The Lazy Person's Way to Meditate?
By Bill Harris, Director,
Centerpointe Research Institute

 

 

Most people, at some point, at least try meditation. In addition to the age-old spiritual benefits, thousands of research studies have demonstrated that meditation increases awareness, well-being, and equanimity; relieves anxiety, depression and other mental health problems; increases mental clarity; and reduces stress associated with many medical problems.

Meditation, though, can take months to learn, and years - even decades - to master. Many people try to meditate, but quit before they experience results. "Too hard," they say. "Too much work."

But what if there were an easier way, not just to skip the learning curve, but to actually meditate more deeply and consistently - even more than an experienced Zen monk?

Science fiction, you say? Well, you would be half right, because this new approach to meditation is already used by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world - and it is based on hard science.

Here is how I developed it and how it works:

I began traditional meditation at age 19 to get rid of my crushing emotional problems. Unlike most people, though, I kept it up for sixteen years. As I reached my mid-thirties, despite my disciplined persistence, a few isolated breakthroughs and some interesting experiences, I was still miserable.

I probably would have quit but I was so miserable I felt my only choice was to keep going. Besides, meditation seemed like a hip thing to do, and I needed all the hipness I could get.

I also studied Eastern philosophy, and read everything I could get my hands on about Western psychology and psychotherapy. Being a gung-ho, throw-caution-to-the-winds kind of guy, I actually tried everything the teachers and experts suggested. When I look back on those days, given that so little happened, I am amazed that I kept going.

I had some results, of course. Occasionally I even had what seemed to be some small breakthroughs. Somehow, though, I just wasn't getting to the underlying cause of my unhappiness. Any progress I was making was unbearably slow.

Then, I found neuro-technology. I still remember the first time I listened to a ten-minute cassette designed to "change your brain waves" to those of deep meditation. I was quite skeptical, but almost instantly I felt "deeper" than I usually felt at the end of a forty-five minute meditation, on a good day - peaceful, centered, in touch with my inner core. I felt great, in fact, and the feeling lingered for hours.

The crude technology I experienced on that cassette - which I was to improve and call Holosync® - is based on two streams of research: widely-known studies on the brain-wave patterns of experienced meditators, and lesser-known research describing how brain waves can be changed (or entrained) using precise combinations of pure sine wave tones delivered to the brain through stereo headphones.

My initial experience left me wanting more. I borrowed tone generators from a local university, created experimental soundtracks, and became a human guinea pig.

What I experienced literally blew my mind. Not only was I experiencing states of incredibly deep meditation, I also began to release lots of unresolved "dark side" emotional material - followed by incredible euphoria and bliss.

A lot of what happened I had read about but, despite years of meditation, had never experienced: Dream-like visions. Unusual (and pleasurable) physical sensations. Heightened intuition. Deep insights. Feelings of oceanic Oneness. Hours speeding by in what seemed like minutes.

Best of all, I began having the breakthroughs I had been seeking for so many years. Anger melted away. My depression evaporated. I began to experience a feeling of connectedness with other people and the world - something I had read about but never understood or experienced. My whole life changed in ways I never could have imagined.

I was experiencing the benefits of a long-term meditation practice, but in a fraction of the time.

How it works
Mystics describe the universe as one all-encompassing energy, intelligent and aware, existing forever as the source of everything. The very nature of this energy is contentment, love, peace, and happiness. "You are that energy," mystics tell us.

But this isn't the way life seems to most of us. Because our mind chops the world into separate things and events, seeing some as "good" and others as "bad," we more often feel at odds with other people and the world, and even with our self. We think something is missing, that there is somewhere to go, something we must get or strive for if we are to feel fulfilled and fully alive.

Meditation, however, quiets the mind, and this internal battle. As this happens, we become increasingly aware of how everything goes together. Stress and separation-based problems dissolve. We begin to experience fulfillment regardless of what happens around us. Though we still do things, go places, and strive to get things, we do it in a more lighthearted way.

These changes are reflected in the brain. When you feel separate, your brain is lateralized - one hemisphere is dominant over the other. The greater the lateralization, the greater the feelings of anxiety, separation, and dis-ease. As our brain hemispheres synchronize, however, we relax. We see and feel how everything goes together. Well-being increases. Stress diminishes.

As synchrony increases, the electrical patterns in your brain slow from the more jangled and stressed beta pattern to a slower alpha pattern, associated with relaxation, effortless focus, and even joy - a flow state. With practice, some meditators experience still slower theta waves, associated with visionary experiences, deep intuition, and spiritual insights.

A few rare individuals learn to make the slowest delta brain-wave patterns. Brain-wave bio-feedback expert, Dr. James Hardt, has described delta as the brain-wave pattern of kundalini awakenings - profound experiences of transcendental, expanded spiritual awareness.

Those living in this "awakened mind" state are more productive, happier, and capable of more intimacy, creativity, and wholeness. The brain produces more of a wide range of pleasurable and health-enhancing brain chemicals associated with increased mental clarity and feelings of well-being, even bliss.

Meditation was once seen as weird and far-out. Today, main-stream publications such as Time and Newsweek celebrate the mental, physical, and emotional benefits of meditation and respected scientists meet with the Dalai Lama to discuss meditation.

Fewer people, however, are aware that these same beneficial brain-wave patterns can be created, quickly and easily, with audio technologies such as Holosync - and that technologically-induced meditation greatly accelerates the meditation process, providing all the benefits of meditation in a fraction of the time.

Using our living laboratory of more than 700,000 people in 173 countries, Centerpointe Research Institute has refined technologically-based meditation over the last 20 years. Today, Holosync is used by top personal and spiritual-growth teachers all over the world.

Now, any person can experience the profound states of meditative awareness previously available only to those willing to meditate many hours a day for ten or twenty years. So if you are one of those who have tried meditation but found it difficult, there is hope for you after all!

For more information about Holosync technology and Bill Harris, and to request a free Holosync demo CD, visit www.meditatefree.com/awareness.

 


Return to the May/June Index page