Tag Archives: guided meditation

Ways to Interiorize Attention Revisited

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By George A. Boyd ©2021

Q: I have gone to Vipassana retreats and experienced deepening insight into my mind, but when I came back from the retreat, I have found it difficult to meditate. Is there some way to go within without the need to completely withdraw from daily life?

A: Absolutely. Your challenge is to find a method that enables you to collect your attention and move it inward along the thread of consciousness. However, what might work for one person to achieve this might not work for you. For this reason, we recommend that you learn a variety of ways to interiorize your attention, and utilize the ones that allow you go within.

Some of the methods that allow you to move your attention within include:

  1. Tratakam, using your intention to move your attention to discrete focal points along the thread of consciousness
  2. Absorption of your attention into inner pranic (life force) or sensory currents—breath, inner sight, and inner sound
  3. Using visual metaphors for deeper levels of your mind, focusing your attention, for example, on steps of a ladder, floors of an elevator, chakras in an inner body of light, centers in an array—like the Sephiroth of the Kabala—or layers of a mandala
  4. Paying attention to your experience in the present time at some level of the mind until you break through into a higher state of consciousness
  5. Use of the Han Sa mantra to collect attention and absorb your attention into the focal points along the thread of consciousness
  6. Praying to God, asking the Divine to guide your attention into higher states of consciousness; this may also take the form of repeating the name(s) of God as a mantra or chanting
  7. Guided meditations, following the suggestion of your meditation teacher to travel within; becoming absorbed in the beam of attunement from a disciple or Initiate and traveling on that current of attunement to the inner worlds of Light

We teach types (4) and (5) in our beginning meditation course, the Introduction to Meditation program. We teach types (2), (3), (4), (5), and (6)—and you do have the initial experience of doing guided meditations (7)—in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We train you in type (1) and you have multiple experiences of ever-deepening guided meditations (7) in our advanced class, the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Whether you learn these methods from us or learn them elsewhere, we encourage you to acquire proficiency in a variety of meditation methods to enable you to rapidly interiorize your attention and advance to the level where you can begin to perform inner work—to resolve your life issues; to tap into your Soul’s intuition, abilities, and unconditional love and compassion; and to transform your spiritual evolutionary potentials.

Mistakes Meditators Make

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By George A. Boyd ©2018

I have taught Integral meditation since 1983, and have published 16 books on this topic. I have observed the following mistakes meditators make:

  1. Meditating without a clear objective – if you meditate in this fashion, you will simply slip into a state of reverie. While this is relaxing, it effectively wastes your time. Every meditation needs to be done with a purpose.
  2. Not going beyond preliminary stages of meditation – while many people can reach the stage of mindfulness and begin to become aware of what they are experiencing in the present moment, this is only the first layer of meditation—the Conscious mind. Meditators need to reach the Superconscious mind to do the deepest work of meditation.
  3. Jumping ahead to practices that are not keyed to your current stage of spiritual development – This all too common blunder has people meditate on a spiritual essence other that your own Soul. If meditators practice powerful transformation techniques along with contemplating this higher essence, it can liberate powerful energies in the mind, and create dangerous splits in identity and perception. You can lose your motivation to pursue your personal goals; you can begin to sense that the world and your life are unreal; you can begin to hear visions and voices that tell you to do odd things.
  4. Get involved in a spiritual cult – While there are many reputable schools of meditation, there are a number of groups that, in exchange for teaching your meditation, expect you to let the leader of this group  completely reprogram and control your mind and your life, and have you dedicate all of your labor and money to him or her. I would strongly advise that those seeking meditation instruction have some knowledge of the dynamics of cults and if you start getting warning signs, get the heck out of there![We have articles about cults in our Library, and those of you who may like to understand this subject more deeply may benefit from reading our book, Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing?.]
  5. Having only one technique – If you call a handyman to your house, he won’t show up without a whole toolbox. Many schools of meditation teach just one technique. It’s important that you have a whole tool box of methods to use to work on the issues of your personality, to lift your awareness into your Soul, to transform your Soul, to get guidance from your Soul’s intuition.
  6. Remaining in an altered state of consciousness – Some schools of meditation that cultivate the experience of enlightenment encourage their students to remain fixed in this altered state of consciousness 24/7. This is not a good idea. You can become narcissistic, believing that the whole Creation revolves around your needs. You can become arrogant and grandiose, believing you are a superior all-knowing god-like being. You can become delusional, believing you are a Christ-like being, and expecting everyone to recognize how enlightened you are.
  7. Not understanding the context or big picture of why you are meditating – It is important to have a long term goal of what you are seeking to achieve in meditation and have the appropriate techniques to help you achieve this. Many meditators get excited when someone does a “guided meditation” and takes them somewhere, but they no clarity about what is the purpose of meditation and how they truly actualize their spiritual potentials. The objective is not to take visionary journeys into the higher mind; the objective is that your Soul will accomplish the Great Work that it was destined to do.

We have developed our Integral meditation system to help you avoid these common meditation mistakes. Those of you who wish to learn a complete system of spiritual development that steers you away from these spiritual detours, you may wish to investigate our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and they by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.