An Easy Guide to Meditation by Roy Eugene Davis Page A

perspective. Take to heart whatever is meaningful to you. Use your intellectual skills to determine the meaning of whatever is not immediately clear to you. Use your intuitive abilities to see beyond words and concepts, to truth—that which is factual. Doing this is the only approach to understanding the processes of life that will satisfy your heart.
    If you are a beginning meditator, the guidelines in the early chapters will be sufficient to enable you to practice with benefit. If you a more experienced meditator, review your practice to be sure you are doing it correctly, then use the various techniques and procedures to improve your meditative skills. Even if you are not inspired when you first sit to meditate, sit still anyway, and wait in the silence. In time, your innate, soul urge to have awareness restored to flawless clarity will implement the meditation process and direct its actions to a successful conclusion.
    Planet Earth is our present dwelling place but it is not our permanent abode. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do while here? What will become of us when we depart this world? How can we awaken to higher understanding and live with meaningful purpose? These are questions we should ask until the true answers are known. I pray that the allness of life becomes known to you, and that all your needs are met and your destiny is fulfilled.
    Roy Eugene Davis
    Lakemont, Georgia
     
     
    CHAPTER ONE
    Meditation as a Foundation
    Practice for Personal Benefits
    and Authentic Spiritual Growth
     
    Meditation, correctly practiced, is the simple process of removing attention from conditions and circumstances which, when cognized and overly identified with, fragment and cloud our perceptions. Meditating, while remaining alert and observant, enables us to easily experience pure (clear) levels of awareness or states of consciousness. Doing this on a regular schedule provides frequent opportunities for physiological and psychological rest, while freeing attention to explore more refined states of consciousness and to effortlessly experience spontaneous unfoldments of innate, spiritual qualities.
     
    Please remember, as you read this book and proceed to the practice of meditation, that the secret of successful meditative experience is to relax into the process, allowing constructive adjustments of mental states and states of consciousness to occur naturally. For this reason, it is recommended that anxiety, as well as any inclination you may have to exert effort to accomplish something, are to be avoided when meditating. Anxiety about the outcome of an endeavor indicates an attitude of need and keeps us too self-centered. A sense of personal effort or excessive use of will power, to accomplish a goal or to make something happen, arises from self-consciousness which needs to be renounced so that more refined levels of awareness can be perceived and experienced.
     
    At all times, whether meditating or routinely engaged in everyday circumstances and relationships, it is helpful to be inwardly aware of the fact that you are an immortal, spiritual being temporarily relating to the human condition. While in this world you express as a Spirit-mind-body being, with your spiritual nature remaining superior to the mind and the physical body.
     
    You need to know that you are a spiritual being so that you can do helpful things to allow your innate qualities to unfold and express. People who are self-consciously identified with their personality characteristics, or with the physical body or objective circumstances, sometimes become forgetful of their essential nature as spiritual beings. Then, if they endeavor to facilitate spiritual growth, they may tend to think in terms of trying to transform their human, conditioned nature into a spiritual one. The truth is, the human condition does not become spiritual; when conditions are ideal, our spiritual nature awakens and blossoms, allowing us to clearly