Meditation music is music performed to aid in the practice of meditation. It can have a specific religious content, but also more recently has been associated with modern composers who use meditation techniques in their process of composition, or who compose such music with no particular religious group as a focus.
vipassana meditation technique | relaxing music cd
One day I found myself in a small country town in Poland, whose name I couldn’t pronounce, totally alone and teaching English as a second language.
This was a new job, new country, new everything. I was fifty-two.
Let me digress a little.
I, like almost all of us had been a busy human ant in this demanding chaotic world. A world largely dominated by Government and big business with the cracks filled with a myriad of smaller more agile organisations, each making the most of each opportunity.
I had worked for small and large multinationals, a few smaller organisations and my life had become one of networking, cutting deals interspersed with meeting after meeting. Some crucial coffee meetings were so important we first held a pre-meeting meeting, the main meeting then a post meeting meeting. I daily consumed green tea by the litre accompanied by blueberry muffins and the ever-smiling coffee shop lady did well from my expense account.
This was Sydney, Australia, in the 90’s and the noughties. Well cut suits, pastel shirts, Italian ties, expensive client lunches and later with a loosened tie, drinks in some expensive bar with your mates to chew the fat and to network some more… and to exchange glances and make ribald remarks about the female mirror images of oneself, the well groomed corporate counterparts in short dark skirts and low cut blouses with ever-so-lovely eyes.
Sound good?
We all seemed to think so at the time. Or, at least, I thought everyone thought so. But it didn’t really feel right to me. Something was lacking. In fact, everything was lacking. Was this what life was meant to be?
What was my problem?
I was on the corporate treadmill, along with my lemming doppelgangers. Noisily spinning our wheels and progressing our careers, buzzing around doing business. Adding value to the world or, if not to the world, adding value to our clients who added value to the world, or maybe not? Another me, an inner me, a deeper me, the submerged me was observing, watching all this activity with increasing concern. My inner me began speaking. Not telling but asking. Asking what was it all about. All my life I had tried to more or less, simply do what was expected of me. I had married because it was expected of me at the time. I had taken the “best” job available because it was expected of me. I behaved as I did because others expected it of me.
I had let others determine my rights and wrongs. Job, wife, children, friends, relatives. I had not acted on an original thought since I was a kid, and maybe not even then.
So my inner me asked me if my present life made for a better existence for me or for anyone. In my job, who really won if I succeeded and got the deal over my competitor? In fact, as I was working for a foreign owned company at the time, I suspected that the more business I won, the worse off economically Australia became. And yes, I could argue the alternate case too. I began to ask myself such questions. It quickly began to dawn on me that my boss cared more about the outcome of my winning any deal than I.
The end result was a new job, new country and the end of fifty-two years of doing what was expected of me, and the start of a time when I decided to do what I felt best for myself and for the world at large. The responsibility was huge. I had become responsible for myself and my own happiness. Wow. For the first time the buck stopped with me. Which way was I to go? What was I to do? It was time to think and choose my own future. How? I had no idea.
(I have skimmed over the fact that I left my wife after 20 plus years of marriage after concluding she loved being married to me because I fulfilled her expectations, but she didn’t love me for me and my sometimes unconventional plans received very short shrift. The relationship was doomed by this realisation. This was a price we both paid.)
Why had I ended up teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in Poland? Well, I was not particularly well off financially and was looking for work that would essentially not eat into my savings and also not be too onerous. One alternative was to become a dance partner on a cruise ship for mature people, but my sense of rhythm was (and still is) severely lacking. I could speak English, so I took the easier road and, after investing $1,000 on an internet-based course, became an ESL teacher. Jobs are easier to get in the old eastern bloc countries and to me Poland was as good a place as any.
It was summer holidays. Two months before teaching would start and I had nothing to do.
Nothing? I had lots to do. I made it an opportunity to take a look at myself, a good honest deep searching look, a real look. I looked harder and longer than I had every looked before. It was difficult, it was hard work to focus, concentrate and commit to exploring individual thoughts for hours. Along the way over the next couple of months I discovered contemplation. Not a quick thought before falling asleep, but hard focussed contemplation. An ancient practice that has largely disappeared from almost everyone’s life. Certainly in the so-called western world it has.
Over these two months, I spoke to almost no one. I ate simply, no TV and no radio, no music, minimal distractions. Focus. I read perhaps half a dozen books on philosophy, I read them again and thought about what they said and why they said it and who said it. I thought. I read the books again. My philosophy books provided some counterpoints and perspectives and several different viewpoints.
It took a while for me to realise that what I was doing was contemplation. I was thinking about internal stuff, long slabs of internal stuff, thinking, thinking. Evolving thoughts, developing meaning and new thoughts.
I had fifty-two years of information in my head that I had only superficially processed. Like most of us, with so much external information clamouring for our attention I had been distracted for fifty-two years. The first two weeks were the biggest struggle. We all know about giving up bad habits, addictions and cold turkey. While not so spectacular, the mental addiction to consuming new trivia is amazingly strong.
So, after two or three weeks struggling with concentration and focus I began to really analyse what I knew and put myself into perspective.
Some people choose a defined religion as their answer, and it can be a good answer I guess, but not for me. A defined religion is accepting someone else’s morality and I was seeking my morality, my direction. I was not going to choose a path determined by someone else, no, my life is my responsibility so my path must be mine alone. I do not want to blame God or the Devil for my actions.
More common ways which we choose today to assess our lives include: buying a self help book with quick to read chapters, watching a PowerPoint presentation by the latest life balance guru, watching a TV program on life matters, or Google it. Are we obsessed with getting the answer as quickly as possible that we want to look it up, do it, see it on TV or search the web and the problem is solved in ten minutes because we have something more important to do? Something more important to do!
Unfortunately yes. That is how we work today. I have rediscovered the ancient approach. The old approach. One adopted by all the truly great minds, including many spiritual leaders. Contemplation. Contemplation alone. Serious contemplation.
We have confused the important with the urgent most of our lives. I was able to break that cycle with contemplation.
Contemplation means to me; think and revise, think and revise – for some weeks or months. This is not a task to be undertaken lightly in spare time. It is serious study requiring a serious commitment. In my case it took at least a couple of weeks to begin to think in a focussed way about non-distracting issues. The mind at first seeks the easy way out of working hard, it would prefer to do a cryptic crossword than to think about the meaning of life.
My contemplation process was simple:
Think for a long time by yourself about life
Note down your thoughts; study what you have written
Revise what is written, revise your thoughts again and again
Read what others have said before you and think about what you have read
Do it again and again until you have some clarity of mind
Don’t stop until you can answer “My purpose in life is…”
Minimise distractions, eat simply and contemplate what you do eat. Think about what your food actually is and where it came from. How it is grown and how it all relates to you and the world. Do not set a deadline, contemplate until you gain clarity. I became a vegetarian along the way and never felt better.
Be alone. No TV, no radio, no newspapers, no entertainment. Just a few books, and pen and paper to capture your thoughts. You must practice looking internally. Bored? Good, channel that boredom into contemplation.
Call it contemplation, call it meditation, call it study but without distractions, without discussion groups, call it what you will but think and think some more. The meaning of life, the rainbow we all search for is within us. So it is no good asking others for your answer. Yes, read and learn from what others have thought before us. But don’t ask your mate Pete down the road what is the answer to your life and you won’t find it on TV or in the beautiful eyes of the girl you ogled over a beer after work.
Spend your time contemplating your own life. Talk with others briefly but that should only be a very small fraction of the time spent. One puffteenth of the time you spend thinking alone.
You will be rewarded.
All our great minds spent huge amounts of time alone, thinking, contemplating. Isaac Newton didn’t suddenly figure out the laws of gravity when an apple fell on his head. What do you think he was doing when the apple dropped, he was thinking, reading his notes in an orchard getting away from others. He was contemplating alone.
Great religious figures, John Paul II, Dalai Lama, Jesus spent time in their own wilderness to contemplate what is the meaning of life.
This is a forgotten practice, an ancient rite. The path to our inner rainbow is contemplation.
No it doesn’t pay the bills. No it doesn’t increase sales next month. No it doesn’t give you muscles. But what it does is provides clarity to enrich your life so you can enrich others by living a better life. And amazingly it has a side effect, it improve your sex life. Sex becomes more meaningful. Interesting.
Contemplation. Weeks of contemplation. How foreign is this? Hugely so.
When your neighbour asks what you are doing for your annual leave, you need to reply, ” I’m going to a retreat in the mountains by myself to think for a few weeks.” Your neighbour will ask what about that ocean resort? What about lying by the pool, cold beer, sexy people walking by, the casino, different restaurants every day, meeting friends in foreign places, comparing tours, drinking stories?
Are they the meaning of life? To eat, drink and be merrier and merrier every holiday? They are lovely distractions but need to be understood for what they are. Frivolities are entertainment purely and simply but not the reason for being and should not be the reason we work so hard in the western corporate world.
Contemplation puts it into perspective.
I thought and thought and thought. I read of Plato’s concept of “good”. I read of ethics and morality and the difference between the two. I looked at the history of philosophy and its evolution. I sought a framework for my life. And found one. I found my own philosophy, my own guidelines to my life.
They are not absolute, they are not written in stone or handed down to me by God, but they have given me a framework on which I can base my life, my decisions, my future. They are now part of me.
I will tell you what I realised over those summer holidays, and how I shifted my understanding of the world, my world and your world. How it gave me more peace and fulfilment than I would ever have thought possible.
But remember these are mine because I created them out of the shifting memories, a sticky morass of fifty years of memories and thoughts and feelings that were inside my head. You can do the same.
No ego (do things for others, not for yourself)
Be nice (do good things)
Be aware (understand the impacts of your actions on others and the world)
I am not perfect and stumble often, but I can return to my guidelines for life and see a way forward confident that I am doing the best I can. I am not so easily confused, I am more certain of my actions. I have a better life by almost any meaningful measure, and I do not include monetary wealth as a meaningful measure.
You too can have a better life. So you can spend time doing what you really believe is important, spend time with those you truly love. You don’t have to work so many hours, you can walk to the shops and spend more time enjoying the sunrises. A better life is there for you. One vehicle to take you there is contemplation. Contemplation gives you your own future.
No, it’s not easy, but it’s worthwhile. What is stopping you? Only excuses. Next year is another year gone.
Cancel your next holiday to Paris. Go to a retreat instead. Preferably one where silence and solitary living is the rule. Contemplate. You will be surprised and grow a stronger and more balanced person for it. I did.
Listening to music while you are meditating – not a good idea. … Anything you do with the thought that you are meditating is meditating. There are many ways to meditate. Personally, I find music to be distracting, but paying attention to sounds in your environment is part of insight meditation.
Types of meditation
Loving-kindness meditation. With the many types of meditation to try, there should be one to suit most individuals. …
Body scan or progressive relaxation. …
Mindfulness meditation. …
Breath awareness meditation. …
Kundalini yoga. …
Zen meditation. …
Transcendental Meditation.
Meditation is a habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. You can use it to increase awareness of yourself and your surroundings. Many people think of it as a way to reduce stress and develop concentration.
Basic meditation music simply provides a way for an individual to go deeper with their meditation by adding a new layer to their experience. … Unlike many other music forms, the binaural beats work with the brain to develop a frequency most associated with relaxation.