Why Guided Meditation is Important
Why Guided Meditation is Important
A guided meditation starts like most other meditations. You sit in a comfortable position in a place free from distraction. You take a few deep breaths. You slowly relax each part of your body, beginning with the feet and ending with the face.
Once you are totally relaxed you can count yourself down into your safe place. Simply count backwards from 5-1. With each descending number you go deeper and deeper into a state of meditation. On the count of 1, you find yourself in your safe place.
Your safe place
When you open your eyes in your safe place, you are seated against a contoured rock. To the left, about 20 feet away is a babbling brook. Straight ahead, about 30 feet, is a large fern, dripping with dew, glistening in the morning light. To the right, about 50 feet is a row of young pine trees. About 9 pine trees, standing closely together in a row. You find yourself beside the babbling brook, kneeling down, and you cup your hands and take some water to your mouth. You swallow three times and each time you relax more. You say to yourself “you are magical water”. Then you find yourself standing next to the fern. Place your right hand under the lowest frond and tap the frond. Dew from the fern drops to your hand. Rub the dew on your chest and say to yourself “intimacy with my safe p
lace”. Now you find yourself standing alongside the row of pine trees. You turn your back to them and fall backwards. The branches of the trees support you and bounce you back up. You say to yourself “intimacy with nature”. Now you are again seated against your contoured rock and you notice your higher self appear from behind the pine trees. As your higher self approaches, you stand and embrace. Together you slide down the contoured rock to take in the beauty of your safe place.
Directly in front of you, and between you and the fern, is a clearing where the ground is flat and smooth. You go there and lay down on your back. You are looking up at the white clouds against a deep blue sky. You close your eyes and relax more. You count down from 5-1 and with each descending number you go deeper and deeper. On the count of 1, you open your eyes and are now in a new location. This is where your guided meditation begins. Depending on the purpose of the meditation, you will choose a different location in which to find yourself. I’ve created a location on a river bank for my guided meditation on Overcoming Fear of Success. Other locations for other purposes include a beach at night, a clearing in a forest, or a mountain top.
The Purpose of a Guided Meditation
Guided meditations, when used on a repeated basis, create fundamental changes in the “wiring” of our subconscious minds. That little voice in your head that you “hear without paying attention to”, that tells you who you are and what you’re capable of, and what you’re not, and what you deserve and don’t, and what life is all about and what it isn’t. All the fundamental beliefs you have about the world and your place in it are contained in your subconscious mind. These beliefs were installed in the first five years of your life and are a reflection of the beliefs of the parents, siblings, relatives and friends who were around you on a consistent basis until you were five years old. For example, if, when you were a toddler, you witnessed your mother and father arguing over money, your toddler brain which was wide open to subconscious programming, equated money with stress, discomfort and unhappiness, maybe even tears. As an adult you can see that to make such an equation is ridiculous. But as a toddler, it was perfectly normal for you to make that connection. After witnessing repeated arguments between your parents over money, that belief took hold in your subconscious mind. As you grew into adulthood, and you recognize on a conscious level the benefit of money and all it can provide, your subconscious mind continues to resist having money in your life, because on a deep level you associate money with stress. Therefore your subconscious mind causes you to make decisions which result in you never having enough money. I’m sure you’ve seen this many times in the lives of others. There are people who earn great sums of money and yet always seem to be living paycheck to paycheck. There are people who earn one million dollars a year and have ten million dollars of debt.
Guided meditations performed with repetition can actually re-write the subconscious programming that you received as a small child. Guided meditations can redefine who you are in your own mind. They can redefine what is possible. How does it work? Repetition.
The subconscious mind accepts new beliefs with repetition. And once those new beliefs are accepted into the subconscious mind, that’s when change begins. The changes I’m referring to are changes in the decisions you make and changes in the beliefs that you hold. It may be small adjustments to decisions. Over time, those small adjustments to decisions have the cumulative effect of putting you on a new life path.
The subconscious mind is more powerful than our conscious mind. The conscious mind decides what items to pull of the store shelf and place in your basket. The subconscious mind tells you which store to go to and how and when to go there. Most of our lives run on auto-pilot and that program is written in the subconscious mind.
I’ve used guided meditations for the purposes of feeling deserving, overcoming fear, creating a new self image, dismissing guilt and shame, and welcoming success. If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me.
