Payday with you here again today. And today we're going to talk about meditation and what is meditation? Because there is a lot of misunderstanding around what is meditation, what is not meditation in the world today. And I think to get a very, very clear understanding of meditation is very, very helpful in your meditation practice. So let's look at the different types in general of meditation. And the way I want to look at it is to put the different meditations on a type of a spectrum.

Sort of at the one end, you've got probably the purest meditation, which is where you meditate on one single object. So whether that's your breath or a candle flame, or in my case, I meditated for a long time on a blue flower. That was the object of my meditation. And we have to use all our own willpower and our own awareness and our own concentration, to stay on that one object of meditation and keep bringing the mind back to that anchor to that one object of meditation, takes a lot of effort, needs a lot of mindfulness, it's very good at empowering our mindfulness. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, is more like hypnosis, where someone is actually guiding you in the meditation. In fact, in pure hypnosis, we totally give up control to the hypnotist and we get rid of what is sort of the critical faculty and we let the conscious mind be absorbed in what the hypnotism hypnotist is saying or might be a CD recording so that they can then implant suggestions right into our unconscious mind, empowering suggestions.

And of course, I do A little bit of that as a hypnotist. Now, in between there are some other types of meditation, I'm sure that some of you have done guided meditations, perhaps where you're taking on a journey along a beach or through a beautiful forest. And again, you relax and you get swept away by the words of the person giving the guided meditation or the CD or whatever. This is very, very similar to hypnosis, except the suggestions you're getting are suggestions of relaxing and being at one with the beauty. So this is very, very close to sort of that hypnotic type of induction or meditation. Now there are other meditations which I do a lot of which are in between.

So you take a subject, let's say for example, we take impermanence. And the God will say, consider how everything in your life is impermanent and cause And play this for the next few minutes. And then they'll remain silent while you internally contemplate that idea. And then every now and again, give some suggestions to keep you on the right track and to remind you to come back to the object. So this is somewhere in between. Now, the differences are in the low ones, it's often has a story so your mind is moving, your mind is moving all the time.

Also, they are tend to be a lot easier, because you've got a guy that is facilitating in you, keeping you away from distraction and on the topic at hand. Now that the pure meditation or the less facilitation you have, the more difficulties but also, like for example, when you're practicing sport, if you practice against someone that's very much better than you you're going to develop your skills better. You will develop a stronger Got mindfulness, concentration, if you just do more pure meditation, and meditate just on one object at a time. So these different types of meditation are all good, and they all have different purposes. And I use, you know, all types of meditation, because I'm a believer in whatever works for you. That's what we should do.

But it's also good to know what type of meditation you're doing, and maybe mix it up a bit. So you try some, like purist meditation just on one object and some guided meditation, that sort of thing. I hope that explanation has been helpful for you in understanding a little bit more