Guided Meditations

For me, meditation provides the simplest, richest, and most effective window into whatever issues are most urgent and troubling in my life. It doesn’t matter what I’m struggling with; meditation almost always helps.  I have created downloadable guided meditations of various sorts (available for a donation of any amount) — for meeting spirit guides, achieving relaxation and deep peace, and releasing fear.

• Meditation to Meet a Spirit Guide
• Meditation for Inner Peace through Loving Kindness
• Meditation to Release Fear
• Eight Meditations for Relaxation and Peace

Apart from guided meditations, there’s also art, spiritual name analysis, inner landscapes, Tarot decks, books, calendars, personal journals… Below is a list of all the different sorts of things offered through Druid Journal. There is no fixed price for these items; everything is available for a donation of any amount. If you’re curious about why, you can read the in-depth rationale here.

• Spiritual Name Analysis
• Books
• Decks
• Calendars & Journals

This meditation is designed to help you contact a guide — such as your higher self, a spirit guide, a relative who has passed to the Other Side, or even spiritual beings such as angels or gods, depending on your level of vibration.

I’ve described a lot of my visualizations at length on this blog, and many people have told me that they enjoy reading them and wish that they had similar experiences when meditating. I wondered if there was some way that I could help people get the same benefit that I’ve had from this practice.

In this meditation, I lead you gently into a relaxed state, and then take you through a series of images designed to help you feel happy and fearless and loving. Only then do I bring you to a place where you can meet a guide. If the meditation is successful, you will have no chance of meeting any awful beasties, and — if not immediately, then with practice — you should be able to establish a good connection with Spirit.

You can go into this meditation with a particular guide or spirit in mind that you want to meet with. Alternatively, you can simply see who shows up! If there are guides with good intentions out there who wish to contact you, then they will probably jump at this chance to communicate with you.

Don’t be too disappointed, and don’t give up, if you can’t contact anyone on your first try. Like anything worthwhile, meditation takes practice, and it can take some getting used to. Repeat the meditation several times and you should find your results improving.

Please let me know how it goes, and don’t be afraid to comment, or let me know where you’ve had trouble. Here is some feedback I’ve gotten on it:

• The first time Kara-Leah tried it, she met a different kind of guide: “My four year old self turned up… we chased each other around the bench and played in the flowers and climbed the tree and had a chat… it was wonderful.” She has enjoyed the meditation so much that she performs it weekly, and has started using it with her yoga students.
• Slade said, “Your voice is wonderfully suited to this format. Your voice is warm, calming, authoritative, benevolent…”. He has a lot of experience meeting guides, but he found that the meditation opened him up to enable him to receive a message from someone else’s guide who had been trying to reach him.

Enjoy! The meditation is 18.5 minutes long and 22MB. Download here.

May all beings of all kinds, in all directions, be happy and at peace.
Above and below, near and far, high and low.
All types of beings.
Humans and non-humans. Seen and unseen. May they be happy; may they be at peace.

I open my heart and receive loving kindness of all beings in return. I let that love into my heart.

– from this meditation

This is a deceptively simple meditation. It is an ancient one beloved of the Buddhists, for it begins by cultivating loving kindness towards oneself, and then slowly expands the circle of compassion — first to your loved ones, then to your friends and associates, then to all people everywhere… and beyond!

In Buddhism, it is taught that the world is full of dukkha — a word usually translated as “suffering”, but might better be rendered as “disjointedness”, “ill-fittedness”, “dis-ease”, or “disquiet”. The image ofdukkha in ancient Sanskrit is of a potter’s wheel that is ill-fitting, so that it jerks and squeaks as it turns. How can one happily create pots with such a wheel? Similarly, life is full of disquiet, which prevents one from existing in peace. The solution in Buddhism is the Noble Eightfold Path, the core tenet of which is non-attachment — the release of fear, expectation, anticipation, and the like. However, the release of such attachments can, in the beginner, lead to a cold, joyless, Spock-like state. The meditation for loving kindness is essential to counteract this by cultivating compassion alongside non-attachment.

There is no visualization utilized in this meditation, so you can practice it regardless of your skill in that regard. I will lead you into a state of relaxation, and from there, I will simply give you words of peace, joy, and compassion. You will hold these words in your mind, letting them seep into you and become a part of you. As your circle of compassion expands, you will feel peace and love spreading from the center of your being out into the universe.

The meditation features background music composed and performed by myself.

Enjoy!

This is one of my most popular meditations.

I have been in many shapes:
I have been a narrow blade of a sword.
I have been a drop in the air.
I have been a shining star… –Legendary Welsh bard Taliesin

Fear: a great enemy, a great teacher. When we become too tightly bound up with our ego, when we identify ourselves too strongly with a story we tell ourselves, when we feel our life’s projects slipping away, and we grab desperately for control… This is when fear arises within us. It paralyzes us, it skewers us; our emotional and creative resources are cut off, and we feel frozen and helpless. Our task at that point is to face the fear squarely, to see it for what it is: a messenger of hope. We must allow the fear to pass; we must find its source and release it. By releasing our stories, our projects, and our unhealthy desires, by letting them be what they will be, we release ourselves as well.

In this meditation I guide you into a state of relaxation, and help you visualize the river of life before you. During the course of the meditation, you will focus gently on your fear, and identify its source. Once you have done that, you will be able to release the fear, and allow it to be carried away to the ocean, where all things are renewed.

In the fall of 2006 I posted a three-part series on my favorite meditation, which was actually three meditations rolled into one: a Meditation to Release Fear, a Meditation for Loving Kindness, and a Meditation for Living in the Present. The first meditation releases your fear, the second one replaces it with compassion, and the third locks you into the present moment. The three were intended to be done in sequence, and when this was done, the effect is a Meditation for Inner Peace.

I considered offering all three together as a single Meditation for Peace, but quickly found that the meditation would be extremely long. I may still offer that meditation in the future, but for now I have decided to create a guided audio version of each of the three meditations separately.

The first one is the Meditation to Release Fear, and this version differs somewhat from the description I offered last fall. In that article I warned that this meditation should not be done by itself, since it could release attachments that you might prefer to keep! I have reworked the meditation in this audio version so that there is no danger of that. Also, the meditation I described was extremely cerebral — it focused heavily on introspective questioning. In contrast, this audio guided meditation uses a combination of imagery and contemplation to achieve the desired effect.

As with any new meditative practice, repetition is key. The first time you try it, you may not experience much of a change. But as you repeat it a few times, you will begin to feel your fearfulness shift; and when you have practiced it enough, you should be able to remove anxieties by simply recalling to mind the image of the river conjured by the meditation. This has been my experience, and it has been extremely liberating in my daily life.

Enjoy!

Still waters run deep, everyone knows. And fast waters run shallow. Chances are, if you have not had the space and time in your life to be still, your world is too fast, and your life is too shallow.

It isn’t just that our modern lifestyle has made true relaxation and inner peace impossible. We’ve been running and working and striving for so long, so hard, that we’ve forgotten what true relaxation and inner peace are like — if we ever knew in the first place.

Imagine a field of soft green grass in the summertime. The birds are singing; the industrious insects buzz as they go about their summer business. There is gentle, warm breeze. The grass is soft; the sun is warm. There is a hint of the smell of honeysuckle coming from somewhere…

When you read those words, did you feel yourself to be there in the field? Could you really hear the birds? Could you really remember what a warm breeze feels like? Do you remember the smell of honeysuckle? More: do you feel what it would be like to be there in that field, simply enjoying the day, with no cares, no worries, nothing hanging over your head or dragging you away from that perfect place of simple enjoyment?

Maybe you’ve tried this. Maybe you’ve gone on a hike, or a tropical vacation, or a simple trip to the park, and tried to escape the troubles and pressures of life. But as you may have discovered, simply moving your body to a place of peace and quiet doesn’t mean that your mind goes along, too. Your mind can easily stay back at home, or at work, endlessly worrying and chewing on your fears.

Or maybe you’ve found peace in remote places, away from the pressures of your life, but when you return, you can’t bring that remote place with you. You fall back into the same pattern of rushing or worrying or striving.

This is where meditation, along with changes in lifestyle, can help.

Re-introducing yourself to peace and relaxation is a process that involves your mind, body, heart, and spirit. As with so many things in life, these elements are intertwined and mutually supporting. If you try to use only your willpower (for example) to change your habits, your heart won’t be in it, and you will fail. If you only use your body – by, say, traveling to a remote place – your mind and heart may remain behind. But if you bring all your resources to bear on this issue, their combined force will lead you to an overwhelming success.

So I’m delighted to offer here a complete package of resources to help you achieve the inner peace you need. The core of the package is eight guided meditations, spoken by myself, to help you reach both deep inside yourself and out beyond yourself to draw relaxation and peace here, to you in the center. Below, I describe each of the meditations and talk about how they work. From Golden Fields to The Labyrinth, they are set in order from simplest and easiest to most complex and rich. In this way, the set of meditations also acts as an excellent introduction to meditative practice. But the package also includes my 20-page Guide to Relaxation, Inner Peace, and Joy, which goes into detail about real, practical ways in which you can make changes throughout your physical and spiritual life to attract and generate the inner peace you need.

All meditations and materials are available for a donation of any amount.

The package includes:

• Eight Meditations. In order from simplest and easiest to most complex and rich:
  • Golden Fields. A simple meditation designed to help you get started with visualization, as well as to bring deep physical and mental relaxation.
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  • Sunset at Stonehenge. Slightly more complex imagery than Golden Fields, designed to build visualization practice, and to connect more deeply with the peace of the world and ancient wisdom.
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  • Walking in the World. A meditation designed to be heard while you’re taking a walk. Step by step, I help you focus your awareness on your moving body and the world around you.
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  • Movement and Affirmation. Another moving meditation, this one designed to be done at a faster pace. As you move, I provide statements of affirmation, relaxation, and positive energy.
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  • Dawn at the Pyramids. A meditation for gathering forces at the beginning of the day. It starts in darkness, and ends with the blazing colors of morning in the desert.
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  • Dusk Among the Redwoods. A meditation for releasing and relaxing at the end of the day. It begins with the sun setting into the ocean, and concludes with a camp in the midst of a redwood grove.
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  • The Zen Garden. A meditative walk through a Japanese garden, culminating in a Zen rock garden. The visualization is interspersed with Buddhist affirmations of universal compassion and joy.
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  • The Labyrinth. Walk through a maze of hedges, a labyrinth of possibility and manifestation. At the end of the meditation you will reach the center of the Labyrinth, where you will find a treasure to help you in your waking life.
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• Free Meditation Transcriptions.
• • Full text of all meditations is downloadable here for your analysis and contemplation.
• 20-page Guide to Relaxation and Peace. Downloadable here.

Inner peace and complete relaxation are within the reach of all of us. It is no accident that people feel relaxed and invigorated near the ocean, and love to hear the rise and fall of the waves. Our lives resonate with the rhythm of the sea. We go through periods of activity and relaxation, of excitement and peace, like the rising and falling surf, or the more stately motion of the tides. We cannot go forward forever without pausing to regroup and regather ourselves. If you have pushed yourself too far up the beach, your forces thin and dissipated like seawater over sand, use these tips and meditations to draw back to the source, back to the origin, to rejuvenate and be reborn.

Name Analysis

Why do you have your name? I believe that your name is a prime example of a “meaningful coincidence”, an instance of synchronicity. Whether you’ve chosen your name, or you’re still using the one you got as a baby, I believe it reflects your inner soul; it is a spiritual snapshot of your life’s trajectory. I can give you the benefit of my experience and knowledge as a linguist and a spiritual searcher, and another person’s perspective. I believe our names reflect both our character and our purpose in life. For a donation of your choice, I’ll give you a complete etymological analysis and phonosemantic reading — a full historical and spiritual assessment. Click here to find out more.

Decks

A set of not-yet-prime-time projects are Tarot decks. Currently I and my partner, Kate Gladstone, are working on the Wardrobe Tarot, inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia. I am also working on a deck based on Wilson and Leary’s eight-circuit model of consciousness. Links to those projects will be placed here when they are available.

Calendars and Journals

In 2007 my partner Esmerelda and I released the Druid Journal 2008 Almanac, a personal planner. Eventually I hope to create others, as well as a wall calendar and other variants on the theme. Links to those projects will be placed here when they are available.

Books

I enjoy writing fiction, and I feel it is one of the highest callings of written art.  Here you’ll find freely downloadable short fiction, as well as hardcover and paperback editions of my fiction collection, Wild Enough and Free.

At the suggestion of one of my guides, I’ve decided to make available a small collection of my fiction. I enjoy writing speculative fiction of all kinds, from historical fiction to hard science fiction to high fantasy.

I’ve gathered together my best short fiction, along with an introduction on fiction writing, and postscripts describing how each story came to be written, and put them together into a single 165-page volume.  It’s available as hardcover and paperback.  Named after the final short story, Wild Enough and Free is an eclectic collection that contains science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and general weirdness.

I’m also making each short story available for PDF download below.  If you enjoy the short stories, please do consider buying the book.  Fiction is always best enjoyed curled up in bed, and personal computers just aren’t as cuddly as books…  Plus, you want to encourage me to write more fiction, right?

• The Last Man to Believe in God. John Doakes, of Gypsum, New Hampshire, is the last man to believe in God. Kate Wright, doctoral student in religious studies, has set herself the task of finding out why — why does he continue to believe, without support from family or community? What purpose does this belief serve, especially in an era when immortality drugs make the idea of an afterlife irrelevant? Is he psychotic? Or is he the last sane man?
• The Secret of the Day Rat. A story of a rat’s simple but determined quest for a higher standard of living.
• The Time Machine and the Prince of Mars. Frank really is a nice guy, once you get to know him. Of course, he did almost kill that one guy, and he killed himself too — at least twice, actually — but he’s not really a killer, when you get down to it. The first guy was really asking for it; and as far as killing himself, well, he did it to defend Ashley’s honor. Which, Ashely thinks, is really pretty sweet. Sometimes you just really can tell he’s a prince.
• Virginia Dare. What if North America were reversed east-to-west, with the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Appalachians to the west? In this alternate history story, the high Rockies slowed the advance of the Europeans enough that now, in the 20th century, Native Americans still live in powerful independent nations. This story covers a crucial episode in the 2nd World War.
• Wild Enough and Free. In Greenland, in the year 1100 AD, the Christian missionary Mona wanders into the remote fjord where Ulf, one of the last believers in Odin and Thor, is living alone. Their intertwined journeys will carry them far from everything the Europeans have ever known.
• Zopyrus. Babylon is under siege: it has revolted against Persian rule, and King Darius I is leading his armies personally against the ancient city. The siege is already twenty months old, and the Persians are growing weary. Young Zopyrus, head of Darius’s stables, hatches a daring plan to break the Babylonians, for the glory of Persia. But even as he prepares to betray the Babylonians, he begins to wonder whether he will find himself betraying the Persians instead.