Thread: Introducing (transcendental) meditation

I actually got into meditation after listening to Lynch's Catching the Big Fish. He's just so psyched about TM it's contagious.

Anyway, this is a good way to learn how to quiet the mind:

Breathing Thoughts Away: Center your attention on the process of breathing, using this to hold your mind totally clear. Feel each breath entering your body and filling your lungs, then feel it leaving your body. Follow the breathing process with your mind, but do not think about it. Feel it,
be aware of it, let the feeling of breathing occupy your entire mind. This exercise is enough to occupy the surface mind and to keep its rambling thoughts at bay.
If you need more than this, count your breaths. Count up to ten breaths, then start over again.
Mentally counting is not a breach of thought-control discipline. When you count each number, drag out the mental word over the whole of each breath. For example, follow the IN breath carefully and then count (mentally) "Onneeeee" (one) for the entire OUT breath. Hold your mind clear during the next IN breath and count (mentally) "Twwooooo" (two) for the whole of the OUT breath.
While you are holding your mind clear, surface thoughts will attempt to creep back into your mind. When this begins to happen (and it always will in the early stages) quickly and firmly push them away before they have a chance to take hold and complete their message. You will get progressively better at this with a little practice. You will soon be able to detect thought pressure alone, and thus stop thoughts before they have the chance to form into actual mental words inside
your surface mind.
When you get to the stage where you can sense the pressure of thoughts as they are about to start, you are really getting somewhere. You can then begin pushing thought pressures away before they can form into actual thoughts. Eventually, with a little practice, you will be able to hold your surface mind totally clear, like a blank slate. The pressure of thoughts wanting to start will stay with you for some time, even after you master them. This pressure will, however, progressively ease with regular practice.

Meditation is good. i started a few months ago, but stopped recently because i'm lazy.. keep sleeping in.
Have started getting up early again so now I have time.

I've made it to the first step where after about 10-15 minutes i get very relaxed and thoughts are almost gone.

Taking a while to get to the next step though. Can't wait until I get there though.


I use a meditation stool (have a search online). It pretty much fixes your posture as soon as you sit on it, so it's very helpful. Posture is important!!

Originally Posted by Lolasaurus

But I pretty much find it impossible not to think or anything; always have that little voice inside my head. Does anyone have any advice, in particular on transcendental meditation? Lay down or sit up? Music or no? Any practices or good places to learn how?

That is exactly the issue for anyone starting on this kind of meditation, the mind seemingly can't stop chattering thoughts. You are also so used to it that it is an automatic and probably mostly subconscious thing. The mind is made to make associations, probably because in general, thinking stuff makes us "survive", and those fittest (who can think of all the dangers, etc), will have the advantage. Having a blank mind wasnt all that much advantageous to our ancestors.

But at some point, there you are, wanting to break this cycle of thoughts. How to approach this? Tvs_frank gave some good idea of a possibility. However if you start this type of meditation, it will probably be pretty hard. In my experience, the trick here is not to force anything. If you have thoughts, observe them in a detached way. You can either try to force them away, or observe them, but the mind is a sneeky deveice, the more you force it to do something, the harder it gets to do it (remember the examample where you try NOT to think of something, like a polar bear, for a minute... if you focus on not thinking of it, your mind will actually force thoughs on the subject). So if you feel it is very hard to "force" thoughts away, try the approach of becomming the witness of thought. This way you will realise what thought is (it is not "you"), and slowly thoughts will become less agressive and dwindle away. If you feel you gain a little proficiency in this approach, you could try the "focus on you breath" meditation, and see if during this you can still only witness breathing while the mind stays quiet. In this whole approach, it is inportant to accept whatever happens. If at first you have little luck in meditating, realise that expertise comes with more practise and experience.

At some point, the pressure of thoughts, as tvs_frank called it, will become less and less. You have to put less and less energy in maintaining concentration on breathing, or on keeping a mind blank of internal discussions altogether. However this does not need to mean there is nothing going on in your mind (can be, but doesnt need to be). What I mean is that once the thoughts cease to exist, your internal emotional state will become more clear. "Thinking" will then happen in feeling, not in words. If you meditate, and you feel good, and this is the only thing on your mind, then you will just want to continue it for a while.

To answer your question about what position you should be in while meditating, it does not matter that much as long as you can be comfortable for a while. You dont want the body to start sneeking in signs of discomfort as the mind will pick this up and start nagging that you have to change position.

Anyway thats my view on it, good luck and have fun meditating!

In a guide book for spiritual progression called "Initiation into Hermetics" by Franz Bardon Step one outlines a process of thought control where you start out doing 10 minutes a day of passively observing your thoughts and trying to recollect them at the end of the session, once this can be done with ease you naturally progress into being able to hold a single thought, and afterwards an absence of thought. Personally I can barely do the last for 5 minutes at this point. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Also you are suppose to increase the amount of meditation each time you do it to whatever is comfortable. I like doing an hour a day.

CSM - Clinically Standardised Meditation. No religion, no pressure, no BS.

Learn To Meditate Kit, by Pat Carrington is what I used. She's good; the pressure's off you to be like a thinking robot. "If your thoughts wander just gently bring them back to your mantra." That's a line I always remember because, like many, I started meditation thinking, "Oh god, I've got to get this right. I've got to stay focused on mantra all the time and if I don't I've failed." She recommends you start thinking of meditation as, "My daily quiet time alone" which, I agree, is a good way to start.

It's ultimately very simple. It's more a matter of dropping your misconceptions.

I don't know if it's readily available now (my one has a booklet and four audio tapes) but she has a book out too.

Kit:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Medita...2843699&sr=1-1