditation by itself will not give you the skills to fly a jumbo jet airliner, start a successful high tech company or clean up corrupt and evil politicians. Even little simple tasks may be out of your reach. For instance, you may not be able to persuade a relative or friend to stop smoking cigarettes.

The point is, meditation will not solve all the problems of the world.

Meditation will significantly improve your mental abilities, and make achieving your goals easier, but you will still face enormous challenges.

Don’t let this limitation stop you from meditating. You will need all the skills you can learn to solve your challenges.

#10 Simple is good

My preferred style of meditating is simple. I sit in a comfortable chair in a quiet room and focus on my breathing.

You may wonder, “Shouldn’t he be sitting in full Lotus position?” Well, I’ll tell you something, when I was much younger, I would sit in full Lotus for hours and meditate. I took martial arts, Tai chi, and yoga. And I must say that I had many exciting, fun and educational experiences.

However, activities that focus attention on my body can distract me from my primary purpose of learning about my mind. So, I use simple methods that don’t put requirements on what my body is doing. I strive to be able to meditate anywhere, anytime, in any body position or condition.

Finding answers

I highly recommend meditation. It is safer than learning how to ride a bike and just as simple. You can meditate almost anytime and anywhere. If you buy books on how to meditate, then it is also low cost, low risk, and low commitment.

When meditating, you may hit brick walls or stop at mental barriers. But meditation did not make these obstacles. Meditation exposes your limitations and provides you with opportunities for removing what is holding you back.

With meditation, you can become aware of your mind. In time, you will better understand how your mind works. Then you can make corrections and improvements to how you think.

I have provided you with information that will help you meditate and continue making progress.

You will discover new and powerful mental abilities.

You will become more aware, more focused, and emotionally stronger.

You will better understand yourself and others, reducing the difficulty of social problems.

You will be able to remove old barriers and take on new challenges.

With new powerful mental skills, you can make your life easier, happier and less stressful.