The ultimate purpose of meditation practice is to discover your innate goodness, which is the beautiful quality of your own mind, encompassing awareness, love, compassion, and wisdom. This fundamental light is the background from which all thoughts and emotions manifest.
Do not try to get out of, fight with, or do anything with panic or strong emotions; instead, the key point is to simply be with awareness. This allows you to connect with a deeper sense of contentment and joy that exists beyond fear and anxiety.
Understand that awareness is your fundamental nature, always present within you, even during panic or sleep. The practice helps you recognize this inherent quality, much like recognizing a watch you’ve always worn.
Connect with awareness through a systematic, step-by-step practice, as it’s not easy to perceive directly at first. This gradual approach allows your mind to become more pliable and workable over time, like building physical fitness.
As a first step, choose a simple meditation support like listening to sound, focusing on your breath, or mental recitation of a word or mantra. This helps you connect with awareness through an object, serving as a mental exercise.
Progress to the second step by expanding your meditation practice to everyday life, using any situation or problem as a support for awareness. This means you can meditate with anything, anywhere, and at any time.
When working with strong emotions like panic, follow a four-step approach: first, be aware; second, if overwhelmed, try something different like a smaller emotion or returning to sound/breath; third, step back by observing your aversion to the emotion; and fourth, take a break if too exhausted.
Cultivate wisdom by deconstructing strong emotions, like panic, into their constituent pieces such as sensations, images, voices, and underlying beliefs. By seeing these components as changing and interdependent, the emotion loses its solid meaning and power.
Understand that aversion (trying to get rid of something) and craving (trying to hold onto something) are core causes of suffering. Letting go of these reactions allows emotions to liberate automatically, revealing wisdom, love, and compassion.
Allow difficult emotions like panic, depression, or stress to be present without fighting them, as this act is a true form of self-kindness, self-love, and self-compassion. This approach helps diminish the emotion’s power.
Learn to practice “non-meditation,” which involves ceasing all striving and simply being with your mind as it is, allowing clarity and presence to naturally reveal themselves. This is the best meditation once you’ve learned how to meditate.
Reframe any suffering, including anxiety and panic, as a motivation for practice and a teacher that helps you discover awareness, love, compassion, and wisdom. This perspective allows difficult experiences to become your friend.
When practicing sound meditation, relax your body and simply listen with your ear and mind together, allowing sounds to come to you without strong focus or trying to stop thoughts. The key is to remember you are still hearing, even if thoughts arise.
Recognize that awareness itself requires no effort; it is happening without your conscious doing. You can use a mental reminder like “effortless” to bring yourself back to this understanding during practice.
View meditation as a mental exercise, similar to physical training, where consistency is more important than intensity. At first, you may only sustain awareness for short periods, but with regular practice, it becomes longer, clearer, and more effortless.
Commit to a regular, daily meditation practice, even if it’s just for five minutes, for at least one to two months when starting. Consistency is crucial for building mental fitness and making awareness more salient.
When starting to apply meditation to your problems in daily life, if a major affliction like panic is overwhelming, begin by working with a smaller, less intense emotion like past anger as a stepping stone. This prevents being overwhelmed and builds confidence.
Practice observing emotions as if you are “seeing the river” from the bank, rather than “falling in the river” and being carried away. This means you are out of the emotion, even if it’s still present, allowing awareness to be greater than the emotion.
If you find yourself fighting with an emotion or pretending to welcome it while secretly wanting it to leave, shift your awareness to that feeling of fighting or aversion itself. This “inner recycling” turns the secondary reaction into a support for meditation.
Do not feel guilty about taking a break from meditation if you are too tired or exhausted; it’s a valid part of the practice. Resting, drinking coffee, exercising, or even sleeping can be beneficial, much like resting during a mountain hike.
Before practicing, cultivate a clear “view” or understanding of what awareness is, its function, benefits, and how to practice it. Having this conceptual framework helps guide your experiential practice and connect with your core being.
Being honest and open about your nervousness or anxiety, even if you are an expert, can be incredibly impactful and relatable for others. This shared vulnerability can help alleviate others’ fears.
If you find yourself struggling with an emotion, even a “fake welcome” or insincere attempt to accept it can be helpful. This initial step, though not fully genuine, can still create a beneficial shift in your experience.
Recognize that these profound insights often need to be heard and revisited repeatedly, as they cut against the grain of human nature and modern life. Each reminder offers a deeper level of learning and discovery.