Spirit Online: Meditation: Creating Your Own Meditation

Consider your favorite place, or somewhere you'd like to be that has a lot to interest you and would keep your mind busy. Make sure you are comfortable, and take a few deep breaths. Take yourself to that place. Imagine all the things you would see and respond to them just as if it were real life, meet people and create scenarios. Rather than having an unorganized array of disconnected thoughts, you can concentrate on the scene. As you get deeper into the meditation you will find the scenery and schemes simplifying until you are basically "gone" with the meditation. You can even make a tape recording to guide you on a meditation journey. One can also use this method to go somewhere to find an answer- this would again require personal devising.

Another more difficult method is to choose one image and focus on that. I find this hard as I am always straying around from thought to thought. But if you find an image that interests you, keep your "sight" on that and nothing else. (This is more for the visual person, you can do the exact same thing with music or a feeling... this is the reason petting an animal for a long time can be relaxing, and listening to certain music can put a person in a trance.) The native americans did this with the monotonous sound of drumming. You could use a mellow instrumental piece and just focus on each note, going from one note to the next. Remember that monotony, if you can stand it, is like instant meditation. (If you have ever done the "counting sheep" thing to get to sleep, you know what I mean.)

The final method of meditation (which I am adding now, but did not include in the response) is to choose a calm, monotonous experience to visualize. That doesn't make much sense, so here is an example. A long, winding river on a warm summer day is serene and continual. Imagine drifting freely like a leaf down the river. It is relaxing and unchanging. Imagine how it would feel, and nothing else. You could also use driving down a long deserted road, coasting down an unending slope on a sled, or walking down the path in a forest with plain, simple scenery (just trees, trees, and more trees). Similar to the previous meditation, the monotony is what makes this work. Just make sure to choose an "activity" which you are familiar with, enjoy, and can identify with.

Know that the mind is constantly bombarded with thoughts, it's not anything one can really help. Meditation essentially is focusing those thoughts on one point until you reach another state