Category Archives: Self help – helped me

Be Meditating in Fifteen Minutes or less

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It does not feel like it, but most of us have been meditating all our lives, we simply are not aware of it. We start as little kids. Those times when everything is quiet, or it was raining outside. Or in my case, when I was in school sitting at my desk daydreaming, wanting to be outside playing.

Everyone has been asked and also asked someone else, “Hello, are you there? I am, talking to you.” We are not paying attention, checked out, or are daydreaming. Different words to describe the same state. You are talking to someone and you realize that they are not paying the slightest bit of attention to you. They are sitting right by you, but you can tell by looking at them, they are miles and miles away.

If you have been trying to meditate and feel you cannot, remember times when you were the person who left the conversation and went somewhere else. What were you thinking about when it happened? When was the last time it happened? Was it quiet, noisy, busy, or still? Whatever triggered your leaving the conversation can be used to help you learn to meditate.

We all are different and we all have different ways of interacting with the world. For successful meditation, what works for one person, or several people may be totally wrong for you. Just because one famous person does something and it works for them, does not mean it will work for you. You may need a different setting, less, or more stimulation. Maybe you need music, running water, bird sounds, or kids at play in the distance. Maybe you need a dark room with complete silence. All of these settings trigger different reactions in different people.

This is what I do when meditation does not happen smoothly. Perhaps it will help you find a sequence to help you learn to meditate? I flood my mind with differing type’s of quiet directed stimuli. There is usually so much noise in our minds we are not aware of it though it needs to be quieted for meditation to happen.

First I decide on a combination of sound. I prefer a three syllable nonsense word that ends with a vibration syllable such as, eng, ing, om, or ong. The nonsense word, Beir-har-ing as an example word. Any three or more syllable word should be as effective as well as any other three syllable combination. If a syllable combination pops into your thoughts while you are getting ready to try meditation, use it instead.

Different combinations of syllables have different effects for me. I have noticed for example that nonsense words starting with a B produces red or orange images in my mind. Starting syllables such as, ‘bear, behr, beer’, all produce a slightly different effect on me in a way not related to the meaning of the sound.

The idea of stimuli appears to go against the norm, and that is ok. You want to achieve a meditative state, not ponder your life. This may be a modified form of EFT used for a different purpose. EFT attempts to engage all your senses and keep your mind busy while a unique thought is introduced in the background.

Learning how to quiet your mind for more than a few seconds is a job in itself, so why not try to use a busy mind to your advantage? Why not use a simple handy aid to make the process more productive and less frustrating? If you sit quietly and listen you will notice a steady stream of thought, sometimes verbal, sometimes not. It takes time to learn how to silence it, and is a big frustrater to meditating. Let’s try something I know works for me, starting with the next post.

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Quest For Truth

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Chances are you are on some type of quest. What your individual quest is and whether it is defined in your being is something only you know. Most quests are completed silently in solitude. They range from rampaging emotions through to quiet desperation, always looking for a speck of confirmation telling you that you are on the right path.

Once the basic three needs were solved, who knows long ago, regular amounts of food, shelter, and offspring, we started to have have time to ponder other life mysteries. The search for, The Fountain of Youth, goes on yet today, as does the quest for ruling the world, the secret to creating and sustaining life, and the search for our own personal truth(s). Searching for our own personal truth, whether it be religion, lack of religion, or fairies in the hedge row, we all are on the same search, hoping to give meaning to our life.

Michael Ayers has been on a quest for his personal truth for some time now. Michael’s blog has a dedicated following who have stood along side of Michael at various times and topographies, as Michael set off to pursue his own personal truth looking for answers to the question of his own reason for being alive.

You will have to read Michael’s blog yourself to find what Michael has found to be true for him. Michael searched and suffered, hitting deep lows and reaching new heights, only to be plunged into new lows, a repeating cycle of ups and downs. Perhaps Michael’s search is not over yet. Maybe Michael has only reached a higher plateau, and is unknown to himself resting and regrouping, before his insatiable curiosity spurs him onward to find more.

My own quest for what is true for me took decades. I tried to fit everything I knew to be true into a hand me down mold. What I believed to be true was always at odds with my inherited package of what was supposedly true. It was not until I accepted almost everything I was told to believe was not quite true, and my flighty willingness to accept what I knew rather than what I had been told, that I started to believe my own truths.

I am curious if you are your own quest for your own personal truths? Does the version of truth you were given by your family meet your needs, or is there a little niggling voice coming out of the background of your mind every now and then suggesting what you think you believe is not quite true?

If you have heard the voice, have you done anything about it? The first steps as Michael can attest to are the easiest. It is once you are well down the path when the cobble stones beneath your feet start to crumble, and the way becomes slippery, frustrating, and difficult. During these times a second voice is heard. Every explorer and risk taker who stepped out from the herd knows this voice. It is a voice of steeling.

You rarely hear the second voice when the sun is shining and you are sure of the route. You know the truth you are seeking is just around the corner, you can almost see it if you strain your eyes the right way and bend your neck in the correct position. Our final truth is only a short way up the path, we are almost there.

Maybe we become too needy in this moment. We are worn and haggard, and we want to find what we are looking for and be done with it. We are tired from our journey. The quest that seemed so romantic, simple, and fun in the beginning is taking more time and energy than we bargained for.

As the sun sets, and we are tired we hear a new voice, “Maybe we made a mistake? Maybe there is no truth to find? Maybe what we were told is the only truth we need to believe?” The same question formulated into a hundred different doubts makes its presence known. Maybe we should quit it say’s

Putty or steel, what are we made of? To give up the search because it is not fun and is becoming painful, or move one foot in front of the other to the end? Fall back into the fold and safety of the herd, accept their murmurs of welcome, or continue on?

Moving on means more of the same, deprivation, restlessness, loneliness, and doubt become our companions if we choose to continue. It is not an easy choice, and there may not be a correct answer. It is a test of your spirit, and everything you are made of. If you are like Michael and others like him, you too may find what you are looking for.

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Recumbent Trike Decision Making Process

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I have a few posts on this blog about making decisions. I also use my Rule of Three quite often when making decisions.  I know it is always good to modify my Rule of Three when my, Rule of Three, does not work correctly for that situation. Sometimes a decision is important and available information needed for making a correct decision fits all decision choices almost equally – that is a problem. When this happens one or more of the three rules need modifying.

In this instance my initial Rule of Three failed me in trying to choose a Recumbent Trike. I was wavering between four models and two companies. I thought the decision would be easy as I decided what my top three needs were in a Recumbent Trike. They were:

1. Quality Build – If I am spending what is to me a large amount of money, I want to most quality product my allotted dollars can buy. This decision was made more complex by the pricing structure, and ignorance of bicycle components. Both companies and all models seemed to have almost equal yet different makers and level of the installed components.

2. Crowd favorite – As I have little Experience with Recumbent Trikes, it was important to stick to a manufacturer and model which other have bought and are or were happy with before they decided they needed something more.

3. General comfort and high speed safety – I love to go fast. I also want to be comfortable. Unfortunately, comfort and speed do not meld together well in a human powered vehicle.

In situations such as these where there is no clear choice when the most important factors are used, a new model needs to be created to do a better job of showing differences between what appear to be almost identical choices. I have heard this called, “Keep investigating until one of your choices reaches out and grabs you”.

That is a good explanation, and it works. Make a snap decision, and any of my four choices may indeed have been good. I may have been happy with any one of the four choices I narrowed my search down to. And maybe not too.

The problem is it is an important decision. I need to be happy with the result long term and be comfortable knowing I made the right decision. Because there were four Recumbent Trikes in my list, and they all seemed equal, I had to find areas where one choice clearly outweighed my other three choices .

My choice needed to be solid enough so I do not suffer that little nagging voice in the background telling me, maybe I would ‘really’ be happier with one of the other Recumbent Trikes other than the one I chose because I could not choose correctly.

When that little voice starts, it is hard to quiet it. It is a subtle little thought that appears whenever something is not quite perfect with a choice I made. It whispers, “…maybe the other choice would have been better?” Of course there is no way of knowing either way, and the doubt lingers and grows over time.

What I did first was ignore what was written by people who were obviously in love with their Recumbent Trikes, and read comments from people who had quibbles with their purchase. What did these people mostly agree on that was good for each Recumbent Trike though they chose a different brand or model?

Secondly, I placed a formal weight on each of my choices. I started with 100 point pie and split it into three, giving each slice thirty-three points. That did not help much, but it led to a different set of criteria. I needed to rethink and redetermine how much each of my choices really mattered when added together to equal one-hundred.

High speed, though fun, is not really crucial to my enjoyment of peddling around as it is once in while event. What the crowds prefer did not help either because everyone has different needs and wants. Neither did comfort, because for every complaint in the comfort department there is someone else who was thrilled, or there is a fix in place.

My final list boiled down to with about thirty points for each item was:

  • Quality of Manufacture and Components.
  • Provable value for each dollar spent.
  • Technical experience of posters on various Trike forums.

Quality was number one. The car commercial is correct, Quality is Job One. Quality was given the biggest slice of my 100 point pie.  Value for each dollar spent changed my thinking on how much I should spend. That was the second biggest piece of my one-hundred pie. Third was expertise and experience of Trike riding posters in the forums. People who had years of cycling experience and were now riding a Recumbent Trike, enjoying it, and having knowledge and experience to back up their opinions.

After re-slicing my 100 point pie, everything became simple. I was still using The Rule of Three, but now they were three criteria that showed the strong points and flaws in each of my previously ‘about the same’ four picks. Especially when I had the opinions of cycling experts available to weigh my guesses against.

Basing my decisions of these three weighted wants, it was a simple matter to make the most correct choice. Revising and weighing my wants against each of the four Trike models I narrowed my view. The best choice stood out easily over the other three. I went to sleep feeling I had arrived at a good decision, and woke the next morning, knowing I arrived at the best decision for me.

This was good learning! The learning in this post, is if you follow a sound decision making process, and all decisions appear to be equal, take a few moments and redefine the criteria you are using to arrive at a decision. When you are objective and use the correct criteria instead of what you think is the correct criteria, the right choice is a no-brainer. It will, “reach out and grab you!”

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When the Bottom Falls Out of Your Life

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Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has problems in their life sometime or another. No matter who you are and what you do you have some types of problems. Sometimes life is good, and then it rains on your parade. Occasionally the rain becomes a raging flood, and you wake up one day and wonder what happened. When this happens and you know there is no earthly cause why this happened to you, perhaps it is time to look into other areas for the cause.

Whether you peruse Supermarket Rags, follow Celebrity gossip on television or internet, or pay attention to what is happening within your circle of friends and acquaintances, there is always one underlying theme. Ms. Christina Aguilera made the cover of a Supermarket Magazine recently. Other celebrities made the front pages of other magazines, and still more celebrities are making the gossip pages on the internet. In your world and mine, we know someone who is suffering the same fate, or is about to. The shock of finding your friends life dissolving is not restricted to somebody the media can exploit to make a few nickels.

What these people who’s life has fallen apart for no obvious reason share is feeling distanced and cut off from the rest of the world. Try as they may, what they have been doing all these years, no longer works. Pretending everything is fine, or burying themselves in something exterior to dull the pain, does not help the pain of isolation and surging feelings of loneliness. Temporary relief for some people it is food, for others, some other form of personal abuse. For any who have been in this situation, we feel like we are standing with toes over the edge of a bottomless pit, and we have not quite made the decision to jump yet.

In America (at least) we are conditioned to treat everything with a physical response. If it hurts, there is a pill for it. If we are lonely there is someone waiting for us. We use in excess food, alcohol or drugs, and other forms of self abuse. When our cure does not work, we try harder and at times add something else to the mix. A famous singer from the sixties is an example, food, alcohol and drugs, and none of them helped in the end.

There is also an internal perception problem. Our perception is the world has cut us off. No matter what we do we can not connect in any meaningful way. We try different ways of trying to connect. We join to groups we never really become a part of. We try sports, religion, or attachments. We search Boyfriends or Girlfriends who will be sympathetic to how we feel. No matter how they try, they can not make us feel complete. That emptiness is always hovering in the background, just out of site.

I made a post, The Dark Night of the Soul which captured some of what I learned from the process. To put everything in a cookie cutter mode, if you feel this way, the world has not shunned you, you have shunned the world. If you find that offensive, it is because there is truth to be found there. Life to be lived properly is lived through the heart. Life lived any other way is an empty shell of a life.

Two real choices exist when this state is realized. Go on living the same way, knowing nothing will change. Or decide that life in such a state is not worth living, and make the decision to change your life no matter how painful change may be. The quickest way to change, and that does not really relate to quick as in a timeline, is to acknowledge that everything you believe to be true about yourself and the world is most likely incorrect.

Beliefs encompassing physical and spiritual domains, yourself, and your reality is most likely faulty. Of course there is always the other option and that is the idea that live will start improving any day now, even though life has only become more difficult over the last years.

The bright side to finding ones self in this situation is the knowledge that if it has not happened already, hitting rock bottom is a certainty and not too far away. At that moment the choices become very clear. Either continue to exist in a life one would not wish on their worst enemy, or make the decision to let go of everything one thinks is true and start over. Starting over, is by far the more pleasant of the two choices though it comes with some amount of pain before any gain is realized.

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Meditation Ideas You Can Use

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I want you to know I am not a meditation expert by any stretch of the imagination, mine or yours. I can only speak from my experience, and the mileage of my experience varies according to your understanding. There are many people who teach meditation for a living, probably including your local college who will have more substantial information than this post may contain. This as an overview of my experience with meditation.

Over the years I have been skeptical about most paranormal or mystical concepts unless I have experienced them and can validate them myself. I have had to change my opinions about some things and with other things, they are not worth a second thought. Meditation however is the one of the ‘Real Deals’. Unless one is so rooted in their beliefs, believing nothing exists that cannot be proven scientifically, it is well worth your time and effort to give meditation a try.

The first type of meditation I learned which we all share or used to share is daydreaming. Daydreaming is a powerful free resource. Whether daydreams are confined to our minds or occasionally tap into some other source, I do not know. I do know daydreams tend to slip from the context of Daydreaming and become something else.

We all used to daydream as children. As we grew up daydreaming was relegated to those childish things we put away, or leave behind. Daydreaming in itself does not go away. After we have forgotten we used to daydream, daydreaming comes back to us in new packaging. Sometimes called positive affirmation, perceptive visualization, or other vague name, it is daydreaming. Once the pretty wrapper is taken off and we look closely, we will see the daydreaming we knew as  children in adult form.

A second meditation method I learned was meditating on or against trees. The idea is a tree will trade you energies, refreshing you and taking away your stress. How much energy exchange comes from the tree and how much from the process itself is not clear to me, but there is no better place to relax under when outdoors than a nice shade tree.

I stumbled into a quasi-meditation form that is part of Shamanism. I am not sure if Shamanic Flight could be considered meditation per se, but the process is about the same, only with different focus. Shaman’s use Shamanic Flight to help one or more people in some fashion. Shaman’s do this by being active in two realities at one time. Shamanic Flight is also used for other reasons, but that is a different subject.

One interesting aspect of Shamanic Flight is most people I know have met a ‘Gate Keeper’ who questions their purpose at the beginning of their Shamanic Flight. If the purpose for Shamanic Flight does not satisfy the Gate Keeper, their entrance to another world is denied.

They are kicked out of their semi trance state, waking with an abrupt start. In some instances Shamanic Flight is put on indefinite hold by the Gate Keeper, and you will become spiritually mundane against your wishes.

I came across a most interesting meditation which is uses a word to achieve a meditative state. If you have ever watched a movie where someone is in a sitting posture and repeating the word ‘Ommm’ over and over you are familiar with this type of meditation. While I personally do not think repeating Ommm over and over would work for me, I have experienced very interesting outcomes from using other words that feel right in the moment.

If you want to try a simple type of meditation yourself, start with daydreaming. Ask around  and find someone knowledgeable about meditation. If you do not know anyone, find one or more good written resource(s) to help you. If what you read sounds soft and mushy, find another book or website. Sitting down and successfully meditating cannot usually be done the first try without help. For some, meditation is a tedious painful process to go through before any of those wondrous benefits you hear or read about begin to be realized.

Shamanic Flight deserves the utmost respect, and extreme caution. If you want to explore meditation leave Shamanic Flight alone. Some people in their ignorance have approached Shamanic Flight as a new playground to be explored. Some of them are ever sorry for their lapse in judgement because they did not understand that what they were doing has effects and consequences in this reality.

Personally, I have found each type of meditation produces different effects or responses. Daydreaming opens me up to possibilities, it is fun and relaxing. Resting with my back against a tree, or sitting somewhere that feels special brings me to a white cloud-like space and leaves me both refreshed and relaxed. For a little while the world is repainted in warmth with bright colors, and everything is perfect.

Shamanistic Flight has taken me to places I would never have imagined, and situations I would not have conceived, as I am not that imaginative. I recommend you stay away from Shamanic Flight and leave it to others as it can be harmful to you and your spiritual self.

Meditation while speaking a word is amazing! I am not sure yet where you end up, but in my experience there is someone there to meet you, and they will know an awful lot about you. They have demonstrated to me at least, abilities I have a hard time coming to terms with even though I am/was the recipient of those abilities. The experience is akin to meeting someone who knows everything about you and your life, and they can help you in areas of your life if they so choose.

If you think meditation may be for you, find someone who has experience with meditation and let them teach you what they know. I may be falling off the deep end here, but meditation is a spiritual practice, not a physical practice. With any spiritual practice or undertaking, caution should rule the day. Things of the spirit have a lot in common with high risk sports such as hang gliding, or cave diving.

In the land of the spiritual, practicing thoughtlessness and rash behavior will hurt you both emotionally and physically. Meditation is a somewhat arcane practice in the western world and for good reason. We are generally too into our ego and personal fears to think beyond ourselves. As I once read, and am now passing on, treat everything of the spirit the same as you would standing in a bad part of town on a full moon night. It is better to be a live mouse, than a crippled or dead warrior.

With that disclaimer out of the way, the rewards of meditation are many. Insight, answers, life mysteries explained, the list goes on and on. Give it a try, it may be just what you are looking for and you never knew it, until you tried it.

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More Time For Your Life

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I used to be very frustrated when I took a college class with a friend. It was not the class, although it was not the most enjoyable class, it was the expectations of the class. We were expected to write a number of short papers, and one longer page which would be our final for the class.

Each week we would go to class, and learn about a different way of presenting information on paper. One week it would be from an observational view, the next week, a third person view, and so on. Thrown in for good measure was proper paragraph structure and proper placement of the paragraphs main sentence.

The class, although it had its boring moments, was a good experience from a beginning level on how to put together a paper correctly. If I could remember most of what I learned my writing would be cleaner and more effective.

What I found frustrating in the class was the friend with whom I was taking the class with. I took my homework very seriously. I would start the night after class, and add, change and polish my weekly paper almost every day until we met the next week and turned them in.

My friend on the other hand generally waited until a few hours before the next class, sat down, typed out their paper, and was done in less than two hours. The disparity in effort was troubling to me. I would spend six, eight, or more hours, and they would spend at the most two hours. When our papers were handed back, our grades would be equal.

There was some difference in our writing abilities, but there was also something else going on that I had yet to discover. I was yet to discover that when it came to managing my time effectively, I was not very good at it.

You see, I thought when you had free time it meant there was time to do things that needed to be done no matter how far into the future, work on my paper for example. It seemed perfectly logical to me, spend some time on homework each day, and it is all done when it needs to be. I thought I was making effective use of my time.

What my friend understood that I did not, was it was not the amount of time spent on something, it was doing something when it needed to be done was more important than doing it over time.

Unlike my friend I was not a stellar student in school. Once I started college, I decided I was going to keep up on my home work and not wait until the last minute to do it. That way I always had time to go over and fine tune my papers before I turned them in.

My friend on the other hand understood that in many cases, once a certain level of proficiency is gained, fine tuning becomes re-writing, and re-writing again; essentially writing the same material out four or five different ways before turning it in.

I eventually learned about time management and I understood that in some ways and areas I was creating busy work, and not value added work, my class writing being an example.

There are multiple ways of looking proper time management but they all can be distilled into to a few major points:

1. Everything that needs to be done carries a level of importance.

2. Not everything needs to be done at once.

3. Completing tasks ahead of schedule, is not always the best use of time.

4. Working on and finishing tasks when they are needed is much more effective than doing them over time.

The number 4 is the most important idea to take from the points above. Everything we need to get done in our lives can fit into four or even three levels of importance.

The idea of time management is two fold. Proper time management gives you extra time  to do whatever you want to do. Effective time management gives you a tool to list in importance all tasks needing attention, allowing you to work on and complete them in level of importance and time.

The time we have in our life is finite, even though it may not always seem like it. Working and reworking on a task that is not needed until some point in the future is less important than a task that needs to be completed by tomorrow.

Mark up your tasks in levels of importance with ones given to tasks that are a low priority, and a four given to those very important items that must be done, and done today or tomorrow at the latest.

Only work on those tasks that are level three or higher on your scale of importance. Tasks that you rate as level one or level two can wait until they become important enough to be raised to a level three or higher task.

Now you know how to better manage your time, which relates into better managing of your life. Why spend time today doing something that is not needed until next week? You may never see next week. Put off those future tasks, and do what needs to be done today.

If after going through your list of tasks and you find none that need doing today, you have a whole day to spend on something more important. More important may be curled up with a book, spending time with someone, or going outside for a walk around your neighborhood, or a local park.

Whatever something more important turns out to be, it won’t be wasting time on tasks that really are not that important, or doing busy work just to be busy.

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