I Should Be Meditating

The FREE 8 Day Group Meditation Challenge is Starting Now! Come join us for a FREE group challenge experience, share inspiration and turn the corner in your meditation to live in a state of presence and peace. Invite your friends to come along too, just email them this link: See you in there I hope! Alan The post Join the FREE Meditation Group appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

There is a sweet feeling inside, the feeling of being alive, which everyone can contact. We can get better at that as we practice, but it all comes down to a simple choice, an act of choosing what we know is right. And we can practice that too. We can strengthen the recognition that we have an interior choice, where we can supply our attention to what is right in us rather than what we think is wrong in us. If you are looking for a way to cut through the clutter of the mind and find a way to rest attention naturally and easily in the heart feeling, click here to see if the way of Meditation Forest is the right thing for you. The post Mindful Choice Guided Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Sometimes indecision stops us in our tracks. This simple guided meditation goes directly into that, to enhance your sense of power and ability to follow your heart, right at the micro-level of where indecisiveness arises. After each long thought phases passes, a moment of potential arises and in that moment you do what you intuitively feel is right. Then repeat the process. It’s that simple. To practice trusting yourself, practice trusting yourself! The post Trusting Your Intuition to Meditate appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

How can we feel present in our life, and stay that way? In this talk we explore what it means to be mindful beyond trying to remember to “pay attention.” Typically, we’ll “remember” to be present for something when it is just about to end, whether it’s a meditation or even at the end of life. The trick is to remember in the middle! Let’s look into how it really works: a practice of mindfulness is setting up the moments of awakening to happen on their own more and more. It’s not about exerting force or pressure to ‘be present.’ Rather, it’s being wise about how to set things up in a way that brings attention home, while also recognizing the truth that you are always here. The post Being Present Before Things End appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Using the flavor of appreciation in your attention makes for a wonderful experience where you are grateful for meditation and grateful for life. The post Appreciating Breath and Presence appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided meditation is a pointing and a training in shifting to the heart of meditation, the source that keeps it going and alive and growing. For just a few moments here and there when the opportunity strikes cast aside all concerns for only just a moment no obligation for more and throw the power of your belief and care your love with wild abandon into your simple presence beyond all that and always here. The post Your Instant Shift to the Heart of Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Does your Meditation practice get stale? Does it still grow and grow in depth? Should you just accept plateaus? No, don’t fall for that. This talk is about real change, and what is the one thing that you MUST have in your meditation for it to keep flourishing. It wont last long, meditating like a robot or relating to yourself like a machine or a brain to hack– these aren’t pointing to this most important power in your meditation which comes from your organic nature as Being. The post How to Get to the Next Level in Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

In this meditation we bring our attention to ‘being present.’ without assuming what that is. What does it really feel like to be present now? What is it like when we recognize our presence, and attention is close to us, not dispersed and feeling like it is far? We observe what that state is like; we focus on registering the moment. In doing so we build up a connection with that. Then it can become a force in our lives, one we don’t have to work to maintain all the time. So, let’s take a moment to sense our presence and soak in the goodness it brings into our lives, and help make that connection stronger bit by bit. The post Soaking In What It Is To Realize appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

In this meditative talk we look closer into how meditation provides us with the tools to recognize that there are different channels – so to speak – that we can tune in to. Through an exercise of self-inquiry we sense that many things are going on at once in our bodies and minds. But through silent contemplation we learn to tune in to a deeper, more interior sensing, a kind of energy from which all else arises. So, let’s practice sitting down and caring about what’s here, what’s you, what’s now. The post The Inner Channel and Caring about Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Inject power of intention into your meditation. Intention is a temporary state where we have a feeling like we can choose. In this guided meditation we repeatedly exercise the ability to insert intention into the mix of meditation at the moments that it is possible, working with the breath and the moments when we have emerged from long thought dreams. The post Inserting Intention into the Mix of Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

The third part of the talk series on Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. In this conversation we delve into how our state of being present relates to arising negative or violent feelings and reactions. We ask what is our behavior like when we are in our being? In answering this we look into how we relate to life when we are truly present. How we become entangled with our ideas of who we are and how we’ve learned to differentiate between right and wrong (something I call the trial of you). As we search deeper, we realize that we become more aware (and unease) with possible negative feelings, and our sensitivity increases. Listen on to learn more about what keeps us from harming others. The post Talk on Ekhart Tolle Power of Now – Part 3: What Keeps Us From Harming Others appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

The second installment of a series of talks on Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Alan Klima discusses questions sent by listeners regarding Eckhart Tolle’s book. Join in for an interesting discussion reflecting on trust. What does it mean to find the right balance between everyday life and what we are truly seeking for? What do we need to fix right now to make a good life possible? The post Talk on Ekhart Tolle Power of Now – Part 2 appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Part one of a series, listeners submit questions and Alan takes up some of the top things that come to mind when reading this book. The talk delves into questions like what relation our past history has to who and what we are as being, and whether or not it is necessary to suffer first in order to be free, and other issues that come to mind which all help clarify what it really means to be by looking inwardly and questioning our sense of who and what we are. The post Talk on Ekhart Tolle The Power of Now appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

In this mindfulness meditation session learn to notice thoughts and mental activity while developing your awareness for intentionally being present. Going from the tensions in the body and hectic mind activity to subtly playing with your inner mental attitude. Sometimes we call it the wandering mind, but there really only is wondering and then it ends. Through meditation you will notice the stream of thoughts but then intentionally turn to mindfulness presence. Practicing this meditation will open the doors to that experience of simply being with your self. The post Meditation on After Thought appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Relax into this mindful body scan and start developing skills to make the experience of the body joyful and interesting to play with. We move our attention through every inch of our body kindly noticing and becoming aware of what is already there. It is a simple technique to get in touch with bodily sensations and cultivate a real sense of pleasure in the body. A meditation skill that can be used anywhere and at any time to simply look inside the body and ‘feel what it feels’ with kind and mindful attention. The post Pleasant Body appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Have you ever wanted to quiet your thoughts? To be able to silence all distractions, negative thinking, or simply noise in your head? This talk on mindfulness meditation as well as a meditation practice helps you develop a technique to begin to distance yourself from thoughts, but more importantly to distinguish between different forms of thought that arise constantly. By recognizing them as distinct forms of thought we can also learn to break free from them. We’re never not thinking, but thinking can become part of our meditation. Through this practice you will develop a sense of realization and acknowledgement of thoughts. It’s not about trying to stop thinking but rather to practice meditation with all the thoughts that arise. The post Training with Two Kinds of Thoughts appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Recognize the quality of attention, how experiencing the breath shifts and changes things so easily around. Release into the sensation of breath and allow thoughts, feelings, and tensions to be present while the breath becomes the center of attention. Explore the body through the breath and notice how much can be observed by simply focusing on the abdominal breath and appreciating the restful feeling that is already there. The post 59: Release into the Abdominal Breath appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

A talk and a meditation. A contemplation of life. Use this training to get acquainted with and understand in your bones two meditation skills that are most important to finding a natural way to practice meditation, not forced, not pressured. Our ability to enjoy life is to accept that all is temporary and we can only embrace what we have now, here, in this moment; really embrace that. And in meditation we can also add into this the skill of watching over the continuity and sustaining the presence. These two are not just meditation skills; they are life skills for appreciating life and in this process learning what joy and beauty really are. The post Talk 9: Two Great Skills in Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

It’s great to train the attention to be fast and agile and play a kind of game to see how fast you can bring the attention home, or how fast you can hop off the train of the thought. It’s a great training skill with some profound effects in your everyday life, where things happen fast! The post Quickfire Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

What is it like to be present? In this guided meditation practice of looking inwardly, you return to that sense of presence to find another way of feeling, another way of being. Dwelling in presence, recognizing it, checking it out. Understanding the delicate task of looking inwardly, of just being. It is there that freedom from all trouble lies. Letting go of instability, choosing not to have any trouble with anything, choosing freedom. The post 58: Dwelling in Presence appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

[Podcast] Life is constantly in flux, often presenting changing situations you need to adapt to. This guided meditation is a practice in two (or maybe three) techniques for training to become flexible, adaptable. Understanding that peace of mind can already happen. Here. Now. By practicing mindful meditation we become well rounded and ready for anything. Join in! The post 57: Guided Training in Two Meditation Skills appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

In this whole world that is your life there are thoughts and busyness, emotions and sensations, but there’s also something else here. Something that is always present. This guided meditation points towards that awareness of life, living as you, and here all along. A meditation to recognize this and be present. The post 56: Awareness of both Thoughts and Presence appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

The pure pleasure of hanging out with yourself! Find the most direct way to enjoy the inwardness that meditating on a regular basis provides. Through this guided lesson you will get closer to that inner refuge that is within us. A simple way to connect yourself with what is already there and bask in the joy of being present. The post 55: Hanging out with Yourself appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Thoughts and worries can seem to distract you. By practicing this simple exercise you are reminded of the power of feeling your breath. Staying with the breath allows your inner mental attitude to brighten. Appreciating your presence. Being at home in your body and mind. The post 54: Appreciating Presence appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

When we think about life we often make judgements about it, have ideas of how it is, or how it should be. In this guided meditation we commit to life as it already is. Through this practice we move from what our idea of being present is, to simply being present. This easy to practice meditation can be applied to our everyday life. We open up to life as it already is, to us as we already are. The post Meditation on Loyalty to Life appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Use this guided meditation to connect with the breath in all kinds of ways you haven’t tried before. Playing with the Breath hones our skills in relating to what feelings and emotions arise in our experience later. Practice now to get ready for when you’ll need calm presence and a calming breath. The post Relax with the Breath All Over the Body appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

There is a powerful breathing technique for facing hard times, but you must practice it now if you want to use it later. It’s not always a good idea to try and zap your problems with meditation while they are happening. Instead prepare for them by practicing mindfulness of the pleasant breath so that you have that infused into your being before the hard times come. The post Pleasant Breath Now For Hard Times Later appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

How should one breathe for panic attacks and how to breathe for regular worry? Panic Attacks and every day worry have some things in common, but also a big difference. We can learn a lot from panic attacks, whether we have them or not, because they point us in the direction of the right attitude in meditation. The post Panic Attacks, Anxiety, and Breathing Meditation: Talk 17 appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This classic formula for cultivating compassion is an excellent way to bring us back to the fact that mindfulness attention is a kind attention. It is also a great meditation to use at bedtime to sleep great!! Mindfulness is not a neutral or clinical or objective attention. This guided meditation takes us through several layers of wishing well for ourselves and others. This traditional method of cultivating “metta” is a bit of genius. Using an inner voice, you put voice to a strategically chosen series of well wishing that both taps into established wells of love and spreads the good intentions liberally and indiscriminately, starting from one’s own sense of self and eventually extending to all beings everywhere. While there may be areas at any point that are conflicted and mixed, that too is part of the work that this meditation does. Some may have mixed feelings about extending good wishes to certain people close to them, or maybe even to themselves. That’s all part of the mix and perfectly fine, as this practice winds itself through you. A couple tips: don’t worry if you don’t mean it every time (remember its all part of it!) and if one can semi-believe that these good wishes actually could have a effect, that heightens it (but is not necessary). Have a great time! The post 53: Guided Compassion Meditation Formula appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This classic formula for cultivating compassion is an excellent way to bring us back to the fact that mindfulness attention is a kind attention. It is also a great meditation to use at bedtime to sleep great!! Mindfulness is not a neutral or clinical or objective attention. This guided meditation takes us through several layers of wishing well for ourselves and others. This traditional method of cultivating “metta” is a bit of genius. Using an inner voice, you put voice to a strategically chosen series of well wishing that both taps into established wells of love and spreads the good intentions liberally and indiscriminately, starting from one’s own sense of self and eventually extending to all beings everywhere. While there may be areas at any point that are conflicted and mixed, that too is part of the work that this meditation does. Some may have mixed feelings about extending good wishes to certain people close to them, or maybe even to themselves. That’s all part of the mix and perfectly fine, as this practice winds itself through you. A couple tips: don’t worry if you don’t mean it every time (remember its all part of it!) and if one can semi-believe that these good wishes actually could have a effect, that heightens it (but is not necessary). Have a great time! The post 53: Guided Compassion Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided meditation is very simple and short, giving you the space and pause to do nothing but remain as you are. Simply being is a refreshing, restful pause that brings us back to ourselves, from one point of view, but really dispels a whole lot of extra stuff that when gone reveals what we already and always were. The post 52: Being Simply As You Are appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Meditation is about more than Self-Improvement. That is only its possible side-effect. If we bend meditation to our will and make it serve us, the only definite side-effect is frustration. At some point the meditator will have to make the switch over to something bigger than their sense of “Selfyness” and to a longing for freedom that has been driving their interest in meditation all along. The post Talk 16: Surrender or Self-Improvement? appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

In this guided meditation on the breath the emphasis is on receptivity, sensitivity, and opening. By offering up the breath sensations to the world to which they belong, we also cultivate an attitude of allowing everything to be as it is. The post 50: Surrender to the Breath appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

If you play with the edge between conscious deliberate attention and open awareness, your meditation in enhanced so that you can quickly find yourself in a state of ease. The post 49: Playing with Being and Breathing appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This breath meditation explores the difference between when we consciously, deliberately feel the breath, and when we let it go and allow it to appear by itself. These two flavors of attention are great to recognize, and are easier to recognize by contrast. This meditation will make this clear on an experiential level and give you an attention tool so that you can adjust your meditating to changing circumstances. The post 48: Breathing with Intention, and Not appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

A connection with the inner mental attitude is made, and then sustained, with this guided meditation that makes a sense of the inner mental attitude vivid and clear, and then helps you to maintain and sustain it. This is a great way to remain present, close and intimate with your home in this body and mind, and to extend your stay so that it becomes very clear to you what it is. The post 47: Connecting the Breath with the Inner Mental Attitude appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided meditation begins with a 3 step settling process and then explores feelings of exchanging the breath between the interior feeling of alive presence, and the greater world beyond the body, surrounding the body. It contains a balance and exchange between active enjoyment of the breath and surrender to whole world and universe in which the breath takes place. The post 46: Exploring the Breath from the Inside and Out appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Whenever possible, it is very powerful to recognize and confirm our effortless and fundamental right-ness. Some meditators have yet to catch a whiff of this, while all of us can vary in how easily it comes forward to our attention. This guided exploration moves through different levels of relaxing into presence. Each level is important for everyone to work with, so it doesn’t matter if you have or have not caught a whiff of this fundamental okay-ness. It’s all good work and you can trust that soon you will catch a whiff, or more, and we all can benefit from working on all fronts whenever those come forward as what we need attent to. The post 45: Three Levels to Relax into Presence appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided meditation training is a great introduction to a basic tool in the mindfulness toolkit. It pinpoints a three step process which you can use repeatedly to bring you to focus. Train this a few times with this audio and it will stick with you as you go forward. And hint: it is great training preparation for meditation #45, coming soon. The post 44: Three Steps to Focus in on Your Presence appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Season 2 is Back with a Point that Cuts Straight at one of the Biggest Obstacles stopping us from getting what we want in meditation. It is a belief, a thought lodged in the mind, and if we just get past it a whole new world opens up for us, whether what we want is better focus, to be more productive, to be more present for our relationships or a spiritual goal, like enlightenment– it is the same thought blocking us. And unblocking it is one of the main purposes of the ISBM podcast, so it’s a fitting talk for the start of Season 2. The post Talk 15: It is Way Easier Than You Think appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided contemplation points to something essential that every meditator must see and understand if they are to go beyond worry over wandering mind. There are many ways to deal with wandering thoughts, but the most important and most powerful is to see the knowing that is beyond wandering or not-wandering. Recognize this and your life will change. Recognize it more and more, and your life will change more and more. The post 43: Meditation for Seeing Beyond a Wandering Mind appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

What does “Life is an Illusion Mean” and what does it have to do with your electricity bill? I mean, you have your real life, while there are many spiritual statements that seem to indicate there is an ultimate reality and it is different than what we see as real and true now. In this talk, I want to show what the source of the confusion is here and how each and every one of us can get a clear sense, from our own direct experience, of what can be meant by such things as “moving from the unreal to the real” in meditation. The post Talk 14: Reality and Illusion in Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Making the body more accessible to us gives us a base point with which we can get perspective on excessive thinking, explore our emotions, and get communication from our body that leads us in beneficial directions. The body scan opens these lines of communication! Use it early and often. The post 42: Quick Body Scan Guided Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

The huge question of how to balance our striving in meditation practice opens a whole lot of possible things to say. In this talk however one very important point is made that before trying to work all that out, it is crucial to fully explore and surrender to single moments of allowing everything to just happen. And these moments should be kept separate from any plan, including how good it would be to do this! Including how to sustain it in time, how to stay with it, or how it relates to everyday life. Keep these special moments separate from all plans as much as possible. Then, we will be more open to the important two aspects of the rest of the question. 1. We have a planning and orienting energy, and it’s there for a reason, and it can and should be used in some measure to go about our life, if it is arising for us. But we get out of balance when that energy captures our attention. 2. We don’t have to figure out that balance by ourselves, life itself will show it to us and life itself will move us down the proper course. If we are open to it that may happen easier. But if we are not open, life will bite us until we get what it is telling us. The post Talk 13: Balance Striving and Being appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided meditation starts with a soothing breath to feel your way into the core of the breath-body and from your alive, sensitive presence, and then guides you to remain there, to enjoy your being now and to more easily return to it in the midst of busy life. The post 40: Feel Your Way into Your Being appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

There is a natural joy always here. Where is it? This question is an important one that requires radical honesty to answer, yet it is otherwise simple and natural to get into contact with this fount of aliveness. The post Talk 11: Feel the Natural Joy appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

Without having to do very much at all, simply being as you are is a very powerful meditation that uses our intention and attention in just about the most skillful way possible, which is to say, in the slightest, easiest, and simplest way. Practice this guided meditation and then apply it in your life to every stolen moment. Soon you will understand meditation very well. The post 38: Simply Being Short Meditation appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

The real Quiet is not the physical quiet of sounds, nor is it even a quiet from thoughts or a quiet mind. What is it and how can we recognize it? This can be a sticky point for meditators, but this sticky point cannot overpower the quiet itself, a silence greater than sound or thought and which makes everything about a meditation practice work better, even if our main goal happens to be having a quiet mind and body. The post Talk 10: The Quiet appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

This guided tour through the body sensitizes you to all the flavors of feeling in the body, and brings you to the vivid enjoyment of subtle breath sensations interacting with whole body sensations. This is a profoundly accessible and healing meditation that leads us toward the shift into a mindful life. The post 36: The Vivid Body Scan appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.

The tensions between meditation and our natural state are explored through great questions about restlessness, how to begin a practice, and what the “inner mental attitude” is all about . This is the straight raw recording of our live online video stream with call-in questions. You can join the next one! The post Live Call-in Show! Sept. 10, 2014 appeared first on I Should Be Meditating.