When I started meditating it was often difficult to know when to end. I didn’t want to have to be worrying about the time. When I’d set an alarm of some sort it was often jarring and unpleasant.
So I searched for a nicer way to signal the end of the meditation and found that the sound of a bell worked nicely, and I got one on MP3.
Then I was able to set up a playlist with an appropriate amount of silence for the mediation, and then the gong would ring.
For example, I set up the following if I wanted to meditate for 20 minutes:
- 30 Seconds of silence
- gong sound
- 5 minutes silence
- 5 minutes silence
- 5 minutes silence
- 5 minutes silence
- gong sound
This way I got a little bit of time to get settled, then a gong to start off with. Then 20 minutes of silence, then a gong to end with. I used a file of 5 minutes of silence so that I could set up different playlists for different lengths of time.
This worked very well, and could be adapted for use on a CD, if you wanted to. That is, just burn a CD with the appropriate tracks of gong or silence depending on how long you want your mediation to be.
I have a Palm Pilot that can play MP3s and has a speaker, so I just set up playlists like above and used them to time my meditations. (Nowadays, I found a great alarm program, Palmary Clock, that has a timer that can use an MP3 as the alarm sound, so I use that with my gong sound.)
Since I’ve heard that people are looking for a tool like this, I’m posting the gong sound I use and the tracks of silence in various lengths for you to download and use as you wish. I’ve included two different gong sounds. The first has the little “tap” before the striking of the gong, which I prefer. The second is just a gong sound.
Mindfulness Bell
Meditation Gong
Silence - 1 Minute
Silence - 5 Minutes
Silence-30 Seconds
Technorati Tags: Meditation
Posted by Jonathan in Uncategorized
