#225 Consolidating the knowledge (Meditation: How to integrate it into your life. Can it bring spiritual awakening? How can an app enhance your practice? And an 8-minute drumming meditation.)

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

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Agi Keramidas  0:05  
Welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast where you will find both the inspiration to grow and the actions to implement towards your next level. I am your host Agi Keramidas. And I've been on a journey of personal development and self mastery for six years now. And my mission is to inspire you to stand out and take action towards living your best life. In this podcast, I invite myself inside the minds of authors, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, exceptional people who will inspire you to improve your life, and also give you actions you can take and implement. So on my ongoing journey of the podcast, on Thursdays episodes are now focused on consolidation. Repetition is the mother of all learning, as they say. So instead of adding more knowledge, I revisit the previous episodes and consolidate the wisdom imparted by my guests.

In today's episode, the topic is meditation. And let me start by asking you, do you practice meditation? If not, I hope this podcast will give you the incentive to at least give it a try. If if you do practice, are you consistent with it? Do you do it daily? How long do you do it for? For me personally, meditation has been one of the cornerstones of personal development and it is one of the daily activities or daily habits that I will never miss. So today we will revisit four of the previous episodes and my intention is to distil the wisdom of my guests on this topic of meditation. What are its effects? How to integrate it into our life? What about those moments of quote unquote, spiritual awakening? And even more? How can modern technology help with practising meditation and at the end of today's episode, you can actually experience a very unique, eight minute short meditation with a shamanic drum. I really hope that you will find something that clicks something that inspires you to take action as a result. So my four guests that we will listen to today are Chess Edwards, Tiffany Nguyen, Dan Clark and Eirini Kapsidou. And the first one we will listen to is Chess Edwards, who was featured on episode 81 . Chess Edwards is a meditation teacher, and a spiritual guide. And we will listen to him first describing these moments of spiritual awakening that one may experience during meditation.

Chess Edwards  3:34  
But what happens is in those moments, one might have a fairly complete awakening, it can happen through you know, working with substance or Ayahuasca or different you know, mind altering substances. It can happen in deep meditations and a 10 day vipassana retreat, silent meditation. So yes, that can happen. But what often happens is one feels a an exhilaration, and a bliss, that they go, Oh my God, it's the OH MY GOD moment. And then what they do is they try to maintain that or look for it again, and again and again. And if it doesn't keep showing up in that same level of ecstasy, feeling is I've lost it. And it's important to remember that that moment of pure freedom of going, Oh, that's what I am, I am the pure I am consciousness, I am already free up there's that that moment of bliss is the human experience of the truth. But once the truth is realised and embodied, you don't walk around in a state of constant bliss. That that beautiful piece of Rupert spyera and Mooji. You know, they've said the same thing. They're like, look, awakening is not an extent and an extraordinary thing. It's just you being you. So we He ended up just living then in the state of have more normalised peace and presence. But I think a lot of people, they, they have an experience, and then they look for that again and again and again and try to recreate it. And they feel like oh, I've lost. And indeed kind of a half, because they're looking for the human experience of awakening, rather than just letting the purity of consciousness be.

Agi Keramidas  5:32  
Awakening is not an extraordinary thing. It's just you being you. And let's also listen to another part of the conversation with chess where he discusses of how little by little meditation awakens us.

Chess Edwards  5:52  
Because it's like coming out of a deep, deep, deep, deep sleep, if literally, you've been laying in bed sleeping, and somebody comes up and kind of wakes you up for a second, you know, smack you upside the head and wake you up, you may wake up for that moment and go, Oh, my god, wow, I had no idea that this world existed this awake, where I was always in the dream. But you're groggy, you're not going to stay awake, you're going to so every meditation is an interruption of the habits of the mind, every meditation is a is a new moment, of being a little bit more awake, then we fall asleep, we meditate again, and we will wake up again. And then we fall asleep, and then we meditate again, and we wake up again. And if one is doing a meditation that is geared toward your actual self realisation, inquiry, who am I really? How do I come into the knowing of that, if that's what one's meditation is, is aligned with then with repetition, discipline, devotion, that self will awaken. And then after a while, it'll stay awake, just the same as if I kept, you know, patting me on the cheek while you're asleep. After a while, you'd go Alright, fine, fine, fine, I'm awake.

Agi Keramidas  7:07  
Every meditation is an interruption of the habits of the mind. And we will listen to one more part of the episode with Tess, where he talked about the meditation of self inquiry, a meditation that is designed to help one come into the knowing of their truth of their eternal nature.

Chess Edwards  7:38  
There's various types and purposes of meditation, the meditation that I teach, that I offer, is a meditation of self inquiry. So it's a meditation that is designed to help one come into the knowing of their truth of their eternal nature. And so Meditation really is a moment to stop and feel into what is the self beyond the mind. Prior to mind, beyond the mind, what is the self that isn't being thought, but it's the self that just is and is always present. So meditation is the opportunity to stop and intentionally point one's awareness. Beyond the mind with the inquiry of what's there, who am I when I'm not thinking myself into being with all my thoughts of worthiness and unworthiness of ability and not livability? If all of that were to stop even for five seconds, what I disappear? or might there be something there it is called me. So meditation is an opportunity to interrupt the story of self and discover the self that doesn't need a story. It just already is.

Agi Keramidas  9:15  
And after all this, I think it's time to listen to something more practical show here is a test describing a practical practice and how to integrate meditation into our waking life.

Chess Edwards  9:33  
So take a moment if anyone listening and bring your awareness to the presence of your left but okay, got it. Yeah, you didn't even have to look. You just intentionally stopped and said I want to be aware of my left foot. And there it was. You didn't just grow a left foot. Yeah. So it was a moment. That was a meditation to intentionally point one's awareness to something that is present. But simply tip typically not looked at, not felt into. So one of the meditation practices that I love and and in the in the gift that I've got for people, here's some of the guided meditations. One of them is a meditation about feeling into a self that feels good, a self that feels stable, a self that feels like it's not burdened by the ideas of self. And to give that up a metaphor. So for me, when I first started this work, I felt into a redwood tree. We have these beautiful trees in California, here in the United States that are called redwoods are just beautiful, giant, stable, majestic beings. And I would feel into that stability in that grace. And I'd feel into the feeling of what if I was redwood? What would that feel like? Oh, it feels like a nice, like a storm could come and the redwood goes, Okay, bring it on. I'm good, I'm fine. So I would feel into that. So in that how this relates to moments is, I would throughout my day, and this is a practice that I invite, find a metaphor. I am an open meadow, I am a deep ocean, I am the clear sky. I'm a, you know, a giant, I'm a stable Redwood feel into something I know what it feels like. And then throughout the day, what if you took 10 seconds at a time just to stop and take a breath. And just like we pointed the attention to the left foot, take a breath and point one's attention to the feeling of grace. And seconds. That's it, right? Ah, there I am beautiful, and then go about your day. If one did that 20 times a day. That's 200 seconds. That's just over three minutes. And not only does it again, awaken, awaken, awaken the truth of self again and again and again and again. it rewires the brain. it rewires our sense of self, we interrupt the habit, the pattern of identifying with our construct itself, and allows us to feel into something that already feels whole, and alive and strong and peaceful and loving. Do that 20 times a day. So a meditation can be a moment, it can be a breath, or it can be sitting for an hour. He's sitting for two hours. We're anything in between.

Agi Keramidas  13:00  
We will listen next to a snippet of the conversation with Tiffany Nolan in Episode 135. Tiffany is a spiritual life coach. And she talked about the effects of practising meditation and when do this effects show, and especially said that the show the most clear when we are faced with really challenging situation or even more when our life gets in chaos.

Tiffany Nguyen  13:36  
I guess sometimes when you can have like a very good experience in the beginning, like when your mind is already in chaos, and suddenly it's like settle down. So it's good. Like, it's like a very noticeable thing. Before after you practice for a while you kind of don't have that kind of blissful state of friends. But for me, it's the focus is more subtle. So you will see is more when challenging time comes up. And if you keep up with the practice, you can see how like I when that happens. So after I was in my practice for at least a year, and I was starting my job, and it was very stressful in retail. And also my family also was in chaos. So everything is in chaos in my life. But even through that there's that sense of peace, there is a sense of groundedness that is very palpable that I can feel it. And it's not it I realise not everybody feel it. And it was all fine to my practice of not losing myself. So the meditation practice really helped to increase awareness and maintain that awareness. So you know it just like when you brush your teeth every day, you know isn't doesn't make a difference. If you do it one day But if you do it every single day, then it's really like, have a snowball effect. So just especially is the effect will show the most clear when challenging times comes out when everything is in chaos and you don't lose that sense of self. And that's how my meditation practice how Yeah.

Agi Keramidas  15:22  
So far we've listened to the benefits of meditation that the necessity really is the word I would use. But an interesting question to ask in the times that we live in is, Can modern technology help with meditation? We will hear next apart from my conversation with Dan Clark on episode 130. Dan Clark is the CEO of brain FM, an app that leverages neuroscience and leading technology to create functional music that helps people focus, relax, and sleep on demand. And if you are a regular listeners, you will probably know that I have partnered with brain FM to spread the word about their app, because it's superb. It's outstanding. So even though the main function of the app is to put you into a focused mental state, there are also other mental states that the app can help you tap into. So let's listen to Dan talking about how using brain FM, especially for people who are experienced meditators can help them sleep into deep meditation quicker.

Dan Clark  16:50  
And meditation is really interesting, because there's tonnes of apps that do meditation, right? So we're not we don't believe it's our mission to teach you how to meditate. There's some great apps that do that. But users have found that when they they already know the practice of meditating, and they come into our app and they try it, they're able to slip into deep meditation way quicker. And if you think about it, it's because we're using the same kind of principles. So we understand the neural patterns of meditation, they're heavily studied, we're able to emulate that in these different patterns. And then people that have, they've learned how to ride the bike and meditation so to speak, they're able to go extremely fast and deep, because we're kind of the wind pushing their back while they're running towards it.

Agi Keramidas  17:37  
Is my podcast listener, you have the opportunity to try brain FM completely for free, and if you decide to use it, you will get a special 20% off. Go to brain.fm/id That's bra I n.fm Sluss Agi and from the cutting edge of technology. Let's go to ancient shamanic drumming meditation with my fourth guest for today. Irina copsey, who was she was featured in Episode 65. She came into contact with spirituality when she was 19, when she met this Siberian shaman, and she now leads spiritual events and organises drum meditations and workshops on awakening femininity, and the art of relationships. So we'll listened to a part of that episode, which is a unique eight minute short, full meditation with a sermonic drum. So if you are able to sit down somewhere, comfortably, and close your eyes for this last part of the episode, go right ahead.

Eirini Kapsidou  19:06  
I wanted to offer today to our listeners, a very short meditation with a drum. So this means that I'm going to be playing the drum and maybe singing. And I want us to connect through this with our heart. I want us to connect with our true hearts, our true desires, our true wishes, and our true self, let's say and to be able to understand and realise more and more what we want. So this will be just a very short meditation to do that. But we can start by this and you can experience a bit what it means to to do the drumming. So I'm holding my drum right now, and I would like you to close Your eyes first of all take some deep breaths relax where you are you're probably sitting somewhere or standing. So you can if you want sit down and find a moment to do this moment for yourself where there will be no external influence

and I would like to ask you to put your hands on your heart on your chest the area of your hearts

and you can talk to your heart through the beating of the drum and you can feel what your heart is telling you hey Hey hee hee. Listen to your heart take deep breaths I told us stress, disconnect connect with who you are deep inside your true inner self and expression of a greater power Here

If you want to move, you can move your body your hands, your arms, your legs, your head

you can even stand up and start  a small dance

face again, your palms, on your chest, on your heart and feel deep gratitude for who you are for your life path so far, deep gratitude. You have made it so far you have been through difficult moments, and beautiful moments. And this has made you who you are. You have learned so many things from life. Be grateful for this. And you can bow down a little bit to your head if you want, as a sign of thankfulness to the universe. To this power that exists to consciousness or however you want to call it to God, however you want to call it. You can take a deep breath and slowly open your eyes when you're ready.

Agi Keramidas  28:00  
I hope you found something valuable among these parts of the conversations, and also something actionable, something you can implement yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, I certainly intend to do more of them to condense the wisdom contained in these conversations and distil it in a way into actionable items that you can pick up and implement in order to change and grow and improve your life. But I would like your help. Tell me what is your biggest challenge? What what kind of content would you like to hear? Go to personal development, mastery podcast.com and send me a message. And a quick question before I go. Have you ever thought of having your own podcast sharing your voice making an impact, but you don't have the time or the computers case to learn how to create and launch a podcast. If that resonates then I have a solution for you. A solution that takes away all the complexity and allows you to concentrate only on creating your content. Go to my website ID keramidas.com and get your free copy of my guide on how to create and launch your podcast in seven simple steps. And until next time, stand out don't fit in