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Matrix Meditations

A 16-week Program for Developing the Mind-Heart Connection

Published by Destiny Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

LIST PRICE ₹798.00

PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER

About The Book

65 dynamic meditation techniques for manifesting your desires and multiplying the power of your mind

• Contains meditation practices from both Eastern and Western traditions

• Includes proven techniques for increasing mental clarity, replacing negative behaviors that have become habits, and realizing your desires

Matrix Meditations offers dynamic meditation practices derived from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions to develop intuition, manifest desires, and empower the self by forging a strong heart-mind relationship. The authors provide a systematic 16-week program that is designed to develop heightened awareness and deeper states of consciousness for readers with any level of meditation experience, moving from lessons in classical Eastern techniques to advanced levels that employ methods not found elsewhere.

Four key forms of meditation are used in the book: concentration, mindfulness, contemplation, and adventures in awareness. These are applied to specific practices that range from improving mental clarity and memory to replacing self-limiting patterns of thinking and behaving in which you may be trapped. Each of the 65 meditations offers a doorway into a different chamber of your consciousness and an opportunity to learn more about your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual nature. The matrix can also be used as an oracle to guide you to the most valuable meditation you need for the present moment--be it love, balance, conflict, dreams, renewal, or celebration. These meditation techniques are designed to create healing and harmony between the mind and emotions, allowing you to attain not only greater financial and emotional security and well-being but also life-long spiritual growth.

Excerpt

CELL 43
Joy: Happiness, Bliss, and Peak Experiences


The Sun in Your Heart

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
-- Abraham Lincoln

You can discover and let go of ways you make yourself unhappy and replace them with thoughts and acts that bring you great joy. Every language has many words for feeling good: joy, enjoyment, happiness, delight, pleasure, cheer, gladness, bliss, and ecstasy. Just hearing these words is reassuring. We’d all love to be able to go to the store and buy happiness, but it’s not for sale. You have to find it within. Happiness can be momentary or enduring. You feel it when you obtain something you want or when something good comes your way unexpectedly. You also feel happy when you’re doing something enjoyable or worthwhile. And you probably feel happy when you bring others happiness. In Swami Ramakrishananda Puri’s words, “Happiness is like perfume. We can’t pour it on someone else without getting a few drops on ourselves.” But for many people, it’s all too easy to get locked into routines so hectic that they leave little room for happiness. You can, however, increase your ability to be happy, or even joyful. Vietnamese Buddhist monk and meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests using the metaphor of watering flowers: “Cultivating joy means to . . . organize our daily lives so that the positive seeds are watered every day, and the negative seeds are not watered.”2 How do you water seeds of joy? A good starting point is to notice your thoughts that contribute to making you feel bad and move your attention away from them. In their place, you can amplify thoughts that make you feel good and act in ways that help you feel optimistic instead of pessimistic. Also, notice whether you set limiting conditions for letting yourself feel good. If so, you can let go of those conditions and become more accepting of being in each moment. Observe when you’re tight and tense--since it’s hard to feel good then--and use whatever tools you know of to relax. We can learn something about watering seeds of joy from Gestalt therapist Stella Resnick, who had a thriving psychotherapy practice, a hectic life, and pervasive feelings of dissatisfaction. “I did yoga,” she writes. “I meditated. I exercised. I became a vegetarian. Why wasn’t I happy?” At the age of thirty-four, she closed her practice and moved to a house in the country where she lived alone for a year, read Thoreau, and contemplated her life. She discovered “how little I knew about how to be happy on a daily basis. I knew how to drive myself to succeed. I knew how to criticize myself. . . . But I didn’t know how to take on a day and enjoy it. . . . I suddenly realized: It isn’t enough to know what you are doing wrong. You have to . . . learn how to . . . enjoy your life--moment by moment and day by precious day.” The following meditation can help sow seeds of increased receptivity to joyful states of mind.

YOUR SPECTRUM OF ENJOYMENT

Remember large and small events that have brought you great pleasure, happiness, or joy. Think about pleasant events in your recent past. Then think back to your childhood, your teenage years, and your adulthood prior to the recent past and recall your most enjoyable times. Finally, contemplate potential enjoyments that you seldom or never allow yourself. When your recollections slow to a trickle, scan through those old and recent memories to see which sources of enjoyment are an active part of your life today and which are not. (For instance, perhaps when you were a teenager you spent pleasant, lazy afternoons with friends, but now you never do.) In your mind’s eye, survey the range of enjoyable experiences that you allow yourself. Then shift the spotlight of your attention to experiences that lie outside that range. Are there past pleasurable experiences that you’d like to make part of your life now? Are there opportunities for enjoying life that you’d like to allow yourself more often than you do? Is there something you’d like to try that you’ve never done? Finally, choose one neglected source of enjoyment that you’d like to allow yourself to do this week--and make a commitment to do so.


Variations in Technique

As in the above technique, recall various memories of happy moments. Now focus on just one or two of your most meaningful events. Take a few more minutes to reflect on the feelings and sensations you experienced in these happy moments. Enlarge these feelings from past happiness and let them saturate your present awareness. They live inside you. At any time, you can recall them by remembering the moments in which they arose.

Points in the Process
Contributing to others’ joy or happiness can increase your own. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and all the other great prophets and saints had this in common: They recognized that finding your own happiness, joy, or bliss is just one step on the path to self-realization. It’s still attachment to ego: “I am the one who must be happy. I am the one who must be saved.” The next step is to help others. Buddha used this metaphor: Once we’ve built a small boat and crossed the river from samsara (illusion, or your mind going around in circles) to nirvana (in which we discard illusion and live in abiding clarity and joy), the next step is to give up hanging out in bliss and go back across the river to the realm of toil and tears where most people live. There we can build a larger boat to ferry others across. He called one who does this a bodhisattva.

About The Authors

Victor Daniels, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Sonoma State University. He was the first director of the India Studies program at Sonoma and studied meditation with Harish Johari and Jakusho Kwong-Roshi. He is the coauthor, with Kooch Daniels, of Tarot d’Amour and lives in Bodega, California.

Kooch Daniels studied with Harish Johari for 20 years and is also a student of Sri Amritanandamayi. She is the coauthor, with Victor Daniels, Ph.D., of Tarot d’Amour and lives in Bodega, California.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Destiny Books (June 25, 2009)
  • Length: 416 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781594779701

Raves and Reviews

“Victor and Kooch Daniels have studied dozens of meditative disciplines, creating a systems approach in which each of their readers will be able to find a suitable path. In today’s troubled world, navigating the sea of consciousness can be a hazardous task. Matrix Meditations provides a trustworthy guide for avoiding the hazards and enjoying the ride.”

– Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School, and coeditor of Varietie

“Matrix Meditations takes the complex and makes it simple, with one thought in mind--to show the reader that despair can be changed into hope and tragedy can be transformed into triumph. It gives readers truly practical methods for solving their worst problems and thus achieving happiness and success. Magical and mystical at the same time, Matrix Meditations is a must read!”

– John Harricharan, author of When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat

"In Matrix Meditations, Victor Daniels and Kooch N. Daniels present their marvelous 16-week program for developing the Mind-Heart connection. These two experienced teachers present a method of honest communication with your inner self, and their techniques demonstrate how you may begin to listen to both your head and your heart--perhaps for the first real time in your life. After you have encountered the 65 cells in the Matrix of Consciousness, you may find that you will have to release some of your most cherished old concepts and ideas--but the good news is that you will also be able to free yourself from those stubborn roadblocks on the path to realizing your dreams and your true mission in life."

– Brad Steiger, author of Worlds Before Our Own, and coauthor of Angel Miracles: Inspirational True St

"In Matrix Meditations, Victor and Kooch Daniels survey the landscape of the world wisdom traditions and present an unbiased and well-researched book that synthesizes and presents in very direct language what seers from all over the world teach about the mind and meditation. Matrix Meditations can serve as both a reference and guide to those seeking greater peace and the human desire to be of help to others. Whether you already have a meditation practice or are just embarking on such, it will be a source that you will read, practice, and treasure."

– Robert Sachs, author of The Wisdom of the Buddhist Masters: Common and Uncommon sense, The Passionat

"The authors draw from both Eastern and Western meditation techniques, writing about the basics of meditation in a clear and concise manner, and then expand upon it. . . . can offer new insights to both the advanced meditator and to the newest beginner."

– Susan LosCalzo, New Age Retailer, Holiday 2009

"Four key forms: concentration, mindfulness, contemplation, and awareness are applied to specific daily routines for added punch. No new age collection should be without this."

– The Midwest Book Review, Oct 2009

"This is a great book and the authors point out it can also be used as an oracle. Just open it to any page and use that as your area of focus for the day."

– New Spirit Journal, Vol. 5, No. 7, Nov 2009

"If you are looking for a positive change in your life, or just want to deepen your daily meditation practice, Matrix Meditations . . . is your perfect companion and guide. After all, isn't it time to fully experience your inner bliss?"

– Bliss Wood, Aura Trade Magazine, Issue 42, Nov/Dec 2009

"Whether you are an experienced mediator or a beginner, this is easy to understand and to follow. It is written in real English, not psychobabble, and is in no way 'airy-fairy'."

– Jennifer Hoskins, New Dawn Magazine, September 2010

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