Is this meditating?

[carolliketarot]

Hi All,

What is your feeling when you are meditating? What do you feel after meditating? I hope I phrase the questions in an appropriate manner.

Before I learnt tarot and had no idea about meditating, I always loved to just turn off the light, turn on the music and imagined that I was in the nature wandering around and feeling/experiencing the nature beauty. When I started to learn tarot, some books had suggested how to meditate, for example image the Fool turning into a real person, and you walking into the garden to meet him, etc., but somehow, I find that it is difficult for me to really follow, the image just sort of refusing to appear in my head.

The imagining "I am wandering in the nature" still works for me. Does this count as a start of meditation? Everytime when I am doing this mind wandering, instead of feeling calm, I feel that my emotion swell in my chest, feeling happy, even a bit exciting (I even "feel" the light breeze brushing my face and my hair), instead of calm. Is this normal? It does take my emotion from worries and a sense of release, everytime after I finish, I need to take a few breath and calm down the swelling feeling in my chest.

I do believe in meditation, could anyone give me advice on how to start? Or any good books that I can refer to?

P.S. Diana, if you are around and see this post, I just want to let you know, you are right, I get addicted to this forum

Wandering Mind
Carol

 

[jade]

i believe that everyone's experience is totally correct and right for them. i know some people who go into deep meditative states, clearing and cleansing their minds of all thoughts...........others (like me) tend to give themselves more directed meditations.........like walking in a forest, going to a small pond of water, swimming and finding a chest in the bottom and coming back out. feeling cleansed and fresh.

other times, i allow reiki to take me away to the mountain tops and fly between them......

i prefer to begin by being in a group and following a guided meditation to learn how...........

in light,
jade

 

[jade]

i know i've posted this before, but i didn't want to dig thru the archives for it. so here it is again.......................this is specifically for cleansing your chakras...you can read it or you could tape yourself reading it outloud and then play it back for you to follow.

~~~
find a quiet place to meditate and ground yourself.

visualize yourself in a beautiful garden full of flowers. whatever flowers are your favorite - they are there in full bloom.....the scent is softly reaching your senses.

walk thru the garden and in the center of it you see 7 pools of water. each pool is a different colour.

remove all of your clothing............the air is warm and the sun is gently shining on you. embrace the beauty of this moment. the flowers surrounding you with all their smells and the birds in the distance singing to each other. what a beautiful moment to be alive and healthy.

the first pool is red, as you slowly lower yourself into the pool you feel it's colour wrap itself around you. you can breathe under this magical water so don't hold your breath! take three deep breaths, - breathing IN - tuition and breathing OUT - negativity - another deep breath - IN - tuition and OUT - negativity and one more breath - IN - tuition and OUT - negativity. feel the red all around you. feel it entering your first chakra and bathing it (chakra) in it's colour and gently, ever so gently removing any residue. feel the energy of sexual/survival - the energy of life filling your entire being, spiritual, emotional, mental and physical. you are completely red and feeling this colour empower you with it's energy.

then, when you feel ready feel yourself magically lift out of the pool and onto the side, standing amongst the beautiful flowers and notice that they are all red in colour.

now you have two choices 1/ you can thank the energy for it's gift of cleansing and leave this meditation - to return tomorrow night to do the next colour or 2/ you can go onto the next colour. my recommendation is you either do a colour a night or all seven at once but follow your intuition on this one.

either way, the next pool is orange. do the same as the red pool only the energy is orange and carries it's energy - emotional/relationship. it fills your second chakra (two finger width below your belly button).

when you magically get lifted from this pool the flowers are all orange!

the next pool is yellow. the energy is intuition. it fills your third chakra (solar plexus).

then green. the energy is healing and life giving. it fills your fourth chakra (heart)

then blue. the energy is communication. it fills your fifth chakra (throat).

then indigo. the energy is psychic/vision. it fills your sixth chakra (third eye).

then lastly and certainly not least! violet. the energy is spiritual, your connection to god/goddess/all that is. this is your seventh chakra (crown).

after you do all the chakras you walk to the fountain at the other side of this beautiful garden and the violet flowers begin to change - to all the colours of the rainbow (roy g. biv) and you rejoice in the simplicity and complexity of this union of energies. sit by the fountain and ask the goddess for a gift for you to take with you from this place. look into the fountain and a box will be sitting on the bottom of the fountain. it magically lifts out of the water and gently sits beside you on the edge of the fountain. you open it and see what the gift is. if you have difficulty understanding or seeing the gift, ask the goddess to show it to you in a way that you can understand and see and she will!

before you leave this wondrous place be sure to thank the god/goddess/all that is for this blessing and the opportunity to visit this place again and again.

gently, open your eyes when you are ready.

love jade

 

[jade]

just in case you are interested......here's my grounding exercise that i suggest to people.

~~~

a simple and very effective grounding is:

visualize a star. a beam of pure white light is radiating out of it's core and coming down thru the sky towards you. see the beam coming down thru your 7th chakra and moving down your spine to your base (1st) chakra. at this point it splits into three cords. one goes straight down, thru your base, out of your body and into the ground. the other two cords run down your legs and out thru the chakras on the soles of your feet. the three cords meet up again in the ground (floor) under you and twirl around each other (for added strenghth). visualize them running thru the earth, thru an underground stream (the water is cleansing) and to the center of the earth where they fasten themselves to the center. then cirle that fastening (whatever it becomes thru your med.) three times (with the grounding cord energy) and then swirl the cord upwards around the other (three) cords up to your feet. then circle the cord around your body and at your 7th chakra, continue circling the energy around your cord until you get to your star. cirle the star three times to fasten it to the star.

you are very grounded. with practise this will eventually take about 3 seconds to do!



love,
jade

ps this is one of about a million ways to ground yourself!

 

[carolliketarot]

Hi Jade,

A million thanks on your detailed advice. But first I need to get everything taped Can't wait to start!

Carol

 

[fairyhedgehog]

These are lovely visualisations, jade. Are they somewhere on the web where I can link to them from my website?

Regards,

FH

 

[lunar_rabbit]

Wonderful meditations, Jade. Thank you!

For anyone who feels like doing some foot work on the Internet, try doing a search using Google (or your fav search engine) for "guided mediation" or "mediation exercises" or something similar.

I have found many wonderful meditations this way.

What I do, it copy and paste the meditation text into my own word program. Then, I read it very carefully and slowly, changing things so it suits my own personal preferences better. Once i have gone through it a few times and perfect it for my own needs, then I don't actually need it anymore.

Since I have done a practice visualization a few times, when I get to actually meditate, all I need to do is remember it. Then I can walk through the forest, or along the beach, or whatever.

And to answer the original question... I think what you are doing is meditating. The point is to rid yourself of the "gunk" of every day life and reconnect with God or Goddess or spirit or nature. It helps to recharge your own energy and gives you strength and peacefulness.