Maintaining patience during meditation is of vital importance.
Showing signs of impatience is a sure sign that you need to meditate. Through meditation you can develop a very special kind of patience that creates the awareness of the magic in each moment of life.
Patient, Steady Progress –
There are a lot of ways to experience patience. One is by not trying to move too quickly from watching your breath to the other techniques.
No matter what technique you are using, attention is the key in all meditation.
Stages in the journey –
In meditation 3 stages are involved, which have to be taken in a particular order and one at a time. All these stages exist side by side. You don’t have to leave stage 1 while entering stage 2 and so on.
After exploring all the 3 stages, you will realize that though there are differences between them, they are one.
Before you move on to the stages of tranquility and insight, concentration has to be achieved (which you have already started practicing as per earlier chapters). For example when we are listening to someone we rarely give our full attention. We can improve our powers of concentration by focusing on what they are actually saying.
By practicing a few simple exercises, which can be done during normal daily life you can develop concentration.
- When people talk, listen more carefully. Focus actually upon listening instead of allowing the mind to wander and busy itself with what you are going to say next. Attention should be focused upon the words and their meaning and don’t be distracted by random thoughts about the person who is talking.
- Experiment by running your hand over an uneven surface, for example the clothes that you are wearing. Concentrate on the feel of the material and just experience the sensation don’t label it. Feel the roughness and the smoothness, pleats and creases and varying textures of cotton and wool. Move your hand over the material and listen to the variations in the sounds. Just hear them don’t think what the sounds are like.
- Take an object, for example a flower and really study it for a few minutes. Just look at the object and move your eyes slowly over it; studying it from every angle. Do not think about it just experience it.