Get out of the box with these techniques.

One: Do awareness meditation outside, with the intent to discover something new about Nature that you never knew before. Be aware of visual details in plants, trees, soil, water, clouds, birds, animals, etc, but pick a restricted area to focus on, like a single plant or group of plants, or the clouds in one part of the sky, or one animal. The new thing you learn doesn't have to be dramatic, just new. This not only enlarges your appreciation of Nature, it also provides rich associations between Nature and your life, and increases your awareness of patterns, natural and unnatural, in the environment. I used this nalu once to find a pair of wire rim glasses someone had lost in a Tahitian jungle.

Two: Meditate on the world around you in the framework of its being a dream. That is, look at it as if it really were a dream, a projection of your own consciousness and not a separate thing with solid object. This is one of the most disturbing exercises for many people because it begins to change the pattern of your habitual relationship to the world, some very strange effects may occur. Just remember that if you don't like it you can simply stop doing it. Some will find that it opens up unparalleled adventure, however. I have used it to discover other dimensions or dreams in the midst of this one, which has given me a greater range of action in my undertakings.

Three: Focus on an imagined thought form. This jumps us into a different range of awareness. In ordinary terms I'm suggesting that your purposely create a hallucination, but in esoteric terms I'm suggesting that you exteriorize a thought. Imagine something in your immediate environment as vividly and realistically as you can and observe it as if it were as real as anything else around you. Your imagined subject could be something that is beautiful, that is useful, that represents a goal, or that represents a problem. You'll get the same effects as with the previous meditations, and in addition it will be great training for your imagination. An added benefit is convenience. You can carry a thought form with you anywhere.

~Serge Kahili King