Meditation For Beginners: A 22 Day How To Meditate Course

Review - Mark Barnes An excellent way to begin meditation. I love how Lovic breaks down the Buddhist way of meditating into something practical that anyone can do. If you have stayed away from meditation because you picture sitting in a painful lotus position saying "aom" for hours on end, read this book, and you'll learn that mediation can be something entirely different. I always believed I could never meditate because of preconceived notions of what it is, which I learned are completely off the mark. Review - M. Odom I've read and continue to read and take courses on meditation and mindfulness. All of them are fascinating and provide enormous insight regarding this life-changing subject. But in this simple book you actually learn what to do. Nowhere else that I've seen will you find such a concise set of instructions (there aren't many). Without this book, I would have assumed I just don't get it and quit. Probably in the first week or so. Thanks Vern Lovic. And to the guy who said there's not much to it: That's the whole point! I learned much more from Jon Kabat-Zinn and others, but not how to meditate. And perhaps Lovic is right, maybe you don't need to know anything else. Meditation is a very popular exercise, and it is no wonder with the amount of stress most of us have on a daily basis. I was going through the same thing when I took up meditating while working hard in a sales career. I had been exercising regularly, and that helped to some degree, but I thought I should treat my mind to something special. I began reading about Buddhist meditation, Transcendental meditation, and other styles.Eventually I settled on the idea of Buddhist meditation. I liked the Buddhist precepts, and though I wasn't looking to join a religion, it seemed that meditation was inseparable from the physical act of sitting down and focusing on the breath because all of the instructions were geared toward Buddhists.Then I had another idea. I thought, if the act is physical and mental, then it need not involve Buddhism at all. Buddhists obviously came up with the program - and I would follow it, but I could do so without following all the fluff that Buddhism added into it.So, with that I went to the bookstore and found a book about the meditation method of Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka. It was quite detailed and steeped in Buddhism. I began pulling out the essentials from the book and writing down an outline of the program I would follow for myself. It was Buddhist meditation - pure and simple. I distilled it down to a system of action and little thought about it. I followed the essence of Buddhist meditation, of Vipassana, without following Buddhism.It sounds strange to most people. You should see the reactions I get from Buddhist monks here in Thailand when I tell them how I went about it!So, that's what I began with. Progress came very quickly, though not effortlessly. If you follow the suggestions in the book, you can reach a certain level of calmness, peace, clarity of mind as the mind begins to slow down.It is hard work to sit and watch the breath while the mind tries desperately to grab your attention and take you away from the task. That is the first goal - learn to focus on the breath. Once you have that down, I think the rest follows rather easily.Keep in your practice the simple ideas of hard work and letting go of all the mind throws in front of you, and you will progress through the levels of Jhana and reach whatever level of spiritual enlightenment or bliss that you choose. Religions have attached many rules and superstitions to the physical and mental practice of meditation on the breath. We do away with all of that in this book.You'll find only the bare essence of meditation, like Buddha did, but without Buddhism, superstition, and meaningless beliefs and practices.Everyone can experience the benefits of meditation - regardless of religion.Try it now! My name is Vern Lovic, and I'm an author of over thirty fiction and non-fiction books, and I own and contribute to a number of websites: MeditationAnswers.com; Jhana8.com; AimforAwesome.com; JoysThaiFood.com; ThailandSnakes.com, and a dozen more. I've written for About.com, LifeOptimizer.com, IRunFar.com, and some other websites. Some of my meditation books have had over 70,000 downloads. Articles I've written over the past decade have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers. For a couple of years I was so involved in writing that I wrote over a million words per year in just books and articles alone. I'm a native of Western Pennsylvania, and I studied psychology at the University of South Florida where received an MA degree. I am a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, where I was stationed in Hawaii. I have spent the majority of my adult life in the Hawaiian Islands, Florida, and now Southern Thailand where I've lived with my wife and daughter for twelve years. If you would like to contact me about meditation, or for other reasons, my email address is inside this book. Read more