Thread: does meditating become fun???

That thing in your head, that irritation that you get telling you you're bored, that panic, that's what you need to focus on. Absolving that panic is the purpose of meditation.

Meditation doesn't become fun. It becomes a peaceful moment in which you successfully clear all your thoughts and negativity. It becomes an enjoyment of awareness not interrupted with streams of thought.

Anyway, meditation is a lot of work in the beginning. Surely you'll accomplish nothing what you expect in the first 10 times, but the truth is, that is the most important phase in achieving inner peace while meditating.

Sit down, relax, and simply observe your thoughts without interfering. Observe your most negative thoughts with high awareness and just let them flow. I recommend Echart Tolle's book - Power of Now. Nothing religious or supernatural involved.

Moved to Inner Sanctum, but I'll keep the redirect here so more people can read this

Meditation isn't a "fun" thing, it just is. Don't worry about doing it "right" or "wrong", there is no right or wrong when it comes to meditation. Just do what feels right for you and just flow.

OP made me lol.

I started with walking meditation because I found sitting meditation to be too difficult, initially. Even now, for me to do a sitting meditation for longer than 15 minutes requires me to be in a group.

I decided I didn't want to turn you off of meditation or make you think of it as work (it is, after all, the one time of day where we do not work) so I found some techniques that might me more interesting:

Fun Meditation Techniques for Finding Inner Peace | Lifescript.com

Bubbles Meditation
This is a wonderful meditation technique and visualization exercise that is quick, easy and fun to do:
Find a comfortable, quiet place.
Sit either on a chair with your feet flat on the floor and palms resting upward, on top of your thighs.
Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing.
Take five deep breaths, feeling yourself centering in calmness.
In your mind’s eye, visualize yourself blowing golden bubbles of light, each time you exhale.
These are bubbles of joy and each time you reach out an pop one, giggle.
Pop as many as you can, imagining glowing streams of joy flowing through your finger and into your heart chakra and bringing you inner peace.
As you feel your heart chakra opening, you may find yourself laughing uncontrollably, and that’s wonderful.
When you are ready, slowly come back into the room and open your eyes

Gratitude
The realization of joy in our lives often comes from discovering and practicing daily gratitude. When you get up in the morning, take about ten minutes to write down everything you are grateful for in that moment. When you have completed your list, read it over by starting it with the phrase “I am truly grateful for…” and go down the list. Do the same thing and meditate on your list for 10 minutes before you go to bed. You’ll be amazed at how wonderful your life will become, and how your hardships will lessen.

I personally like that one, but you don't even really need to do a list, in my opinion. Every moment I can, I try to use gratitude like a muscle to enrich my experiences.

I also found this website, which I think is helpful

8 Ways to Make Meditation Easy and Fun | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In

One technique highlighted is one that helped me a lot:

3. Use the Alarm Clock Meditation.

If 100 breaths isn’t going to cut it for you, set a timer for 5 minutes. Then meditate until the timer goes off. This way, you don’t have to wonder about how long it’s been, or how much longer you should meditate for. It’s like meditation on cruise-drive.

What about it makes you want it to be over? Try not to go into it with the assumption that lack of activity=boring. Notice the subtle difference between each breath.

You could also try doing shikantaza instead. Maybe this is bad advice, if anyone feels it is let me know. In zen practice you start with the breath then you do shikantaza, which is choice-less awareness. Just be very aware everything going on around you, every sound every smell. Fell your ass on the cushion, you clothes your hair, the pain in your back, the food stuck in your teeth. Be aware of it all and harbor no anger towards any of it, let it be what it is. If you are in real pain maybe do something to change that, but try not to shift around. This might actually be much harder than breath work, but I got kinda bored with the breath counting when I was doing that too, though I also broke through that.

If you want a more secular version of the same thing check out http://www.dreamviews.com/f49/all-da...gyoshi-113253/. It's great.

Thanx for the replies.
And I guess by fun I meant enjoyable and not a hassle. A good thing not a bad thing.

Try to find enjoyment in simply being alive, most people don't have that luxury.

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

I started with walking meditation because I found sitting meditation to be too difficult, initially. Even now, for me to do a sitting meditation for longer than 15 minutes requires me to be in a group.

I decided I didn't want to turn you off of meditation or make you think of it as work (it is, after all, the one time of day where we do not work) so I found some techniques that might me more interesting:

Fun Meditation Techniques for Finding Inner Peace | Lifescript.com





I personally like that one, but you don't even really need to do a list, in my opinion. Every moment I can, I try to use gratitude like a muscle to enrich my experiences.

I also found this website, which I think is helpful

8 Ways to Make Meditation Easy and Fun | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In

One technique highlighted is one that helped me a lot:

thank you,
these seem great i will give them a try.

if you like these types of things then i would recomend trying something i learned a while ago, but i felt it was more self hypnosis than meditation.

relax your body fully,
relax and calm your mind by focusing on your breathing,
visualize 10 steps going down to beutiful water,
relax even more with each step, slowly walk down each step feeling each step as ou go, and counting the numbers starting at 10.
(you have probably heard of this up to here but this next part is the fun part that you probably dont know),
once you get to the bottom continue walking into the warm, relaxing, numbing water, feel it go higher up your bod with each step.
keep walking till you are fully under water.

when i did this my body was numb, warm, relaxed nd buzzing and i could hear a buzzing in my ears.

If you are bored you need to meditate on boredom. "I am bored" is a thought. It sounds like you need to develop concentration before you try meditating. They are similar, concentration natural becomes meditation. Try a concentrating on a candle flame. You can actually see when your mind wanders. You lose alertness and it is like a cloud covering the sun, or a shadow covering the object of concentration. The shadow is a thought or feeling. Try to hold your attention on the candle flame. Everything else will disappear if you are doing it right. The candle flame may even darken or disappear. Keep being alert. Your concentration will reach new levels rapidly, it is like a muscle that needs to be exercised. before you know it you will feel alert, refreshed and clarity of mind.

Some points to keep in mind regarding meditation and all mental practices: Firstly, there is no point to meditation. You are not waiting for something to happen. Just like there is no point to playing a song on the guitar. If the point was to get to the end of the song quickly, then the fastest players would be the best. One meditates like one listens to one's favorite music: enjoying, not in a hurry, not expecting anything to happen, but enjoying the moment of it. Listening, attentive, enjoying your own presence.

At first meditation is not very phenomenal. But as you refine your attention, it does become a lot of fun. Just like lucid dreaming is a lot of fun. Meditation is the process of refining your attention and calm abiding in the atomic present moment. There are many methods. Not all of them are right for every person. The candle flame method is very popular and universal. There is the breath method. Try to enjoy the breathing. Think of it like drinking, or absorbing bliss. The breath comes in like waves crashing on the shore, turn and go back out. Is laying in the sun fun or boring? Is watching the sunset fun or boring? These types of things are what meditation is like. WHen attentively watching a beautiful sunset, one is naturally in a state of meditation. The ego is not there, just attention on the present moment of beauty. Try hitting a gong and listen as the sound slowly fades. pay attention to the quiet reverberation, and just stay with it and you will find it leaves you in alert silence. When feeling a texture like fabric become the sensation of feeling. Etc. etc.

Boredom is your ego trying to distract you. It is your weak concentration. Boredom is a subtle fear. It is a distraction. It is distracting you from yourself. If you are bored when you meditate that means you think that yourself is boring. Meditating is spending time with yourself with no distractions. But most likely you are not using every available method to help you.

Often we are bored because we cannot control our thoughts and there is a lot of tension in our minds and bodies. That is why yoga or any other exercise is good. Go jog a few miles then catch your breath and meditate. It will be a lot easier. Because the energy is flowing strongly through out your body and not in your mind. It will be so easy to meditate then. When doing any aerobic activity with totality, you are in meditation. Dancing, running, etc... When you are running you are not thinking about anything, but just being in the present moment. You are not thinking "I am meditating, I am a Christian, I am a Buddhist, I am an atheist, I am this, I am that..." No you are BEING, nothing more or less. You are being dancing, you are being running.

Many uncontrollable thoughts means your energy is not flowing through you. You need to iron out your energy. That is why exercise, breathing, yoga, chi Gong, etc. are all done right before meditation.

Make it fun to explore consciousness. You are an explorer, exploring the last frontier: consciousness. Make it an exciting game. Think of what you will be able to experience as you get better at it. Lucid dreaming, etc...

To summarize: If you are bored then you are not meditating. So you cannot say that meditation is boring. If you say that a sunset is boring that means you are not really seeing the sunset. You may be looking at the sunset, but you are not seeing it. Rather, you are seeing your own monkey mind being uncomfortable and rebelling against being disciplined. Have a deeper insight and see that beyond this uncomfortable restless monkey mind is meditation.

Just look within yourself and take it all passively. Accept what you are feeling and thinking allowing it to flow, but don't let it control you and don't resist it. Just let it flow with every breath you take. What goes on inside can be overwelming and it can cause you to be restless.

Yes is the answer to your question. Firstly you need to understand that meditation is a discipline and expect it to be hard work in the begining. I, like you, meditated for twenty minutes per day in the evening. My thoughts were scattered and I got frustrated with myself but I persevered. After a few weeks I didn't notice any difference in my meditation and my life certainly didn't feel more peaceful as I had expected. I kept meditating and gaining experience of being aware of my thought processes and not trying to engage with them and trying to remain mentally clear. I found this all rather frustrating but I wasn't going to give in. Then one evening BAMMM!!!! I had been meditating for about two minutes and I suddenly entered this state of mind where my internal dialogue - mental chatter - completely ceased. I was in a state of complete utter peace. Oh man it was so beautiful. I could have stayed like that for hours and hours. It was like the ultimate drug. I savoured every second but the most phenomenal thing was that I had no thought processes running - I was just pure awareness. I had no sense of time. I heard a voice say, 'That is enough for now.' I looked at my clock and 15 minutes had passed.

This experience made me realise that if we think that we aren't making progress after weeks or months of meditating we actually are; we just aren't consciously aware of it.

Just wait until your third eye opens. Then the fun begins... Well I think so anyway.

Originally Posted by mcwillis

Yes is the answer to your question. Firstly you need to understand that meditation is a discipline and expect it to be hard work in the begining. I, like you, meditated for twenty minutes per day in the evening. My thoughts were scattered and I got frustrated with myself but I persevered. After a few weeks I didn't notice any difference in my meditation and my life certainly didn't feel more peaceful as I had expected. I kept meditating and gaining experience of being aware of my thought processes and not trying to engage with them and trying to remain mentally clear. I found this all rather frustrating but I wasn't going to give in. Then one evening BAMMM!!!! I had been meditating for about two minutes and I suddenly entered this state of mind where my internal dialogue - mental chatter - completely ceased. I was in a state of complete utter peace. Oh man it was so beautiful. I could have stayed like that for hours and hours. It was like the ultimate drug. I savoured every second but the most phenomenal thing was that I had no thought processes running - I was just pure awareness. I had no sense of time. I heard a voice say, 'That is enough for now.' I looked at my clock and 15 minutes had passed.

This experience made me realise that if we think that we aren't making progress after weeks or months of meditating we actually are; we just aren't consciously aware of it.

Just wait until your third eye opens. Then the fun begins... Well I think so anyway.

What you described is how I feel about 90% of the time. My mind is normally so blank and I just feel everything. And when in flow a voice in my head will guide me telling me what to do. Telling which direction to go. One of my first legit meditation experiences was like what you described, so much peace. I was often so angry and frustrated all the time. And I just felt so much peace.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

To summarize: If you are bored then you are not meditating.

Nail on the head.

Anyway, like others have said, "fun" is not really the right description, but the meditative experience does become pleasant in an odd sort of way. It's a little hard to explain, since it's not the same kind of pleasantness that I would liken to, say, savoring a nice mouthful of ice cream. Maybe the best I can do is to say that the peacefulness of just being is kind of satisfying.

It isn't the same thing as fun or pleasure, it is infinitely more satisfying.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

It isn't the same thing as fun or pleasure, it is infinitely more satisfying.

this was a long time ago. but i didnt explain myself properly, i didnt mean fun, i meant enjoyable, and not a hassle.
and over the time till now i have discovered the answer and that is yes. now i enjoy meditating and look foward to it. especialy after feeling stressed out or having to do something that i realy dont want to for the day.

That is what I wanted to hear! Glad you are making progress!

You can use meditation to unlock your own past life memories, only if you discover consciously that you are connected or through dreams, after you can start practicing meditation. You don't need a hypno-therapist, they are expensive for one session only, i even found out myself and didn't agree to pay 300 and left, and this was a long time ago.
You will start getting unusal memories or images and feelings, this will happen when you get the hang of it. During meditation, if you feel some sad or depressing feelings you can stop short and get off the meditating state if you can't handle it, if you can then keep going until your feelings fade away. Sometimes you really need to face fears and feelings so that memories will stop if you keep having them without meditation.

I see mediation as a nice escapism from external processes from this reality, and to realize that it's a matter of stages that you practice to condition yourself in. For people who add in that it helps you organize your thoughts, being passively aware, and learning how your mind goes from complex to simplistic essentially as you go deeper, that's good, and you should keep doing it.

But when people start using it to explain supernatural, things based on complete faith without rational thinking, that's when meditation seems to be less enticing to others (who don't know where to start mind you) because they feel they have to be conditioned to some other person's belief. Whether it's for Third Eye, Merkaba, Nirvana, or any methods that establish closer and a "deeper connection" towards spiritualistic endeavors, the point being is, with so many preconceptions of what it "should" lead to (third eye activation, chakras, etc.), I wouldn't find it surprising that it would be too overwhelming for people new to meditation.

The point being, in the most practical sense, meditation is simply a form of conditioning yourself to go deeper and deeper into your mind, and realizing that ultimately, you are getting in a suggestive state. So it's no wonder people feel awe inspiring when they unlocked their "third eye" or found "enlightenment" when it's really the simplicity of suggestibility getting more and more easier to grasp.

- If you were a Christian and practice meditation, you'll realize because of mediation reaching a state of suggestibility, you'll find yourself literally seeing parts of the schemata of that particular faith.

- If you were into Spiritual endeavors, like spirit guides or just basic debatable dreaming aspects like dream guides, depending on how deep your state of suggestibility is, you're going to have projections and phenomena pertaining to those convictions.

And the steps to get deeper suggestibility state of being (like using 17 breaths for Merkaba meditation), is really just conditioning yourself and solidifying your expectations that the meditation is going to pertain to Merkaba.

Same for "Astral Projection," "Dream Guides," "Enlightenment," "Akashic Records" etc. When you realize the meditation sees how you really think, this simulation or experience only makes what you want to be true to be plausible in meditation, especially if said belief can't be proven rationally with scientific process.

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So for meditation, it goes both ways for me.

1. If I want to feel less insecure about a belief that I cannot prove, I take advantage of the state of suggestibility it brings to literally make thought energy prevalent in my perspective. The subconscious (or whatever you want to phrase it), can give you expressions of what you want to believe is true, which makes it so enticing to solidify people's faith and never really question why they're so attached to it.

2. It's also a learning tool to see why I'm so inclined to believe in things, both rational and spiritual/abstract. It helps me see that instead of stating that it's "magic" or that it's "a conduit to our past lives," why not gather these predispositions, come back to this reality and embracing its awareness, and analyze my thought processes instead of stating "Oh it must be the "magic" of meditation!"

Which is why the latter makes it so enjoyable, the steps to get to that state of suggestibility that establishes meditation becomes enticing rather than a chore, because I can see what makes me tick, what makes me happy, what makes me disgusted, and so forth; it makes me question things more instead of giving up in finding ways to understand.

I see the ego less of a distraction but more of an aspect I just temporarily invest less focus on and come back to it later to rationalize. The ego isn't a panic, it isn't a distraction, it's just part of the totality of how I conceptualize reality, I just need to go around it for the time being and tap on its shoulders again when I'm done.

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It can be used to promote constant skepticism and possibly find ways to gradually prove things probable and workable in this reality (and not only in the person's eyes) simply because you when you get into a deep state of suggestibility (and meditation = hypnosis fundamentally), you have your foundations set out for you, and it's up to you to explore deeper and analyze, or stay in the defeatist mindset and state

"Oh it's too grand for me to explain, and thus because of that, I'll just label it as spiritual and making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside rather than admitting it's my unwillingness or inability to question it and learn."

But that's just my opinion.

Nice, I agree with the above post except for one little point. Maybe at first meditation may seem like conditioning the mind. But in fact, the whole purpose is to uncondition the mind. To allow the mind to relax in its natural unconditioned state.
It might help you to know about the stages of meditation. These are not beliefs, but the stages of meditation everyone who meditates successfully goes through, no matter what their tradition or beliefs.
There is a map of the stages of insight that the Buddha mapped out. Various Christian mystics have also mapped out similar maps. The Kaballa tree of life is also a similar map.

It is said that the first insight a meditator has is that their mind is like a waterfall. Thoughts and physical sensations are constantly cascading through their awareness, carrying them away. They realize for the first time how insane and out-of-control their minds actually are.

Eventually, by continuing to pay steady attention to experience, there is a shift into what is called Mind & Body. Mind and Body is very pleasant and state-like, and the key insight revealed here is that there are all sorts of subtle phenomena—that were once below the threshold of our attention—which we are now aware of. These include intentions, thoughts, and the simple knowing of experience (consciousness).

With continued investigation, the pleasantness from Mind & Body begins to fade and one begins to see a stronger relationship between all of these elements. The next stage, Cause and Effect reveals that intentions actually precede actions. There is the intention to take a step forward and then the action follows directly after it. From here things can begin to get a bit faster, but also more unpleasant. The next stage, which is the 1st major trough in the process, is called The Three Characteristics. One’s attention has become much more finely honed, to the point that with a fair amount of reliability one is able to perceive the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and relatively selfless nature of our experience. This is particular true of physical experiences, and it’s not uncommon at this stage to experience strange, and uncomfortable physical phenomena, such as a sore neck, back, or shoulders, a build up of pressure in the forehead, finding one’s posture twisting into odd positions, etc. There also tends to be a lot of heat during this phase. I’ve often felt, when going through the three characteristics, that my body was cooking from the inside-out. And to top things off there can also be a good bit of emotional difficulty including tightness, irritation, and sadness.

Oddly enough, the only way through this difficult period is to continue to practice well, and to perceive the three characteristics with greater clarity and speed. If one is doing the noting practice, then somewhere in here it becomes natural to drop the noting in favor of perceiving things with a more bare attention. At this point one is perceiving the arising and passing of experience so quickly that the mental notes can actually feel cumbersome and clunky. During this phase, called The Arising and Passing Away (or A&P for short), things begin to get much more clear and pleasant. For many people they find they can sit much longer than they normally could, and can do so with very little effort. Meditation becomes quite easy, almost effortless at times, and accompanying this are many deep insights into the nature of phenomenal reality. Brightness, clarity, and joy often accompany this phase of the process.

At some point there is a peak to this phase, and there is an important event that happens called the A&P Event (or pseudo-nirvana). It is a peak experience, which reveals something very profound in the relationship to experience, and is often described in various ways. These can include descriptions of a great dip in reality, a momentary release of identity, an explosion of consciousness, or even something resembling an out of body experience. It can also happen in a lucid dream—as it did for the me the first time I remember crossing it. In all cases it is an important landmark not because of the experience itself, because of what follows it: the dark night.



[The preceding map is a graphical representation that uses a sinusoidal wave to describe the progress of insight. The vertical axis is describing the vedana, or feeling tone, of each particular phase. The center is neutral, the peaks are pleasant, and the troughs unpleasant. The horizontal axis is describing time, though in this case it’s not to-scale. Certain phases tend to take longer than others.]

The Dark Night, a term borrowed from the Christian mystic St. John of the Cross, describes a series of stages that follow one another quite closely. The first is Dissolution, in which phenomena are arising and passing so quickly that all that is noticed is actually the endings of phenomena. The subjective experience is very much of things dissolving, and falling away to quickly to really perceive clearly. After dissolution, you have stages with such fun names as, Fear, Misery, Disgust, & Desire for Deliverance. The mind goes through a series of intense reactions to the fact that reality is dissolving moment-to-moment. One’s attention becomes quite broad and unstable, and there is a very real sense that the ‘observer’ of experience is itself beginning to shake. There is also often an intensive emotional component to the dark night. During intensive practice it can feel as though one is being hit by wave after wave of intense emotions. After being hit by several small waves, one then has to handle the last stage of the dark night, called Re-observation. True to its name, it’s as if all the small earlier stages of the dark night combine into one, and one has to re-observe, or re-learn, the lessons of each. But this time instead of several small waves it’s one gigantic one! During this phase many people report having a difficult time sitting still at all, intense and primal feelings of frustration, and the most extreme mental upset imaginable. Re-observation is often called the “rolling up the mat” stage, as it can be so difficult that one feels compelled to just stop right here. And in fact many people do. If one is able to keep their resolve during re-observation and continue to pay attention to the constant arising and passing of phenomena then eventually it will subsist. It is not an immediate relief, but rather a gradual one.

Where, during the dark night, attention was broad but shaky, in the early part of this next stage, Equanimity, it starts to get a bit more stable. One begins to be able to sit for longer periods of time, and insights come naturally and organically. The neutral quality of experience predominates here (instead of the extreme highs and lows that preceded this stage), and as a result equanimity is often very peaceful and relaxed. Meditation can take on a more-or-less effortless quality toward the later part of the equanimity stage (what is called high equanimity). During high equanimity it is also common to slip into formless realms of concentration. It is at this point, that the conditions are ripe, for a spontaneous realization of emptiness to occur.

In the Theravada tradition, there are several moments, which occur in succession at the time of achieving the 1st stage of enlightenment. These are the 12th – 15th stages of the progress of insight map and include Conformity, Change of Lineage, Path, and Fruition. The 1st three moments are said to happen only once for each stage of enlightenment (4 in total) and the last, Fruition, is the actual event, which is referred to as emptiness or nirvana.

During the event of Fruition, which from the outside only takes a split second, all of reality blinks out of existence and then suddenly reappears. During the blink, or gap in reality, there is absolutely no sense of self, identity, observer, awareness, or anything else that would make think one that “they” have experienced anything in particular. As the late Bill Hamilton, wrote in his book Saints and Psychopaths, “Nirvana is an experience of the Unconditioned which defies any description. Any description of Nirvana is not a description of Nirvana, and that is the most that can be said about Nirvana. There are no reference points in Nirvana on which to base a description.” In the end one has to have this experience to know it, and as Hamilton points out, it is often an experience that defies any sort of easy description. Following Fruition there is a great sense of bliss that wells up, and a very real feeling that something important has happened (though it’s almost never what one expected). Some people describe it as a feeling of coming home, or of realizing that which they’ve most desired.

The last stage of the progress of insight is called Review. During review one begins to go through all of the previous stages, and almost immediately finds themselves in the arising and passing stage. They traverse this stage just as before, cross the A&P event, struggle through the dark night once again, emerge into equanimity, and once again reality blinks out for a moment with a Fruition. This cycle repeats itself again and again just like this until the territory has been thoroughly learned, hence the name Review. The only thing that changes is that during each progressive cycle, they become a bit easier and faster. Eventually a new full cycle of insight will emerge, and one will begin to work on the next stage of enlightenment. At this point they start all the way back at square one, but at a whole new layer of subtlety.

I see the progress of meditation as Upekkha. Upekkha is a Buddhist concept that is translated as "equanimity." Upekkha means something like: "I have see the unfamiliar and have experienced the unfamiliar. Through experience, the unfamiliar has become familiar. I am open to new things because all new things are part of the unfamiliar, which is familiar. I understand that surprise and boredom are reactions to the unfamiliar and the familiar. Since, the unfamiliar and the familiar are the same, surprise and boredom are the same. I am open to all these things and still others that I am yet to understand."

I see meditation as time spent remembering the side of yourself which sees things equanimously.

i personally enjoy meditating while reading the forums. i just observe people's personalities and watch how my mind reacts to certain post or posters. especially if there is conflict going on, as my emotions will get more involved giving me the chance to be more aware of my own emotions.

i even apply this in my day to day interactions with people.

Well no shit