Halloween – Welcoming the Spirits

Halloween is not only a time of costumes, parties, trick-or-treating, jack o’lanterns, and candy. It’s also the time when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest. This means that you can more easily contact the dead.  

But how do you do that? It’s easier than you think. Here are some methods to help you contact your department loved ones – or anyone else you want!

Contacting the Dead – 3 Easy Ways

Contacting the dead is usually harmless. But because the veil between the living and the dead is so thin on Halloween, evil spirits can also creep in. So before you summon spirits, you need to ask for protection. This can be as simple as saying a short prayer:

Dear Lord. I ask for your protection and ask that only good spirit come through to me in this session.  Amen. (You can use any deity you’d like.) 

You can also visualize a white or purple light streaming down upon you from heaven, then circling your body through the duration of the session.

After you have asked and received protection, you can proceed to one of these methods of summoning spirits.

1. Meditation. Go to a room where you will not be disturbed for at least 30 minutes. To set the mood, you may light candles and incense and play soft music, if you’d like. Sit in a comfortable chair, back straight, feel flat on the floor, with your hands (palm up) on your lap. Touch your thumb and index finger together on each hand.

Inhale slowly to a count of three. Hold breath for a couple seconds. Then exhale to a count of four. Repeat several rounds, concentrating totally on your breath. Whenever thoughts intrude (and they will), simply return your attention to your breath.

After a few minutes, start noticing your thoughts. Notice how they arise from nothingness and how they return to nothingness. Don’t engage your thought or try to hold onto them in any way. Simply let them come and go. After a few minutes of this, start noticing the space between your thoughts.
By this time, your thoughts should have calmed down quite a bit.

Now…every time there’s a space between your thoughts, ask a question of someone who has passed on. Think your question, as opposed to asking it verbally. Then wait for the response. Now that your thoughts have settled down, you should be able to hear the spirits. They actually talk to you all the time, but your mind is usually so busy, you don’t hear them. This Halloween, you can actually listen to them!

2. Scrying. You can contact the dead using a reflective surface like a crystal ball, a black mirror, or even a glass or bowl filled with water. Staring into a reflective surface is believed to induce a state of altered consciousness.

Just like with meditation, go to a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed for at least 30 minutes. Then…put your scrying object – crystal ball, black mirror, etc – on a surface at a level where you can comfortable look at it when sitting in a chair. Position an armchair so that it’s facing the table. Light a candle and put it on a stable surface somewhere behind the chair. Again, you may light incense and play soft music, if you’d like. Turn off any lights. The room should be totally dark except for one flickering candle.

Sit in the chair, close your eyes, and begin breathing slowly and deeply. As you breathe, relax your body and clear your mind. Relax and breathe for about ten minutes. Then open your eyes, and gaze into the scrying object. Look deeply into it, but with a softened gaze. (Let your eyes go out of focus).
You may instantly start seeing images, or you may see a mist form before images appear. You may also see nothing the first time around. (However, some people do see images in the very first session.) Don’t try too hard, and don’t scry for more than 20 minutes in the beginning. This is a method that takes practice. But you may also be one of those lucky people who see something immediately, especially if you do this on Halloween.

3. Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). You can listen to recorded sounds of spirits. This method is amazingly easy. All you have to do is turn on a recording device, ask the spirit a question, and then shut up and let the machine record silence for the next few minutes. When you play the recording back, however, you may be amazed to discover that you’ve recorded a spirit’s voice. (You will not hear this voice while recording, only during playback.) Though easy, the EVP method doesn’t usually give you a lot of information. Rather, you will probably just hear a word or two. But it’s probably enough to let you know your loved one is alive and well – at least in the spirit world!

There are many more ways to communicate with the dead, but these three are probably the most common. (Yes, I forgot to include the Ouija Board!) Do you have any favorites you’d like to add?
      

Stopping Thoughts Instantly

Photo credit: Shirley Booth

Stopping thoughts is what advanced yogis spend 20 or more years trying to attain. To this end, they meditate—daily—for hours at a time. Stopping thoughts is why Buddhist Monks chant for hours in their temples. (Chanting interrupts thought patterns).
Why are stopping thoughts—having a quiet mind—so important?

Because, say both ancient and modern spiritual gurus, you can only access your spirit through a quiet mind. Your spirit is found in silence. It cannot be accessed through your monkey—or incessantly chattering—mind.

But what if you don’t have hours a day for the next 20 or so years to devote to spiritual exercises, such as meditation, that are known to quiet your mind? No problem. I just learned a method of stopping thoughts instantly that is incredibly effective.

AN EASY WAY OF STOPPING THOUGHTS

Stopping thoughts is so easy that a beginner at meditation can do it. Follow these steps of stopping thoughts, and you will experience pure consciousness, perhaps for the first time.

Step 1: Sit down in a comfortable chair, eyes closed.

Step 2: Breathe slowly and deeply, in and out.

Step 3: Let your thoughts do what they will for 10 or 15 seconds. Don’t try to influence them or control them in any way.

Step 4: Now, stay very alert while you ask yourself this question: “Where is my next thought?”

Step 5: Did you notice the break in your thoughts as you waited for your next thought? That, my friend, was pure awareneness.

Step 6: Now ask the question again…and again…and again…(re-stating the question every 15 seconds) each time noticing the gap between your thoughts. By the way, you don’t have to always ask the same question. You could just tell yourself to catch your next thought as it’s developing. Conversely, you could ask yourself, “What will my next thought look like?” The question does not matter. All that matters is your attention to the GAP between your thoughts. Within just a few minutes, you should notice your mind becoming calmer and your body becoming relaxed without you doing anything more than being aware of this space between your thoughts.

You may not realize it instantly, but the value of stopping thoughts recharges your connection to Spirit. At this level of spirit, you can be, do, or have anything that you desire. Try it and see for yourself.

Healing Breaths

I just learned a powerful way to take what I call “healing breaths” to soothe anything that ails me, and I wanted to share it with you.  This comes from spiritual teacher Matt Kahn, and it really does work (I have tried it a couple of times.)

Matt says that whenever you are bothered by anything—a physical pain, a bothersome thought, a problem, a judgmental attitude, whatever it is—take a deep breath.

Using your breath as a delivery truck, Matt says, direct your breath to your heart. Then pick up love from your open heart and deliver it (via the breath) to your point of awareness. Breathe into your problem, your blockage, your worry.  Then take a long, slow exhale which is the signal that the love has been delivered to your point of awareness.

These healing breaths will get your mind out of the way and put your problem in higher hands. You will no longer be burdened by that which is not yours to control.

Matt describes and goes into more detail about these healing breaths in this YouTube video. I suggest you watch it, because Matt’s explanation is so much better than mine!

Meditate for World Peace

Photo Credit Adrian van Leen

Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. – Matthew 18:19-20 (KJV)

If there’s one subject most of us agree on it would be world peace. We are tired of wars and armed conflicts around the globe that continually threaten our survival as a species. We dream of a planet where love and respect among nations and compassion for their people is the rule rather than the exception.  
We want world peace dammit!

But most of us doubt world peace will ever become a reality. Moreover, we don’t think that we can effect such a change. After all, you’re just one person. How can you (and others like you) get the nations to stop fighting among themselves and killing our young men and women?

Well, you have a lot more power to create world peace than you think you do.

Meditating on Peace Brings Peace, Studies Show

A number of studies have been done testing the power of meditation to effect peaceful behavior on society. The results of these studies were published in the Journal for Conflict Resolution.

This is how the studies were conducted along with the fascinating results:

“During a given week, only 100 people in towns of 10,000 focused and meditated on peace and well-being for all the inhabitants of those towns. Crime rates dropped, business rose, and hospital emergency rooms had far less action. As soon as the group stopped after the week was over, all the crime rates and emergency room statistics returned to normal. This was done in the middle East in Lebanon as well, and all war actions stopped during the time that this group was focusing on that situation.” (Source: University of Metaphysical Sciences)

Through these experiments, the researchers were even able to estimate the minimum number of meditators (those meditating on and radiating peace) were needed to begin a peaceful society, or even world peace—this number is the square root of 1%. As our world has approximately 6 billion people, this means that just 8,000 people can begin the process of world peace. But 8,000 people are just the beginning. The more people who meditate on and radiate peace, the faster world peace will become a reality. This is not just conjecture. This is now scientific fact.

Yes, little old YOU are important.  You can help to create world peace. There is, indeed, strength in numbers. But these numbers can be located all over the world. Join with us. Help us to create world peace.

I’d like you to watch these two videos. The first one is an explanation of the experiments that have proven that meditating on peace can affect peace. The second one is an excellent guided meditation for world peace. Let me know what you think!

Meditation Relieves Pain, New Study Shows

Image byTosaporn Boonyarangkul

A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that meditation relieves pain. But that’s not all. It also indicates that—get this—the pain relieving properties of meditation may be stronger than that of morphine.


To find out whether or not meditation relieves pain, the researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center trained 15 volunteers in the practice of “focused attention,” or mindfulness meditation, in which the volunteers practiced clearing their minds of thoughts while focusing on their breathing. Before and after this training, the volunteers submitted to MRIs of their brains.


Then, according to the Los Angeles Times:

“Before and after the meditation training, the subjects were subjected to five minutes and 55 seconds of pain—relative pain, anyway. Researchers heated a small patch of skin on the subjects’ right legs to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and the subjects used a 6-inch plastic sliding scale to report their level of discomfort.”

The result?

After meditation, the subjects reported a significant drop in pain intensity and unpleasantness—40 and 57 percent respectively. Moreover, the MRIs of their brains showed a virtual halt of activity in the pain centers of their brains. (By way of comparison, morphine typically reduces pain by a mere 25 percent).

But does this mean that you should forego pain medication for pain meditation the next time you experience severe pain? NO. This study, after all, was a small one composed of just 15 volunteers who were subjected to a mild amount of pain compared to, say, that of terminally ill cancer patients. This study does not prove beyond a shadow of doubt that meditation relieves pain for all people and under all pain conditions.

But still…this study adds to the growing body of evidence that shows that your mind does matter when it comes to pain intensity or cessation.

Do you believe that meditation relieves pain? Have you ever used mediation to relieve pain and did it work?

Meditation in San Francisco’s Public Schools. It’s about TIME

Image by Tory Byrne



If you have ever wished that meditation would be taught to (and practiced by) children in America’s public schools, your wish has been granted. It’s happened right now in California. In fact, meditation in San Francisco’s Public Schools has been going on for four years. Right now, three schools in San Francisco are teaching meditation to the student body and leading them in its practice.


One of these schools is Visitation Valley Middle School, a place where quiet-time has replaced time out as a way to temper the stress and anxiety of living in a rough and violent neighborhood, a neighborhood that the school’s principal equates with that of a war zone.

What happens when you see incredible violence on a daily basis? What happens when your very survival is threatened on an almost daily basis? What happens when fear and dread becomes a normal part of life?

Post-traumatic stress syndrome, that’s what. And this is where meditation is helping the children at Visitation Valley Middle School. Indeed, there is some evidence that meditation in San Francisco’s public schools is helping the children in many areas.

According to Natalie Jones of Crosscurrents from KALW News:

“Since the program started, test scores have gone up a little bit, attendance rates have gone up a little bit, and suspension rates have gone down, although the changes are only by a few percentage points.”

Yes, these changes are small, but remember…the students at Visitation Valley Middle School only practice meditation for “fifteen minutes at the beginning of their school day, and fifteen minutes at the end.” (Source: KALW News) With just a small amount of meditation practice, even a change of just a few percentage points is phenomenal.

I hope that the success of meditation in San Francisco’s public schools—which also include Everett Middle School and John O’Connell High School—will inspire other schools around the country to implement meditation programs for their students.

Now it’s your turn to voice your opinion.

Do you believe that public schools should teach and/or promote meditation?

OR

Do you believe that meditation should not be taught or practiced in public schools because you view meditation as a religion, the practice of which would violate the separation of church and state?

Mindfulness Meditation Changes the Brain, Study Shows

A new study shows intriguing evidence that mindfulness meditation changes the brain. Specifically, a regular practice of mindfulness meditation appeared to cause measurable changes in the brain’s gray matter of the study’s participants. This is a phenomenal finding that should go far in encouraging people to take up mindfulness as a regular discipline.

What is Mindfulness?

The simplest way to explain mindfulness is that it is complete moment-to-moment awareness of all thoughts, sensations, feelings, and states of mind. Moreover, your awareness of these aspects of your being is completely nonjudgmental. You just notice them in a detached way, as if you were a scientist looking at an organism in a petrie dish. In other words, you do not become hooked by your experiences—rather actual or sensory—you just observe what is.



Image by Ha Pe_Gera

 And yes, this is also the concept that Eckhart Tolle describes in his book Living in the Now.

This seems simple and, actually, it is simple. But it is so hard for most people to do. Until you try mindfulness, you won’t realize how seldom you live in the present moment and how seldom your thoughts are without judgment.

The beauty of mindfulness is that you can practice it all day—every day—of your life without pausing in your activities. Soon, it will become your primary state of being. But to hasten this state of being, you should set aside some quiet time every day to practice mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness Meditation and the Brain

In this latest study, 16 volunteers were given MRIs to assess their brain structures. Then they participated in the eight week stress reduction program at the famed Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. While participating in this program, the volunteers were instructed to keep track of how much time that they spent actively practicing mindfulness meditation each day. While the volunteers were being trained in, and practiced, Mindfulness Meditation, researchers gave MRIs to a control group of volunteers who did not meditate.

At the completion of the Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction programs, the 16 volunteers were again given MRIs to assess if any changes had taken place in their brains. They compared these MRIs against those of the control group.

And what did they find?

Well, they found changes in the brains of the mediators that were not present in those of the control group.

According to U.S. News Health (Health Day):

“The meditation group participants spent an average of 27 minutes a day doing mindfulness meditation exercises. The MRI scans taken after the eight-week program revealed increased gray matter density in the hippocampus (important for learning and memory) and in structures associated with compassion and self-awareness.

Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Stress

[Moreover], the investigators also found that participant-reported reductions in stress were associated with decreased gray matter density in the amygdale, which plays a role in anxiety and stress" (Source: U.S. News Health).

Imagine…just 27 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation can significantly decrease stress and anxiety, increase learning and memory, and give you a healthy infusion of compassion and self-awareness! Sign me up!

For a more detailed explanation of this study, along with the exciting implications of these findings, please watch the below video from Newsy. If you would like to read the results of this study, it will be published in the January 30th issue of the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

Do you have any experience with mindfulness meditation that you would like to share?
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Witnessing your Thoughts

Image by Artem Chernyshevych

Oh, those pesky thoughts! It is estimated that the average human has 70,000 thoughts per day.

Our minds are very busy places. Little wonder, then, that most of us think that are thoughts are us. We identify so strongly with out thoughts. Just think about it…

When we think angry thoughts, our bodies feel the anger.

When we feel fearful thoughts, or bodies feel fearful.

When we think loving thoughts, are bodies feel all warm and fuzzy.

But…

We are not our thoughts!

We are the ageless, timeless, eternal spirits who use thoughts to create, but we are not our thoughts.

Becoming the Witness of your Thoughts

So…in order to free ourselves of the stranglehold that our thoughts have over our true self—the spirit, the soul, the thinker—we need to separate ourselves from our thoughts. Only then will we be able to control our thoughts and not have our thoughts control us.

It’s called becoming the Witness, and here is a meditation technique that helps you to do it:

•Go to a room where you will not be disturbed for at least 20 minutes.

•Sit down in a comfortable char. Keep your spine straight.

•Close your eyes.

•Begin breathing slowly and deeply.

•Relax your muscles and clear your mind briefly, and then…

•Let your thoughts flow freely.

Here’s a good explanation, written by Chuck Gallozzi, that explains what to do next:

“Do not analyze them [your thoughts]. Above all, don't be judgmental. Merely observe and accept. If a negative thought arises, don't say to yourself, ‘I'm too negative. I need to change.’ Just observe; don't judge. But if you do start criticizing yourself, that's okay, too. Witness your self-criticism. Step back and observe, just like you're watching someone else. In fact, that's what you are doing. You are observing someone else because the thoughts are not you. The thoughts come and go. They fade away and change. But your True Self is changeless.”

Oh, you will find being a dispassionate witness or observer of your thoughts almost impossible at first. But keep at it. Start out doing 5 to 10 minute sessions of witnessing your thoughts, and then gradually extend that time to 20 to 30 minutes.

I have been assured that, in time, your thoughts will not have the power over you that they once did. You will be freed of your thoughts. You will control your thoughts and they will no longer control you.

I have to admit that I am such a slave to my thoughts that it’s pathetic. But I’m going to start this technique of witnessing my thoughts and see what happens. Won’t you join me? Try this technique and let me know what you think.

Concentrating on the Breath in Meditation

Concentrating on the breath in meditation is a common strategy. The steady rhythm of your breaths flowing in and out of your body is relaxing. Every time thoughts intrude on your meditative practice, if you gently bring your attention back to your breath you can make those thoughts fade away.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

I was just reading an article about meditation when I came across this piece of advice, “ I suggest using the breath as a focus. It’s like a natural door that connects ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’”
What a wonderful visualization for the breath when used as a meditation tool!

Do you concentrate on the breath during mediation, or do you use some other point of concentration?

Integrative Mind-Body Training: Shortcut to Meditative Bliss

There’s a new kid on the meditation block. It’s called Integrative Mind-Body Training (IMBT) and it is getting a lot of publicity in the wake of a recent study published online on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

IMBT is based on traditional Chinese medicine. Although this meditation practice is getting a lot of press lately, the techniques was actually developed in the 1990s. A number of studies have shown that IMBT has a positive effect on cognitive function and stress reduction.

But perhaps more importantly, for a society that wants everything now, IMBT reportedly achieves these effects very quickly—after practicing this meditative practice for just 11 hours according to the most recent study. (Standard meditation, by comparison, can take years of regular practice to achieve the brain wave changes seen in a brief practice of IMBT).

University of Oregon Study

The most recent study of IMBT was conducted on 45 University of Oregon students. Half of these students did IMBT training and half of the students did relaxation training. The students’ brains were scanned before and after the training.

At the conclusion of the study, the IMBT group’s brain scans were compared against the relaxation group. The brain scans of the IMBT group had increased brain connectivity. These connections were more pronounced in an area of the brain that regulates emotion and behavior.

It took just six hours of IMBT to start this brain connectivity and this effect became very obvious after 11 hours of practice.

How does IMBT Work?

IMBT appears to combine many different meditative disciplines—mindfulness, controlled breathing, guided visualization—into one practice.

According to PsychCentral, “The technique avoids struggles to control thought, relying instead on a state of restful alertness, allowing for a high degree of body-mind awareness while receiving instructions from a coach, who provides breath-adjustment guidance and mental imagery while soothing music plays in the background.”

Further, “Thought control is achieved gradually through posture, relaxation, body-mind harmony and balanced breathing. The authors noted in the study that IBMT may be effective during short-term application because of its integrative use of these components.”

And I agree. There is something about the integrative use all of these meditative and/or spiritual components that bring results FAST. So of course, I want to try it.

There’s only one problem. Apparently, IMBT cannot be learned, or even practiced, on your own or while listening to tapes. A coach is essential for practicing IMBT, and I can’t find a coach anywhere. This technique is so new that there may not even be that many qualified coaches in the world.

But I’ll continue to look for one.

Have you any experience with practicing IMBT? Do you know where I can find an IMBT coach?

“So Hum” Meditation

Image by Tosaporn Boonyarangkul

The most difficult aspect of meditation is stifling the thoughts that run rampant through your mind. It is not until you try to meditate, in fact, that you realize just how noisy your mind is.

But there are many ways to still those pesky thoughts. My favorite such method is one that I learned from a book by Deepak Chopra. It’s called the “So Hum” mediation. Follow these instructions and you will soon be meditating like a pro, your mind relatively silent.

Step 1: Go to a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for 20 minutes.

Step 2: Close the curtains or the blinds.

Step 3: Sit in a comfortable chair. Make sure that your spine is straight and your feet are flat on the floor.

Step 4: Close your eyes and begin breathing slowly and deeply.

Step 5: Concentrate on each breath as you inhale and exhale. With each exhale, feel the tension leave your body. Relax your muscles.

Step 6: As you slowly inhale, say the word “So” silently to yourself.

Step 7: As you exhale, say the word “Hum” silently to yourself.

Step 8: Continue breathing like this for 20 minutes, saying “So,” on the inhale and “Hum” on the exhale.

Step 9: If your thoughts wander (and they will) gently bring your attention back to your breath and to your repetition of “So” and then “Hum.”

The “So Hum” meditation calms your soul and quiets your mind. Try it and start meditating--for real.