edithbertrand.com
.
.
Getting started
Your posture and physical space
Find a physical space where you feel comfortable and to which you can return. This could be your bed, or a small corner of a room. Make sure you sit in a slightly different position to what you’re used to. Turn it into a little ritual. These can be very small things.
When sitting, it can be helpful to sit slightly higher than usual so that your hips are just above knee height. This naturally straightens your back. You’ll find yourself leaning forward slightly, and then you’ll straighten your back again. This posture is easier to maintain for longer if you also place your knees slightly apart. Make sure your back is fairly straight, even if you prefer to use a backrest.
When lying down, also ensure you maintain a straight posture as much as possible.
When sitting in tailor's pose, your feet are crossed. But otherwise, in a meditation posture, ensure that the right side of your body remains on the right, and the left side on the left. When sitting in tailor's pose, you can support your knees with small cushions so that the pressure on them isn’t too great.
Whether you keep your eyes open or closed is up to you. For inner observation, closing them can be just as good because it reduces external stimuli.
Ensure you have a quiet environment where as little noise as possible disturbs you. If that isn’t possible, let the sounds be and accept them.
Nature is, of course, always a good option. Out in nature, it’s perfectly fine to lean against a tree trunk if you wish. Just do whatever feels comfortable and natural to you.
Walking slowly is also a good meditation posture, especially if you opt for reflective meditation. This is a form of meditation in which you calmly and with an open mind reflect on a theme within yourself. When walking in nature, keep observing the natural world around you and attune yourself to it. When walking indoors, remain mindful of your body and the movement of your steps.
Relaxation
The foundation of every meditation is relaxation and creating a sense of stillness within oneself.
You can achieve relaxation, for example, by scanning and sensing your body and its various parts. This is an effective form of relaxation that provides a solid foundation for meditation, as it helps you connect with your body. The alignment between your consciousness and your body deepens, thereby grounding you.
You can also achieve meditative relaxation, as mentioned, by spending time in nature, watching natural water and its rippling movements, staying amongst trees, listening to birdsong and other sounds of nature, clouds and the sky... These are deeply effective means of achieving a meditative state. You can also do this by using your imagination and picturing yourself in such a situation.
Meditative sounds and music can help you relax in a meditative way. Mantras and singing bowls are well-known examples of this.
Very slow physical movements in one spot are familiar from Eastern traditions and certainly constitute meditative relaxation. You can sense for yourself how your body wishes to move. Do this very slowly.
Deep and slow breathing also has a relaxing effect.
In all these forms of relaxation, you involve your body. When you listen: let all your cells listen, your bones, your internal organs. When you move slowly, be aware of how your whole body is following this single movement and is conscious of it.
Relaxation is called meditative relaxation when your consciousness becomes stiller. When, at some point, you feel more ‘at home’ in this, so that you can reach that ‘place’ within yourself more easily and, above all, when it remains more present even when you are not meditating, this is called a stillness within the personality.
Grounding
Grounding is establishing a connection within your consciousness with your body and/or the planet Earth. Your body is part of the Earth. Your body is designed to cope with all the conditions of the planet Earth when it is fully at one with your higher light body. In other words: if the body can respond in its original state, it is capable of withstanding all earthly conditions.
Thinking of your body and thinking of the Earth can be seen as a single whole. If, for example, you do not wish to give your body too much attention at a particular moment because pain is arising, you can choose to focus entirely on the Earth. You can do this by visualising energy channels between yourself and the Earth, or by thinking of the ground beneath you. Create flows of energy moving up and down. In your imagination, descend into the Earth towards its heart or core and picture it as a great sun, for example, or a magnificent crystal. As you move towards the Earth’s core, you are connecting with the Earth’s soul, Gaia. The Earth is a being of very high consciousness. You are moving within the magic of the Earth, which is also your body. You can allow healing to rise up from the Earth that nourishes and heals your body. This is inexhaustible and you can explore it further yourself. Crystals, stones, energy and light channels and flows… Take it easy, slowly.
You can also apply these moments of connection with the Earth and your body throughout the day.
As mentioned, deep breathing also has a grounding effect. Let the breath flow through your whole body. You can also, if you wish, use visualisations that are beneficial for you at this moment.
If you are in an environment where the air is not clean, imagine that you are breathing in clean air and breathing out dirty air. Anthony William (medical medium) indicates that this really helps to reduce the effect of dirty air in your system, and therefore recommends this if you work in an environment where polluted air is present (see the ‘References’ section under ‘Other’). If you are meditating or breathing in an environment where the air is not very clean, you can visualise this for a while, as long as it feels right, but you do not need to keep doing it. Your system will take over. It will then know what to do and will automatically take over. Do pay attention to this again next time. Over time, you will forget this: your system will no longer need your conscious memory of it or your attention to it.
The breath
The breath is also extremely effective for focusing the mind, provided you are already well-grounded in your body.
Breathing was mentioned in the section on relaxation – deep breathing – but that is not the breathing of meditation. The breathing of meditation simply flows as it does, unless you are doing a specific exercise. This is the entire instruction: be present with your breath. Through your breath, you are connected to the creative forces of the universe.
Generally speaking, focusing on the breath is not necessarily the same as involving your whole body. Some people tend to shut themselves off from other bodily sensations, which can actually hinder proper grounding. Be mindful of this. Connect with your whole body.
Duration
Do not focus on duration. A meditation can last 10 seconds. Get into the habit of pausing to be mindful of this more often. Gradually, you will bring a sensitivity to your own presence into your consciousness.
“I am” can be a lovely mantra for you to repeat, or simply open your hands.
Pavlina Klemm shares number combinations from the Pleiadians. You can also use these to focus during short meditations.
If you wish to meditate for longer, bring silence into your consciousness, and the awareness of your physical place in existence.
If you are doing a vipassana, you meditate for the duration of the vipassana, with short breaks for sleep and meals. A vipassana can last from three to eleven days, or even longer, and takes place under the guidance of a teacher. Frits Koster is a well-known and excellent teacher in the Netherlands who leads vipassanas.
Vipassana retreats are for somewhat advanced meditators. Check whether you feel strongly drawn to them. If the idea of a vipassana makes you happy, it’s a good idea. And if not, you don’t have to do it. It’s better to listen carefully to your own system and follow your own rhythm. The underlying spiritual reason for a Vipassana retreat may be that you will be helped on certain deeper levels within your system, which requires you to spend some time in a state of profound stillness. This manifests itself as joy at the prospect of a Vipassana retreat and, consequently, the urge to undertake it.
Generally speaking, you can assume that meditating for 10 to 15 minutes daily or very regularly is highly effective. I’m assuming, of course, that you feel comfortable with it and that you enjoy doing it.
'Normal' tension
You might find that meditation doesn’t immediately help you relax. It’s perfectly normal for it to take a few months before sitting quietly with yourself starts to have a calming effect, if you meditate for fifteen minutes every day or almost every day. I mention this to give you an idea of what’s ‘normal’. People sometimes think that when you meditate, you should almost immediately experience a sense of peace from sitting still, but that is certainly not the case. It is also true that some people find meditating much easier than others. Keep observing whether meditation appeals to you. If you’ve had enough of it, don’t force your system. But if it appeals to you, know that it’s normal for it to take a while before your core breaks through your system of stress and appears in your consciousness as calm, empty, still, content, and happy. These are signs that your core is breaking through.
Other options
You may find it difficult to achieve a state of calm relaxation where you feel free, your mind feels clear, you don’t have to think about anything for a moment, but above all, you are simply being. One option is to see if guided meditations work for you. You can then use the distraction provided by a guided meditation. These often work because they do indeed bring you into a state of calm. There are plenty of guided meditations available online.
Other simple ways to calm your body and mind include lying in water – whether still or flowing, or warm; spending time in nature; making slow movements; and listening to soothing music. I have already mentioned some of these as meditative practices, but they can also help you open up more and find peace without thinking about or focusing on meditation.
Personally, for years I chose to lie on my bed, so that I no longer had to use a single muscle. That worked for me. I would then focus my attention on my breath, following it ‘downwards’. I wasn’t meditating, but in a sort of semi-awake state I let everything that came to mind pass through me, almost dreamlike and completely surrendered to it. That’s how I usually found peace. This is also a good method for processing things.
To find peace, I also practised the ‘I am dying’ meditation for a while. It was actually a guided meditation that I led myself. I would lie down, hands across my chest, say goodbye to everything and everyone (I did this slowly and very carefully), and then I would let go of every part of my body. What remained at a certain point was my breath, which naturally continued as before. Afterwards, I got up feeling refreshed. The point is that, amidst the stress you’re experiencing, you seek a way in which your system can truly find peace and let it all go for a moment. In such a situation, spiritual and healing energies can access you. They cannot enter, or cannot enter properly, a stressed system.
Another effective way to gradually bring a tense system into a state of greater calm is to do everything you do a little more slowly and with greater attention. To ask yourself again and again: “What am I doing? What am I thinking about? What is happening within me? Am I seeing my surroundings clearly? Am I noticing myself within my surroundings?” Pure, open alertness is an important meditative state of being. If you cannot step back from your busyness, you can use your own activity as a springboard. Get busy, and engage very explicitly with whatever you are doing. Turn it into a super-alert activity. In doing so, you are also engaging your heightened awareness. See if it makes you feel lighter.
Another thing you can do—and this offers a completely different approach—is to start accepting everything. You then create an opening for your core within your fundamental attitude towards life, not directly in your consciousness but in your attitude towards life itself. Every fifteen minutes, or as often as you allow yourself to think of it, say to yourself: ‘I accept this.’ ‘This’ is the position you find yourself in at this very moment, with all that it entails. It means acknowledging that this moment is part of life as it unfolds for you. It’s not about leaving things as they are if you don’t want to, but right now you’re in it, and as it is, you accept ‘being in the now’. For example, if you’re driving too fast and risk getting a fine, you say to yourself: “I accept this” (that you’re driving too fast) whilst hopefully actually slowing down. Even in a situation you want to change, you briefly adopt the ‘I accept this’ attitude. This essentially means working with your intentions, and using your intentions to bring calm into your system. This method doesn’t work immediately either, but it does after a while, provided it is genuinely meant. If it becomes a habit that you repeat to yourself without thinking about it, it will have no effect. That is why you don’t just say it to yourself, but you actually put yourself in a position of acceptance.
Meditation app
A gentle gong can be useful when you’re meditating, especially when you need it. For example, to signal that it’s time to stop. The Insight Timer is a meditation app that offers this feature. And you might find yourself using it more often.
Inner perception
I briefly mentioned Seth’s tip – “lie down and observe what you feel” – on the first page of ‘Meditation Instruction'. Seth knew at the time that you were reading his book; otherwise, you wouldn’t have received this guidance, as it was contained within the book. That is an important point of context. He had long been encouraging the reader to perceive things on all manner of levels that they had never heard of and which they had probably never even considered possible.
Perceiving during meditation can mean all sorts of things. Approach it lovingly and let it come to you when it is worthy of your attention. Otherwise, simply leave it be and do not pay it too much attention.
Inner perception refers to what you perceive when you are not using your senses to perceive the world around you. An important tip from one of the ascended masters who speak in the book ‘The Seven Sacred Flames’ by Aurelia Louise Jones is to make more space for yourself and do less. This book contains highly focused meditation exercises as well as helpful spiritual insights that you can use to guide your life and which will help you progress on a spiritual level.
Inner perception is something you are likely coming to learn. You can learn this by spending more time with yourself in a meditative atmosphere. An important step in this is observing your own body. When you lie down to do this, you need do nothing else for the time being. For many, this is still the most relaxing and therefore effective method. Falling asleep means you need it. If that happens in the evening and you consequently sleep less at night, that’s not ideal. But generally speaking, there’s nothing wrong with falling asleep because it gives your consciousness rest and time to process. Sleep is an important mechanism for processing events and for opening yourself up spiritually. Sleeping is fine, just like yawning. When you start yawning, do so with abandon and lose yourself in it; do it more often if you can. Yawning sets energies in motion and opens channels.
If you can lie down and relax, commit yourself to observing very closely. Try to register everything you experience in your consciousness. If that is difficult for you, you can choose to touch parts of your body with your hands or fingers, gently or with force. You can also make stroking movements to become more aware of a part of your body and to bring movement into it, without the body itself having to move; again, gently or with force.
Inner observation gradually makes you more sensitive to impulses from your system. It is good to start noticing when you do not follow an impulse. Examine within yourself why you do not follow impulses. That is a good meditation exercise: when have I followed my impulses today, and which impulses have I not followed? Impulses are often presented so subtly that you hardly ‘see’ or ‘feel’ them – whichever word suits you best. We then switch to our ‘mind’, our ordinary day-to-day consciousness programme, and follow the programme as it has developed within our day-to-day consciousness for whatever reasons.
Your soul will not speak, nor will your guides (probably not, though it is possible, by the way). Don’t expect that. By that I mean that you learn to attune yourself more finely. If everything continues to be presented to us at the level where it currently appears most clearly to us, we cannot practise becoming more subtle and sensitive. That is why the higher systems do not adapt easily, because the intention is for us to become like the finer energies, not the other way round.
Changes in meditation styles and needs
Your meditation practice is likely to change over the course of your life. There may be periods when you don’t get round to it, or do so less often. Then suddenly you might pick it up again and establish a regular routine within your day. Let those fluctuations happen. That’s all part of it.
Every time you meditate, you create an opening in your consciousness through which higher frequencies can work within you, whether you are aware of it or not. Ultimately, it is about your state of being and not about a meditation. That is why mini-meditations are important, and repetition is more important than duration.
Reflective meditation
A reflective meditation is one in which you quietly examine, reflect on and feel something within yourself, observing how it affects you and what it means to you. Spiritual topics are suitable for this. But you can also examine and approach a relationship in this way, or anything else that is meaningful to you. You engage with it in a quiet, open manner and hold thoughts, feelings, images and memories in your consciousness without doing much with them. What you are actually doing is opening yourself up to information from your deeper core. In doing so, you do not place yourself within the situation, but hover slightly above it, or view it from the side – whichever image suits you best. Perhaps you can help yourself by literally placing the subject before you: by writing it on a piece of paper, drawing a symbol for it, or doing something else that brings it into your presence.
Another useful approach during a reflective meditation is to have a notepad to hand and jot down any key words that spring to mind, without thinking or analysing them, simply associatively.
You may notice, for example, that at a certain point the subject itself no longer demands your attention, but that you remain calmly in a state of peace, without the subject still being in your thoughts.
A reflective meditation can also imperceptibly transition into a blessing (incantation) or into an intention or wish, when another person or others are involved in the situation you are reflecting on. Gentler feelings may arise and may wish to express themselves. In fact, this is a form of small-scale healing that you are sending. Keep an open mind as to whether the other person receives it. You place, so to speak, your beautiful intention or blessing at the other person’s feet and leave it up to them to accept it. You no longer concern yourself with that. But then you are not working within another person’s system.
Afterwards, you return to simply being yourself.
Emotions during meditation
During meditation, you always remain open to feelings, and if emotions arise, to those emotions. However, you do not then start thinking about them, but simply feel them. When emotions arise, you do not engage in reflective meditation, because then your reflection would be fuelled by your emotions, and that is not meditative.
When an emotion arises during meditation, it is good to surround it with spiritual thoughts. Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is that you are in the process of learning your life lesson. Your emotion is yours and says something about your life path, not about someone else. I am not saying that someone else cannot be involved, but in meditation, your life is entirely your own and nobody else’s. All emotions, all thoughts, all feelings, say something about yourself, about no one else.
Whereas in a reflective meditation you calmly let your thoughts wander over a subject, when an emotion arises you do not switch to thinking, because the outcome will likely lean towards thoughts such as: “I am right,” or “I have been wronged” and so on. Probably also “the other person this” and “the other person that”.
From your consciousness, you are the only one who exists, and everything happens because it is your lesson. It is part of your life’s programme. That is a very good meditative attitude when dealing with emotion.
Trying to push an emotion away serves little purpose. However, you can see if you can introduce some softening, in whatever way you can. If you can make the connection to softening, you can then start to allow thoughts to arise from that place. You will be aware of that difference. Do you have a thought that softens an emotion, or does it actually intensify it?
Anger is often rooted in pain or sadness. When you feel anger, you can explore where your pain lies. That is often a soothing step in itself and turns your attention inwards.
With emotions, you can also explore whether you can reach your inner child. The child who is sad, disappointed, feels misunderstood, neglected, who is angry and perhaps even furious, who has not been seen or heard. Be the one who hears, sees and understands the child; take the child in your arms, comfort it, make it feel safe with you, and let it feel what it feels. Show it as much understanding as possible. In this way, you are actually doing therapy on yourself. If you are able to meet yourself with a calm, loving and open attitude and allow emotions to arise within that, that is also meditative.
Crying
One of the most beautiful meditations you can do is the crying meditation. I knew about this as a child. Years later, my spiritual guides confirmed that tears are indeed a key to connecting with the soul. This means that if you can cry in the right way, you will find great peace. That is a wonderful feeling. It would be lovely if, when you need to cry, you remember to do so meditatively. That you give it all your attention, all your love, all your sense of self, that you fully immerse yourself in it. Through your emotion, you enter your feelings and then move on to your soul. And that by crying with complete surrender and love.
Perhaps you don’t have so much to cry about that this will happen. That in itself is also a good sign. You certainly don’t need to be sad about that. 😉
Openings in your consciousness
Seth (the entity who spoke through the deep-trance medium Jane Roberts) has stated in one of his books that everyone connects not just several times a day, but very frequently, with their own deeper core and the other dimensions in which everyone’s consciousness also resides. He says that these moments are so brief that no one remembers them. If that were not the case, we would very quickly become rigid as human beings. Meditation can be seen as creating openings in your consciousness for other dimensions and higher frequencies. We often speak – myself included – of the soul, the deeper core, or the essence of being when referring to that deeper layer.
When meditating, do not immediately expect your everyday consciousness to pick up all sorts of information and experiences from those other layers of consciousness. But do expect that more experiences and information from those deeper layers may come to you. Christina von Dreien repeatedly points out that one’s own expectations can be a hindrance here. Positive energies work very subtly. It may feel as though it is doing nothing for you, but after a week of meditating every day, for example, you might suddenly gain a slightly different perspective on a problem, making it just a little easier for you. Yet you do not link the two because you expected a different result—such as feeling less stressed through meditation. It makes no sense to meditate with a focus on results. Meditation works on trust. Trust, treating yourself, the world and the things around you with love, and not judging – these are powerful spiritual triggers. Gradually, you become clearer. You often only realise this when you can look back over a longer period.
Visualisation
Gradually, you will begin to experience greater freedom within your own consciousness and you can get used to taking ‘trips’ during meditation. Of course, you don’t have to do this all the time. But it can be very helpful. You take these ‘trips’ through visualisations, also known as guided meditations. You can practise this well in nature because there you are surrounded by high frequencies. You can imagine focusing on the Earth and slowly sinking into the ground. You go as deep as you like and absorb helpful and positive energies there. You can also do this by focusing on a tree or bush and absorbing the energy of that plant. You can also follow the roots of a tree down into the Earth. You can unite yourself with the sun, or flow along with the clouds. This is only possible if you can quiet your mind and surrender. You practise that at the same time.
Everything is energy. If something exists, it is some form of energy; otherwise, it would not be there. The aforementioned Seth has also made it clear that energy is consciousness. Energy does not possess consciousness but is consciousness. When you focus your energy on something and give it your attention, you make contact with that consciousness. Treat everything with love, and give thanks too.
Bear in mind that when you visualise something, you are working with energies that have a reality value. In the same way, our thoughts are realities that exert influence. The deeper something penetrates your system, the greater its reality value. This is not a matter of will, but rather of whether it harmonises with your core being.
What draws you in?
When you meditate, you make space within yourself for spiritual energies. In your everyday life, these probably don’t have much room, or perhaps very little. If you feel drawn to meditation, that attraction comes from your soul.
If you force yourself too much into a system or programme that doesn’t make you happy, or that you don’t feel an inner drive for, then it doesn’t come from your soul. Leading a life that makes you happy is, on a soul level, far more important than meditating. Meditation doesn’t work simply by sitting down to meditate. You feel that inside.
In meditation, you open yourself up to another reality. You literally put your current physical reality ‘on hold’ for a moment. You stop everything. If you use meditation solely to regulate your emotions and thoughts and gain more control over them, that is likely to be the effect it has. That is why the question: “What draws you in?” is important. Perhaps more draws you in than you realise. In itself, the desire to meditate is a desire that can only come from your soul, from your deeper self. But if you shield that with thoughts, it cannot get through. Thoughts are real barriers. If you think: “that’s not possible,” then it isn’t possible for you either. That immediately becomes a fact. Thoughts create facts.
Meditation is not about thoughts but about being. That can feel awkward. We constantly define ourselves through our position on Earth, in our environment, in relation to people, things, animals, nature, geography, events, finances, plans, past experiences, inner situations, and so on. In meditation, none of that matters and, in principle, you move beyond all of it.
From the spiritual world’s perspective, you are a completely open book. I am talking here about the higher spiritual dimensions. From the perspective of oneness, everything is immediately one; everything knows about everything else; everything knows one another. We all live one life together, everything. Spiritually speaking, there is no separation. Nor is there any such thing as privacy.
Meditation and resistance
You feel drawn to meditation, but not right now. Or perhaps you thought about taking it up, but it has so little effect on you that you might as well give it a miss. These are thoughts of the great adversary of meditation. When someone starts meditating or is already meditating, you will encounter the great adversary because you are embarking on a positive path. Then acute negative energies arise, making it clear to you that it’s pointless, doesn’t suit you, really isn’t convenient right now, you wouldn’t even ‘be able to,’ and so on.
The tricky thing is that it’s hard to tell whether a thought stems from a need within your system, or from negative energies. Normally, when you’re at rest, thoughts that aren’t yours let go relatively easily, whilst thoughts that are yours remain. However, the great adversary is a formidable opponent and can make meditating quite a struggle for you. Headaches, nausea, the feeling that your throat is being squeezed, fears and stress – often precisely your weak spots. You can, of course, ask your spiritual guides for help. Always surround yourself with positive energies when you go to meditate, as you are opening yourself up. But it can also be a challenge you need to come to terms with yourself; I mean: something your guides won’t simply take away from you. Gain some experience with it. If you eventually come to the conclusion that it’s rather strange that you experience this every time or often just as you start meditating, then there’s a chance it’s the great adversary.
The reason I describe it this way (as the great adversary) is actually to give it a humorous character and not to take it too seriously. But perhaps, I now realise, readers might actually be put off by such a term. Rest assured, these negative energies will not be able to harm you.