Meditation has become increasingly popular in the western world over the last few decades. Lots of people are interested in it, but it can be intimidating to get started for a few reasons:
(1) It seems mystical - don't you need a guru or something?
(2) It sounds crazy before you've tried it - what, sit still for 20 minutes? Just breathe?!
(3) If your friends aren't already doing it, you don't have the social support to get you started.
This VLOG is aimed at people who either have never tried meditation, or meditate sometimes but don't feel like you "get it" yet. I talk about how there are many forms of meditation - none are right or wrong, everybody has their own "right way" - and discuss my own beginnings as a meditator.
BTW - I only meditate for 10 minutes a day, which is perfect for me. I love it, consider myself to be a passionate meditator - yet, 10 minutes is plenty. I can hear the gurus crying already.
Let's talk in the comments! Here are my questions for this one:
(1) If you do meditate, what is your practice? Do you have advice to share?
(2) If you don't meditate, but are interested in it: What's stopping you?
Hi Matt, Good job, as usual!!
I invest a lot of time to meditate, I do it since a few years, I do not say spending time because every moment invested meditating, it is time invested, which gives me a better quality of life and a deeper knowledge of myself.
I do it in the morning just awake, after morning fitness, at least half an hour, after lunch, at university, another half an hour, and finally in the evening after dinner, just before going to bed, always 30 minutes.
I just sit in this way (it's not me in the picture)
I close my eyes and empty my mind, I focus only on my breath and my heartbeat, and after a few minutes, my inner voice starts to weave a plot, from which I let myself carry, and I always go out with a sense of peace and relaxation, and sometimes with something more. Here on steemit I wrote something about the Noble Truths of the Buddha and some reasoning that took place during meditation, if you please, I'd be happy if you give them a look. I do not place the links here in the comment because i do not want to spam anything :)
Have a nice day and happy Steeming!!!!
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Hi Matt, since 2001 for me and really because Wilber got to me although I spent that decade being quite critical of his oeuvre; especially his misrepresentation of science.
I do mainly mindfulness and just watch for the gap; sometimes I can stay in the gap. It's given me what I call the spirit of equanimity although when I do occasionally lose it ( dealing with kyriacos on Steemit:), I recover quickly.
In the early days, I used to do recursive meditation and came to believe in reincarnation although I now believe the soul doesn't exist. Reincarnation is about super-computing or so I think now. Or, consciousness is downloadable...
..This is The Akashic or consciousness cache...If this were true, and there is no way to prove it, then to me, there is definitely an Architect; which to me is so beyond what humans can deal with, but we would be dealing with its Archons...
.Source, Neo, there is so many of me Mr. Smith's!
You are deep in the philosophical rabbit hole, andrew! My friend who did a 10 day meditation retreat told me that practically all they talk about is being "equanimous," which makes sense.
Being able to really feel the gap between each breath is a beautiful feeling. That's one of the more intense sides of meditation that I have accessed, although I would need to do more than 10 minute sessions to really sink into it.
Thanks for sharing, very interesting ideas you have :-)
This is an area I'm passionate about so time spent on it isn't a problem to me.
Here's the thing though and I concede this may be idiosyncratic: the experiences of meditation could be local to this planet so drawing universal conclusions from these experiences is quite problematic to my way of thinking. The consequence of this would be that the Buddhist religion is false within this context...
I find Kenny W's take on meditation to be a kind of fetishism in that he puts such value in its soteriological prowess; I don't see this position as justifiable as one could argue that meditation (and Buddhism) have been colossal failures within the context of historical flow and things like Climate Change's worst case scenario's; let alone the worldwide obsession with capitalism, money, power, etc....
One could argue that things are getting worse and worse and worse.....that is the context of what I'm getting at above.
Meditation as proof of God's non-existence is the biggest issue I have with this field. Meditation proves no such thing, IMO.....And I say this as one who has had many peak experiences with nondual states of consciousness.
I do get and am sympathetic to the affinities between certain scientific worldviews and Buddhist ontologies...
Over the years I've redefined meditation a million times to come up with a line that includes all of the eastern meditations that I am aware of. So here is the definition "Continuous uninterrupted use/application of consciousness/awareness". When I started meditating I was sort of competing with my ability to stay still and silent.(not just physically but mentally). Nowdays I rarely use the word meditation. I feel the word is over polluted. I call it practicing concentration n dilution of awareness. I dont think of meditation as an activity but as a state of observance regardless of what activity you do. The simpler meditations are based on inactivity. Sitting with eyes closed. But it can get as complex as you want.
Definition sounds reasonable to me, it's broad enough to cover a lot more practices than just sitting still and breathing which is good.
Although I will admit for that me, I don't feel like I am meditating unless I am in a vipassana state, just sitting and focusing on the breath.
Have you ever heard of the book "Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha"? Some of your mindset reminds me of the author of that book.
In one my of the 10 day vipassana retreats, I told my guru that I think I am not meditating. He asked me why? n I said I am thinking too much. He told me that the problem i was facing was that I was judging the process. The mind had the tendency to label experiences n call it right or wrong. But if we can learn to keep this part of us aside and dive into the activity without doubt then I think it would give us the opportunity to explore the depths of our awareness and spread this state of mind into every aspect of our lives. I should say I really started meditating when I stopped bothering about what it exactly is and why I was doing it. I havent read that book yet. I put it my wish list. Thanks :)
Hey gokulramdas, I am understanding that your definition would be to take the nondual state consciously into dreams and deep sleep? If that is correct then I would be an amateur meditator. I know there have been some studies done on meditators in their deep sleep and have read that tests done did show they were consciously aware....If that's true then to my way of thinking there should be whole universities set up to study such phenomenon on a full-time basis.....
I'm pretty sure someone else can come up with a better definition. To some degree I relate bring conscious to being awake. Ive never been consciously aware when Im asleep(except for the few lucid dreaming episodes), so I cant say anything about that. But it is very easy to meditate when washing dishes or going out for a walk or just listening to music. The simpler the activity the easier to meditate. There are a ton of people back home(India) who take this seriously. We call them yogis. These are the people who are devoted to life and the mechanics of existence. There are university like places where this is explored too. We call them ashrams - A community of yogis and aspiring yogis . These places have existed for 1000's of years. And they've come up with so much literature describing their findings over all these years.
Do you have any tips on meditation for people who struggle with ADHD and OCD intrusive thoughts?