Guided Meditation Exercises

Meditation does not have to be a solitary activity. Guided meditation exercises are a common form of meditation. For centuries, monks and priests have led groups to meditate on particular words and phrases from their holy books. The meditation leader speaks slowly, with many pauses, and suggests simple ideas for the listeners to focus on.

This form of meditation contemplation can be very powerful. The meditation leader often goes into trance and speaks aloud from within trance. Some historical saint's meditations are famous. These have been used with identical wording by thousands, perhaps millions of people.

Other guided meditations change every time they are used. The meditation leader simply says whatever pops into mind. These can be very sparse, or they can be filled with images and metaphors and emotional words.

The guided meditation exercises here give a sample of the sort of thing that you can do either on your own, or to use if you are becoming a meditation leader yourself. Most are very short. These have parts that are intended to be repeated over and over, very similar to affirmations. In fact, you can use Positive Affirmations as a source of personal contemplation.

Meditation on Words

Words are strange.
They have no meaning except what you give them.
There is no particular reason why thunder should be the series of sounds we have all agreed to say to represent the sound that clouds sometimes make.

You can prove that words have no meaning quite easily. All you have to do is to repeat a word, any word, over and over.
It will quickly cease to have any meaning at all
It will seem totally strange to you.
This is the basis of mantra meditation. By repeating a word or phrase you eventually dissociate from it, the word and its meaning separate, and your mind then drifts off into trance.

Another interesting experiment to do is to try to find out what a word means to you personally, your own personal sense of it. Take an abstract word, not something definite like the word kangaroo, but something you cannot picture directly. A word such as 'towards' or 'together'' or 'apply' or something else abstract.

Even the word 'abstract' itself. Meditate on that word. A word like abstract might immediately bring up an image of some crazy modern painting. But you can continue to meditate on the word, and eventually you will find that you get other images and feelings that have to do with that word.

It is quite an interesting process, watching your own mind at work. There will be some words that do not produce an immediate image, such as 'towards'. In that case meditate on your word, keep focusing on the word, and at some point you will get an image, and it will probably be something from your early childhood.

Because these are words that could not be shown to you in a picture, they had to be demonstrated indirectly in some way, and it probably took many attempts before you understood what it meant. And most likely, what you get from your mind will be a memory of someone or something acting out your word.

So you never need to be bored again when you are waiting in the departure lounge.