Guided meditation question

[moonlightsonata]

Hi,
For those of you who do guided meditations, either those you wrote yourself or someone else's, do you ever use the same meditation more then once?  I've been trying not to do that, but guided meditations of the type I like to do aren't incredibly common, and even if they were, you still have to go through a lot of junk to get to the good.  Can you use a meditation more then once?

[Jenett]

For those of you who do guided meditations, either those you wrote yourself or someone else's, do you ever use the same meditation more then once?  I've been trying not to do that, but guided meditations of the type I like to do aren't incredibly common, and even if they were, you still have to go through a lot of junk to get to the good.  Can you use a meditation more then once?

Absolutely, assuming it's not designed to be a one time thing.

The guidance I'd give is:
- Was this designed to be a one time thing (a specific stage in learning a thing, for example: my tradition has a couple of those) or something that might be repeated.

- Don't repeat them too quickly - one guideline I've seen recently that I like is not to repeat the same meditation within a week, even if that's a thing you're currently focusing on. For more general stuff, I might give it a month at least between repeats.

- Give yourself space between guided meditation work to digest what you're doing - or at least *kinds* of work. In my training, we often had a meditation as part of it, but we were doing two or three of those a month, not every day.

In my personal practice, I've gone through stretches of active meditation work but it was doing my own thing in astral spaces, not something where there was a clear narrative or lesson I was following. Giving yourself space to process the more directed/focused stuff is important too.

[moonlightsonata]

The guidance I'd give is:
- Was this designed to be a one time thing (a specific stage in learning a thing, for example: my tradition has a couple of those) or something that might be repeated.

- Don't repeat them too quickly - one guideline I've seen recently that I like is not to repeat the same meditation within a week, even if that's a thing you're currently focusing on. For more general stuff, I might give it a month at least between repeats.

- Give yourself space between guided meditation work to digest what you're doing - or at least *kinds* of work. In my training, we often had a meditation as part of it, but we were doing two or three of those a month, not every day.
In my personal practice, I've gone through stretches of active meditation work but it was doing my own thing in astral spaces, not something where there was a clear narrative or lesson I was following. Giving yourself space to process the more directed/focused stuff is important too.

Thank you very much!  That's extremely helpful guidance.

[Altair]

Thank you very much!  That's extremely helpful guidance.

BTW, you may want to check out this thread, where we've been sharing various meditations (which reminds me, there's one I've been meaning to add to the thread that I haven't gotten to yet).

[Waldhexe]

For those of you who do guided meditations, either those you wrote yourself or someone else's, do you ever use the same meditation more then once?  I've been trying not to do that, but guided meditations of the type I like to do aren't incredibly common, and even if they were, you still have to go through a lot of junk to get to the good.  Can you use a meditation more then once?

I'd say it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I've had good experiences with therapeutic guided meditations, which I used daily when I wasn't feeling well. I did 1 or 2 of them every evening before going to sleep. (There are plenty of CDs with guided meditations for calming down, against anxiety etc.)

I'd say the same applies if you try to train yourself in something (like grounding, centering, shielding), anything that's more like an exercise than a journey, it might help to do it daily for a while.

If the guided meditation is more of a spiritual journey (especially if it's designed to give you a revelation about something) I'd go with what Jenett said...you'll need time to digest your findings before going on another journey.