In preparation for meditation, please consider the following:
1. Clean your space and wash Your hands, brush your teeth, or grab a mint!
2. Create an “altar” and make “offerings”. This can simply be pictures of your family, teachers, deities in your tradition, or anyone who inspires you or anything that creates the mood for your mind to relax. Making offerings means to give incense, candles, sweets and flowers to present as loving gifts to these Beings, or simply bow in recognition of this time of contemplation.
3. Find a comfortable seat.
4. Examine your motivation for meditation.
5. Ask for peace and develop the wish to help Yourself and Others. This means to reaffirm the aim and desire to move in a safe, positive direction in life. Moreover, You are taking this safe and positive direction in order to be able to help others as fully as possible, not just to benefit Yourself.
6. Invite and visualize a special person to sit with You. Recognize them for their inspiration and gifts and Love.
7. Admit shortcomings, difficulties and weaknesses. In admitting that we have problems, we reaffirm our reason and aim in meditation. We want to learn and then practice methods to overcome these problems.
8. Rejoice in the good deeds of others and ourselves which helps us to counter any feelings of despondency that might come from acknowledging our problems, mistakes, and difficulties. We need to balance awareness of our shortcomings with reaffirmation of our good qualities.
9. Ask to be inspired and to gain more insight, more understanding, more realizations. Ask that you remain open to learning and that the teachers come in the ways that work for You.
10. Dedicate the virtue of meditation. May your effort act as a cause for achieving supreme peace and bliss and, in turn, benefit others as much as possible. May this effort be applied in Your everyday life so that it starts to make a difference and bring more happiness, joy and peace to Yourself and others.
