How to Meditate
What is meditation?
British biophysicist C. Maxwell Cade, inventor of the Mind Mirror, defined silent meditation as physical inactivity combined with the absence of thought. Meditation researchers classify silent meditation as the Fourth State of Consciousness (see below).
Using the Mind Mirror EEG, Cade discovered a still higher level of awareness, the Awakened Mind. This Fifth State of Consciousness, an ideal state, develops naturally
through silent meditation, creative endeavor, and active, working meditations geared to inner discovery, healing and transformation.
Visit this page to download a series of meditations recorded by Max Cade on cassette for the purpose of stilling the mind in silent meditation in order to awaken the higher awareness of the Awakened Mind. With practice, the brainwave pattern of silent meditation generalizes into waking life as the Awakened Mind of clarity, creativity, insight, intuition and spiritual connection. The unity, focus and coherence of the Awakened Mind brainwave pattern enables people to develop the integrated and highly creative mind of mastery.
The 10-minute guided meditation offered below by Awakened Mind Consciousness Trainer Judith Pennington, based on Cade-Wise meditation principles and practices, will usher you into an alpha-theta meditation pattern for personal insights and a profound experience of the Awakened Mind.
During the meditation, you will become aware of two or more qualities and characteristics. Repeat these in an "I am" statement to strengthen your inner resources and gradually externalize
the Awakened Mind of creative flow and peak performance.
Listen to this "beingness" meditation in a quiet, comfortable place. The creative flow of the Awakened Mind brainwave pattern will provide you with life-enhancing insights. Create an "I am" sentence out of your musical qualities and characteristics to master your brainwaves and enhance your experience of life.
Free meditation book
Titled The Meditation Experience: An Easy, Practical Approach to the Art and Science of Meditation, this e-book by Judith Pennington focuses on the scientific and spiritual dimensions of silent and active meditation for creativity, insight, and healing. Includes meditation benefits, techniques, objective measurements. PDF format. 57 pages.
Cade's eight states of consciousness
0 - deep, dreamless sleep
1 - dreaming sleep (REM)
2 - hypnagogic (in-between) state
3 - waking awareness
4 - meditation
5 - the awakened mind of lucid awareness: meditation
combined with conscious
awareness
6 - creativity (the Evolved
Mind) of unity and oneness
7 - illumination,
self-remembering,
psychedelia (super-psychic
state)
8 - cosmic consciousness, or
omniscience
Can anyone learn to meditate?
Yes and yes. It's a simple matter of deepening your mind's awareness into lower and slower brainwave frequencies. (See our brainwave Patterns of Consciousness.)
Mind Mirror technology provides a scientific fast-track to silent and Awakened Mind meditation. If you want to address the content of your consciousness--that is, the material in your mind--contact a certified Awakened Mind Consciousness Trainer. Or you use the Mind Mirror's self-training program to attain optimal states of awareness. The self-training program's audio rewards will enable you to adjust your brainwave patterns to access content and expand your mind's awareness in the comfort and privacy of your home.
Biofeedback takes the guesswork out of learning how to meditate. However, people can and do learn to meditate on their own. With committed practice, any normal person can deepen into meditation's relaxed, open flow of awareness.
Both silent and Awakened Mind meditation expand the power and potential of the brain and consciousness.
If the only way I can learn is to teach myself, what should I do?
- Sit upright in a straight-back chair with your feet flat on the floor. Loosen any binding clothing and get comfortable. Close your eyes and consider what you want to attain through meditation. If that is peace and calm, create a mind-focusing mantra such as "I am calm and peaceful." Or create an affirmation out of the qualities and characteristics you discovered in the "What Instrument Am I" guided meditation on this page.
- Relax the back of your tongue so you can't talk to yourself. This will relax your whole body.
- Slow your breathing to activate your parasympathetic (relaxation) nervous system. Keep your awareness on your breath. When your thoughts stray, bring your awareness back to your breath to unite your mind and body into a single identity.
- Engage your senses to activate alpha waves. Become aware of yourself in a natural setting, doing whatever you love to do. Walk around in this setting and experience it with all of your senses. See, hear, feel, taste, smell and touch it; bring it to life in your mind.
- Sit down in this environment and deepen into theta. Close your eyes and drift or very slowly and gently fall deeper down inside yourself. Rest in that silence for as long as you like.
- Use your mantra. When beta's random thoughts return and distract you from the silence of your subconscious mind, repeat your mantra to discipline your thinking mind and return to the silence.
- Close your meditation. At the end of your meditation, find a word, image, concept or body sensation that describes your felt state of awareness. Bring this to mind to return your brainwaves to this quiet, peaceful state of consciousness. Open your eyes, wiggle your fingers and toes, and take a fully-body stretch to arouse. Use the Table of Subjective Landmarks to gauge the depth of your practice.
Free guided meditation
Listen to this 16-minute guided sensualization to relax into the peace and coherence of your meditative heart. Relive a memory of joy, create a mind-centering mantra, and deepen into silent alpha-theta meditation.
How long will it take me to teach myself?
Most people feel a shift in consciousness immediately. Simply slowing the breath and relaxing the body tangibly alters one's state of consciousness. Lasting changes come with committed practice. To begin with, meditate for 20 minutes once a day, lengthening and deepening your practice when you can. Listen to the free, downloadable "Heart of Meditation" track available above if you need more help with quieting your thinking mind.
Visit our Books, CDs and Videos page to find guided meditation tracks recorded by Judith Pennington and Anna Wise. Select the track that suits your immediate needs, and become aware of how it feels to descend into meditation. Bring this feeling to mind to descend into an alpha-theta silent or Awakened Mind meditation without external guidance.
Nothing in life will serve you better than deepening into the silence of your subconscious mind, where inner peace, creative insights, and higher perspectives reside and your body rests and heals. With practice, you will learn to generalize the silence of meditation into the active clarity, creativity, insight, intuition and spiritual connection of the Awakened Mind pattern.
Your obliging brain, through the process of neuroplasticity, will rewire its neural circuitry as quickly as possible to accommodate your desire to live in peace, calm and higher perspectives. Out of this, great good will flow.
What are the benefits of meditation?
Centering your awareness in lower brainwave frequencies will balance and synchronize your brain's left and right hemispheres. Thoughts will be clearer, your mind sharper. This will make you feel (and be) more coherent and lucid. Your electrical brain, now freed of static and fragmentation, will coordinate more closely with your spine and its peripheral nervous system. Your energized consciousness will heal and restore your body, mind, emotions and spirit.
Meditation unites and conditions an open flow of awareness in the body-mind and generalizes it as the higher, waking awareness of State 5: the lucid Awakened Mind of creativity and peak performance.
This awakening of awareness and its steady stream of insights will help you make internal changes that empower you in countless ways and project into every aspect of your life. As a direct result, you will materialize the life of your dreams.
Are there any contraindications?
The purpose of attaining a state of consciousness, like meditation or the Awakened Mind, is to be able to work with the content of consciousness in order to resolve and clear away any and all unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. Deepening into the subconscious mind provides access to stored memories and repressed material. Most people will find in the subconscious the creative resources to clear repressed material with little to no difficulty.
However, people who are subject to epilepsy, heart attack, stroke, mental disability, substance addiction, psychosis, depression, trauma or dissociation should undertake meditation only with permission from a medical doctor or psychotherapist. An experienced Awakened Mind Consciousness Trainer can support you, but it would be unwise to meditate on your own, as alpha-theta "flooding" of repressed material can result.
Should meditation stir up repressed memories or traumas that feel overwhelming, we recommend that you immediately contact an Awakened Mind Practitioner or psychotherapist for assistance.