Meditation Exercise by Marcus Antebi
A particular meditation exercise that I engage in frequently involves closing your eyes and using your sense of hearing to try to create concentration and focus. It’s easy, engaging, and fun—consider it to be a game if you like.
First, go to a place where there is an extraordinary amount of nature. Perhaps go into a country field, hike to a good spot in the woods, or set yourself up on the beach.
Next, sit quietly, take some deep breaths, and then concentrate on the first thing that you hear. Describe it to yourself in detail; ask yourself things such as which direction it’s coming from and what it is that’s making the sound. Then identify another sound and do the same things. And then another one after that: Keep searching for more varieties of sounds.
The scenario might be something similar to the following:
You are in a field. You’re laying on a blanket. You can feel the cold air on your skin, but the sun is still warm enough to keep your body quite comfortable. First, you hear the faint sound of a single engine airplane. Then you listen carefully and can hear the sounds of all the leaves as the wind hits them. A 60-foot tree is particularly noisy. You ask yourself if it’s the wind blowing past the leaves that makes the noise, if it’s the leaves hitting each other gently, or if it’s a combination of both.
You then hear the sound of an occasional bird chirping. Your wife (or husband) claims to hear crickets, although you can’t. You wonder if women (or men) have better hearing for those types of things.
You lift your head, keeping your eyes closed, and position your ears in a different direction. You look for the crickets with your ears. Very soon you find them. You find three different variations of cricket sounds, and you notice cricket sounds coming from everywhere. You wonder how you missed the sounds that your wife (or husband) picked up on right away.
You then hear the popping sound of tires driving over gravel. The sounds of children laughing and playing come to your attention after that. You hear cars moving in different directions and focus on the noise they make for a short period.
Time passes, and you need to pack up and go home. You leave in a more relaxed and peaceful state of mind than you were in when you arrived earlier.