Revisi Blogging

By William T Batten Some days, meditating is easy. Other days is seems impossible. If you're starting out, maybe every day feels like one over the other. As you become more familiar with the techniques, there are more of the good days.It helps to know what to do when you're having a bad day, though. Maybe you're new to all of this or perhaps you've got a lot on your mind. Life happens. You don't have to be perfect. And thanks to one awesome technique, you barely even have to be decent.The trick is to meditate the same way you'd enter a hot bath. You know what I mean. You dip your toe in then recoil out immediately. Then you go for it a second time and it doesn't seem as hard. Maybe you make it to your ankle before pulling out.On the third try, you lower yourself in a few times.Then you simply ease into the warm water and let it envelope you.You can meditate this way, too. Just like with the bath, it's a lot slower but its success rate is phenomenal.If …

By William T Batten One of the big challenges with meditating is learning to handle distractions. It shocks no one to learn that it's a useful life skill, too. Staying focused despite noise, discomfort or even your own thoughts will transform more than your inner life.It's a challenge. No one will pretend that it isn't. Some days your thoughts are calm like a pleasant stream. Other days the world around you is a turbulent mess.Good meditators can enter the right state no matter where they are. Let me tell you from experience that being able to meditate on international flights is amazing.Great meditators can even handle their thoughts being noisy.It's funny - even as I write this, I'm getting distracted. There are noises outside, which are nothing compared to the ideas popping into my mind.That's okay, though, as I'm still writing. And my meditation sessions are similar. In fact, the problem's worse when I'm meditating. When my mind is quiet, that&…

By William T BattenNow, this is not a universal experience.It's pretty common. It happens to me all the time and I see it in others, too.Some of you will read this and nod your head. For everyone else, keep this in the back of your mind. You might find it useful one day.There's a curious phenomenon with meditation. You might go so far as to call it a side effect. This phenomenon is where, after a really good meditation session, you suddenly become completely inarticulate. You can barely string two words together. I'm not talking about if you try to describe your session, you find your experiences don't translate well to words. No - this is where you can't talk about anything.Something as simple as your dinner plans leaves you grasping for the right vocabulary.Like I say, not everyone will know what I'm talking about. Some lifelong meditators never experience it. This is for the rest of us.The best remedy for this is time. Your words will return to you. Simply …

By William T Batten The power of meditation is the power of your mind. It trains useful mental skills that lie at the heart of everything you do.For example, focus. Learn to do that and nothing won't become easier.For example...If you want techniques that improve your memory, the best place to turn to is the latest neuroscience research. The second best place is a book by William Walker Atkinson. Memory: How to Develop, Train and Use It is over a hundred years old. It is remarkably timeless, though. Not everything that he wrote still holds true... but most of it does. A hundred years ago, they knew a lot less about how the brain works. You'd be surprised by how much they knew about using it, though. Atkinson drew on the techniques and traditions of ancient cultures.And many ancient cultures knew a lot about maximising their memory.Before the printing press, books were written by hand. If you owned a library, it meant you were rich. If you were lucky enough to be literate, the…

By William T Batten As you learn a skill and develop your abilities, there comes a middle point. From this point, the road before you looks an awful lot like the road behind you. In a way, mastery is a regression back to your baseline...Novices see the world in a simple way. This is because the novice ignores most of the information in front of them. Think of someone learning to drive. Before they sit behind the wheel, they think it'll be easy. They've seen adults do it without any drama.You just turn the steering wheel and go, right?A master at driving also sees it as a simple task. They ignore most of the information, paying attention only to what matters. Then they just turn the wheel and go.In between these two phases - near the middle point - driving is complicated. There is so much information to pay attention to. Lanes, speed, other cars, your destination...They turn the steering wheel while information floods into their mind.Both geniuses and dunces see things as simp…

By William T Batten When you spend time on personal development forums, talking with curious people or hanging out with open-minded folk, the topic eventually turns to meditation. And this conversation splits itself into two main camps: those who swear by it; and those who tried it and it didn't work.In these communities, the people who haven't tried it are a minority. That's cool, though I'm not talking about them today. I'm focusing on those who gave it an honest, solid try and walked away frustrated.Now, I need to make clear that what I'm about to say is my opinion. It may well be wrong, though I'm confident in it. I base this off my own experiences with meditation and the psychology of the unconscious mind:My belief is that well over 99% of people can learn to meditate. And most of those who "can't" meditate, even after giving it some time, seem to fall into three categories.The Already-UnconsciousMeditation does many things for your mind…

By William T Batten Meditation involves being still and quiet, both in your body and mind. The problem with a still body and a quiet mind is that it draws your attention to any discomfort. If you plan to meditate for long periods, you need to get your body comfortable.Then again, maybe you don't.Discomfort has its place. It can keep you awake and focused. It can drive out other distractions.But, and I may be going out on a limb here...I assume that if you want more discomfort, that's easy to arrange. If you want to change something, it'll probably be to decrease discomfort.And with that not-so-controversial assumption in our minds, let's talk about posture and meditation.Firstly, it's a myth that you need to sit cross-legged. You can sit however you like. In fact, you don't even have to sit. I usually meditate while sitting in an office chair. I've done it lying down and standing up.A few times, I've meditated while walking around. I find self-hypnosis…