Meditation Techniques for Stillness and Clarity : หน้า 151/164

Suzanne Jeffrey repeated to help you get rid of the monkey mind or that incessant thinking of your brain. At the Wat, they use “Samma Araham” which generally means separating yourself from the bad and concentrating on the good, or taking the Middle Path to Happiness, or Righteous Path. You can also use the Jesus Prayer, or “clear and bright”, or another phrase that is meaningful to you. You simply repeat that phrase until it drops away on its own accord. (And that really will happen, by the way.) 9. Additionally, if you have difficulty with visualizations popping up in front of your eyes, you can create your own visualization of a ball, star, flower, cross, or a favorite object, that remains fixed and still in your center. If you visualize a bright, clear ball, then allow yourself to feel that ball right at your seventh base. If it goes away, or you have become distracted, do not chase after the visualization. Just start over, if necessary, until you have a visualization that wants to stay with you. Eventually, as you stay with that visualization and become more calm and neutral, it will transform on its own. 10. Center yourself. This means that you will have to settle yourself at the most comfortable point inside (your personal inner comfort zone), which could be the deepest part of your breath or just an inner space that you feel like saying, “yeah, I could stay here for a long time!” to yourself. (This is generally, as I have said, in or around, your tummy area. The Center is the eventual destination point.) So you want to focus on that and keep it going. 11. Now you want to allow your mind to enter into stillness. (Remember that your brain is NOT your mind.) At this point, ideally, you have relaxed, dumped your garbage, gotten your mantra together, and hopefully stopped the incessant thinking, daydreaming, and visualization. You can now totally relax into that deep stillness that you are naturally and automatically achieving simply through letting go and doing nothing. Somehow, by experimentation mostly, you will gradually learn what works best for you, because, after all, meditation is really an individual pursuit. It may take some time, but once you start to practice the correct technique, you will be so happy that you will want to continue. Remember that the technique is “right” when it feels easy and you feel increasingly happy, clean, and clear. The total trick, of course, is that you will not make yourselves still: You become still by doing nothing. And, because you are not stressed, you are sabai: cool, calm, and comfy, or, said another way, naturally still. 152