Finding Your Purpose Series: Meditating
Article 5 of 8
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The best Vinyasa yoga class I’ve ever taken (and I’ve taken quite a few) was at the Smyrna, Tenn. YMCA back in 2008. I can’t remember my instructor’s name now, which really sucks, because she was amazing. I’m, however, horrible at names a lot of the time.
What I do remember is she was a senior citizen, with bright dyed red hair, and she could out-yoga me any day. I was in awe. I still want to be like that one day.
We sweated and stretched, usually starting with sun salutations, moving into happy baby, pigeon pose, the warriors, so on and so forth. Always at the end, of course, we settled into Shavasana or corpse pose, where the teacher led us through a relaxing and rejuvenating guided meditation.
“Relax your body, starting with your forehead, your eyes. Unclench your jaw. Relax your arms, chest, belly, legs, feet. Breathe in. Breathe out. Imagine relaxing ocean waves washing over you with each inhale and exhale. Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.”
I had been going to this yoga class for months, every Thursday, and couldn’t quite master quieting my mind to get the full effect of meditation.
But then it happened.
One fateful Thursday, I was listening to the teacher’s guidance, visualizing my breath coming in through my feet going up to my head and then going back out the way it came, washing every part of my body with it. My mind cleared, but I could feel my breath and the presence of others around me.
Visions took over in my mind’s eye - it’s hard to describe, but it didn’t feel like it was me who was controlling the visions - and I could see myself lying in the yoga room floor on my purple mat in my blue tank and black leggings. As my breath came in, my body would glow with white light, and as my breath went out, the glowing would dim - it was pulsing, just like my heart. Then, the out-of-body vision expanded to show the other bodies around me, which were sort of blurry, and they were encapsulated with the same white light. And each bubble of white light had a line to the other next to it so we looked like a grid of glowing orbs on the floor of the class. And we all pulsed in rhythm together.
It felt incredibly powerful.
At the time, I didn’t know what to think, except, “Whoa.”
Why Meditate?
Now I know that what I experienced on the yoga room floor that day was a powerful message sent as guidance. The message was somehow related to my own spiritual growth in understanding humanity for my particular path and purpose here on Earth. My understanding now of that message is, we are one collective being with many parts. When those parts work together in harmony, the powerful energy of love and peace washes a calmness and serenity over us. We get to experience bliss.
So, in a nutshell, we meditate to gain:
Clarity.
Clarity is clearly knowing what it is you need to know. For example, jumbled thoughts become clear. Raw emotions become accessible for processing. Hunches become intentions. Rest becomes restful.
Clarity comes because meditation is a powerful practice that:
helps you stay grounded
helps you stay centered
prioritizes required time to yourself
helps you recharge
adds to your health
Clears the clutter in your mind so divine guidance can enter the space
Ultimately, all of these benefits of meditation lead to a connection with yourself, that once is strong, can lead you toward a more fulfilling path with your purpose at front and center.
What is Meditation?
Meditation is a powerful method of God, the Universe, your Angels, your Spirit Guides, or your higher self talking to you. It’s a way to open up your consciousness to receive the messages that are meant for you. It helps you relax and let go of the tension and external pressures of human life through breathing, visualization, and clearing your mind. It helps you live in the here and now.
Mastering meditation definitely takes practice.
Ways to Meditate
You can meditate:
sitting or lying down
on the ground
in bed
on the couch
in yoga
in the bath
inside a building or in nature
with or without music or sounds
in light or dark
with people or by yourself
No matter where you’re at when you start meditating, ensure you’re free of distractions and comfortable, so you can go deeply inward.
My absolute favorite way to meditate is lying down flat on my Bed of Nails. Yeah, you heard that right! It’s an acupressure mat and neck pillow, and it really gets the circulation going and helps relieve scoliosis- and stress-induced tension in my back.
I also often find singing bowls helpful as background noise, or what is an example of what you may have heard called a sound bath.
Types of Meditation
The type of meditation you choose to do depends on your own preference and what you need in the particular moment. Meditation types include guided and unguided - what we’ll call free-form.
Guided
If you’re new or fairly new to meditation, guided meditation is the way to go.
Guided meditation is when a trusted person leads you into a state of meditation. My favorite place to get guided meditations is Ask-Angels.com. In fact, I was inspired to write this Finding Your Purpose article series after listening to a guided meditation from Melanie Beckler that took me into a vision of myself, dancing, suspended in a void of blackness with white light around me, wearing white, ethereal strips of fabric, hair wild and natural. My skin was vibrant, my expression was a small smile on a completely serene face.
I proudly walk my path now, exerting my will toward what’s meant for me. (Not without fault or error - we’re only freaking human, right?)
Another powerful guided meditation comes from Lori Reising, host of The Raw and Wild Hearts podcast. In this meditation, she talks you through sinking deep within yourself to replenish and nourish your cells from the inside out so you can heal and raise to a higher consciousness.
Hear more from Lori in Human Amplified episode 053: We are Nature and Nurture - The Complexity of Abandonment.
Related: 6 Indie Podcasts Exploring Human Nature.
Among other raw and messy topics, she talks about the importance of meditation in her life and how she started doing it from an early age, not even knowing what she was doing was called, “meditation.”
Same for me!
Free-form
Free-form meditation is when you are able to focus on your breath or a mantra and use it to take yourself into a state of relaxation and clearing of your mind, where you can then receive the rejuvenation or guidance you’re looking for.
Apparently, when I was kid and even sometimes as a teenager, I meditated all the time. I would just sit and let my mind wander until eventually my mind was just clear. I’d stop when it was time to stop and move on to the next interesting thing. It wasn’t until life got harder in my tween and early teenage years that I stopped, because it got harder and harder to clear my mind.
Quieting your mind does become harder after abuse, trauma, and after anxiety, worries, and doubts start to set in as baggage from whatever you’ve been through.
The good news is, you can rewire your baggage to get back to peace and harmony.
It just takes work, time, and patience. But it’s so worth it.
After you’ve been practicing guided meditation for a while and feel like you’ve gotten good at it or even mastered it (which could take a while - go at your own pace), then I recommend trying some free-form meditation. I’m not a master at it yet, so I won’t tell you how to do it, but trust that you can find plenty of resources on it when you’re ready.
What I will do is share with you what happened last time I tried free-form meditation, only a couple weeks ago: my first experience with the violet flame.
First, I turned lights off and laid down on my back on my bed of nails, covered in a comfy blanket. Once comfortable, I prayed to God for protection and grounding. Then, I set my intention to receive the name of my guardian angel and any message that was meant for me on my path.
My mind wandered a lot, as I was in the bedroom trying to stay undistracted, but my house was absolutely packed with my husband and our four sons. So, there was a lot of noise going on from every room in the house. So, I turned on some singing bowls on Youtube.
This helped me focus.
Eventually, I entered a state of relaxation. Out of what seemed like nowhere, a vision of a purple fire appeared in my mind’s eye. I could see it form and pulse in the middle of the dark on the backside of my eye lids, but it was very clearly not the light patterns that you typically see when you close your eyes. I immediately knew this was the violet flame - a spiritual phenomenon that is supposed to help with transmutation. And transmutation is something that resonates with me as an artist and as I study and practice to deepen my own spiritual gifts and connection with God and humanity.
I’ve only recently learned of the violet flame’s existence, don’t know a ton about it yet, but had been researching it for a couple weeks before this meditation took place.
As soon as the flame had appeared, I was amazed, happy, and wanted it to stay a while. Then it disappeared. My mind wandered again for a bit, then it calmed back down. I stared at the back of my eyelids. A warmness washed over me. The violet flame appeared again!
This time, after pulsing for a few seconds, it moved. It morphed from a small purple fire dancing in my minds eye to an out-of-body vision of my entire body engulfed in violet flame. I let it go on for several seconds, and then said stop.
It stopped.
I laid there for a minute, knowing it all meant something. It felt special, but also a little freaky. It felt like a big deal.
The violet flame came because I have been praying for release from a negative situation and healing to let go and move on. It means I can discern distortion and can move forward confidently while releasing negativity, fear, and uncertainty and instead put that energy into strength and drive to follow my path and highest purpose.
The violet flame will come back through meditation and I will let it burn as long as it needs to next time.
How Do I Know Meditation is Working?
Just like with prayer, if you’re on the right path, you’ll start feeling good, but you’ll also have a new found information and eventually certainty about which steps you should take next on your path. Even if you don’t see the bigger picture, you’ll start noticing what is right for you and what is not.
Then, you can start taking action toward the right path, which always leads you to your purpose here on Earth.
How has meditation transformed your journey to a purpose-driven life? Tell us in the comments.
Love,
