Insight On How To Meditate & The Different Levels

Why one should meditate and insight on how to get into it. Come with me on this journey into my past and learn why I started meditating some 24 years ago. Within this track, I also give some insight into techniques I fount to really boost you into overdrive and lift energy and your soul to new heights.

Transcript

Hello beautiful people from around the world.

My name is Doug Bruce Gromins and today we're going to discuss how and why you should meditate.

I'll give you some insights into what got me into meditation and also give you insights into what will help you along the path down this road of meditation.

We'll discuss what meditation is,

The levels of meditation that can be attained and what benefits it will have in your life.

So let's get into it.

Grab a drink and sit back.

This should be a good one.

I forget which yogi said this but it's kind of true in a way.

They asked the yogi how do you meditate and the yogi responded by there is no how.

You just do it.

It's just the opposite of doing so you just meditate.

You just be there.

Be in the moment.

Be in the present moment.

But that's not as easy as it sounds sometimes.

Some people can't just sit there and be in the present moment because their minds are going a thousand miles an hour.

So we'll discuss a little bit how to get out over that and beyond that and then get you to a point where you can sit down.

Now if you're a person that is already pretty calm like if you surf or you skydive or you ride snowboards or you have an outlet that keeps you in touch with existence and keeps you in touch with nature then you may already be able to just sit without any other techniques and be able to meditate.

So first let's start with a little bit of history and insight into why I started meditating.

I mean I'm just a little skater kid.

I grew up skating and I liked martial arts just like every other kid.

So I was pulled to the east in the eastern thought as I studied martial arts.

And back in about I think it was probably about 93,

94 I was studying Aikido in Texas and I had a couple Asian friends.

I was always very friendly to the Asian visitors or Asian people that studied Aikido with me.

And one of my friends' names was Leo.

Before Leo there was another guy,

I can't remember his name,

It's been so long ago,

But he told me stories of monks that could fly from tree to tree and do miraculous miracles and things like that.

And I don't know,

I mean it all sounded kind of far fetched to me,

But Leo was the one that said,

You know,

Hey you might want to try meditating.

Anyway the reason why Leo brought that up to me is because we had a discussion that I was having problems sleeping.

It seemed like as soon as I got married I started having sleeping problems.

And they just kept getting worse and worse and worse.

And then I started to have digestive problems.

And the combined two made life pretty hard at times.

I was going sometimes a whole night without sleep.

Sometimes I'd get 15 minutes worth of sleep and then have to go to work the next day.

That's pretty hard to do.

So my body was deteriorating,

I was feeling very sickly all the time.

At a point came where I was having to walk with a crutch or a cane to support my knees because they hurt so bad.

My body was crying at me,

My body was screaming at me,

Hey Doug,

What the hell is going on up there?

What are you doing to cause this?

After listening to Leo's advice I started meditating.

I also was reading a book called Surfing the Himalayas by Frederick Lentz.

He's passed away now but he wrote two good books,

Snowboarding to Nirvana and Surfing the Himalayas.

And Surfing the Himalayas had a lot of insights into techniques for meditating.

And I used those techniques and they worked pretty well for me.

They definitely helped me out along the path.

I remember before I even started meditating that my body was getting very sickly and frail and I was still young.

I was like 25,

26 years old when all this stuff started happening to me I think.

I was way too young to be walking around with a crutch and I had to figure out something.

I tried everything.

I tried acupuncture,

Acupressure.

I tried Chinese medicine and that stuff was horrible.

It didn't help at all.

But the acupuncture was pretty neat because as I was beginning to meditate and starting off meditating they put like over 100 needles in my body as I was lying there on a table.

And they hooked up electrodes to these needles that were stuck in me.

And every 30 seconds or so it would give me electrical shock in certain parts of my body.

I guess they were trying to realign the energies in my body to help me get over it.

I don't know if it helped but it did take me into the deepest meditation I had ever gone to at that point.

I had to escape from the pain so I went inside.

I closed my eyes and I went inside and found this deep depth of emptiness there that was away from the pain.

So that was really cool.

After that I basically started meditating more and more.

And as I did meditate more and more I became more aware.

It's like I tried prayer.

I prayed and prayed and prayed every day that God would help me with this illness and figure out why I'm dying off so fast.

What's killing me?

What's creating all this stress and this pain that I have to suffer with every day?

But I think prayer basically got me up to the door.

Got me up to God's doorstep.

And meditation opened the door and let me in because what I mean by that is that my awareness allowed me to start figuring out that it was something I was eating and something that I was doing because I started through awareness noticing there was patterns.

And by practicing meditation what would happen to me was some days I could get into meditating really well and other days I couldn't.

So I wrote down a diary of what I ate and drank and everything during those moments and those days where I could sleep and then also on the days where I couldn't.

And I started noticing a pattern.

And I found out corn was a big culprit.

But not just corn.

Corn in every aspect.

Corn starch,

Corn syrup,

Maltodextrin.

There are so many different forms of corn and most of the corn in America is GMO corn.

It's been altered.

It's changed.

It's not natural corn anymore.

And I found out that this corn was causing me to have the sleepless nights.

I mean it's even in your toothpaste.

You think why do they put corn in toothpaste?

But they use it as a sweetener because it has no calories and there's no sugar in it.

So it tastes sweet but yet it's not very good for your body.

So I recommend if you have a toothpaste with corn in it there are some out there that still use saccharin or other products or natural toothpastes that don't have corn in them.

So they're out there and if you're having issues with sleep as well and you don't know what's causing them you may want to do an elimination diet and figure out what is affecting you and affecting your sleep patterns.

But anyway as soon as I cut corn out of my diet and started having a little bit of a normal routine again then I started healing and then I started getting better and then the sleep patterns got better.

So it was awareness that brought about my recovery.

It was this meditation and the love for meditation that brought out my recovery.

So Leo and I kept studying Aikido together.

He was one of my favorite friends to practice with Aikido.

He was a Buddhist and I gave him a CD one time of a new age CD of some really beautiful music and he in turn gave me a book on Tantra.

I didn't know anything about Tantra.

I didn't know anything about what Tantra was but I guess this is basically the second or third spiritual book that I've ever owned.

But it's like it hit home with me.

It hit home and it turned out and resonated with my soul very very easily because I'm a very affectionate loving type of a person.

And here on Insight Timer I've made two recordings talking about Tantra or maybe three recordings on Tantra because I love it so much and it goes deeply to my core that there's a lot more for me to share.

I mean I love talking about yoga and Zen and other insightful ways and means of living but Tantra just hit home.

Tantra was an amazing journey and like I said Tantra basically uses every situation as a form to grow instead of it being a stone blocking the road you use it as a stepping stone.

So you use anger,

You use compassion,

You use lust,

You know every energy that's out there every form of energy that might look like it's blocking the path you use it as a stepping stone to grow from and to get higher and to gain more insight and to gain more awareness and more energy gets raised up into your system.

Okay so enough about the history now let's get into meditation and the levels of meditation.

Alright so I might have mentioned this on another track but let's just go over it again real quick.

Okay so basically there are four levels of meditation.

Okay the first level you can consider the equivalent of carrying a bundle of wood from your house to your to your work or from your work from the store all the way to your house.

Let's just say that right and that's the first level.

The second level is have like a bullet cart or an oxen cart and you load the wood up on the oxen cart.

It's slow but it's better than you carrying the wood yourself.

You can carry more you can carry more quantities of wood so there's benefits to the bullet cart but that's not getting you all the way home as fast as you'd like.

So then there's the motor car right so now you can take your your automobile to the store pick up the wood and then take it home and you know drop it off even faster.

But that's still not the highest point of meditation there's actually one more level and I call that the airplane.

The airplane mode is taking you even faster and takes you up in the air and zoom you're home within seconds and you it seems to be the most efficient and best way and also as the airplane gives you a better perspective when you're looking from up high down on everything you have a different perspective than if you were in the automobile or in the bullet cart or just carrying wood yourself.

So the carrying wood yourself is basically the same thing as transcendental meditation or chanting om repeatedly om om om.

It's the first step.

It's kind of necessary for a lot of people some people like me it's not really because I could just sit and meditate and not have to do this but it does help get you in the right frame of mind.

It's a starting point but it's not meditation.

People think that transcendental meditation is meditation and what it does like I said is it dulls the mind it dulls your senses and makes you sleepy and you'll sleep good that night but but that's not the purpose of meditation.

It's the only only getting your foot in the door it's releasing steam release like a valve on a tea kettle that has a little steam valve in it and you hear it go weee when the water heats up enough but it stops it from you know exploding on you so transcendental meditation has this purpose and that's will get you to through through from carrying wood you know from the store to your house or something like that.

So that's the level number one.

Level number two the bullet cart is when you you you leave the tech the first techniques of the ohms and all that stuff and then you stop and and maybe hold your breath for a second or you can notice moments of no thought just brief moments of no thought and that gets you a little bit farther and a little bit deeper and then the moments grow and the moments grow and the moments grow and your energy rises as this starts happening your energy starts going up and you start feeling blissful because you're giving the mind a break the mind has no tension in it when it's completely still in fact mind doesn't even exist when you're completely still and that's your first glimpses of consciousness and your consciousness without the mind you're like oh wow I can exist without the mind and so those are your first glimpses but basically that's that's the the bullet cart getting you to the next point and then the next point comes the automobile and the automobile point of meditation is like the gaps start growing more and more so you're feeling peaceful you're starting to feel the effects of meditation the effects of the stillness in your life and then all of a sudden you'll have a glimpse of enlightenment you'll have a like like a lightning flash in the dark in the valley and you can see the mountain trail and it can get you so far but it's not all the way you're still not home you still got more to go you got a little bit farther to go so then the last type of meditation is when you can go into meditation right and you use a couple techniques to get you down to the point where you're completely still and no thought and then in that moment you disappear you dissolve the mind stops and in that stopping now this can go on from 15 minutes to 30 minutes to an hour I recommend that you don't do much more than an hour because you can get lost in God's echo but anyway this dissolving into existence is the fine in the airplane it's this when this happens you in a sense will become enlightened if it hasn't happened yet at that point it's called samadhi and that's the deepest level of meditation that's real meditation when you are completely still and you dissolve it into existence where you completely are are gone one of the cool thing is that when this happens you can never look for it and that's one of the key elements of meditation you never meditate for a purpose you never meditate for a reason you just meditate for meditation sake and you forget about it you just just let it all happen to you and be receptive be open be aware and conscious and this samadhi that happens is kind of like a conscious sleep so you're sleeping your body can actually fall asleep sometimes when you're in samadhi but you're conscious and you're there but you're also not there because you're halfway between two worlds this is the samadhi you you there are actually three levels of samadhi but you disappear more and more into each one and as this happens you're really raising a lot of energy up into like the crown chakra up into the throat chakra and the third eye chakra all these all your energy is like really going upwards when you're in samadhi and it's a growth period it takes time none of these things none of the effects of meditation happen immediately some because you're you may be dulled or you may not be sensitive to these things like if you if you take chemicals to relieve your stress and stuff like alcohol or marijuana or things and you use these things these tools to relieve stress with i mean they work on some levels but they don't take you upwards they don't take you past the heart chakra you know towards your towards the center of your being right so the first thing you have to do is is if you have trouble if you're having problems getting into being sitting still you need a release and i've made a couple videos on stress here on insight timer that really talk about those releases and how to really get the stress valve and and safely kind of build off some of the burn off some of that steam i mean you could run in place for 10 minutes just lift your knees up really high run in place for 10 minutes and then sit down and meditate you'll find that you'll meditate a lot better that's just one technique that you can do to get yourself to that point om sitting there and chanting om for a few minutes but don't do it for too long remember this is this is like a using a chanting it's like using a thorn to get another form out of your foot once you get the the the to a point of no no thought no and that silence comes in there you don't leave the other thorn in your foot you remove it you get rid of it you get rid of both thorns and so the foot can heal and as this healing goes on your soul is healing then you can grow then the beautiful things start happening but like i said never look for them never ever ever never look for them because that's that's where you go wrong that's when it destroys the bliss and and if you're looking for bliss there the innocence is gone you have to be innocent pure and receptive in order for meditation to work and for it to help you grow now the benefits of that is that once you get 51% of your energy up until your heart chakra then a jump happens a jump occurs and then when the jump occurs then you live from your center from now on from that point on once that jump occurs because you're jumping from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane and that makes the cross like the christian cross is representation of the horizontal plane meaning time past and future and the present moment right in the middle where the two pieces of wood cross and it's like it's dead center it's a very small minute thing and it's and you make a jump when you're completely centered when you're completely completely in the present moment you make a jump so yeah it's it's it's an incredible beautiful thing to have happen to you and and if you guys get into meditation and and these recordings help you leave a comment in the comment section and let me know and i mean i love to get feedback and to see how things are helping and help how other people are progressing in their lives or if they're having trouble if you're having trouble doing something just let us know let me know leave me a comment and i'll i'll respond to the comment and we'll probably make a recording from your comment i'd also like to give you a couple more insights as to what helped me raise my energy so fast of course being a surfer i would be sitting out in the water watching the waves and i'd be completely still just like meditating you're sitting there watching the waves waiting for the wave to come to you and then you ride it and you ride a wave with your awareness and you stay ahead of your mind and you can actually ride really well that way you use the mind when you have to because the mind's a beautiful tool but in life and critical moments you may have to have your conscious work for you if you ever notice like when people get in an accident like a car accident their minds completely stop but they are completely 100 aware in that moment in that moment almost and it stops them from panicking and it may have saved their life but when you're forced the awareness comes to the forefront all other times you're kind of living where the mind is and controlling the mind is is leading your life from from point a to point b to point c to point d when in reality consciousness can do it and zip you from a to z much faster than your mind ever could and much more efficient because you start to trust your intuition you start to trust existence and that's another thing is that you are cradled by existence and meditating in salt water is beautiful i would sit at the water's edge after i get after i get done surfing with my with my legs just like in a couple inches of water and it grounds you it it makes you feel so like you can get to that moment of no thought much faster and and you actually get into the the higher levels of meditation like i said where you're in the car real fast and then you're in the airplane and and meditating in water is beautiful and if you if you're not near an ocean it's okay you can get a some table salt and get about you know i don't know how not even half a cup of table salt pour it in the in a hot bathtub and meditate with in the bathtub or just sit back and relax don't worry about a posture don't worry about any stressful things just just relax and that's the cool thing about meditation is the more you can relax in your posture the better i know in yoga they and and in martial arts they they use uh force to get you to sit a certain way and and get over the pain so you can sit in a posture and get over the pain but it takes forever to do um now if you if you sit down and and fall asleep while you're meditating then you know a posture will help you to maintain and keep you aware and keep you awake more because you'll catch yourself falling asleep so yeah so postures are are important if you need them but if you're taking a bath you're not going to fall asleep taking a bath if you go into meditation and just the your soul and your aura gets cleansed by the salt in the water and the water grounds you so it's a dual happening and you'll feel very peaceful and very beautiful and and i i would go to a pool and meditate i would go to to um the ocean meditate in the ocean anywhere i could find a body of water where i didn't look too kooky at i would just go and meditate for a few minutes and from someone just far away looking at you you just look like you're sitting there with your eyes closed nobody knows that you're meditating i mean this is a personal journey it's your journey i mean um what others think of it is their their problem so i go much deeper into the inside of tantra in the in the three uh tantra tracks that i've made for insight timer and if you guys get your time to listen to those they're they're pretty cool i'm getting a lot of hits on the third one the third one really opens up and hits home for a lot of people but all three of them are really good they just have different depths and they talk about different aspects of tantra and and what it is and how to get into it and how to benefit from it you'll see with with my talks and with my instructions that a lot of these in these religions kind of intertwine with each other a little bit it's like the the line between them gets a little bit blurry to me they all kind of blend together each each one is working on a different aspect or a different way of looking at meditation or looking at life and you know how to grow from those moments so yeah if y'all get a chance to check out those other tracks i think it's really worth it i guess we'll wrap this one up and maybe we'll make another one on how to meditate and go a little bit deeper and discuss some more techniques and like i said i'd love to do a live meditation too a live active meditation the active meditations are really cool they're they're they're usually between 30 minutes to an hour depending how long we want to set it up for i don't like i said 30 minutes just gets you going into a meditation and and an hour is just long enough you know it's not and and the whole hour you're not just sitting there meditating only the last 15 minutes you're sitting there meditating there are other things we do like i said run in place or we work on breathing we we stand and and and shout and scream and yell and you know let off steam when we need to but all these things these release valves are necessary for a lot of people because a lot of people live in cities nowadays and and they don't have means to continuous stress relief like us people that live on the island like i said all of us who live on the island we have a saying that's called you live on island time so like when i work in houston it's an hour and a half drive to get to work and luckily i stay centered and i feel like i don't become a part of the rat race i mean i'm living amongst the rats but i don't have to be in the race so i mean i'm in my own little world uh i'm not the guy driving slow on the shoulder either i'm you know i'm i'm you know just just existing in in in and amongst all these people but it doesn't affect me the way it does others because i'm centered um my awareness is keen and i have compassion and compassion for the guy in front of me cat you know if the guy behind me is in a real hurry then let's just get out of the way and let him go around us it's no big deal we're not in that big of a hurry because we're like i said we're on island time and when i get back to the island everything that happened on on the mainland stays in the mainland uh and then of course the same goes for when we go surfing you know everything that happens on land stays on land and when you're in the water it's just pure zen it's just pure essence of of meditation and and uh awareness and uh beauty and and love and all the great things that happen um while you're surfing anyway i think we've talked enough uh thank you for joining me guys and girls uh like i said leave me a comment leave me a rating that'd be great if you guys left a donation i love that too anyway um much much love and namaste and aloha to all my friends and all my surfing buddies and to everybody around the world that's listening thank you very much once again take care of yourselves

Reviews

Very interesting! Looking forward to listening to more! Thank you!