Present Moment Guided Meditation

The present moment awareness meditation is simple and easy to use at any time of the day. It is very effective in helping you overcome anxiety and depression.

In order to get the best results, set aside a regular time of day such as first thing in the morning or last thing at night, preferably in the same place so as to ground the practice in your very being. You will find that regular use will dampen the physiological signs of anxiety.

Here’s how you do it.

Setting Up
Adopt a comfortable posture but not one in which you are likely to fall asleep. The aim is to have an alert mind but a deeply relaxed body as if asleep. Sitting upright is more effective than lying down. Experiment with your posture and take time to set it up.

Shifting from Thinking to Sensing
The first step is to move from being caught up in endless cycles of thinking. Move toward experiencing the present reality as it is. To do this, first set up the inner gatekeeper. The gatekeeper controls what comes in and what stays out of the mind. Give the gatekeeper clear instructions at the outset and he or she will do his or her job without further interference from you. Silently repeat clearly and with full attention the following phrase three times: “Now is the time to be aware of the present moment. I let go of the past and the future.”

Awareness

Because the mind has a natural tendency to think, keep it occupied with a relatively unexciting task. When you first meditate, your mind might be like an unruly teenager, undisciplined and always wanting its own way. Therefore, as a beginner you give the mind lots to focus on; as you improve your guided meditation and relaxation skills you give it fewer and simpler objects of focus. This first stage of meditation is called “present moment awareness.” Simply turn your attention to:

Sounds.

First focus on the most obvious sounds and as your concentration gets sharper, notice more subtle sounds, such as bird calls and distant traffic. Just allow them to wash over you, letting go of the sounds that have just passed by and being present to the sounds that arise now.

Bodily sensations

Feel your arms resting on your lap, your legs on the chair. Feel your clothes against your skin. Notice any pains, muscle tightness, fluttering in your stomach or anxious feelings, the very things you were trying to avoid. Watch how these sensations shift and change, letting go of them and becoming present to those that arise.

Thoughts

Watch your thoughts arise and pass, without getting caught up in them or feeling that you have to act on them. Some thoughts are nonsense; others are so compelling that you follow them. With demanding thoughts, observe them, label them and let them go. For example, if you are thinking: ‘I’m upset over that insult,” you might label it “hurt” and let it go, ready for the next thought to arise. It’s like watching clouds passing in the sky and you are progressing towards a “blue sky mind” where storm clouds pass and the mind is clear, calm and alert.

Meditation Helps to Deal with Expectations

A Dip into the Truth
Our own experience tells us time and time again that expectations reduce our enjoyment of life. Yet, most of us do not even realize that a lot of times having too many expectations about everything could be a reason for not naturally feeling happy.

For example, we go to see a movie that everyone has been raving about and even at the theater we experience the hype and the buzz. Then, when we see the movie - yes, it was good, but not that wonderful! Sounds familiar?

On the other hand, friends throw a surprise party for you and you have a fabulous time. There is a lot of joy in surprises, which is why kids love them. Expectations, which are just our imaginings about how things might be, prevent the mind from being fully with what is happening in the moment and so reduce the joy that is inherent in the present moment.

Clearly, expectations are not something we can or should avoid. They are just like all other thoughts—they arise and pass away on their own. Simply observing them with the knowledge that they reduce enjoyment in life is enough for some of us to avoid getting caught up most of the time. But for other people, unfulfilled expectations are a major source of disturbance. Many of us need an understanding of our mind and of life itself before we can let go of expectations. This understanding can be gained through wisdom and meditation.

Example:
Let’s take an example of an expectation and how meditation and practical wisdom can help to reduce the disturbance around it.

Say you’re attending a group meditation session. You have an expectation that people doing the meditation benefits will comply with the instruction given prior to the session to turn off their mobile phones.

You are starting to sink into a pleasant meditative state when a phone rings loudly. Phones continue to ring several more times during the session. One possible response is that you let go of your expectation that people obey the instruction to turn their phones off and accept the ringing phones as you would any other noise.

Alternatively, you may be unable to do that and may feel that the phone owners are lacking in awareness, selfish, and inconsiderate. Consequently, your mind will be simmering with irritation during your “meditation”. You may spend much of the session mentally criticizing these people or the organizers, or you may be planning what you will say to the organizers later.

What are the key realizations that can pull you out of this reaction?

The recognition that the problem is not in the situation but in your reaction to it! Equally loud or louder noises could be made by dogs barking, rain, thunder, or traffic. Crickets chirping could make a sound quite similar to a mobile phone ringing. Yet, if they were to make noises during a meditation session, you are unlikely to feel that the rain, dogs, or crickets are selfish or unaware. You would probably not accuse truck drivers driving past and honking their horns of being inconsiderate.

The reason you would not be annoyed about the noise generated by these phenomena is that you would accept them as “part of nature” and as spontaneous happenings. On the other hand, with the phones, you feel that the situation could have been avoided if people would have behaved as they should. The feeling that the situation could have been different is at the core of your disturbance.

It is important to understand that the ringing of phones is also a happening and is as much a “natural” phenomenon as rain or barking dogs. (this is not to say that you wouldn’t talk to the organizers and see if they could do something more to stop it occurring in the future).

See also that at the time, there is nothing you can do about the expectation not being met. It is completely out of your control.

Meditation Makes Us Act with Compassion

You’re in a waiting room, seated next to two other people. There are only three chairs. A woman enters on crutches, a medical boot on one leg. She winces, checks her phone, sighs uncomfortably, and leans against the wall. Neither of the other people responds.
Do you get up and offer her your seat?

You’ll be much more likely to if you meditate, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.
In the study, Paul Condon and Dave DeSteno of Northeastern University and Gaelle Desbordes of Massachusetts General Hospital assigned people with little or no meditation experience to one of two eight-week meditation classes, or put them on a wait list for a class. One class was a mindfulness meditation class geared toward focusing and calming the mind. The other covered similar terrain but also discussed compassion and suffering.