A Meditator’s Guide for Reducing Stress

Choose any Name of God you wish; such as Om, Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Buddha. Sit upright as comfortably as you can, gently close your eyes.

Make the mind cool and still.

Do not allow your meditation to become your opponent.

Approach meditation as a real friend, allowing adequate time to become best friends.

Let it flow in a refreshing way; make it a harmonious flow. A relationship with meditation, being either the repetition of Om or watching the breath, or both, must become harmonious in order for our outer relationship, with work or people, to follow suit.

Find comfort in meditation, let the ease grow within, respect the concentration.

Try to float within the breath and Om. Thus it will gain momentum and move throughout the entire mind and body to alleviate stress.

Focus only on the areas that are comfortable, let go (ignore) of the points of stress. Leave stress alone, focus only on the points of ease and allow them to expand.

Put the mind in a place where it feels safe, not overwhelmed or threatened by the stress.

If inner irritation and disharmony abides within meditation, then it is hard to remove or dissipate it outside of meditation.

Meditation can and should be the best medication. In time it will become a really good friend that will see you through all kinds of difficulties. Relax, think of God!

Develop the awareness of exactly where in the body stress is settled in as a physical discomfort. This is important, for the mind will always manifest ‘within the body’ it’s accumulated stress.

Simply watch the areas of stress; they will literally get embarrassed as we look on it straight on, rather than letting it hover around the edges of our awareness.

Most stress is like a ghost that will wither away when the light of awareness is shined upon it from a comfortable (skillful) meditative “stance”. Some ‘types’ of stress will not wither up so easily, and then you must ‘do’ something about them!

These must be examined ‘skillfully’. Yes, understanding where it arose from, and more importantly what will cause it to pass away. And honestly face why you are ‘hooked’ into it and therefore hold on to it, letting it defile the clarity of the mind?

Honestly see if there is a ‘place’ in the mind where we find satisfaction in being angry or resentful about the defined cause of the stress!

Look within for the ‘place‘ where there is appeal for the stress that seems satisfying, discern where it leads you. Then go right to the place where the mind is free from these things. Then, from there, watch the breath and remain in the repetition of Om, pulling yourself always back to this free and comfortable state when you become forgetful or resentful. This is the more dynamic aspect of meditation!

But remember that we are not dwelling on the areas of stress or its absence. The main focal point of our concentration is on the breath and Om.

The key to success is found in the understanding that with the most troubling degrees of stress we cannot do anything about its cause. The miracle of meditation is that by dismantling the effects, we weaken the cause.

Meditation is a skill.

Patient perseverance is the foremost virtue for success.