Well it seemed that everyone said that they meditated but noone could give me a clear answer of how . (until Burrie searched google lol) and found www.how-to-meditate.org i went there and found many ways to meditate and i figured since i haven’t posted on the forum at all might as well start and guess this is a good as way as any. so how do you meditate, what method works for you, or are u like me and trying to find one … well i found this one to be good for me so here is the method try it out or go to the site and try others.
THIS IS FROM THE WEBSITE NOT ME! HEH
The first stage of meditation is to stop distractions and make our mind clearer and more lucid. This can be accomplished by practising a simple breathing meditation. We choose a quiet place to meditate and sit in a comfortable position. We can sit in the traditional cross-legged posture or in any other position that is comfortable. If we wish, we can sit in a chair. The most important thing is to keep our back straight to prevent our mind from becoming sluggish or sleepy.
We sit with our eyes partially closed and turn our attention to our breathing. We breathe naturally, preferably through the nostrils, without attempting to control our breath, and we try to become aware of the sensation of the breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. This sensation is our object of meditation. We should try to concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else.
At first, our mind will be very busy, and we might even feel that the meditation is making our mind busier; but in reality we are just becoming more aware of how busy our mind actually is. There will be a great temptation to follow the different thoughts as they arise, but we should resist this and remain focused single-pointedly on the sensation of the breath. If we discover that our mind has wandered and is following our thoughts, we should immediately return it to the breath. We should repeat this as many times as necessary until the mind settles on the breath.
If we practise patiently in this way, gradually our distracting thoughts will subside and we will experience a sense of inner peace and relaxation. Our mind will feel lucid and spacious and we will feel refreshed. When the sea is rough, sediment is churned up and the water becomes murky, but when the wind dies down the mud gradually settles and the water becomes clear. In a similar way, when the otherwise incessant flow of our distracting thoughts is calmed through concentrating on the breath, our mind becomes unusually lucid and clear. We should stay with this state of mental calm for a while.
Even though breathing meditation is only a preliminary stage of meditation, it can be quite powerful. We can see from this practice that it is possible to experience inner peace and contentment just by controlling the mind, without having to depend at all upon external conditions. When the turbulence of distracting thoughts subsides and our mind becomes still, a deep happiness and contentment naturally arises from within. This feeling of contentment and well-being helps us to cope with the busyness and difficulties of daily life. So much of the stress and tension we normally experience comes from our mind, and many of the problems we experience, including ill health, are caused or aggravated by this stress. Just by doing breathing meditation for ten or fifteen minutes each day, we will be able to reduce this stress. We will experience a calm, spacious feeling in the mind, and many of our usual problems will fall away. Difficult situations will become easier to deal with, we will naturally feel warm and well disposed towards other people, and our relationships with others will gradually improve.
O AND IF THIS IS IS THE WRONG PLACE SRRY I DUNNO WHERE IT WOULD GO BUT IT’S HELP FOR NEWBIES AND well this helped me.
I actually went and did an introductory meditation course at a Buddhist Centre near where I live - https://www.fwbo.org/contacts/index.html - and I think that is a pretty useful way to learn because you can ask questions and discuss the problems you are having with meditation with other people. I also got a couple of tapes which guide you through the meditations which are pretty useful when you’re learning.
I haven’t really heard much about lucid dreams and meditation - although I have seen it mentioned somewhere that meditation is supposed to help. I’d be interested in reading more (eg why it helps, which meditations are best etc) if anyone can point me in the right direction.
I’m assuming meditation is the reason why I started having lucid dreams. I did the meditation course in September/October last year and started doing short meditations (about 15 minutes) every day. After a couple of months, I had my first lucid dream and I have had a few more since then. I’ve never tried any (other) techniques to induce lucid dreams (and didn’t really have any knowledge or interest in the subject until I experienced my first one) so something must have triggered them off and that’s the only thing I can think of.
Meditation would be good for me as I’m often very tense. If only I had more patience.
I have a problem with the breathing exercises, not that I have anything physically wrong but the moment I start thinking of my breathing it goes out of control. It gets too fast or too slow and I start to feel light headed and out of breath. I tend to be extremely over aware of myself in general so it’s probably to do with that.
Also I have a fear of being trapped under water, not being able to breathe. Whenever I see things like this on telly I get uncomfortable.
The breathing is something that will come with time, so try not to worry too much about it - the more you worry, the worse it will feel!
Meditation is also something I know would do me a lot of good, but my difficulty is finding time to do it. Sometimes, when I am feeling a bit tense at bedtime, I find it is a good way to get me off to sleep and making my body nicely relaxed.
I also have this fear of being trapped underwater and have had nightmares about it in the past. I know what you mean about how you feel when you see it on telly. This is something that can really be helped with lucid dreaming. In the last few years, I have found I can ‘breath’ underwater in my dreams and it is a real relief after my previous nightmares. The world looks very beautiful from under the water in a lucid dream
A HUGE site about the yoga meditation of the Himalayan Tradition. Contains lots of information about the basic principles of meditation, a description of all sorts of yoga meditation, articles about awareness, karma, mantras, lots of exercises and many more
I’ve been trying the technique fear posted. I had trouble at first, but this evening, I made huge progress. My mind bounced around a lot, but I finally got it focused… then I felt my mind slip into some kind of a state for an instant. As always when something like this happens the first time, I got surprised, and that jolted me out of it. Naturally, I couldn’t get back into it either…
So I gave up, and rested for a couple minutes. Then, when I got up, I felt so dizzy, I just about fell over! Ummmm… is that supposed to happen…?
Has anyone here ever tried to meditate in a lucid dream? I think ive heard something about how its supposed to be much more effective than in waking life.
Hi,
thanks to fear for this post, it has helped me understand meditation a bit better.
Although I have tried in the passed couple of days, to meditate, by concentrating on just my breathing. Yes i can do that but soooo MANY thoughts control me, I mean, I can’t control the thoughts, it feels that way!
When I think of something, I try and stop thinking of it and concentrate on breathing. but then the THOUGHT of not thinking about the OTHER thought, appears, so i block it, and go back to breathing, but immediately i am already thinking of trying to NOT think of any thoughts, and i keep thinking and thinking uncontrollably
maybe i should stick to LD’s? although I dont want to give up on meditation, i really really want to try it, and feel it.
I tried it a long time ago. It was more selfhypnosis than real meditation, but I was surprised it went so easy. You’re right about that: in dreams you can reach a deep meditative state in minutes, while in waking life you need hours to reach it.
If you want to practice meditation in a serious way, you really need to have some degree of control over your thoughts. This may require lots of practice though. Actually I gave up on serious meditation a while ago, simply because my thoughts ruined it most of the time. I’m now doing some thought-control exercises every day, and when I can control and stop my thoughts with some reasonable degree, I’ll start back on meditation. This is what I do:
Sit in a chair or lay down on the floor (on your back). It’s not really important which position you choose, as long as you can hold this position for half an hour in a more or less relaxed state.
Relax your muscles. You can use relaxation exercises such as the tension/relaxation practice, but it’s not the purpose to relax your muscles completely as you do when going into trance or meditation. Just a medium level of relaxation of the major muscles of your body will do. It doesn’t have to take hours to do this!
Now, pay attention to your breathing. You must breathe with your stomach, not with your chest. The air must be able to flow right to the bottom of your lungs. Keep breathing at a slow but regular pace. You can also combine breathing with muscle relaxation: tighten your muscles when you breathe in and visualize how all the muscle tensions vanish into the air when you breathe out. Slowly reduce the level of muscle tension when you breathe in until most tension has left the body through your breathing out. Follow this breathing process with your mind, but try not to think about it actively. Just remain aware of it.
Your mind is now busy with staying aware of the breathing process, so the train of thoughts has diminished a bit, or has moved more to the background. To improve this you can count your breaths mentally. When you do the counting, count along the whole length of the breath. Count only when you breathe out. When you breathe in, try to keep your mind as clear as possible. This might not work very well in the beginning, but you have to practice daily if you want to see some results in time! When you keep your mind as clear as possible, try not to think about upcoming thoughts. When they do appear, try to push them back by keeping your mind clear. This won’t work in the early stages, so don’t give up!! Practice is extremely important here if you want results. Soon though, you’ll start to detect the so-called thought pressure, the precursor which marks the upcoming creation of a thought. This is very important that you learn how to notice this, because if you’re aware of thought pressure, you’re able to stop the upcoming thought before it had the chance to formulate itself into mental words. Now you can begin to push the thought pressure away, before they actually form thoughts.
Eventually, thought pressure will almost completely vanish and all that’s left is a completely clear surface mind. Your surface mind has become as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the incoming perceptions without touching them or translating them into swirling trains of thoughts. It will become completely silent inside your head, which is a strange feeling. It feels a bit like you’ve entered a trance state, but it’s… different. In time, you’ll also be able to keep your mind blank for longer periods of time (in the beginning it will be only for a second that you’ll manage to keep the mind clear).
Thus, a random surface thought will develop like this:
Oh, I forgot to check the LD forum today Oh, I forgot to check the LD for… Oh, I forgot to check the L… Oh, I forgot to che… Oh, I forgot… Oh, I ?.. O??.. ??.. …?.. => this is the initial thought pressure which you must be able to detect before it grows into a thought … => reducing thought pressure … => thought pressure has almost vanished ? => no thought pressure anymore; the surface mind is perfectly clear
Your mind will also need to adapt itself to this new thoughtless state, and this might really take some time. But if you keep at it, also the deeper mind will become affected and the inner silence will grow steadily to more profound levels.
How long it will take to reach this level of thought control depends on your mental abilities and your practice, but it will definitely take quite some time. However, when you meditate then, you’ll no longer become distracted by the monkey mind of everlasting thought trains which run through your mind.
Oh and thought control also seems to work wonderfully well in dreams (haven’t tried this myself yet though).
Mystic i found out lol 16 years ago that meditation combined with the essense of hypnosis takes you a huge step forward.
If i would have to teach ppl meditation i teach them also selfhypnosis so they experience way faster and sooner emptyness en therefore progress way faster.
Isn’t it a bit too difficult to combine selfhypnosis with meditation practice? I mean, it seems more efficient to me that you first learn to control your thoughts (for instance with the aid of selfhypnosis) before you start with meditation. This way, you could remain fully aware of the meditation practice, without being distracted by thoughts.
How did you do it then?
i have these tapes and i managed to not think about anything for about 10 minutes, while not even realising i was actually sitting down or aware of the world, i didn’t have any distractions. Is this deep meditation? or rather a trance? is there any difference?
Hard to tell… I really don’t know what you’ve experienced. Meditation isn’t about not realising the world around you. To the contrary, meditation allows you to experience the moment with highly increased awareness, while clearing the mind until it’s surface is ripple free, free of thoughts, thus reflecting perceptions like a mirror. The essence of meditation is becoming aware of being. It’s about letting go and simply be, thereby using awareness and intuition. I haven’t experienced deep meditative states yet though. But Jeff has. He can probably tell you much much more about it than I can
Trance on the other hand requires active thought focusing and concentration instead of a quiet mind (however, when one reached deep trance, concentration isn’t really necessary anymore). Also awareness ofcourse. Trance can also be used during meditation, to clear the mind. Meditation is also more self-reflective and controlled than trance.
I practise zazen. This is the basic zazen I started with:
Sitting in a half-lotus position, I focus on my breathing. Everytime I get carried away by my thoughts and notice it I get my focus back on breathing.
After you have practised this for a long time you can always focus on your breathing with full potential without being distracted by your thoughts, even if there were passive thinking.
The second “stage” of zazen practise is shikantaza, “just sitting”.
In this practise you literally just sit and let go of all (meaning you don’t focus on anything particular. This way you are aware of everything around you). You notice your thoughts but you don’t try to stop them; just don’t get attached to your thoughts. This way thinking stops naturally.
You sound like me. Sometimes I’m trying to sleep and I’ll suddenly start counting in my head (it’s like my mind is trying to annoy me) I try to stop but the moment you think of not doing something, well you know, it goes on and on…
how confusing )