Meditation is an important part of achieving personal health, balance, and equipoise.  Some meditations hail from historical ancient Pagan practices, such as the View from Above (see below).  Others are modern adaptations.

Varieties of meditation

Attention to Emotions – from SeeingTheRoses.org

Bicycle Meditation – seeking serenity through cycling, by Thomas Schenk

Contemplation – a practice for cultivating directed mental effort (compare with Introspection, below), at the Spiritual Naturalist Society

Deep Relaxation guided meditation  – an mp3 for deep relaxation (opens in Fileswap)

Demeanor Practice – a practice for cultivating sound habits of body and mind, at the Spiritual Naturalist Society

Focusing – psychologist Eugene Gendlin’s meditative technique of concentrating in an open, non-judgmental way on a “felt sense”, an internal knowing which is directly experienced but is not yet in words; see also The Focusing Institute and Focusing Resources

Great Story Beads – resources for stringing a “cosmic rosary” to commemorate and contemplate the epic of evolution

Humanistic Pagan retreat – an experimental model for a home retreat (see individual posts for all seven days)

Introspection – a practice for developing undirected awareness of thoughts and feelings (compare with Contemplation, above), at the Spiritual Naturalist Society

Listening to the Three Kindreds – Halstead’s naturalistic meditative practice of listening to the unconscious, nature, and the ancestors present in the DNA of one’s very body

Listening to the Threshold Brook – Adrian Harris’ technique of fine-tuning our sensory awareness of the organic environment, resulting in a “deepening sense of place”; the term comes from Keats’ poem The Human Seasons: “Fair things pass by, unheeded as a threshold brook”

Meditation on Emotions and the Greek concept of Ate (delusion) – a meditation on emotions, with a comparison between Buddhist and Greek concepts of emotion-based delusion

Meditation on Rain in the City – a video meditation (YouTube)

Meditation on the Five +1 – a meditation bringing awareness to the five senses as well as mental contents; audio available.

Mindful Hiking – from SeeingTheRoses.org

Mindful Eating – from SeeingTheRoses.org

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy – a type of cognitive therapy based on mindfulness practices; see also here for guided meditations

Mystical Union with Reality – from Pantheist Paul Harrison, as featured in Time Magazine, December 12, 1996

Naturalistic Pantheism – Practices: Path – suggestions for a variety of meditative, educational, and environmental/ethical living practices from a naturalistic pantheist perspective

A Practical Way to Work Your Chakras – from Thomas Geddes

Regaining the Child’s Vision – from Pantheist Paul Harrison

Roses Meditation – from SeeingTheRoses.org

Seton sitting – from Thomas Schenk

The View from Above – A Stoic meditative practice focusing on wholesome detachment and perceptions of unity in the cosmos

Guided meditation audio

Insight Meditation Center – dozens of guided meditations led by Gil Fronsdal, a leader in the insight meditation movement, which is largely without supernatural or woo elements

Meditation on the Five +1 – led by B. T. Newberg

Mindfulness meditation led by Sam Harris – if you want to be 100% sure there’s no woo in your meditation, Sam Harris ought to put you at ease

The View from Above – A Stoic visualization meditation led by Donald Robertson, focusing on wholesome detachment and perceptions of unity in the cosmos

Other meditation resources

Meditating in Midstream – numerous naturalistic meditation practices and articles in issue 16 of Pan magazine

Meditation 101 – a breathing meditation practice for cultivating concentration, calm, and insight, at the Spiritual Naturalist Society

Mindfulness Clock – rings according to times/intervals you set, with online and downloadable versions

Tree of Contemplative Practices – a useful graphic organizing dozens of spiritual practices into a family tree

Voluntary Simplicity – from Greg Epstein, Humanist chaplain and author of Good Without God

Image credit: B. T. Newberg