Yes, the longer the pauses between your meditations, the sooner the ‘effects’ wear off. If you meditate twice a day, even if it is just for 5 minutes (but longer is better), you’ll notice that from the moment you sit down, you pick up where you left off the previous meditation.

People tend to go from one meditation to another hoping to find ‘the one’ that will bring them ‘orgasmic bliss’ in minutes. There is even a program that was launched recently, that promises you a different meditation everyday for the rest of your life. But the reality is that it is better to master one basic meditation first and then move on to another one and master that one.
If ‘explosions of relaxation’ are what you are after, a basic meditation can get you there without a doubt.

Try this meditation twice a day for about a week and you’ll feel very relaxed, not only during the meditation, but throughout your entire day:
– Breathe in and out through your nose. Do not try to slow down your breathing, just be aware of it. Feel the air going in and out of your nose. Focus your attention on your nostrils and the air going in and out of your nose. If your mind starts to wander, bring your focus back to your nostrils. It’s normal if thoughts come in your head, especially in the beginning, so don’t get frustrated about it. Just breathe and feel your breath, that is all you do.

If you do this meditation for a couple of days, you should definitely feel very relaxed during the meditation and throughout your day. After doing this meditation for about a week or two, you can add a little variation.
Still focus on your nostrils and the air going in and out of your nose, but when you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in ‘pure love’ and filling your lungs and body with it. When you breathe out, you imagine breathing out gratitude.
After doing this for about a week (or maybe two, it varies per person), you’ll notice a feeling of love and gratitude throughout your entire day.

Just like with anything else, learn the basics first and build from there.

It depends on the meditation. Different meditation techniques give different results. Last year I attended a meditation week with a great meditation master. He taught us a couple of ancient meditation techniques that where extremely intense. One meditation was a very intense breathing technique. It felt somewhat uncomfortable during the meditation, but once I stopped meditating, it felt like every cell in my body had an orgasm of  pure light and love. It was very intense,but at the same time very relaxing. This feeling lasted for about 15 to 20 minutes and it was just pure bliss. This meditation gave me a very physical experience.

Most meditations, for me at least, make me no longer be aware of my physical body. The longer I meditate, the bigger the pauses between my thoughts get, until I finally arrive at a place of pure bliss, where there is no body and no world outside of me.

There are also meditations for a specific purpose where your mind needs to stay active to some degree, like mantra meditations for example. These  are very powerful also and create a different feeling than the two mentioned before.

Meditation is a skill and the more you do it, the better you get at it and the deeper you go into ‘trance’ (although I don’t like that word). What you put in meditation, you get out of it tenfold. Not only during meditation, but throughout your entire day. For me, it has been the single most important tool for transforming my life.  I now meditate about one hour, first thing in the morning and one hour before I go to bed. I experience two hours of complete physical and mental relaxation, two hours of pure love and bliss, every single day. Can you imagine what effect that has on your day?

Ok, re-reading my post, I realize I went a little bit off-topic at the end. I just can’t help myself, I love meditation 🙂

I agree with Kenneth: Religion can but does not guarantee to lead to spirituality. I noticed that the more people focus on the scriptures and the ‘rules’ of their religion, the more they are taken away from the spiritual path. And the more they focus on their own personal evolution and being a good person, the more they are taken away from religion.

I feel that just pronouncing yourself as a member of a certain religion is taking you away from your spiritual path. By saying: ‘I am a Christian’, you are putting yourself in a box. You are differentiating yourself from everyone who is not Christian. And the same goes for claiming to be part of any other group or movement (Country, religion, sports team, race, … ) It all creates a degree of separation when there is only oneness.

Just the fact that all these religions have become ‘religions’ goes against everything their founders taught. Don’t focus on yourself, fear God,  … . The people who turned these teachings into religions knew very well what they were doing. They turned them into tools to control the masses. And for centuries this worked almost flawlessly.

Now, more and more people are awakening and finding their own path to God and often this doesn’t involve religion. Which is a good thing. There should be diversity, there should be different paths.

You might think I am against religion, but I am not. I think it is neither good or bad. If  a person chooses the path of a certain religion, it all comes down to how he interprets the message. What he does with what he learns is what makes it bad or good.