Fantasy Meditation For Calmer Minds

 

Meditation and Challenges Reaching Spiritual Enlightenment

There are many forms of meditation.  Merriam-Webster dictionary defines to meditate as to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness.  Guided meditation is the most popular as it takes many years to master yogic meditation.  Pranayama or breathing techniques are used to calm the mind before coming to a state of deep thought.  Pranayama itself can be quite challenging.  Refraining from wandering thoughts even before you start meditating might be the biggest challenge. Trying different techniques will get you closer to spiritual enlightenment when you find the best technique for you.

What is Fantasy Meditation?  

 

Fantasy Meditation is a type of guided meditation that exercises and calms your mind to control the need to daydream or fantasize excessively throughout ones day by being guided through common and fun fantasies on a more disciplined schedule.   

With this type of meditation, you are being mindful of how you are feeling and where your mind is in the fantasy.  There is no need to wander because this place is a feel good place to be.  Being in a feel good place will always calm the mind. 

Practice Regularly

Practicing regularly will remove the need to fantasize or daydream excessively.  By setting aside a small block of time everyday to focus on one or two fantasies, you eliminate the need to daydream at other times because you are expecting to fantasize tomorrow.  

Control Excessive Daydreaming

This isn't to cause you to daydream all day.  The goal is to achieve the opposite, to bring you back to a calm more focused state.  A controlled daydream; you accept it, not fight it, then control it and use it for your advantage.  With guided daydreaming, you may have had similar fantasies so you can relate and have a controlled session of fantasy so it doesn't spiral out of control.  

This type of meditation is to not stop what you do all the time, not make you try something that is unnatural to you and to not change who you are.  This is simply a practice of controlling thoughts to work in your benefit rather than against you.  

Why Some People Stop Meditating

I have come across many people attempting meditation and fight to stop their mind from wandering.  Chances are, there mind wanders to what they need to do later or what someone has said to them earlier or anything else that's happened or going to happen.  This results in not reaching spiritual enlightenment or worse, giving up on meditation and never trying it again.

Choose Something More Interesting to Focus on

Instead of avoiding these thoughts by trying to focus on how your breath feels inhaling and exhaling, wouldn't it be easier to focus on something you like to think about?  Nobody likes to think about the bad things that happened earlier in the week but people do like thinking about taking a vacation.  Chances are if you have a hard time focusing on thinking about breathing, you will have an easier time focusing on swimming with dolphins in the Caribbean.  

Healthier Controlled Daydreaming

This becomes a healthier controlled way to daydream.  It's also fun!  The rest of your day, your mind is more content, relaxed and free to focus on being productive.  You can now clean the house quicker as you are not stopping at the washing machine to think about taking a vacation.  If you are a writer, you are free to focus on the topic you are writing instead of daydreaming when you hit a roadblock.  If you are a computer programmer, you are free to control your thoughts with more ease to discover the next best networking software or website. Freedom and practicing something fun does lead to a healthy lifestyle. 

Why encourage daydreaming or fantasizing?

 

We are told it is “bad” to daydream.  “You are not living in reality, you need to pay attention, don’t waste your time with dreaming.”  After years of hearing comments such as those and discovering a thing or two about life as I grow older and wiser, I realize, maybe it’s not “bad”.  Even in my thirties now, it is still as it ever was, a challenge to never daydream.  Feeling unnatural, naturally, it’s normal to question what is bad and what is good. 

After years of research, we have discovered many things that were known to be 100% bad are now good at times.  Marijuana for example, a few years ago this was known as a bad drug and nothing good could come of it.  Now, it’s used to treat seizures, people fighting multiple sclerosis and cancer.  For those people, Marijuana is good.  Coffee, coffee now may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and delay the development of Parkinson’s disease. 

Just about anything can be a good thing for someone.  

When I stopped fighting my dreams, I grew stronger and more successful.  When I started embracing my dreams, I became a successful artist, writer, yoga instructor, entrepreneur and mother.  I offer to you to give it a try.  Find a moment every day to not fight your fantasies but finish it and start anew the next day.  Maybe try writing your own fantasies down to follow as a guide every day.  

Try Fantasy Meditation for Yourself

Here is a sample guided fantasy meditation to try out.  Find a quiet comfortable place for just a few minutes to read the story.  Maybe continue the story as you sit or think of another fantasy of your own for a few minutes longer.  Then try it again tomorrow.  Make it a scheduled practice and let me know if you start to control the times you daydream, if you start being more productive and share your fantasies for others to meditate to. 

Control it!  Don't fight it!