admin – How to Meditate

Meditation Pyramids for Healing, Meditating (Copper Pyramid)

Meditation Pyramids
I have been meditating under pyramids for over twenty years. I began in 1988, stringing copper wire from the ceiling to the hardwood floor, stapling or taping it there copying the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza. I was in Brooklyn, NY in an apartment there. Crystal healing and new age ideals had become a global phenomenon at this time which some might attribute to the harmonic convergence. At any rate, I soon began building my own meditation pyramids out of copper pipe.

Pyramids for Healing
From my first experience with these pyramids it was incredible. They offer a sacred and safe space for sensitive individuals to meditate, relax and heal. It was one of these individuals and was amazed at the difference inside the pyramids. I was able to focus more deeply with this electromagnetic barrier between myself and the barrage of thought-forms that I experienced otherwise. Whether these forms were directed towards me or simply randomly hitting me, I can not tell you. Inside the pyramid I was free from this barrage. I was able to process things that were specific to myself alone which allowed me to heal– psychically, emotionally, mentally, and what must have also been physically.

Building Copper Pyramids
Over the years I have built a number of them, experimenting with sizes, angles, components, etc. In 2001, I built an enormous one on a back porch (built to hold the pyramid) in Northern California. Sides and base were all out of one-inch heavy copper pipe, and the I even bent a plate of copper to form the capstone (as pipes obviously do not form a point when brought together). I can tell you now that size, weight, capstone, and even pipes at the base made little difference energetically. I can say that now, as my design has improved, culminating in around 2006, when I build my first portable and collapsible meditation pyramid.

Copper Pyramids for Meditation (Portable)
Tired of losing my pyramid every time I moved, or having to assemble and disassemble it constantly, I decided to experiment with building one that I could both easily put away in a closet, but could also keep if I needed to move again. So, the design you see below was born. It was not long meditating under these copper pyramids before it became clear that they were going to be just as effective as any previous. What matters most is the side pipes and the angles they form.

Meditation Pyramids for Sale
I posted a do-it-yourself video, wanting to share these with others who may be interested, offering to build them myself and shipping them out for any who did not feel up to the task. It was not long before I was selling them on Etsy (see the shop advertisement, right). As of this post, it has been just less than a year and I have built over twenty pyramids for others. The design works. There is no need for a capstone, and the copper electrical wires at the base are more than enough to hold the space.

Personal Development
I have experienced my kundalini rise from base to crown. I have grounded myself to the degree where I can walk about in my daily life and deflect negative energy with compassion without taking it into my energetic space. I can function in a healthy way in relationships because of my contact with source and my clarity of myself as an individual and sacred being. I owe so much of this to my experiences communing and confiding with myself under these meditation pyramids. I recommend them to anyone who is dealing with any of the above issues.

Here is the link to my Etsy shop: Copper Pyramids for Meditation, Healing and here is the link to do-it-yourself instructions at my blog on meditation pyramids at Meditation Pyramids Blog”

Meditation Interview with Adam Tebbe of Sweeping Zen

—An Interview with Adam Tebbe, Part Two—
>>> Part One: Zen Meditation Practice – Meditating Seated

Meditation How: What was it in particular that caused you realize that meditation was going to work for you? How did you come to know that you had found something important?

Tebbe: I like the simplicity of it. I was diagnosed with ADD at a young age, minus the hyperactive component, and had always struggled with concentrating on just one thing. With ADD, it’s like there are so many things within your sphere of consciousness competing for your attention. Now, zazen is a very barebones practice. Whether following the breath or, as I often did initially, on some object to hold in my awareness, it allows one to develop the faculties necessary for what might be called “single-pointed concentration.” But, I don’t meditate everyday.

Or, perhaps I can quote Rev. Rinsen Weik of the Toledo Zen Center, who recently said, “I sit everyday, except for the days where I don’t sit.” It isn’t a compulsion for me as it was initially. Certainly it’s a strong component to Zen practice but its usefulness is really found in how that concentration you develop carries over in to everyday activity.

I spend a lot of time at a computer which, admittedly, probably isn’t the most healthy of exercises for me. But, my work requires it of me and I love my work. A meditation practice allows me to not outright reject those things we may say are harmful or not beneficial in our practice, like spending long hours working at a computer. Instead, meditation practice simply allows me to accept my life on the terms my life presents to me. So, meditation allows me to deal with life on life’s terms. I’ll say that.

Meditation How: Your words “meditation allows me to deal with life on life’s terms” says so much. It is this level of acceptance that makes for the dropping of would otherwise be a fight with circumstances or an attempt to force outcomes. I get that. So many of us still struggle with what life brings. Thank you.

Tebbe:Thanks for the opportunity.

Interview with Adam Tebbe of Sweeping Zen

About Adam: Adam Tebbe is editor at Sweeping Zen, an online resource which has biographies and interviews with various Zen teachers throughout the world. He began his Zen practice in 2002 and is founder of Kannonji Zen Retreat, an outreach of Sweeping Zen in the virtual world of Second Life. The temple hosts weekly events with Zen clergy like Rev. Jay Rinsen Weik and Rev. Paul Dochong Lynch, as well as special events with other Buddhist teachers throughout the year. He is also partner, with David Sango Angstead, at DharmaPixels, a web design & development company that helps organizations and nonprofits develop their presence on the web.

Links:
Sweeping Zen
Kannonji Zen Retreat
DharmaPixels

Zen Meditation Practice – Meditating Seated, Tao Te Ching

—An Interview with Adam Tebbe, Part One—
This two part meditation testimonial and interview features Adam Tebbe who shares his own introduction into a life of meditation practice. Tebbe is editor at Sweeping Zen, an online resource which has biographies and interviews with various Zen teachers throughout the world.

Meditation How: How did you get started with meditation? When did you begin meditating?

Tebbe: I began meditating on my own after reading some books on Buddhism, particularly The Compass of Zen by Zen master Seung Sahn. I’d went through a particularly tough breakup with a girlfriend at the time. This was around 2001 I guess. I was an angry young guy and the world centered around me – I deserved the breakup. It helped me grow. So, after I spent upwards of a year depressed and feeling sorry for myself, my sister sent me a copy of The Tao Te Ching (the Richard Wilhelm edition). I was drawn in from those opening lines:

“The Dao that can be expressed
is not the eternal Dao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal name.”

I’d never encountered anything like that before. That is how my interest in Eastern ways, if we can call them that, began. Slowly I began to read more and more books and came to realize that Zen was where my heart belonged. I wasn’t prepared to sit with a group at this point, however.

So, aside from a couple visits to a local Dharma center and also the Indianapolis Zen Center later, my meditation practice was done at home. I remember reading online resources on how to construct an altar and I ordered a zafu and zabuton after I realized it kind of sucks sitting on pillows. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s how it began.

Meditation How: In what way did you manage tough situations (the breakup, for example) before you found meditation?

Tebbe: Cigarettes. Marijuana. I didn’t manage tough situations well. It’s not like meditation is the be all, end all, mind you. It is and it isn’t. Sitting on a cushion doesn’t magically make one a better human being. That, at least in my case, takes work. Certainly it helps as a stabilizing force and allows me to process some of the stresses in my life in a more sobered way.

I think when I say meditation isn’t everything, I’m going off of a very limited, narrow definition of meditation. Most people think of seated meditation, right? In that way, meditation is effective but not all pervading. There are some who would probably disagree with me. I’ve just not found it to be so. Meditation is attending to, and caring for, my relationships. It means working through a litany of compulsions and shadows and, also, it means sitting on a cushion.

>>> Part Two: Meditation Interview with Adam Tebbe of Sweeping Zen