Previous: Mindfulness Meditation
Next: Guided Meditation
Once you have become comfortable with mindfulness meditation, you may advance to self-guided meditation.
The purpose of self-guided meditation is to resolve doubts and perplexities that commonly occur in one’s life. Meditate on the doubt or perplexity uppermost in your mind by bringing up all data related to it, and letting it associate freely as described in this exercise.
.
Mindfulness Meditation 2: Let the confusion resolve through free association.
-
Bring up in meditation the doubt or perplexity uppermost in your mind. For example, it could be a doubt regarding marital relationship.
-
Let yourself be grounded in your body through awareness of breathing; and in your mind through awareness of the order in the universe.
-
Let the data regarding the doubt and perplexity associate freely as it comes up. Do not avoid, resist, or suppress any thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, etc. Let anything suppressed be released.
-
Do not anxiously dig into the mind for answers, or act out impulsively. Let the mind unwind itself. This process goes deeper than any logic.
-
Broaden the context as wide as possible. For example, when doubt relates to marital relationship then broaden the context to all marital relationships that you are aware of, such as, those of parents, friends, acquaintances, etc.
-
Look at basic purpose of the key area of doubt and perplexity. For example, in the case of marital relationship you would look at the purpose of marriage not only in yours, but also in other cultures.
-
Work out the ideal scene for that area. For example, in the case of marital relationship, look at the actions and condition, which make a marital relationship happy and successful in the broad context.
-
Place the specific data of your situation in the broad context, and let free association sort it all out.
-
Repeat the above steps using the 12 aspects of mindfulness until the doubt and perplexity resolve.
-
Other doubts and perplexities may arise during this process. Apply the same steps as above to resolve them.
.
