Meditation Anyone?

[Mike's Beard]

Any Smiley Smiler's into meditation? I have only recently started to (in fact have just completed my second one). It worked much better the second time (I am still mildly blissed as I type this). I didn't seem to feel much as I was doing it but the second I stopped and opened my eyes and moved my limbs something washed over me. Nothing major but a unique feeling all the same. Also cliched as it may sound, time had slipped from me. I been practicing my mantra for 17 minutes but it felt MUCH less. Would love to hear from others with similar experiences.

[rab2591]

Learned about it from my psych professor in college; went home and tried it. After 20 minutes I started to feel incredibly relaxed and happy, then everything in my vision lit up around me and it felt like I was leaving my body - I actually felt like I was levitating (I was not really levitating however). I got really excited, my heart started pounding and then in a flash the feeling disappeared. For days after I tried gaining that same feeling but failed at every attempt. This was three-four years ago.

A few months ago I was sitting in my living room after a long day of work, I settled back on my couch and stared straight ahead at a light on my DVD player. Not once did I move and I associated the light with the droning sound of the AC unit (classic meditation technique - associating sight with sound). Gradually I felt more and more relaxed, everything around me just wasn't important, I could interact with outside stimuli, but it just didn't really matter to me. As with you, the feeling slipped away. I tried for days after to gain that same feeling, but again, failed at every attempt.

Meditation is incredible, but it seems to be so hard for me to slip into that meditative state. My brain just gets too excited about the prospect of being in a completely different state of mind that I can't empty my mind of thought.

[Mike's Beard]

Catch 22 - as soon as you start to become aware of it working, your train of thought is broken and the feeling goes. I hear it gets easier and better with practice.

[rogerlancelot]

I recently tried intestinal yoga but never got to reach colonic nirvana.....

 

[ghost]

To see the benefits of TM just look at Mike Love & Al Jardine. 

[ghost]

A few months ago I was sitting in my living room after a long day of work, I settled back on my couch and stared straight ahead at a light on my DVD player. Not once did I move and I associated the light with the droning sound of the AC unit (classic meditation technique - associating sight with sound). Gradually I felt more and more relaxed, everything around me just wasn't important, I could interact with outside stimuli, but it just didn't really matter to me. As with you, the feeling slipped away. I tried for days after to gain that same feeling, but again, failed at every attempt.

Here is the appropriate technique for this as taught by ghost. Use it at your own discretion. Stare without blinking until you cease thinking. There. That's it.

[Alex]

You're not allowed to meditate until you go to Rishikesh, India and pay thousands of dollars to the Maharishi so he can tell you what your mantra is.

[onkster]

I, too, have had the beginners' luck experience of having a fantastic first-time meditation go well. It was 20 minutes, but felt like about 5. And I felt fantastic, like I'd just had the best night's sleep ever. I felt like I could do anything.

And then...haven't been able to duplicate it since. I've gotta go back to trying, if practice makes perfect, or at least better.

Have never done it using a mantra...does that really help?

[ghost]

I, too, have had the beginners' luck experience of having a fantastic first-time meditation go well. It was 20 minutes, but felt like about 5. And I felt fantastic, like I'd just had the best night's sleep ever. I felt like I could do anything.

And then...haven't been able to duplicate it since. I've gotta go back to trying, if practice makes perfect, or at least better.

Have never done it using a mantra...does that really help?

You are having difficulty because the spontaneity is gone. First time : no experience, no expectations. Second time : experiences, expectations. The "I" that seeketh, findeth not. Cease to be and it will be revealed. Alert passivity - this is the entire secret of meditation. Just-be & be-aware & find out WHAT IS THE AWARER - nothingness. Space. The mind is void. Reality is a mirage appearing in abstract nothingness. Enjoy.

[ghost]

The brain is very connected to the visual and auditory movements. If you relax your eyes and gaze with a 'thousand yard stare' while holding your tongue against the roof of your mouth you'll find that the sense of quiescence arises naturally and without any effort on the part of the thought-I to think its way into a "state". Thoughts are like phantasms appearing in a dark room - they flash into view and then disappear. Don't do anything to stop them [who is stopping them? more thought]. Besides, meditation is not about being thoughtless. If all thought disappeared YOU WOULD DISAPPEAR. You are just a thought - your "I" is unreal - a mirage created by the nervous system. What you guys need is some quiet time removed from your ordinary obligatory world where you can drift in subconscious associations - hypnagogic reveries for the expansion of your aesthetic awareness. For this, just relax... more and more... be like a cat... just drift into the ether of your mind... dream-think about whatever you want... sometimes I go into this state just to create girls to make love with... I am a lonely ghost within this corporeal realm, I must return to the astral to find my honeys.

[ghost]

Also for the intellectuals and philosophers ... you can get into a meditatively 'detached' state just by really thinking through to the end of this life you appear to be living. What are you? Are you actually an existent being or just an indistinguishable part of the whole made to think of "itself" as singular-self? It appears to ghost that "we" are "waves" in the "ocean" of "reality" - is the wave separate from the ocean? It is inseparable from it, as are "we" from "it". We appear and disappear. No birth, no death. Just appearance/disappearance. It's all an illusion - INCLUDING "YOU", "ME", "I".

[ghost]

Meditation as a concept really goes off the deep end when you research Indian Yoga practice/philosophy & Buddhism. It goes from being a Mike Love/Al Jardine relaxation therapy to THE TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF "YOU". Nirvana means Cessation. It's not a heaven, not a paradise. It's not a state of bliss, not an eternal ecstasy. There is no "I" to be enlightened. The spiritual illusion is that there is a "you" that traverses a "path" of understanding and practice to "get" somewhere like "enlightenment". It's a cultural myth as much as what Moses and friends were up to in the desert. Moses thought in terms of "Me" & "You". God is the biggest You there is in monotheism until you start going into the esoteric core where the duality loosens a little bit. Muhammad thought in "Me & You". Almost everyone you know thinks in "Me & You". Ghost thinks in No-Me, No-You, No-Thing. The Asiatic tradition is the introverted search for the Self as God. It is still a "You" because the "I" that seeks it is the mind which relies on past knowledge [ego]. There is a split - the "I" seeks the "Self". If the essence of "I" is Self, then there could be no split. How could something become other than itself to perceive itself as not-self? It just makes no sense. There is no real "I" and there is no real "Self". "You" only arise at various "times" anyway. When you're fast asleep, No-I for "you". When a sudden perception catches the whole attention of the organism, there is no-I for "you" there is only vivid perception. The untouchable motion of the living reality is not an I-wave but a deep current in the Ocean itself. The "I" is a mirage within a mirage, a dream within a dream. Russian dolls. Fractals. What "you" are says Ghost rightly or wrongly is a discontinuate verbal mental illusion of self - "I am" - that is an abstraction created by the nervous system - for survival [when you think you actually exist, you care more about surviving - when "you" know "you" don't exist, there is little care either way] - meditation now becomes a sort of neurological intelligence-awareness that brings about an actual shift in brain functioning so that the "awarer" is not clouded by all the noise. Meditation actually can go far beyond psychedelic drugs. No one seems to believe "me" when "I" say it except people who have no experience of psychedelics. Meditate on VOIDNESS - NO-I, NO-YOU, NO-ME, NO-SELF, NO-GOD, NO-WORLD, NO-EXISTENCE, NO NON-EXISTENCE, NO AFTERLIFE, NO PRE-LIFE, NO REINCARNATION..... let every concept DIE and cease to exist.

[ghost]

I recommend Steve Roach's music for hypnagogic voyaging. He tunes into primordial earth & space sounds. Get "Origins", "The Serpent's Lair". These take "me" deep with good headphones. Just sit back and close your eyes. The brain does the rest. Get out of your own way.

[onkster]

Wait, you're saying...cease to exist? Where have I heard that before...

But seriously thank you for your copious and thoughtful answers, ghost. I'm going to take some time to reread them again in depth.

[ghost]

i actually have my own religion if anyone is interested. the presentation is more of a visual nonverbal thing, not as wordy as i have been here at all. i prefer a haiku like simplicity for describing the religion. symbols instead of essays, you know. i don't want to start race riots - just turn into trees.

[Alex]

Ghostism?

[ghost]

the name itself is too intense for this forum. i don't play no games. this is a sword that cuts off your head.

[ghost]

guys i just swallowed a dime by accident what should i do

[onkster]

Don't worry about it, ghost, you just got some cents in you.

(Just teasing. Call your doctor. And probably buy a little strainer. Soon.)