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Meditation is one of the most abstract notion of practice in our spiritual cultivation. Without understanding the underlying basic conditions in spiritual meditation, then one would find it difficult to practice meditation for spirituality successfully to attain liberation across the ocean of Samsara – the life cycle of rebirth and death.

Spiritual meditations are the direct means to achieve instant realization of truth but this is also the most difficult way to attain emancipation unless one has true basic knowledge of mindfulness and correct effort.

Only with our successfully trained mind of instilling mindfulness and the right effort along with our spirituality meditation practices will only then evoke the power of insight and wisdom.

Basic Criteria Before Starting Spiritual Meditation for Beginners

Before one delves into deep spiritual meditation practice, one should know the criteria before subscribing to meditation. Needless to say, the important criteria are that one should be healthy, have a calm mind, is stress-free and also worry-free from financial constraints before you can consider embarking on your meditative journey.

No doubt, as humans, many would in one way or another undergo traumatic problems of restlessness, having an unhealthy body, worrisome of financial problems, with some even suffering from insomnia. However, we need to rectify them somehow or other, for example, through more regular morning exercises, eating a balanced diet food, having enough good rest and enough sleep as well as a sound financial management. This way, we will gradually overcome all these hindrances to our meditation practices.

Remember, it is important to adhere to all these norms before one enters into meditation techniques or meditation practices. Otherwise, complications will arise in the final outcome of our meditation for spiritual growth.

Sometimes, we have to undergo all kinds of encumbrances during our dark times or low-ebbed situations. If that happens, we need to temporarily delay our zeal to practice meditation for spiritual benefits. It is important to note that on many occasions, we have to deal with all these headaches or problems in our daily lives until we can overcome these hindrances to pursue how to meditate spiritually.

Once things have settled down, we can then begin our sessions of meditation but we should never cease eternally in practicing our meditation.

Common Pitfalls in Meditation Steps

We have seen a lot of people meditating in the wrong especially organized by Buddhist temples, whereby rows and rows of meditators are cramped together in their line up at the meditation hall.

Meditation is not an examination session. Every meditator should sit apart from each other for at least 3 feet apart, vertically and horizontally in view.

You may wonder why it is not right for a group of meditators to sit close to one another during meditation. The reason is, when meditators sit close to each other, the rays of meditators’ thoughts will become intertwined with one another, which could interfere with and affect individual meditator’s mind. Needless to say, this kind of meditation session is unbeneficial and conflicting.

Also, the number of meditators allowed to sit in a meditation hall should be around 20 people and not more than 50 people per session, especially since most times, only 1 spiritual teacher is present to conduct the spiritual meditation for beginners. Even though meditation is not an examination, the concept of hosting a group of participants is similar to the examination hall setting.

Even in an examination hall where there are about 150 to 200 students, usually there will be about 5 to 6 invigilators manning the hall. Likewise, if we were to have a hall of 150 to 200 meditators at one time, we should have about 5 spiritual teachers or Bhante or spiritual masters to assess the meditation sessions.

Why the need to limit the number of participants? The one important thing to take note when it comes to spirituality and meditation is that, when one is in deep meditation, one will create a vacuum in the mind, and this could easily attract any spirit or bad energy coming into contact with this vacuum atmosphere. Spiritual teachers or masters act as guardians to oversee and ensure no negative energy or spirit comes into the meditation hall.

And when you have hundreds of meditators creating a big “vacuum”, having just 1 or 2 spiritual masters around only creates the risk of meditators potentially suffering from bad spirit or energy attacks without the spiritual masters realizing, since there are too many people for them to manage all at once. Even if they manage to detect the bad energy presence, getting to them could take a while since they have to maneuver among the crowd to reach the affected meditators.

Unfortunately, through our careful observation, none of the Buddhist temples today are conducting this meditative session based on our aforementioned necessary requirements. After all, it is only proper for any meditator joining a meditation practice to be duly protected by the constant vigilance of these meditation masters or spiritual teachers.

Also read: Zen State of Mind

A Teacher is Necessary to Guide on How to Do Spiritual Meditation

It is important that for any beginner who wishes to practice meditation, one should always have a teacher to guide them and oversee their meditation progress.

We would advise against doing meditation at home on your own unless qualified to do so – never allow for one moment to meditate alone without supervision as nowadays, we are in a white stage period where there are a lot of bad spirits hanging around everywhere.

Until we have fully mastered the art of meditation, we should never initiate meditation without the supervision of a teacher. Furthermore, meditation is not a do-it-yourself technique unless we are inborn spiritual entities. There is a proper step to begin in our meditation process such as understanding there is an inner and outer layer of our meditation practice. The inner layer is our mind, heart and body while the outer layer is all the things surrounding us, also referring to our external environment.

Understanding The Essence of Meditation

How to spiritually meditate requires an understanding of the essence of meditation. The key to meditation is to ensure that all the external factors or the outer layer of all environmental conditions are in harmony with our internal factors or internal layer of our body.

When both the external and internal factors merge and become harmonious as one, then we have succeeded in fostering the inner peace of our mind. Once this inner peace is established, we gain insight and eventually into wisdom of mind and power.

It is for this reason that whenever we perform our meditation practice, we should be consciously aware that any moment of external factors, such as sound and voices, are subjugated harmoniously into our mind, heart, and body. This will then be our ultimate goal of achieving a successful meditation.

Initially, this is difficult but after years and years of practice, we will then be able to unify all these external factors of matter into our internal matter of mind, heart, and body. Therefore in meditation, we will also gradually cultivate the habit of patience, endurance, tolerance, determination, and lastly perseverance. Only through these virtuous deeds will we be able to overcome any hindrances stopping us from practicing meditation.

Important Aspects to Consider for Meditation

There are a few things we should bear in mind when we decide to perform meditation. They are: Right place, Proper time and Proper type of meditation.

Today, meditation cannot be practiced randomly anywhere as in this Age of Kali, many places have bad energy atmosphere or are unsuitable for meditation practice. Even temples are not spared, especially since these sacred places are easily attracted by evil spirits and wandering souls.

Also read: How to Build Spiritual Protection to Protect Our Life

Secondly, the time factor is important as we should adhere to a certain time to practice meditation. The time we should choose to practice meditation is when we are off from working schedule or free from stress of work or running errands for the family. This is extremely important as a relaxed mind and body is conducive to our meditation practice.

If we are ever ready to do spiritual meditation at home, be sure to perform it in the middle of the night as everything is peaceful and quiet, which is an ideal condition to practice meditation. However, this is on the premise that we have done enough basic meditation from our previous teacher’s guidance, only can we then conduct our own meditation session.

Also read: How to Identify Symptoms of Negative Energy at Home

The last aspect is the ideal type of meditation, and this is pertinent to our successful practice. There are many types of meditation techniques, including breathe-in-breathe-out, one-pointedness of the mind and walking meditation, but not all types suit every practitioner.

Many meditators must come to understand that if one is suffering from health conditions like sinus, using the breathe-in-breathe-out approach is highly inappropriate, because proper knowledge and a healthy body is required to achieve the correct rhythms of breathing in and out for a fruitful meditation.

Walking meditation is also improper for any ordinary meditator as this kind of meditation is only suitable for those with a high concentration of the mind, such as monks, hermits, spiritual teachers or masters.

The Best Means to Harness the Spiritual Benefits of Meditation

The best means of adopting the meditation process is by practising one-pointedness of the mind.

What does it mean by one-pointedness of the mind? This is done by concentrating on only one object as the focal point of your meditation, such as the Buddha or Boddhisattva statues or even the image of Arahants.

Our mind will begin to focus on any one object of choice and we concentrate on the rays of enlightened light from the image onto our mind. After years and years of practice, we will then come to a time when we will suddenly receive an enlightened ray of Buddha light onto our forehead, and this is where we gain insight.

This insight will then gradually lead us to achieve Jhanas, which is the attainment of Arahantship. With Jhanas, we have then finally ripened our meditation practice and achieved our ultimate aim of Meditation.

At the end of our article, we hope you learn and understand more about the chapters related to meditation. If you wish to learn more and start practicing meditation and spirituality the right way, we at Poh Ern Si Penang are ready to help – contact us today.