Thread: Meditation

There are a lot of different ways to meditate. I usually just sit somewhere quiet and get relaxed. Then count to four, breath in and hold it, count to four again, breath out, and repeat. Sometimes I go by my heartbeat. I usually use it for writing; Just before I start I'll do it for 5-10 minutes and when I sit down to get to work my mind is nice and clear.

Yea after smoking, one must have already a quieter energyflow .. so entering meditation is easier .. I am just wondering if your feelings, what you see in front of your eyes etc. are distorted becaue of MJ's effects ....

Meditation in my eyes can be done in a million ways. Going to the forest, enjoying nature, breathing fresh air, hearing the birds is meditation for people. A friend of mine uses drums to meditate.

What comes to mind first when talking about meditation is the whole sitting thing .. I guess what Forsaken Exp said is pretty much how you do it ... usually up to 30 minutes or even much longer ... depends on you pretty much. Altogether meditation is supposed to calm you down, to relax you, to clear the mind .. having the inner energy under control .. which way one uses to get there, doesn't matter.

Are you kidding?

"Altogether meditation is supposed to calm you down, to relax you, to clear the mind .. having the inner energy under control"
That is the affect - at the same time the effect.
What you get temporarily after meditating is what you get in the long run (over years). Controlling the inner flow of energy in 30 minutes, daily, will make you be able to have yourself much more under control when being consciously in a stress- situation.
In the end, it saves you a lot of nerves ....

some people meditate to loose their ego. or to reach a euphoric state. or both. also, what alot of people see is a fixed image. people meditate to see past the fixed image, to see whats there, rather then whats there mixed with what your ego says is there. people meditate to get to narnia. ow and present time.

I practice transcendental meditation for extreme relaxation, mind expansion, and euphoria. I sit straight up in a comfortable chair or couch and just sit there and relax for about a minute. Then I start saying a mantra. "Aum" is a historically popular one and a sacred one to the Hindus. I think it in my head in the sound it would have if I said it out loud. I do not hum it like some people, the ones you might see in the movies who do it out loud. I almost effortlessly think it. I don't fight other thoughts, which are inevitable. I just gently drift toward the mantra. I do this for 20 minutes. When I look at my watch briefly and see that it has been 20 minutes, I stop. If it has been almost 20 minutes, I estimate when I reach 20 minutes and stop. As soon as I stop, I calmly open my eyes. Then I just sit there for a few minutes and enjoy the peace, which is often mind expanding euphoria. It works best when I open my eyes and see open land, water, or sky. It is recommended that you do this twice a day, at least six hours apart. They say that for best ongoing results, you should do your second one within 12 hours of your first one of the day. Doing it here and there seems to be good too. You are supposed to wait at least 30 minutes after a meal to do it.

* Having certain mind altering drugs in your system wrecks the effects. The clean euophoria is greatly inhibited by drugs like marijuana. But doing it while on mushrooms is highly recommended by some people. It works best when your system is working well, i.e. when you are eating right and in shape. While we're on the topic, marijuana in your system is a big enemy to lucid dreaming success also.

Universal, did you take lessons for transcendental meditation? When I was looking for a "how-to" online, I couldn't find anything ending before the actual how-to should have started, saying "please visit us 500miles away and pay 200 bucks."
You got an e-book or anything?

Dancing is Meditational for me, Drawing too. It is The attention Focussing on the Beat to which you dance that has great Meditational Value, drawing focusses my attention too: Completely into my Drawing. It brings out the ''Animal'' in me, the side that is closest to nature.

I guess you may understand why a forrest walk could do the same thing, as can some Music or sitting very still and relaxed looking deeply into your own Mind: Observing your own present Emotions and thoughts.

Whatever does it for you, dancing seems to do it best for me. Especially to Ska, Reggae and Dub Music as it makes me feel very close to nature dancing to it's beats.

Originally Posted by Slight

Universal, did you take lessons for transcendental meditation? When I was looking for a "how-to" online, I couldn't find anything ending before the actual how-to should have started, saying "please visit us 500miles away and pay 200 bucks."
You got an e-book or anything?
[/b]

I did officially get lessons from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's organization/cult and was initiated as a member in 1991. I was a staunch supporter/follower of Maharishi for almost the next three years. I later started getting all kinds of B.S. propaganda in the mail from them and decided that transcendental meditation (which I put in lower case letters and not the company's capital letters) is awesome but that Maharishi is a fraud. The junk I was getting in the mail talked about learning to levitate and even fly, how to balance out your "doshas" (not anything ever identified by any medical school) by rubbing a certain type of oil on your stomach and listening to Hindu chants on tapes, both sold by the organization, and all kinds of other garbage. I denounced Maharishi as a scam artist. John Lennon and Paul McCartney did the same thing in 1968. Lennon claims that Maharishi gave him a very threatening look over it because Maharishi was planning on using the most popular musical act in history to be his propaganda machine. It almost worked, but Lennon and McCartney caught Maharishi hitting on women who belonged to other men, asking for too much money, and expecting to be treated like a king. Maharishi claims that he is a prophet. The Beatles' song "Sexy Sadie" was written as a mockery of Maharishi ("We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table." "You made a fool of everyone.") Years after learning all of that, I did some research and found a web site about how the organization charges so much money for lessons and giving each person his or her own special mantra. The site claimed that there are only 12 (I think.) mantras. I looked at the list of them, and MY mantra was on it. I am totally convinced that I fell for a scam, but I like what I learned and enjoyed believing that I was on my way to a permanent state of nirvana. I now believe that meditation is great for the moment and good for the short term but that it does not lead to a permanent state of mind expanded euphoria, at least not by itself.

What I described about how to do transcendental meditation is really all I can offer you, but it is really all you will get from anybody else, other than ripped off. If you find anything more formal or detailed than that, it is probably from somebody who wants your money. But that is not to say that what I described isn't a great practice. I think it is. I have tried all of the major techniques at least a few times each, and transcendental is by far the best one in my opinion.

http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/index.php?...c=28554&hl=

a topic with alot of good stuff on meditation =)

Here is a blurb on Surat Shabd Yoga, or Meditation on the Sound Current:

http://santhakar.tripod.com/santmat/shabd-1.html


Here is a very scholarly work on Kundalini Yoga:

http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/download/kundalini.htm


Here is good introduction to Mysticism... it says "Christian" Mysticism, but don't worry about that, as anything the Catholics had ever learned about Mysticism originally sourced out of Eastern Origins anyway... probably Sufi and Zoroastrians Sources.

Here is a small essay on the White Light:

http://deoxy.org/annex/cwl.htm


Then there is a very short blurb on the OM MANI PADME HUM Mantra, one of theWorld's favorite mantras... and you don't have to pay money to anybody for it. http://www.freewebs.com/buddhist_man...nipadmehum.htm


If you want to buy a good intro book, then "Autobiography of a Yogi" is still the best introduction to Oriental Philosophy. If you want to get more in depth, then the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, published by the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Centers, but distributed through Amazon.com or Barnes and Nobles (www.bn.com) is very well written and not so imposing as it sounds, as Vivekananda was kind enough to die young before he had a chance to write at much length about trivial matters. His major works are Jnana Yoga, Raja Yoga and Bhakti Yoga and his commentaries on the Yogic Treatices of Patajali. All really great stuff.


Now, personally, early in my career in Dreaming, a old favorite Guru of mine came to me in a Dream and told me "Even a few seconds of Meditation in a Dream is worth thousands of hours of Waking Meditation", and I have found that to be true. Particularly with Mantra Meditation. One or two repetitions of a poweful Mantra in a dream will get you plenty of results. And then the Power Yogas and Meditations... if you open a Chakra in a Dream, you will DEFINITELY know you opened something...

ok thx ... guess I'll have to go to Nepal to learn how to do it ..

Originally Posted by Slight

ok thx ... guess I'll have to go to Nepal to learn how to do it ..
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No, stay put, man. I just gave you a $500 lesson for free. But it's okay if you want to mail me a donation.

Originally Posted by Universal

No, stay put, man. I just gave you a $500 lesson for free. But it's okay if you want to mail me a donation.
[/b]

And, yes, I could save everybody a dollar and charge $499 for the advice not to waste any money on that idiot scoundrel Maharishi.

He sells Mantra Meditation for $500!?

And you admit you were silly enough to pay out for it?

What ever happened to doing a little bit of product research. Would you pay $100,000 for a Hyundai Accent? Of course not! While being worth something, it is not worth that.

And with any research, despite their Pledged Secrecy, which even you have no qualms violating, the only thing Maharishi is selling is a simple Mantra.

You want a Mantra?

OM MANI PADME HUM

It is reputed to be one of the most powerful Mantras in the Universe, and nobody is so brazen as to charge anybody any money for it.

And yes, I often wonder that nobody has gotten around to horse whipping that Maharishi by now. He must spend a great deal of money on body guards, doesn't he?

Originally Posted by Leo

And, yes, I could save everybody a dollar and charge $499 for the advice not to waste any money on that idiot scoundrel Maharishi.

He sells Mantra Meditation for $500!?

And you admit you were silly enough to pay out for it?

What ever happened to doing a little bit of product research. Would you pay $100,000 for a Hyundai Accent? Of course not! While being worth something, it is not worth that.

And with any research, despite their Pledged Secrecy, which even you have no qualms violating, the only thing Maharishi is selling is a simple Mantra.

[/b]

It was $300 in 1991. Based on what Slight said, it is now $500. The scam goes beyond just the supposedly individualized mantra. They claim that the ritual involved in getting you to start the mantra, in which they say the mantra at first, get you to start saying it with their rhythm, and slowly get you into thinking it by yourself, involves special techniques that get you on the necessary track. Then they tell you that they have a secret way of checking your meditation and that you have to be checked every few months so they can make sure you are doing it properly. They take the fact that silent mantra meditation works and push the envelope as far as it will go. The common and intended response is, "Hey, they got me to have that awesome mental experience. They must know what they are doing. I will listen to what they tell me about this."

I was 19 when I was lured in. I had just been through the worst depression of my life as a result of hypoglycemia that no doctor I talked to fully understood plus serotonin deficiencey after doing LSD, and it had only been two years since I became an agnostic. My weariness with Christianity and Western medicine was at an all time high. The aloud humming meditation I had tried didn't do the trick for me, marijuana was not what I had built it up to be before getting into it, and LSD did not get me into the door I wanted to enter. It only added to my severe depression. I had been obsessed with Eastern philosophy for a while, and I was more into it than ever. Then along comes a friend of my mother's who said that she had been practicing Transcendental Meditation (capital letters in her world) for 15 years and that it had raised her state of consciousness. She talked about it like it is the key to Paradise. She literally believed that. She believed that Maharishi knew the secret of the universe and that she eventually would too. It sounded perfect. It is situations like that which give cults their recruitment power. But the cult world has lost one more possibility of such a luring since then.