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Beginning Meditation?
bagelpirate
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
How does one get started in this? Google searches tend to solely yield religious instructions.
So can anyone explain how to get started and where to go from there? Or provide me with a decent source?
Also, does anyone here actually practice? What are all the benefits?
So can anyone explain how to get started and where to go from there? Or provide me with a decent source?
Also, does anyone here actually practice? What are all the benefits?
bagelpirate on
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In eighth grade, my English teacher, a Franciscan monk and the best teacher I've ever had or will ever have, would start every class with meditation. He'd knock a wood-thingy against a brass cup, and it would set off this resonance. Then, he'd walk us through directions like this (with your feet flat on the ground, your back perfectly rigid, your eyes shut, your hands in your lap. It's been a while, so I only remember the gist):
1. Focus on your breathing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
2. Fill yourself up with every breath. You can take in as much air as you want to. Breathe in, and then slowly let it out. Breathe in, and fill your body, and then slowly let it out.
3. Become perfectly aware of the moment. Forget the fantasies of the future, the preoccupations of the past. Remain within yourself, but understand that you are in the present, and all of you needs to be there.
4. Think of your breathing. Breathe in, breathe out.
Doing it every day for a school year lead to a memorization of the process, if not the exact words. Basically, you ground yourself in the present and focus on your breathing. Doing this has helped me calm down in times of stress, focus my thoughts, fix a neck-cracking problem I had...I highly recommend it. I still frequently do it with my legs crossed upon my bed. Remember, back straight, chin up.
Ultimately it's about clearing your mind and relaxing, which has the basic advantage of giving you more mental focus for other things, as you can come back from a clear mind and prioritize better, rather than staying constantly stressed or having multiple things going on at once and not realizing which is more important.
I used to do it more when I was in college. Never with positions and only rarely with humming. It comes naturally for me so I can do it for a short period of time without having props to assist me. Not that said props lessen the experience at all, mind -- for many/most people, they can make meditation easier or more effective. I still close my eyes or "space out" to do it.
A lot of people get started by reading and pondering Zen Koans, which are unanswerable riddles. They're not made to "figure out," but to realize that there are things that are simply unknownable or unanswerable, and you generally can only realize that when you stop thinking about it. The classic "the sound of one hand clapping" is such a koan. To meditate, you purposefully don't think about anything, which is another koan. How do you think about not thinking? Of course, there's no answer.
Ultra-basic How to: http://www.yogasite.com/meditation.htm
get your learn on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
Here's a few tips I use that might help you:
- Sometimes I will turn on a water fountain in my room to hear the sound of the water hitting the rocks. Then I imagine any thoughts that enter my head (Ah! application deadline! Ah! date tonight!) are being caught by the water and carried away. Eventually my thoughts don't stay, but flow quickly and reduce to almost nothing.
- You may also use a candle. The candle is another focal point that you draw your attention to should your mind wander.
- Also, when you close your eyes, do you notice the light that appears to be bouncing around your eyelids? When you lack other focal points, that can be used as one as well. Keep your eyes closed and focus on what you can see, even in darkness.
By having your attention on these very simple things, your mind and body will relax and hopefully enter that meditative state you seek.
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha
The first two are placed behind you, as far as your left and right hands swing backwards when straight. The second pair are placed in a straight line from core to each knee, again with arms straight. The third pair are straight out in front, aligned with your shoulders, and the last placed in line with your center out front as far as you can stretch forward comfortably while in this postion.
This has marked out your meridians of awareness and action. When/if you move, you will always be within the area marked out by these coins.
When you breathe, taking twice as long on the inhale as you do on the exhale, one imagines their connection to the world directed through these lines. Typically, your focus and awareness will be weaker as you move from front to back. The idea is to be aware of all lines, excluding the token marking 'point' (the one directly in front) So when you inhale, you inhale your connections, and when you exhale, you exhale out to the point marker. Imagine your energy pooling into the point marker, always maintaining your connection with it in your mind.
The key is to align your awareness of the six points, so that your focus is equally dived among them. In advanced practice, these will come to represent energy lines in your immediate surroundings, and you will find it nessessary to quietly adjust them into proper position. After a while, you will feel the reality of the room shifting in and out as you breathe. Sucking into you on the inhale, pushing out on the exhale. You should feel the energy building and flowing out to your point marker. A little will ebb back to you from it when you inhale, like all other points, but mostly the line or channel between you and your point will grow and seem more real.
After a while, you will feel a 'pressure' coming from your point marker. It is the point where you can no longer envision or imagine more energy being stored there, so you will push out to it, but it will not grow in strength. This is your 'spiritual' limit, the amount of will you can imagine placing into something with a strong quiet resolve. Over time, this limit will stretch.
For now, once you reach the limit, one keeps the breathing the same, but now draws from point on the inhale, slowing letting it fill them, and then sending it out to the six on the exhale evenly. For beginners, there is no need to pool your energy on the outflow - just send it out along those lines back into the world. Continue this, drawing from point and breathing out along your meridians until your pooled energy in point is gone. This practice can take anywhere from ten to twenty minutes.
This is a simple influence control exercise, and it has many reasons behind it. I suppose the fundation of the principle is that by filtering your awareness in this way, you learn to draw from your surroundings evenly, and learn to focus your outflow along a point. It helps one deal with distractions, not by ignoring them, but by using them to sharpen focus on other things. The second principle is kind of kharmic, but in spiritual terms, you are filtering a part of the worlds energy through yourself, tuning it to your unique signature.
I don't know how to explain this very well in English, but it is like energy needs to be conditioned by your body before you can use it easily. Once it has been through you and used by you, you can gain more strength and use of it with less of your own energy being wasted. In practice it is beleived that this is why fighters are better at home, the energy there is conditioned by them to respond to thier will more easily. I suppose it is loosely like having a home game in sports were the team feeds off the crowd and familiarity with thier surroundings. Practicing the meditiation at home is designed to give one that 'home team advantage' in everything they do in daily life in that area.
Ignoring the somwhat suspect mythology, the seven points give you something to focus on to keep your mind clear, and a way to focus your thoughts and breathing. It is a nice easy way to start the practice, without being to difficult, and sets a foundation for more complex exercises in the future. I'm sure it is compatible with other forms of meditation as well, most have the same components of breathing, focus and direction.