While CBT is very effective at neutralizing negative emotions, it is less effective at creating positive emotional states. Consequently, many people are not drawn to CBT because they don’t want to just escape misery; they want to experience positive feelings. Emotional neutrality is associated with boredom or a lack of excitement in life for people who have been addicted to their feelings. To get them to simply stop feeling is not realistic. In addition, that is not the goal, since emotions are important for a healthy life. The idea is to dial down negative and reactive emotions that create a roller-coaster of emotion and experience while increasing positive emotional responses in everyday situation.

The problem is that many positive feelings are phony or destructive. When you repeat, “Every day, in every way, I am feeling better and better,” you may be telling yourself something you don’t believe. The result is that positive affirmations can feel like a form of self-brainwashing. Some feelings, like wanting to eat chocolate, have a drink, or smoke a cigarette, are positive because they rescue you from some unhappiness or stress, yet can strengthen addiction and further misery.

Meditation for Stress Reduction will teach you quickly and easily how to transform six common problem feeling states: fear, tiredness, imbalance, criticism, stress, and drama, into genuine and healthy positive emotions. Like meditation, this process, called “Breath Anchoring,” focuses your awareness while expanding your consciousness. Unlike most forms of meditation, it can be practiced anywhere, at any time you find yourself in an emotional state you wish to transform. Like meditation, Breath Anchoring centers your awareness. Unlike most forms of meditation, it centers your awareness on positive states that are intrinsic to your own authentic nature, called in Integral Deep Listening, your “inner compass.”

While positive states are not permanent developmental stages, returning to positive states routinely creates them. Authentic positive emotions that are aligned with the nature and priorities of your inner compass do not merely neutralize negative emotions; they work as antidotes, or powerful counteracting medicine, that rewards and reinforces the act of relinquishing a negative feeling.

Breath Anchoring is simple.  You will be led through a process in which you will identify a personification of a desired emotion, such as confidence.

You will then list times in your life when you habitually find yourself anxious, worried, or afraid.

You will then imagine you are in one of those troubling situations and give those negative feelings a score between zero and ten that reflects their intensity.

Next, you will imagine you are the personification of the desired emotion that you created earlier, such as confidence.

You will then use either one or two physical anchors to “ground” your awareness in the experience of confidence.

You will ground your confidence or other positive feeling in an associated stage of the cycle of your breathing.

In addition, for four of the negative emotions you can also place your hand over either your abdomen or chest to anchor your positive feeling state.

You will then use awareness of your breath to amplify and strengthen your experience of this or that positive feeling, such as confidence.

Finally, you will again score the intensity of your negative feeling, zero to ten. Is it stronger, weaker, or the same? Why? What happened?

It is recommended that you choose the one that gives you the most trouble and work on it first. Before you add a second, follow the protocol for the first for at least a week. You need whatever time is necessary to feel comfortable that you are remembering and charting your progress with the first before you add a second.

Why Breath Anchoring Works

When you use this simple process, you are doing three things.

First, you are interrupting your negative emotional state. You do this when you recognize that you are in it and decide to use breath anchoring.

Second, you are substituting something else for that emotional state. While interrupting any problem behavior or emotion is helpful, substitution is generally more effective because it provides something positive – a reinforcement or a reward.

Third, you are substituting a personally-designed antidote emotional experience that is tailor-made to substitute for your problem emotional state. Consequently, it will feel authentic when you use it, because it is authentic, reducing your resistance and increasing its effectiveness.

One student said, “I had a good contact with myself (when I laid my hand on my chest or abdomen for inhalation or exhalation). My breathing got more quiet. I was able to turn my emotions away from that negative situation. To see it neutral from a distance made it much easier. It´s a great help to sort the feelings.”

Creating Emerging Potentials

Whether you are working with the six negative states addressed here or some other emotional problem, the procedure for creating an antidote is the same. First, think of a time in your life when you remember having had a positive experience.

If the target feeling is worry, anxiety, or fear, think of a situation or time when you felt confident.

If the target feeling is tiredness, think of a situation or time when you felt energized and alive.

If the target feeling is imbalance, think of a situation or time when you felt in balance.

If the target feeling is criticalness, think of a situation or time when you felt very accepting toward yourself.

If the target feeling is stress, think of a situation or time when you felt at peace.

If the target feeling is drama, think of a situation or time when you felt objective and clear.

In each instance, write down or describe out loud the situation and how you felt. This helps bring the feeling alive for you so that you can successfully take the next two steps, naming the color or colors it reminds you of, and allowing those colors to take the shape of whatever animal, object, or plant that it wants.

For example, one student was working to counteract a troubling habit of being fearful of the criticism of others. Since this is a fear, he thought of a time in his life when he felt confident. He realized that he felt confident when he was helping others and he associated it with a golden yellow color. When he watched that color condense or congeal into a form, it became a golden, spinning, top. He had now created an emerging potential that personified confidence.

A short form of the exercise

Ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now?”

If the answer is fear (worry, anxiety), focus on your abdominal inhalations to build confidence; carry that confidence around the six parts of your breath for three breaths and see how you feel.

If the answer is personalization (“What are they thinking/saying about me?”), focus on your chest inhalations to build aliveness and compassion that will help you outgrow a small, self-centered way of feeling; carry that compassion around the six parts of your breath for three breaths and see how you feel.

If the answer is “out of balance,” focus on the space at the top of each breath to build balance and wisdom; carry that sense of balance around the six parts of your breath for three breaths and see how you feel.

If the answer is judgment, criticalness, or addictive desire, focus on your chest exhalations to build detachment and acceptance; carry that sense of detachment and acceptance around the six parts of your breath for three breaths and see how you feel.

If the answer is stress, focus on your abdominal exhalations to build inner peace; carry that inner peace around the six parts of your breath for three breaths and see how you feel.

If the answer is drama (being in one of the roles of the Drama Triangle), focus on the longer pause at the bottom of your breath to build clarity, objectivity, and witnessing; carry those qualities around the six parts of your breath for three breaths and see how you feel.

Using Breath Anchoring to reduce anxiety, worry, and fear

First, identify a time in your life when you habitually find yourself anxious, worried, or afraid. For example, one student of IDL reported that she has been afraid of criticism by others all her life. Another found herself worrying about the future a lot. When do you find yourself regularly worrying, anxious, or afraid? Write it here:

Now rate how strong your anxiety, worry, or fear is, zero to ten, with zero being unafraid and ten being very scared. There is no “right” answer; just choose a number that reflects the usual intensity of your habitual worry, anxiety, or fear, and write it here:

Now think of times in your life when you tend to feel very confident and self-assured. Write a short description of the circumstances here:

Get in touch with how confident you feel in that situation.

If that confidence had a color, what would it be?

Write the color or colors here:

Surround yourself with that color or colors. Watch them swirl, congeal, and condense into a form of their own choosing. It may be an animal, an object, a plant…what is it? Write it here:

When you become your personification of confidence, how do you feel? You should feel the confidence that you felt before, but now it is personified or embodied as a particular form.

Now place your hand on your abdomen.

While imagining you are your character, observe your abdominal inhalation.

With each abdominal inhalation, feel your awareness of yourself as that character grow.

Let each breath build on the last, creating greater confidence.

As the personification of your confidence, observe each abdominal inhalation filling you with confidence.

Carry that confidence through the cycle of your breath.

Continue until you feel anchored in three things:

your identification with your character,

its confidence, and

your abdominal inhalations.

Score your anxiety, worry, fear again, 0-10.

What happened? Why?

You will break yourself of the habits of worry, anxiety, and fear if you chart the times each day when you usually find yourself feeling those negative feelings. Here is an example:

Thinking about the day’s schedule

Worrying about what other people are thinking about me

Worrying about what other people are thinking about my work

Bills

Write yours here:

Listing problematic daily situations alerts you to the presence of worry, anxiety, or fear, to help you remember that when those situations arise, that is a sign that it is time to become the tricycle, put your hand on your abdomen, and shift your awareness to your abdominal inhalations.

At the end of your day, look over the list. Did you remember to become your character, place your hand over your abdomen, and abdominally inhale confidence? If you did, put a check by the situation. Every night, before you go to bed, look over you list and make a check for each time you remembered to practice your confidence breath anchoring exercise.  After a week, see how many checks you can generate for each item.

You will increase your success even more if you will share your progress each week with a friend, colleague, or IDL Practitioner, as a form of accountability for yourself. It will help you to stay on track so that you don’t just bury this exercise under the avalanche of other life priorities.

Here is an example from a student:

In confidence I had a pink pig sitting on a hill watching the sunrise.

In the habitual experience of fear I felt worrying about the future.

As my pig I just enjoyed the present moment and only felt a bit of excitement.

My example of fear grow from four to seven. With my pig it only was at one!

Using Breath Anchoring to reduce tiredness

First, identify a time in your life when you habitually find yourself tired. For example, one student of IDL reported that she found herself tired in boring classes at school. Another found herself tired when she was having to do work she didn’t want to do. When do you find yourself regularly tired? Write it here:

Now rate how strong your anxiety, worry, or fear is, zero to ten, with zero being calm and ten being very scared. There is no “right” answer; just choose a number that reflects the usual intensity of your habitual worry, anxiety, or fear:

Now think of times in your life when you tend to feel very alive. Write a short description of the circumstances here:

Get in touch with how alive you feel in that situation.

If that aliveness had a color, what would it be?

Write the color or colors here:

Surround yourself with that color or colors. Watch them swirl, congeal, and condense into a form of their own choosing. It may be an animal, an object, a plant…what is it? Write it here:

When you imagine you are that character, how do you feel? You should feel the aliveness that you felt before, but now it is personified or embodied as a particular form.

Now place your hand on your chest.

While imagining you are your character, observe your chest inhalation.

With each chest inhalation, feel your awareness of yourself as that character grow.

Let each breath build on the last, creating greater aliveness.

As the character, observe each chest inhalation filling you with aliveness.

Carry that aliveness through the cycle of your breath.

Continue until you feel anchored in three things:

your identification with your personification of aliveness,

its aliveness, and

your chest inhalations.

Score your tiredness again, 0-10.

What happened? Why?

You will break yourself of the habit of tiredness if you chart the times each day when you usually find yourself feeling tired. Here is an example:

Wanting coffee, soda, or candy to perk you up

Daydreaming

Tired, but needing to keep working

Write yours here:

Listing problematic daily situations alerts you to their presence, to help you remember that when those situations arise, that is a sign that it is time to become your character, put your hand on your chest, and shift your awareness to your chest inhalations.

Every night, before you go to bed, look over your list and make a check for each time you remembered to practice your confidence breath anchoring exercise.  After a week, see how many checks you can generate for each item.

You will increase your success even more if you will share your progress each week to a friend, colleague, or IDL Practitioner, as a form of accountability for yourself. It will help you to stay on track so that you don’t just bury this exercise under the avalanche of other life priorities.

One student said that he often felt tired mid-day and evenings, and gave that tiredness an average score of seven.

When he felt most alive was when he was out in nature. He associated that feeling of aliveness with golden yellow, and it turned into the sun.

When he became the sun while placing his hand over his chest and inhaling its aliveness, for five breaths, he scored his tiredness at a two or a one.

Another student felt tired when she experienced herself as a victim and wanted to get out of situations but couldn’t. She rated her tiredness as a seven or an eight. When she thought of times in her life when she felt alive, a blue whale presented itself as a personification of aliveness. “As my whale I first experienced compassion with myself in the situation and more awake in the present moment, so that the physically tiredness in the seminar was gone for the moment.” At that time, with her blue whale, she rated her tiredness toward the habitual situation at five, but her tiredness in the moment of the exercise was at zero to one.

Using Breath Anchoring to reduce imbalance

First, identify a time in your life when you habitually find yourself out of balance. For example, one student of IDL reported that his worries about his heart condition threw him out of balance. Another found herself out of balance juggling work and raising kids. When do you find yourself regularly out of balance? Write it here:

Now rate how strong your imbalance is, zero to ten, with zero being in balance and ten being very out of balance. There is no “right” answer; just choose a number that reflects the usual intensity of your habitual imbalance:

Now think of times in your life when you tend to feel very balanced. Write a short description of the circumstances here:

Get in touch with how balanced you feel in that situation.

If that balance had a color, what would it be?

Write the color or colors here:

Surround yourself with that color or colors. Watch them swirl, congeal, and condense into a form of their own choosing. It may be an animal, an object, a plant…what is it? Write it here:

When you become that character, how do you feel? You should feel the balance that you felt before, but now it is personified or embodied as a particular form.

As that character, observe the pause after you inhale and before you exhale. This is called “the pause at the top of your breath.”

With each pause at the top of your breath, feel your awareness of yourself as your balanced character grow.

Let each breath build on the last, creating greater balance.

From the perspective of your balanced character, observe each pause at the top of your breath filling you with balance.

Carry that balance through the cycle of your breath.

Continue until you feel anchored in three things:

your identification with your character, form, emerging potential

its balance, and

your pause at the top of your breath.

Score your out of balance again, 0-10.

What happened? Why?

You will more quickly break yourself out of imbalance if you make a chart of times each day when you usually find yourself feeling out of balance. Here is an example:

Waking up feeling defensive or threatened about what you have ahead

Feeling cautious or on guard around others

Not speaking up for your own needs; lack of assertiveness

Write yours here:

Listing problematic daily situations alerts you to their presence, to help you remember that when those situations arise, that is a sign that it is time to become your character and shift your awareness to your pause at the top of your breath.

Every night, before you go to bed, look over your list and make a check for each time you remembered to practice your aliveness breath anchoring exercise.  Did you remember to become your character and experience balance at the pause after inhalation and before exhalation? If you did, put a check by the situation. After a week, see how many checks you can generate for each item.

You will increase your success even more if you will share your progress each week to a friend, colleague, or IDL Practitioner, as a form of accountability for yourself. It will help you to stay on track so that you don’t just bury this exercise under the avalanche of other life priorities.

One student of IDL said that she found herself habitually out of balance when she takes things personally, giving it a strength of “eight” on the zero to ten scale. When asked to personify colors associated with experiences of balance, she said, “rolling green hills.” When she became those rolling green hills she felt more balanced. She took both the sense of being the rolling green hills and their balance into the pause after inhalation and before exhalation, to that balance point in her cycle of breathing. She then carried that sense of being balanced through her exhalation and around through her inhalation. At the next inhalation she again became the rolling green hills and amplified the feeling of balance that they gave her. She continued this process for five breaths.

When she scored herself again her sense of imbalance was two.

Another student reported, “I don’t feel present in my body, but somewhere else. This is a very imbalanced feeling.” She gave the feeling of imbalance a “seven.” When asked to think of times in her life when she felt balanced, they evoked the image of a yellow flower on a green meadow. “Breathing as my flower brings me back into my body in the here and now.  As my yellow flower the sense of imbalance vanished and I was totally balanced.”

Another student wrote, “When I had the meditation with imbalance, my Nessi-worm came up.  (‘Some kind of worm or centipede, something like Nessi. It hadn´t really finished developing. The color was a floating red/blue/purple.’) With the rhythm of my breathing, it was curling up and down the waves. Watching that funny happy worm really got my out of the situation.”

Using Breath Anchoring to reduce feelings of criticism

First, identify a time in your life when you habitually find yourself critical of yourself or others. For example, one lady reported that she hates looking in the mirror and is disgusted with the way she looks. Another found herself critical of her inability to stop smoking. When do you find yourself regularly critical? Write it here:

Now rate how strong your criticalness is, zero to ten, with zero being accepting and ten being very critical. There is no “right” answer; just choose a number that reflects the usual intensity of your habitual criticalness:

Now think of times in your life when you tend to feel very accepting. Write a short description of the circumstances here:

Get in touch with how accepting you felt in that situation.

If that acceptance had a color, what would it be?

Write the color or colors here:

Surround yourself with that color or colors. Watch them swirl, congeal, and condense into a form of their own choosing. It may be an animal, an object, a plant…what is it? Write it here:

When you become your personification of acceptance, how do you feel? You should feel the balance that you felt before, but now it is personified or embodied as your particular form.

As that form, observe your chest exhalations.

With each chest exhalation, feel your awareness of yourself as that form grow.

Let each breath build on the last, creating greater balance.

From the perspective of your character, observe each chest exhalation filling you with balance.

Carry that balance through the cycle of your breath.

Continue until you feel anchored in three things:

your identification with your character,

its balance, and

your chest exhalation.

Score your critical again, 0-10.

What happened? Why?

You will more quickly break yourself out of imbalance if you make a chart of times each day when you usually find yourself feeling critical. Here is an example:

Angry at yourself because you overcommitted yourself

Angry at yourself because you’re late again

Angry at yourself because you gave in again to some bad habit

Write yours here:

This is to prime you to their presence, to help you remember that when those situations arise, that it is a sign that it is time to become the water, put your hand on your chest, and shift your awareness to your chest exhalation.

Every night, before you go to bed, look over your list and make a check for each time you remembered to practice your acceptance breath anchoring exercise.  Did you remember to become your character, put your hand on your chest, exhale and experience acceptance? If you did, put a check by the situation. After a week, see how many checks you can generate for each item.

You will increase your success even more if you will share your progress each week to a friend, colleague, or IDL Practitioner, as a form of accountability for yourself. It will help you to stay on track so that you don’t just bury this exercise under the avalanche of other life priorities.

One student found herself feeling critical about her procrastination. She gave it a “four” on the zero to ten scale. Water was the emerging potential that personified acceptance for her. When put her hand on her chest, became Water, felt its acceptance, and observed her chest exhalations, allowing the feeling of acceptance to grow with each breath, she found that her criticalness disappeared entirely.

Another student said, “ When I criticize myself, I am very judgmental and only comparing with others. When I criticize my looks I am easily at “ten” on the zero to ten scale in criticism.” Acceptance personified as a carnation. She stated, “As my carnation accepts my needs, looks, and talents as they are. As it, I only see what is good for me and what helps me. I have the strength to obtain what is good in my own way.” As my carnation my criticism was a “five”; it became less with each breath.”

Using Breath Anchoring to reduce stress

First, identify a time in your life when you habitually find yourself stressed. For example, one student of IDL reported that she easily became stressed over bills. Another found herself stressed over her kids not doing their household chores. When do you find yourself regularly stressed? Write it here:

Now rate how strong your stress is zero to ten, with zero being unstressed and ten being very stressed. There is no “right” answer; just choose a number that reflects the usual intensity of your habitual stress:

Now think of times in your life when you tend to feel inner peace. Write a short description of the circumstances here:

Get in touch with how at peace you felt in that situation.

If that peace had a color, what would it be?

Write the color or colors here:

Surround yourself with that color or colors. Watch them swirl, congeal, and condense into a form of their own choosing. It may be an animal, an object, a plant…what is it? Write it here:

When you become your personification of inner peace, how do you feel? You should feel the peace that you felt before, but now it is personified or embodied as your emerging potential.

As your personification of inner peace, place your hand on your abdomen.

Observe your abdominal exhalations.

With each abdominal exhalation, feel your awareness of yourself as your emerging potential grow.

Let each breath build on the last, creating greater peace.

From the perspective of your character, observe your abdominal exhalation filling you with peace.

Carry that peace through the cycle of your breath.

Continue until you feel anchored in three things:

your identification with your character,

its peace, and

your abdominal exhalation.

Score your stress again, 0-10.

What happened? Why?

You will break yourself out of patterns of chronic stress if you chart the times each day when you usually find yourself feeling feeling stressed. For example:

Waking up late

Feeling deadline pressure

Overwhelmed

Irritable, reactive

Write yours here:

This is to prime you to the presence of unnecessary feelings of stress, to help you remember that when those situations arise, that is a sign that it is time to become your personification of inner peace, put your hand on your abdomen, and shift your awareness to your abdominal exhalation.

Every night, before you go to bed, look over your list and make a check for each time you remembered to practice your inner peace breath anchoring exercise.  Did you remember to become your character, put your hand on your abdomen, exhale, and experience inner peace? If you did, put a check by the situation. After a week, see how many checks you can generate for each item.

You will increase your success even more if you will share your progress each week to a friend, colleague, or IDL Practitioner, as a form of accountability for yourself. It will help you to stay on track so that you don’t just bury this exercise under the avalanche of other life priorities.

One student identified a recurring stressful emotional situation as feeling stressed about his weight and eating too much. It was not a strong stress, only a “three,” but still important to him. The emerging potential with strong inner peace that presented itself to him was a tree. When he became it, he felt strong inner peace. When he placed his hand on his abdomen and observed his abdominal exhalation for a series of breaths, deepening and broadening his sense of inner peace with each abdominal exhalation, he discovered that his sense of stress was gone.

Another student wrote, “In my stressful situation I am in the past persecuting myself and in the future being afraid of the consequences. In my situation of stress I scored a ‘ten.’ Inner peace became a full-size bed with dark purple sheets. As my bed I can relax in the moment within myself even when I have to be quick. In the role of my bed I quickly calmed down to a ‘five’ to ‘four’ in stress.”

Using Breath Anchoring to reduce drama

First, identify a time in your life when you habitually find yourself in drama. For example, one student of IDL reported that she got angry and hurt when she felt criticized by others. Another found herself self-medicating with the internet, soda, and romance novels when she felt overwhelmed. When do you find yourself regularly in drama? Write it here:

Now rate how strong your stress is, zero to ten, with zero being out of drama and ten being very much in drama.

Now think of times in your life when you tend to feel very objective, clear, witnessing. Write a short description of the circumstances here:

Get in touch with how clear you felt in that situation.

If that peace had a color, what would it be?

Write the color or colors here:

Surround yourself with that color or colors. Watch them swirl, congeal, and condense into a form of their own choosing. It may be an animal, an object, a plant…what is it? Write it here:

When you become your personification of clarity, objectivity, and witnessing, how do you feel? You should feel the clarity that you felt before, but now it is personified or embodied as a particular form.

As your character, observe the pause after exhalation, called the “bottom” of your breath.

With each pause after exhalation, feel your awareness of yourself as the clear, objective character grow.

Let each breath build on the last, creating greater clarity.

From the perspective of your clear character, observe your pause after exhalation filling you with clarity.

Carry that clarity through the cycle of your breath.

Continue until you feel anchored in three things:

your identification with your personification of clarity,

its clarity, and

your pause after exhalation.

Score your stress again, 0-10.

What happened? Why?

You will break yourself of much habitual, unnecessary drama if you chart the times each day when you usually find yourself feeling in drama. Here is an example:

Dreams and nightmares

Rescuing, persecuting, victimizing thoughts and feelings

Self-rescuing behaviors, like avoiding your to-do list or eating “comfort” foods

Blaming

Write yours here:

This is to prime you to their presence, to help you remember that when those situations arise, that is a sign that it is time to become your personification of clarity and shift your awareness to the pause after exhalation.

Every night, before you go to bed, look over your list and make a check for each time you remembered to practice your drama-avoidance breath anchoring exercise.  Did you remember to become your character, shift your awareness to the pause after exhalation, and experience clarity, objectivity, and witnessing? If you did, put a check by the situation. After a week, see how many checks you can generate for each item.

You will increase your success even more if you will share your progress each week to a friend, colleague, or IDL Practitioner, as a form of accountability for yourself. It will help you to stay on track so that you don’t just bury this exercise under the avalanche of other life priorities.

One group member said she got into drama when she felt criticized by her partner and felt angry. On the zero to ten scale she felt she was an “eight” in drama at those times. When she became her dog, she felt very clear and objective. This surprised her, because she thinks of dogs as subjectively immersed in their emotions. When she amplified her awareness of herself as her dog with each recurring pause after exhalation, her sense of drama left her completely. She felt a zero in drama.

Another student said, “When I am in Drama I either feel hurt in the past, blaming something in the past or feel victim of the future, persecuted by deadlines and needs of others. It’s pretty strong, an eight or a nine. My witnessing, objectivity, and witnessing was a cloud, but the cloud was not able to solve my drama, only see it clearly. It suggested that I become my school. It represents a broader perspective than I have, in the here and now, that is interested in solving problems instead of only seeing the problems and maybe analyzing why there are problems. When I became my school and focused on it at the pause at the bottom of a breath. my sense of drama dropped down to two.”

Questions About Breath Anchoring

 Why can’t you use any image?

You can. However, even a universal image like the sun, a rainbow, mountain, or water will not necessarily bring up the connotations that you intend. The sun could bring up thirst or uncomfortable heat; a rainbow, illusion; a mountain, unattainable goals; water, fear of drowning. In addition, IDL does not emphasize images chosen by your waking mind but images that emerge spontaneously out of your experience, like dreams do. This reflects a desire to surrender control and share power with your inner compass, based on the idea that you have a healer within, an inner gyroscope, and access to perspectives that know why and how “you” are stuck and what you need to do to get unstuck.

In answer to this question, one student wrote, “In IDL we work with our own images, born from our own feelings and situations and memories. So these images are nothing from outside, but from the inside and (for me) feel therefore more personal and individual. But everyone is also free to work with anything, that helps them.”

Why are images called “emerging potentials?”

While breath anchor images are self-created, they are more than self-aspects. They are more than who you think you are, and they cannot be simply relegated to unconscious, subconscious, or superconscious regions of some hypothesized larger self. They reflect potentials that you have yet to grow into, to identify with, to become. They are indeed greater than you are, yet they are not destiny. You don’t have to become them. Your growth could take you in another direction. However, when you become them they are emerging as realities for your consciousness and your identity. Consequently, they are emerging potentials.

Why associate an image with breath?

Imagery, like thought and feelings, can feel detached from the physical sense of who you are. IDL has a decided preference for the here and now, which includes being in a body. Breath grounds you in your body. Whether you like your body or not, you co-exist with it and it is wise to make the most of that relationship. Grounding yourself in your body gives your life foundation, and your breath is a powerful way that is immediately available to you as long as you are alive.

A student wrote, “”In IDL we experience that the breath has six parts and that each of these parts has a different quality, which we describe as confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace and witnessing. So when we create an object, born of a memory, where we felt strong in one of the qualities, and tie this to the associated part of the breath, we have two means to strengthen this quality in ourself at once.”

What are the six parts of each breath?

Abdominal inhalation, chest inhalation, pause, chest exhalation, abdominal exhalation, and a longer pause.

Why associate certain qualities with certain parts of a breath?

Your breath is a microcosm, a reflection of the microcosm. Every time you breathe you re-enact the drama of birth, growth, balance, detachment, death, and transcendence. You also recapitulate the round of your daily life: awakening, aliveness, balance, detachment at the end of a day’s work, freedom in drifting off to sleep, and the clarity of deep sleep. Each of these phases of the macrocosm of your life can be associated with qualities. Here they are, in order: confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing.

For example, when you associate an image that authentically generates confidence with abdominal inhalation, you give yourself a way to move out of fear and into confidence at any time, in a way that feels authentic and, in that moment, is effective.

 You have a person think of a past time when they were afraid, tired, unbalanced, critical, stressed, or in drama, have them rate that, and then have them rate their current sense of a positive feeling. Aren’t those two different times and feeling states?

Yes. A past episode of a habitual disturbing emotion is used to get you in touch with your “normal” sense of the intensity of a feeling when it arises, using the zero to ten scale. You are then experiencing what happens to that feeling when you substitute an authentic, self-generated experiential antidote to it. The goal is to generate an effective tool to use whenever you feel a particular habitual disturbing emotion. For example, one lady had a pig sitting on a hillside watching a sunrise. When she imagined she was this pig, she experienced great confidence. Her challenge is to remember to become the pig, put her hand on her abdomen, and practice amplification of abdominal confidence with repeated breaths whenever she feels worried, anxious, or scared.

Why do you score twice?

The reason for the second scoring is to give you a comparison as a test of the method. Did your habitual disturbing fear/tiredness/imbalance/criticalness/stress/drama increase, decrease, or stay the same after you went through the steps of breath anchoring?

Do I have to pair a particular hand placement with a particular part of the cycle of breathing? For instance, do I need to lay my hand on my abdomen and focus on my abdominal exhalations to reduce my stress and increase my inner peace?

No, but there is a rationale for the steps of breath anchoring. The association of a particular quality, in this case inner peace, with abdominal exhalation, laying your hand on your abdomen while observing your abdominal exhalations, and carrying a growing sense of inner peace around the cycle of breath several times, is designed to strengthen your experience of inner peace as an antidote to stress.

More tools for using breath for centering can be found in Waking Up, by this author.

Your breath is a microcosm of your day and your life. The following description will tell you how to use each of six parts of each breath to create confidence when you are afraid, compassion where there is hate, balance when you are confused, detachment when faced with your addictions, inner peace when you are stressed, and witnessing when you are absorbed in drama.

Using your abdominal inhalation to neutralize fear and build confidence

Think of something that scares you about your life. Here are some examples:

Loneliness: fear you will have no one around that loves you or cares about you.

Poverty; having no money.

Injury, disability, and pain.

Appearing ugly; social rejection

Fear of what others are saying about you.

Death

Failure (at love, school, at living up to your parent’s/boss’, your own expectations)

Let’s choose fear of poverty, just because it’s such a common, fun fear.

Imagine you don’t have any money for food or to pay rent. You’re homeless. How do you feel?

Now, inhale from your abdomen. It doesn’t have to be a chest inhalation, though it can be. Just focus on inhaling from your abdomen.

Do this five times, with each time being a little deeper and longer than the last.

What do you feel? More scared? Less scared? The same?

Experiment with this.

Your abdominal inhalations bring new life, new possibilities, and the confidence of growth into your body. It wakes your body up with a new infusion of oxygen. Imagine that you are a sprouting seed underneath the ground. Feel your fearless confidence to grow, to be, to expand upward and outward! This is a visual analogy for what is going on in your consciousness when you become mindful of your abdominal inhalations. Y0u can bring new confidence into your mind and heart, confidence that first balances out and then becomes a light that chases the shadows of your fears away.

Practice: Use this exercise any time that you become aware that you are anxious, worried, afraid, or want more confidence. Use it with any of the above fears. Use it when  you want to become more awake and more aware.

Using your chest inhalation to neutralize anger and build love, to replace rescuing with compassion

Think of something that makes you angry.

Here are some examples:

Bad drivers

People who interrupt

Critical people

People who are late

Injustice

Or things that make you angry about yourself:

You want to lose weight but you lack the self-discipline.

Your indecisiveness.

Your lack of assertiveness

Staying stuck in drama

•

Choose one of them; let’s say it’s your lack of self-discipline.

Imagine you continue to not have self-discipline and things get worse. You feel really angry at yourself. Feel that anger!

Now, inhale with your chest. Fill it up!

Do this five times, with each time being a little deeper and longer than the last.

What do you feel? More angry? Less angry? The same?

Experiment with this.

Your chest inhalations bring new aliveness, new energy, new hope, and the oxygen necessary not simply to live, but to grow, thrive, and give to others. Imagine that you are a broad river overflowing its banks in the spring, fertilizing fields with the abundance of silt you carry. In the fullness of your nature, you naturally give. When you become aware of your chest exhalations, as you do with this exercise, you can bring new love and compassion into your mind and heart, compassion that first balances out your anger and then becomes a light that chases the shadows of your anger and its underlying fears away.

Practice: Take five chest inhalations, each one deeper and longer than the last when you are angry at someone else or at yourself and see what happens. You can also use this exercise to wake up out of rescuing. Whenever you experience yourself moving toward burnout or feeling overworked and underappreciated, take five chest inhalations, each one deeper and longer than the last. Allow yourself to feel compassion not only toward others, but toward yourself. Feel those breaths nurturing you, loving you, caring for you.

Using the pause at the top of your breath to replace turmoil and confusion with balance and wisdom

Think of times in your life when you feel so confused that you are in turmoil. Here are some examples:

Do I stay in this relationship or leave?

Do I follow this doctor’s advice or not?

Do I speak my truth and risk blowing this relationship/job?

Choose one of them; let’s say it’s your turmoil about speaking your truth. If you do you’ll probably offend someone, hurt someone’s feelings,  or make someone mad at you. You don’t want to do that. What will people think? But you don’t want to pretend that you agree with something you think is wrong, harmful, or just plain stupid, either. Imagine you continue to not speak up and things get worse. You are in even more turmoil and confusion. Feels terrible, doesn’t it?

Now, observe the pause at the top of your breath. Notice it is a balance point, balancing the alertness of inhalation and the relaxation of exhalation.  Imagine you are Earth. Experience your balance between day and night, hot and cold, rock, water, and air. Experience how amazing your natural balance is. Do this five times, with each pause at the top of your breath being a little deeper and longer than the last. If your thoughts and feelings are running wild, emphasize your exhalations to bring you into balance at the top of your breath. If you are daydreaming and getting drowsy, emphasize your inhalations to bring in oxygen to turn on the lights upstairs and bring you into balance at the top of your breath.

What do you feel? More confused and in turmoil? Less so? The same?

Experiment with this.

The pause at the top of your breath brings balance, and with it discernment and a stability that can replace turmoil and confusion in your awareness. When you become aware of the pause at the top of your breath, as you do with this exercise, you can bring new balance and wisdom into your mind and heart in a way that allows you to make better decisions without all the self-created drama and self-persecution of turmoil and confusion.

Practice: Focus on the pause at the top of your breath for five breaths, with each pause deeper and longer than the last. Do this whenever you feel in turmoil or confused.

Using your chest exhalations to move from addiction and grasping to detachment and acceptance

Think about some of your favorite addictions. Here are some examples:

Being in control

Manipulating other people’s opinions of you

Putting on a pretty/good/effective/efficient face

Chocolate

Unhealthy foods of all kinds

Too much food

Driving too fast

Ignoring opinions contrary to your own

Picking unnecessary arguments/fights

Avoiding conflict

Sex

Smoking

Drinking

Drugs

Comfort

Shopping

Your status quo

Choose one of them or think of a favorite; let’s say it’s your addiction to the stability of your present status quo. You know it’s dysfunctional; it doesn’t reflect the priorities of your inner compass. It’s not bringing you happiness. But it’s real and powerful; all your daily habits and activities conspire to keep you in your present circumstances, continuing to feel your current feelings, and justifying your current opinions, although it is safe to say they were radically different in the past and will be at some point in the future – if you’re lucky.

Imagine you continuing to stay stuck in your status quo and things don’t change. You become a victim of circumstances, of outside forces pushing you in directions you don’t want to go – poor health, less income, unsatisfying relationships. You are even more stuck in your addictions; you are even more grasping at the life you feel slipping away…

Now, observe your chest exhalation. Notice you are letting go of your life force. You are letting go of everything you are attached to. Imagine you are on your deathbed. You are giving it all up, whether you want to or not. Go through all your loves, all your addictions, all your possessions, all your interests, hobbies, and sources of meaning in life and surrender them with deep gratefulness and thankfulness, one after the other…You are detaching.  Experience what it feels like to let go naturally, without thinking about it. Just observe. Do this five times, with each chest exhalation a little deeper and longer than the last.

What do you feel? More attached and addicted? Less so? The same?

You can use your chest exhalations to move into acceptance of letting go of all sorts of things – your expectations, preferences, hopes, desires, wants, needs, addictions, loves, hates – whatever.  This is not a move into passivity; it is an active, consciously chosen detachment, which is very different. You can use your chest exhalations to help you leverage yourself free of whatever addiction you have at the moment. If you are meditating, it may be to that itch or pain.  Avoiding paperwork by surfing the internet? Do five chest exhalations, with each deeper and longer than the one before and see what you feel like doing. Want a cigarette? Try this first. How about that second helping? Try this first, then gorge yourself if you still want to.

Practice: Focus on your chest exhalations for five breaths, with each pause deeper and longer than the last. Do this whenever you catch yourself in an addiction or, better yet, are about to indulge. Do it when you find yourself caught up in someone else’s drama. Do it when you are personalizing. See what happens!

Using your abdominal exhalations to move from your current box to freedom, from stress to inner peace

You are in a self-created, self-sustained box. This box is often experienced as your job, your town, your government, the people who place demands on you. Your box is also your body, your preferences, your beliefs, and your world view. They all combine to create a context that makes you you, that provides a structure in which you can grow, but can also cramp you and imprison you. Your box is both. One of the great challenges of life is how to maximize the growth opportunities of your current “box” while minimizing its repressive, limiting, suffocating characteristics. Think about the ways that you are confined in your present “box.” Here are some possibilities to get you started:

A demanding spouse.

Financial limitations.

Others you have to take care of, whether you want to or not.

Unrealistic or unethical job responsibilities.

Boredom.

Idiots.

Health problems, disease, and aging.

Hating where you live.

Hating how you live.

Choose one of the above or think of your own favorite; let’s say it’s health problems, disease, and aging. The walls are closing in. The box is real. There is no escape. You’re getting old; you’re dying. It’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? Imagine that happening, with your sense of constraint, of control, of being trapped just getting worse and worse…How does that feel? Imagine you are a large, beautiful tree in the woods. A contractor comes and chops down all the other trees to build the parking lot of a mall, but leaves you, surrounded by a small retaining wall. You have lost your friends and you are in a concrete “box” that cuts you off from rain water. But you’re a tree. You don’t cry, get angry, fight reality, or ask, “why does this always happen to me?” Instead, you simply allow yourself to be with the circumstances that exist at present. Be that tree as you exhale abdominally.

Now, observe your abdominal exhalation. Observe the last bit of life-giving air leaving your body. Do it again. Repeat a total of five times, with each abdominal exhalation a bit deeper and longer than the last. There’s a kind of final surrender about it, a complete letting go. You’re not just letting go of your life force; you’re letting go of everything in a deeper, more complete way than you were doing with your chest exhalation. You aren’t just letting go of the qualities, behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that have always defined who you are; you are letting go of you.  You are going away, just as you do every night when you go to sleep. When you enter deep sleep, who you are evaporates; it doesn’t exist in deep sleep. There is no more stress because there is no more box to create stress. Neither one exist.

Experience what it feels like to move into radical freedom naturally, without thinking about it. Just observe. Do this five times, with each abdominal exhalation a little deeper and longer than the last.

What do you feel? Are you feeling more stifled and stressed? Less so? The same?

You can use your abdominal exhalations to move into a life of radical freedom and deep inner peace. This is not the radical freedom of anarchism or the inner peace of pacifism and passivity. Abdominal exhalation is an active process. Although it is typically unconscious and automatic, you can choose to become a conscious participant in that process. By so doing you no longer experience yourself as victimized by death, regardless of what form it takes in your life.

You can use your abdominal exhalations to help you leverage yourself free of whatever box you find yourself in at the moment. You can use it to die to your sense of being boxed in by your inner and outer worlds. Can’t get some worry out of your mind? Do five abdominal exhalations, with each deeper and longer than the one before and see what you feel like doing. Unable to die to some stuck sense of who you are? Just exhale that you with each abdominal exhalation. Focus on five deepening abdominal exhalations.

Practice: Focus on your abdominal exhalations for five breaths, with each pause deeper and longer than the last. Do this whenever you feel you are in your own way, when you don’t like who you are, or whenever you find yourself taking yourself too seriously. Just do some abdominal exhalations.  See what happens.

Using the longer pause at the bottom of each breath to move from mental fuzziness to clarity and from drama to witnessing

You are trapped in a delusional reality, in self-created drama. A major part of waking up out of it is getting clear. First you need to learn to think clearly, which means setting your emotionally-based biases, prejudices, opinions, and beliefs aside long enough to think them through. This is mental clarity. Then you need to develop some distance from the charade of your life. You need to get some distance from your self-created drama. This is called learning to witness yourself. Who you become transcends and includes that self. Who you are now isn’t all of who you are growing into. From that awareness, who you think you are is not so important as it used to be. This creates breathing room, because if your “self,” however you define it – as your feelings, thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, your soul, your Self – is who you are and it goes away, then that’s a real death. You can’t let that happen. So you spend your life, or eternity, in fear, creating substitute realities, transitional objects that are forms of self-medication and self-rescuing. But when you learn to witness any and all definitions of yourself, all that is left is clarity and witnessing as you breathe, laugh, work, play, and live.

Think about the ways that you are delusional and mentally fuzzy. Think about some of the ways that you are stuck in drama. Here are some possibilities to get you started:

You think you’re a self and that self is real.

You think you need your personality to experience love and to have a personal, I-Thou relationship with life.

You think that not having a self is better than having a self.

You think that your ego isn’t real but your soul or Self is.

You think that no self is more real than your ego, soul, or Self.

You seek salvation; therefore you are stuck in the rescuer role of the Drama Triangle. This could be salvation from sickness, poverty, loneliness, depression, anxiety, death, meaninglessness, evil. Take your pick.

Because you seek salvation, you put yourself in the role of victim – someone who needs saving. Therefore you think you really are a victim. You really are basically helpless, powerless, and therefore hopeless.

Because you see yourself as a victim, there really are things that are persecuting you. There really are persecuting people, diseases, devils, urges, addictions, and bugs. There really is karma. There really are laws to break or follow; there really is a self that gets punished with bad luck, reincarnation, disease, abandonment, failure, and karma.

These are all symptoms of mental fuzziness. You lack clarity. These are all symptoms of being stuck in drama. You lack the ability to stand back and watch yourself go by.

Choose one of the above or think of your own favorite; let’s say it’s that you have an immortal soul that will survive death. This is an important belief because it provides you with a sense of security and meaning. If you doubt this, just imagine that it isn’t true, that you don’t have an immortal soul that survives death. How does that feel? Despite the fact you probably don’t believe it, it’s a threatening thing to consider, right? Why? Because you rely on it for your sense of security and meaning. You can’t imagine having either without it.

But for a moment, just as a stupid thought experiment, imagine it’s true. What does that feel like? Pretty bad, huh?

Now, observe the pause at the bottom of your breath. Just be in that place after you have totally exhaled. What’s it feel like? If you relax into it  you’ll notice that it’s empty, clear, open, spacious. It doesn’t contain anything. This is the formless potential out of which every moment, every form is birthed. In is the mundane, dark, silent matrix in which a seed sprouts. Experientially, it is equivalent to deep sleep, but this is different, because normally people aren’t conscious when they are deeply asleep. You are. It is the destiny of mankind to learn to be awake and alert all the time, including during deep sleep and while dreaming. You, have the ability to be awake and consciously participate in this formless state of pure potential by becoming one with the pause at the bottom of each breath. When you do, you are in a space of witnessing the entire cycle of breathing, the cycle of each day, the cycle of your life, and the cycle of life itself. This is a space devoid of drama; it is no better than any other part of the cycle of breathing; it merely brings its unique qualities and characteristics into awareness so you can use them when you need them.

Experience what it feels like to move into clarity and the witnessing of all definitions of self, of all forms, and of life naturally, without thinking about it. Just observe. Do this five times, with each pause at the bottom of each breath make it a bit deeper and longer than the last.

What do you feel? Are you feeling more fuzzy and stuck in drama? Less so? The same?

You can use the pause at the bottom of each breath to move yourself into a clear space of witnessing whenever you want to.

Practice: Focus on the pause at the bottom of your breath for five breaths, with each pause deeper and longer than the last. Whenever you are lacking clarity, use this simple exercise and see what happens. Whenever you find yourself caught up in drama, particularly when you are subjectively enmeshed in it and need some objectivity, do this exercise.

For more information on this process, see Waking Up. 

Awareness is value neutral.  Simply by becoming aware of something you can increase it or decrease it.  By becoming aware of your weight you can increase or decrease it.  By becoming aware of your anger you can increase it or decrease it.  The rule of thumb is that enhanced awareness changes a behavior in the direction of your intent.  If you intend to decrease a behavior, more awareness will tend to decrease it.  If you desire to increase a behavior, say dream recall, increased awareness, say by reading over your dream journal, previous IDL interviews, or telling yourself before you go to sleep, “I will remember my dreams when I awaken,” will tend to increase awareness of your dreams.

This does not mean that more awareness is necessarily better; if evolution is a process of enhanced awareness, objectivity, diversification and adaptability, then involution is a process of enhanced subjectivity and submergence into contexts that shrink individual awareness toward zero. There are many reasons to believe that evolution requires involution, and deep sleep is perhaps the best example in the course of any twenty-four hour period in the life of animals, including humans. Therefore, in what follows, it is important to remember that while heightened awareness is a central goal of evolution it is not for life itself, which manifests itself through cycles of evolution and involution.

What does this have to do with meditation?  Many people have difficulty meditating for a variety of reasons.  Most of them boil down to going to war with themselves.  They put themselves into conflict with their own thoughts, feelings, bodies, or environments, with the result being that they fight or capitulate instead of meditating. They make meditation about self-control and life about self-purification, two goals which ignore the necessity of discontrol and impurity in the forms of confusion, ignorance, failure and suffering. Or, they simply capitulate and do some form of self-rescuing: sleeping, problem solving, daydreaming, or visualizing, and call it meditation. Self-medication, self-rescuing, and being stuck in the Drama Triangle is hardly a move toward increased awareness, meditative consciousness, lucidity or waking up. Consequently, avoiding such warfare is critical to successful meditation.  But how?  How can you meditate outside the Drama Triangle?

Awareness meditation simply notes what is coming up in your awareness at this moment.  At first this is done with language, spoken or unspoken: “I am aware of the flowers on the table.”  “I am aware that I am uncomfortable.” “I am aware that I am bored.”  “I am aware of my breath.”  I am aware of an itch in my left foot…”  Whatever comes up is named. If you start thinking about what you’ve named, you name that:  “I am aware that I am angry.”  You start thinking about why you got angry – what that co-worker said to you earlier today.  Then you say or think, “I am aware that I am thinking about why I got angry.” If you think or feel nothing you say, “I am aware that I am thinking about nothing.” “I am aware that I am feeling nothing.”

Most people will do this for three or four things and then drift into long periods of thought and feeling before realizing they have fallen asleep and stopped naming things.  Then they will try again, only to soon fall asleep into their reflections.  This is why naming things out loud can be helpful at first. It keeps you aware of your intention, which is to break up the addictive flow of one thought to the next, one feeling to the next, in an endless loop of subjectivity and involution.

How does naming improve meditation?  By naming your thoughts, feelings, and sensations you aren’t saying anything is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, or smart or stupid.  You aren’t saying you have to sit in a certain position, keep your eyes closed, not think, not imagine, or not forget what you’re doing.  You are not saying that you shouldn’t name whatever comes up while you are in the car or while dancing or while at work.  You are simply noting whatever comes up, something you can do any time, wherever you are, and not only during designated periods of meditation.  By doing so you create spaces between whatever thoughts, feelings, and sensations that arise into your awareness. These spaces are “flaws in the matrix,”  wormholes out of the hologram, and contextual awareness of any and all selves, particularly yourself or Self.  As you name, decouple thoughts and dwell in these spaces those thoughts, feelings, sensations and images that do arise become less seductive; it becomes easier for you to simply note them as you gain practice. Therefore, naming is cultivating the witness and higher-order objectivity. You are learning to move into and expand spaces where you watch the self-created drama of your life, of you, go by, without judgment, preference, or criticism.

Naming quickly leads to periods of relative tranquility and clarity that are qualitatively different from normal waking experience, periods of genuine meditative awareness. These in turn become part of your normal, waking experience. Instead of creating a dichotomy between meditative awareness and normal, waking awareness, you are expanding and thinning your normal waking awareness with constant infusions of clear, witnessing, meditative awareness. This is powerful, and it is your destiny as an embodied human.

Deepening observation of the spaces between naming becomes a matter of noting more whatever comes up at increasingly subtle levels, without speaking out loud or without needing to name the thought, feeling, sensation or image “out loud” in your mind.  As your mind calms and centers you will find that you start naming thoughts, feelings, images and sensations as they start to come up and then even before they come up.  At this point, such naming is more properly called “noting,” because the process is much more subtle than language and grammar.  However, it is basically the same process, simply refined. This is graduate level practice, but you can do it relatively quickly and easily if you follow these simple instructions with intent and persistence.

Naming is effective for a variety of reasons.  It engages your mind in an activity that is productive, supportive, and useful rather than fighting, which only divides you against yourself.  Naming enhances awareness of what is present rather than focusing on the past or future.  It makes no value judgments.  It is simple.  Naming can be done to great benefit by both beginning and advanced meditators.  It provides you with experiences of  quick and genuine shifts and expansions in consciousness, payoffs often promised by meditation but not so frequently delivered.  Naming continues to provide these benefits over time; you do not stop having such shifts and expansions just because you have mastered the technique, as can happen with other approaches to meditation.  You are doing something that you normally do anyway: observing your experience, only with continuing emphasis on observation rather than on the experience.

Naming is extremely effective at cultivating the witness, increasing acceptance, reducing reactivity, and decreasing personalization because it does not waste time or energy judging experiences as good or bad.  It does not deal with preferences.  Instead of endlessly fighting over preferences it simply says, “Preferences are beside the point right now. For now I am going to simply focus on awareness itself.”

You don’t need to meditate for years. You don’t have to go to retreats. You don’t need a guru or teacher. All of these things help, and will speed and deepen your practice, but they aren’t necessary, if you follow the deceptively simple instructions above.

For more information, see Dillard, J Waking Up.

This short text will not tell you when or how often to meditate.  It will not tell you how to sit, whether to have your eyes open or closed, whether you need a quiet space, whether to use your breath, the wall, a flame, a picture, or an inner image or color as a centering tool.  It will not tell you whether you should have animals around you or what you should do to prepare for meditation.  It doesn’t make recommendations that you purify yourself by abstaining from this or that sort of thought, feeling, or action.  It doesn’t require that you believe in anything or anyone or have any previous knowledge of meditation.  If it doesn’t offer you any of these things, what does it have to offer?

To reverse a metaphor, it’s easy to focus on the forest and not see the trees of meditation.  In this case, there are five of them.  Together, they constitute the entirety not only of your experience, but your identity.  When you understand your relationship with them, you will understand how your mind works when you meditate. With this knowledge you can transcend both mind and self without needing to subscribe to any particular approach to meditation; you can become one with universal love, enjoying a devoted, devotional I-Thou relationship with Life as a person; or you can successfully work with just about any approach to meditation. Without this knowledge you can practice any one of countless approaches to meditation and still have limited success.

Hinduism and Buddhism compare the mind in meditation to monkeys jumping around in trees from branch to branch.   These monkeys represent the constant activity of our minds.  Monkey thoughts are active, and this activity is something that meditation is supposed to reduce.  But meditation often is unsuccessful in doing so.  Why? What can be done about it?  On closer examination, we find that there are at least five trees that your monkey mind inhabits and each has its own enticing fruit.  This short text provides descriptions of the five trees, what monkeys do in them, and what monkeys can do to live in peace. These five trees are your

thoughts,

your mental images,

your emotions,

your physical sensations, and

your state of mind.

Most people are addicted to these trees and their fruit, swinging from one to the other and never getting in touch with the ground of being that is the context in which these trees exist. IDL introduces you to different ways of experiencing this context or ground of being, from the perspective of birds, sky, earth, and outer space. These are metaphors for different types of meditative detachment and witnessing. When you learn to objectify what is currently figure and become this “ground,” from one or another of these perspectives, you wake up. You die to the drama of your previous, limited, imprisoning self-definitions.

For more information, see Transcending Your Monkey Mind: The Five Trees and Meditation.