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    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations
    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations
    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations

    By William Blake

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    About this ebook

    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations has twenty meditations that assist you in mastering the two styles of meditation: inquiry and mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation subdues our monkey-mind thoughts. Inquiry meditation asks Inner Silence for an answer to painful relationship and work issues.

    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations provides a deep understanding of our underlying cultural conditioning and introduces an innovative approach to using meditation to reduce emotional stress and achieve self-realization.

    Bill Blakes A Creative Toolkit of Meditations is a superb read. His distant family member, the poet and artist William Blake, wrote a phrase that describes Bills book: Energy is eternal delight.

    Dr. Stephen Kierulff, clinical psychologist and author of (with Stanley Krippner) of Becoming Psychic

    In his classes using his book, Bills extraordinary method of making meditation highly accessible is truly miraculous. I can honestly say it did change my life! I now can call myself a meditator, when all other attempts made over decades had fallen short.

    Amy Lacombe, artist and designer of arts and crafts

    Bills book and classes have offered me a toolbox of rewarding ways to relax my monkey mind. These meditations have helped me get through some stressful times. I now have a rich daily practice.

    Diane Monteith, retired educator

    This book provides you with tools to achieve the following objectives:

    Increase conscious awareness of your surroundings

    Recognize and experience yourself as consciousness/energy

    Effectively communicate with others

    Connect mind and body

    Identify healthy and unhealthy emotions

    Probe and manage your deep-seated, childhood-based beliefs

    Experience and then release anger

    improve relationships

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBalboa Press
    Release dateOct 8, 2013
    ISBN9781452574400
    A Creative Toolkit of Meditations
    Author

    William Blake

    William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was apprenticed to a master engraver and then studied at the Royal Academy under the guidance of Joshua Reynolds. In 1789 he engraved and published Songs of Innocence and the contrasting Songs of Experience came later in 1794. A poet, painter and printmaker of great originality and imagination, his work was largely unrecognized during his lifetime and he struggled to make a living. Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. He died in 1827.

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      Book preview

      A Creative Toolkit of Meditations - William Blake

      Copyright © 2013 William Blake.

      Author Credits: Co-author and writer of Investments and Financial Planning: The Complete Picture.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Balboa Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      Balboa Press

      A Division of Hay House

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.balboapress.com

      1-(877) 407-4847

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4525-7439-4 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4525-7441-7 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4525-7440-0 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013912151

      Balboa Press rev. date: 10/04/2013

      Contents

      Acknowledgment

      Introduction

      Section 1: Growing Up

      Chapter One: What Is Conscious Awareness?

      Mesmerizing Focal Points Are Everywhere

      Base Awareness and Conscious Awareness

      Is Conscious Awareness Supposed

      to Make Us Happy?

      Meditation on Awareness of Awareness

      Chewing Meditation

      Chapter Two: Belief Systems and their Add-Ons

      Mindfulness Can Overcome Add-ons

      A Brief Look at the Science of Meditation

      The Long Range Impact of Childhood Beliefs

      Before Awakening, the Dilemma of Two Selves

      One Man’s Struggle with Add-Ons

      Three Meditations to Clean Up Stress From Add-Ons

      Chapter Three: Growing Up with OFRA

      Knocking Out Negative Beliefs with OFRA

      OFRA Examination of Our Belief Systems

      Two Meditations and Two Exercises

      Employing OFRA

      Section 2 Waking Up

      Chapter Four: Waking Up to What You Are

      An Awakening or Enlightenment Experience

      The Language and Science of the Awake State

      Barriers to Realizing I Am Consciousness

      Three Meditations on What I Am

      Section 3: Integrating Growing Up and Waking Up

      Chapter Five: Investigative Dialogue Serving Ourselves and Others

      The Value of Investigative Dialogue

      Trait One of Investigative Dialogue:

      Relating to the Issue

      Trait Two of Investigative Dialogue:

      Three Styles of Listening

      Trait Three of Investigative Dialogue:

      Inquiry into Why?

      Meditation on Investigative Dialogue

      Chapter Six: Relationships—Another Growing Up Challenge

      Romantic Love Is Not Intimacy

      Loving-Kindness Meditation

      Mindfulness Births Independence and Harmony

      Meditation on Dimensions in Relationships

      Chapter Seven: The Ultimate Challenge—Our Culture

      America’s Stressful Culture

      Meditation on Contemplative Metaphrases

      Education: A Microcosm of the American Macrocosm

      Disastrous Capitalism

      How Do We Confront Disastrous Capitalism?

      Meditation on Ask the Light

      Chapter Eight: The Dance of Vision—Creating Your Toolkit

      A Synopsis of the Toolkit

      Four Meditations for Your Toolkit

      Meditation for Orthodox Believers or for Nonbelievers

      Meditation on Anger

      A Variation on Centering Prayer Meditation

      Breathing Through the Body Meditation

      Acknowledgment

      Several friends have helped me write and rewrite this book, bless them. I wish to acknowledge their time, energy, and wisdom.

      Reina Roberts invented and refined (four times) the colors and shapes of the front and back covers. Reina teaches world ecology at the high school where my wife Haygo teaches chemistry and biology. The three of us are friends, and I heartily enjoy Reina’s knowledge, humor, and art work. She’s a winner.

      Glenda Ryan and I have critiqued each other’s stories and articles for five years. Glenda recently started submitting more stories and articles and has sold several. She read through this book twice, and it was like a top scale, thousand-dollar-a-cut barber fixing up a disheveled war veteran. From little flaws to bloated paragraphs that required rewriting, Glenda cleaned up the prose like a devoted mother washes up a small child after its adventures in a muddy back yard. Glenda writes and critiques superbly.

      The third pastor ministering to A Creative Toolkit of Meditations is Haygo, my wife. She didn’t want the name Haygo appearing in the book, so I call her Sophie throughout. One of Haygo’s strong suits is her keen analysis. She takes apart and recombines chemicals, people, books, politicians, and cultures. I love to talk with her. But when she’s ready to speak with me about a critiqued chapter, I tell her Wait a few seconds. Now I spend a preparatory minute or two slowly and deeply breathing in and out so that I’m more relaxed when her literary execution begins. This book is hers as much as mine.

      Introduction

      Practicing reverence for life we become

      good, deep, and alive.

      Albert Schweitzer

      According to numerous scientific studies, steady meditation encourages a healthier, longer, and happier life. I recommend that you watch the TV documentary The New Medicine, which details how meditation reduces stress and improves health and happiness. This book’s content echoes the scientific truths presented in The New Medicine. Even the industrial and medical worlds are now beginning to deliver meditation practices.

      I call emotional maturing growing up. Meditation assists us to grow up. The second end product of meditation is enlightenment, which I term waking up. I borrow the phrases growing up and waking up from writer John Welman.

      Growing up involves observation of how our negative beliefs determine our motivations, and thus our actions. A powerfully analytical engineer can produce high-quality design products yet fail to listen and inquire when a colleague is explaining a project. His analytic monologue kills any true dialogue. It’s painful for the monologuing engineer to observe and change his long-term belief, which he might discover is I’m the best, so they must listen to me, a belief itself derived from I’m weak so I must impress others. Once this engineer recognizes this restrictive belief, he can observe and feel his resistance to an attitude change. Then he can listen more carefully to others.

      Those of us who learn to reflect on our beliefs not only observe them but also take action to correct them. This process can be interesting, stimulating, and often enjoyable.

      However, we all have fears about this growing-up process of observing and assuming responsibility for our limiting beliefs. We’re fearful that our emotional identities will evaporate. A man’s strong identity as father of this household, although it infuses him with a sense of power and leadership, can limit his freedom to become a friendly equal with his wife and children. Father of this household is his basic strong suit. Realizing the origins and consequences of such belief-driven identities can weaken them and enable us to feel compassion for ourselves and others.

      Waking up, life’s second journey, is rarer. Not many people wake up to their true nature—the answer to the worldwide meditative question of What am I? This answer eludes us with its simplicity. Specific meditations of chapter 4 can achieve this breakthrough.

      Our two life journeys, growing up and waking up, are distinct, usually sequential, yet interconnected. A Creative Toolkit of Meditations describes both journeys and provides meditations for each. However, we must proceed with steady dedication. Daily practice is essential. Meditating four hours a day for one week is shortchanging ourselves compared to twenty minutes a day for a month.

      My ballroom dance teacher once told me, Ten minutes’ practice every day! A dance teacher or workout trainer wants us to develop muscle memory. The same advice applies to meditation. We can slowly build the muscle of awareness. I’ve observed that a slow, steady format works well in my meditation classes.

      To achieve awareness muscle, we can reset our emotions through meditative inquiry creating mental silence that serves up fresh answers guiding us to useful behavior. Every meditation I’ve ever studied promotes an inner peace and silence. As a result, we live inside this harmonious silence, this here-and-now presence.

      You might be wondering why anyone requires a toolkit of meditations. Why aren’t one or two meditations sufficient? For a few people, one or two are enough. Yet attendees in my classes have distinct preferences for particular meditations—and they often move on to others. Some like meditations that focus on inquiry into a personal issue such as, How can I change my thinking so that my job is more enjoyable? Other participants hold fast to meditations emphasizing mindfulness, a peaceful, unbiased observation of self and others. A good toolkit gives us choices that we can utilize and amend in the future.

      Chapter 8 lists eight topics covered by this book’s meditations and pinpoints which of the twenty meditations best dip into each topic:

      1. Awareness of surroundings

      2. Recognizing and experiencing our True Self as Consciousness/Energy

      3. Effectively communicating with others

      4. Connecting mind and body, relaxing

      5. Probing into our deep-seated, childhood-based negative beliefs

      6. Distinguishing between imperfections and weaknesses; minimizing reactive emotions by increased patience, courage, and being at ease

      7. Releasing anger

      8. Improving relationships

      Readers can select specific meditations by scrutinizing chapter 8’s list of these eight topics.

      Meditation is not belief-based like traditional religion. It’s a personal, scientific inspection and experiment, an experiential routine to discover what changes occur. And, as different scientists experiment with different procedures and observe different results, meditators can create their own meditative regimens. For example, we can stress either one, or both, of the two meditative styles, mindfulness and inquiry. If we’re bombarded by a relationship problem, we can inquire into its origins and resolutions. If we want to focus on being more present and joyful, we’ll take up mindfulness meditations.

      A Creative Toolkit of Meditations is designed to help you develop your own meditative practice. In addition, we can profit from meditating with a partner, friend, or group.

      You can dance all these major steps of the spiritual mission. This book’s thesis thus becomes, Create your own meditation and spiritual routines. Grow up and wake up.

      My life has been bouncy, up and down. A few years ago, I stopped bouncing at the up position and have rested in that happy place ever since. I wrote this book to help readers more quickly work their way up.

      My life features five evolutionary stages. The first was the shallow Silent Generation mentality for those

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