how do YOU meditate?

do i do it wrong? i sit in the lotus position and close my eyes, and then close my second eyelids(i know i dont physically have any but i just do this thing that stops so much light getting through my eyelids). i do deep breaths until i feel calm, then it usually takes me a while to silence my thoughts. i never truly silence them though, i just stop being so conscious and tend to leave my body and fly to different places, i often feel like i have wings and go to people i know are unhappy and wrap my wings around them. two other things that often occur are me on, in or under the sea, and sometimes i turn into this yellow goddess and play in space. should i not be visualising? it’s usually not conscious so i can’t help it though :confused:

There is really no bad way to meditate, as long as you feel you’re liking it. But, meditation in itself, as has been pointed out here before, is single pointed concentration on a certain “something”. This something can be anything from your breath, inner chi flow, some image you visualise, a problem you want to solve, etc. So people who meditate and kind of flow with their thoughts or have a kind of vision / dream, are not really doing meditation in the right sense of the word. The goal of meditation is in the end to be able to focus on this one “something” for a long period of time without losing concentration. This is pretty hard but practise makes perfect …

I can’t disagree with Xetrov, but…
I would advise people not to practice Auto-Hipnosis!
I think it takes place naturally during sleep everyday, at a somehow normal level. But…
Unless one feels VERY confortable with meditation or LD’ing, I mean, unless one knows him self very well and has very high level of awareness I wouldn’t recomend doing it! I have no degree in psychology, but I think that it could be very harmfull for oneself!

Confused… This is the confusing part!
When attempting to WILD, at a level of sleep that I consider to be unconsiously consious, I attempted self-hipnosis. It didn’t make things worse for me, but I didn’t insist much!
Instead of sending positive messages like “I will have a Lucid Dream” I sent insecure negative messages like “Am I able of having a lucid dream?” - This message didn’t transmit security “I am able(I will LD)” instead it transmitted insecurity “Am I able to LD?” - Theoretically this would make you more insecure, instead of fixing whatever you want to fix!

Sorry to bomb you with insecurities, hope you get my point of view, criticize it what you don’t like, but consider it wisely so you don’t harm yourselves!

peace@us.all

Hi, I just happened to finish writing a guide on how I meditate and I thought I’d share it with you. A lot of what’s in it has already been said but there is some new stuff:

Learning to Meditate - A Place To Start - July 26th 2005

There is a component of the mind called the Surface Mind - I believe in one form of Buddhism it is called the Monkey Mind. It is the component of the mind that constantly chatters away all day, reminding you of things you have to do, commenting on things around you, worrying about things, and generally talking nonstop. The goal of this meditation is to quiet the Surface Mind. It takes regular practice for many months for most people to even begin to be able to do this, but the results are well worth it. You feel a profound silence within your mind - for me it feels like I am beginning to touch on something very vast when I am able to start to come close to attaining this silence. The silence grants a clarity to your thoughts that can stay with you for the rest of the day. I would like to add that I am not very skilled at this meditation at all, having only done it daily since November, for 15 minutes a day. I am very eager to see what other benefits there are as I get better at it.

Step one - relaxing the body

I usually start out with controlled muscle relaxation. Start with your feet - curl up your toes really tight and tense all of the muscles there as tightly as you can, hold for about 5-10 seconds, then let go of all of the tension there. Then do the same thing with your calves. Keep going up until you’ve tensed and relaxed all of the major muscles in your body.

Depending on how tense you are you may want to go through your whole body more than once.

Another thing you can do is to just focus on a part of your body, studying it and trying to feel where any tension is in it, and then consciously let go of it. Or pretend that you’re cutting off contact with that part of your body and it doesn’t exist. My friend imagines that they’re breathing in “positive energy” that flows into the area they’re trying to relax, then when they’re breathing out they imagine a cloud of dark-colored tension flowing out of the area and exiting with the breath.

Step two - quieting the mind

Once you are done with the controlled muscle relaxation, begin to focus on your breath. You can focus on what it feels like inside you, or what it feels like as it’s passing through your mouth or nose, it doesn’t matter…if you want, pick a different sensation. Before I started doing it on my own the past few months I meditated with a group of people; most of them used their breath as a focus but there was a guy who focused on the feel of the backs of his eyelids. If you do choose to focus on your breath, try to focus on one part of it…like the air passing through your nostrils, or your stomach rising and falling…for most people it is too unnecessarily difficult to use the entire breathing process as their focus.

If you grab onto a thought, and start thinking about things you want to do that day or worrying about things…just gently bring your focus back to your breath as soon as you realize it, if necessary telling yourself you’ll deal with it after you’re done. (Telling yourself you’ll deal with the thought later is usually more effective than simply denying the thought your attention…the surface mind deals much better with delay than with simply being ignored.) Most people lose their focus and let their thoughts wander many many times during meditation, even people who have been meditating for years have trouble with this. Just gently bring your focus back, and do your best to not follow any of your thoughts. Eventually you will get to the point where you feel merely the pressure of a thought beginning to form and distract you, and before your attention has even begun to follow the thought, you will immediately return your focus to your breath. The idea is to use the focus on your breath to hold onto a strand of consciousness while your body, and in some ways your mind, relax and fall asleep.

This meditation can be used to induce trance. A description of trance:

Trance is the state where your physical body is asleep but your mind remains aware.

There are two components of trance - an entranced body and an entranced mind.

I haven’t been able to entrance my mind very well. I have gotten to the point where my thoughts and consciousness feel a little different, sort of like they do when I am lucid dreaming, but have never gotten very deep into this state. So I can’t comment on this component of trance much.

An entranced body is caused by first relaxing it as much as you can, and then keeping the surface mind quiet. The better the mental silence is maintained the more quickly the body will fall asleep. A mental technique can also help get the body to fall asleep, but I don’t use one so I can’t comment much on this either. I can say that many of the mental techniques I’ve read about involve imagining yourself sinking or falling - for example one of them involved trying to create a feeling that you were on an elevator that went down a floor with every out breath.

I’ve only gotten my body entranced a few times, and that was because I happened to find myself aware while in that state as I woke up slowly in the morning, so I can’t comment on that much either, but here is what it felt like for me:

It feels like your body is very heavy, or you might have no awareness of it at all. Sometimes you’ll just have a real general body awareness - if you try to focus on your hands or feet you’ll just get a buzzing sensation where they’re supposed to be, and it usually isn’t even shaped like the body part your trying to focus on.

If you let the state continue, you can lose the feeling of your body entirely. It feels like you are drifting through a black void. Holding onto consciousness past this point for me usually results in me entering a dream, fully aware that I’m dreaming.

More personal experience and tips -

I like to listen to loud music while practicing sometimes, to increase my ability to concentrate. I know I’m doing very well when I can tune out the music and not have my mind respond to it in any way. This way when I need to meditate to relax or concentrate on a problem, I can go somewhere quiet and do it much more effectively.

In the first month or two meditating felt like a waste of time and was very boring. The more intent you are able to become on your chosen focus, and the less surface thoughts are able to intrude, the less boring you should find it.

If your surface mind is impossible to subdue only using the breath, try adding something else to your focus. Control the rythm of your breathing or repeat a word on every out breath. If you are only shooting for mental relaxation running can also help with controlling the surface mind’s intrusive thoughts.

Try not to get too frustrated if you think you’re having a hard time doing it correctly; the whole point of this meditation is to let go and relax. I’ve found I gain skill at a rate that satisfies me when I practice for about fifteen minutes a day.

Eventually you may find something begin to happen that is pretty intriguing IMO - you may begin to percieve mental “structures” in your mind. I for one percieved a thought-bubble beginning to form that kept out surface thought and allowed me to come closer to the silence more easily. I could feel surface thoughts even when they were just thought-pressures, trying to peirce the bubble, and this sense allowed me to stop some thoughts short by returning my focus to my breath before they could even begin to form into words.

A Few Warnings:

Although many people come to love the feeling of mental silence and the clarity that comes with it once they are more skilled at this meditation, some people find that the silence puts them in touch with things from deeper in them that they aren’t ready to face. This hasn’t happened to me, and so I can’t offer much insight on it, but I thought it needed mentioning.

Some Christians believe the trance state, and astral projection (percieved out-of-body travel) which I think can rarely happen spontaneously from within the trance state, are evil, so if you’re a Christian you might want to check your Bible before trying this. I believe some Muslims and Jews may think that trance and astral projection are evil too but I’m not sure.

(edit - this is not a thought-blocking excercise. This paragraph is a leftover from the guide I wrote originally, when I was trying to block my thoughts back in 2003. I’m taking this paragraph out of the guide.) Because you are learning to block your thoughts, it may be tempting to block your negative thoughts to prevent yourself from having negative feelings. Don’t do this because these thoughts will build up and come crashing in on you eventually. It is also possible to be blocking negative thoughts without being conscious of it, so you need to be careful. (/edit)

Also, many scary things can happen when in the trance state. They can’t hurt you, but can really scare the shit out of you. They include but probobly are not limited to:

  • hearing voices
  • hearing scary animal noises (barking, growling) or percieving that there are dangerous entities nearby (I have yet to be able to tell whether these perceptions are actual spirits or hallucinations, but in any case they can’t hurt you.)
  • feeling boneless, like your body is made out of water (imo this is pretty cool)
  • feeling hands on your arms or legs - sometimes it may feel like they are trying to make you astral project by pulling you out of your body; just wake yourself up if this happens and you don’t want to go.
  • feeling wind blowing past you, even if you are inside and there is obviously no wind
  • sleep paralysis

Keep in mind that the trance state, unless it is a deep trance (which does not happen by accident…I have never gotten into a very deep trance), or unless you are sleep-paralyzed, is easily broken. Also, even a light level of trance for me has NEVER happened during this meditation on accident. If you feel you are drifting too “deep” for comfort, wake yourself up a little by letting the surface mind chatter some.

I don’t know about peaceful - that’s the last word I’d use to describe it! They used to make us have meditating sessions in Physical Education at school, and it was awful. We’d lie down and were supposed to think of nothing, but my body was just itching to get up and do something and my mind was itching to have something to read. Having nothing to occupy my mind and body with is my absolute worst nightmare. (Hah, maybe Illuminada was right and I do have a bit of OCD in me somewhere!) “Peaceful” is just another way to say boring, really, and I suspect the teachers made us do it for an hour so they could go and have coffee in the staff room. Seriously! Just the word meditation brings back horrible boring memories…

Hi Seeuzin, welcome to the forum!

I found your guide on meditation pretty good. Practising meditation for some time myself I do have a few points I want to comment on though …

This is just a stage of trance. When your body is not yet fully asleep, you can already be in a trance. First your body gets very relaxed, this is light trance. Then you lose body feelings, the external senses drop away, etc, all the way to body full asleep (which I would call deep trance).

What does it mean to have an entranced mind? Does it do something with your consciousness? Actually mind and consciousness (as you probably know) are 2 different things, consciousness being the eternal witness and mind being the thinker, the chattering voice. Does an entranced mind mean to you that you silence this inner voice?

This is exactly what happens when you do the WILD technique, which is one of the reasons that meditation can help us get LD’s!

The goal of meditation should not be to block the mind. It should be to learn to be aware that you are the inner eternal witness (not the mind) and that you can use the mind as a tool. If you are very advanced in this, you do not need to stop the mind, it stops by itself. Meanwhile, do not try to force the mind into silence, for that will work counterproductive. Witness the mind first, and then gentrly subdue it into silence. Keep being aware that you are not the mind. Silence will come by practise.

Thanks for your feedback on my guide, Xetrov. :content: I had been looking for feedback on how to make it better and really appreciate it. I will take out the part about blocking your thoughts; it is from my original draft which I made in 2003 (I practiced meditation for a bit and then stopped and only restarted in November.) In 2003 I practiced more blocking of thoughts; now I do more witnessing of my breath and just trying not to follow my thoughts. I’ve edited my post.

As far as asking what the mind and consciousness are, those are things I haven’t even begun to try and figure out; when I say “mind” I simply mean the component of myself that is not my body. :razz: So I appreciate you giving me those definitions. It sounds like a topic that many different people would have lots of different opinions on, though, so until I get an idea as to what I personally think about it, I think I’m gonna leave the guide as it is in that part.

Much like me. More compilcated then that I agree, yet so easy. It beats trying to learn from a book. Thats like learning how to masturbate from instructional videos.

If I meditate I get awake from it. So I mostly don’t do it for I go to sleep. But not always I get a lot of energie from it. Maybe because I’m loading myself (unaware)

I sit in lotus and I try to think about nothing, or just one thing. I let come the thought. What gives me much energy is just sitting in lotus, close my eyes. And than the alfabet comes in front of my eyes by. When I do that I have more energy. At least it feels like that.

I prefer to meditate on the beach by the see, when almost nobody is there. But that doesn’t happen often. It’s seldom actually for me. But on the gras outside, in our garden is alright too. Under my favorite tree :smile: Or just on my bed.

I read the post from Seeuzin later cause it’s very long and I have to go now. But I found it very interesting.

Has anybody tried the Twin Hearts Meditation technique? Some say it’s advanced some say not. It seems relatively simple. Anybody done it successfully?

I’m not really talking about self-hypnosis…I tryed that once and it scared the crap outta me. :eek:

Self hypnosis could be meditation…but I think that meditation can be anything that makes you feel calm, peeaceful, and refreshed. Praying can be meditation in my book :wink: Praying, yoga, stuff like that :smile:

Anamacra wath is the Twin Hearts Meditation technique??

I was just thinking that last night Dreamer_chic. Some one asked me how often I meditate and I said only a few times over a month but I pray everynight. I just say thank you, almost like a mantra and try to make sure I say it with all my heart but sometimes I get distracted by other thoughts so I have to bring myself back and try to make it the one clear thought I have. Sound like meditation?
Sorry MorMor I was writing this as you posted. It seems a very simple meditation where you focus on your Crown and heart chakras and ground yourself with the earth and send it loving energy. It apparently heightens your awarness pretty well. Do a search and you’ll find the steps or I’ll try to get the one I found.

First, I either sit or lay down, I personally don’t think it matters so long as your comfortable.

I see myself walking down a worn path through the woods.
I then picture myself sitting in a small clearing in the dense green forest. I see myself in front of large semi-translucent white marble double doors. The doors are just open far enough to pour this brilliant white light over me. I imagine this light is the “energy” stored deep inside me, for the forest represents my mind and body. This “energy” contains wisdom, powers of self healing, and I also imagine It contains the knowledge of hidden abilities I may possess within myself. I sit and bask in the light and feel the warmth of peace flow over and through me.

When I feel I am ready to leave (if not interrupted) I stand and walk back down the path from where I came.

I usually don’t do this right before I lay down for the night, but try to make a little time during the day.

So you don’t think laying down to meditate is a problem? That’s how I prefer it too but everything always says No you need to be sitting up with your back straight etc… I end up worrying about how I’m sitting or just uncomfortable.

In my opinion, I don’t think it matters which position you are in. Sometimes I’ll do it sitting straight up, but mostly laying down. It just depends on what makes me more comfortable at the time.

Some say it matters but personaly whichever position I am in I still get the same outcome as in a differant position. But thats just me, and maybe i’m wierd.
I’m sure everyone can agree however that you won’t be very succesful if your moving around alot and repositioning trying to get comfortable the whole time.

So try it “your” way first, and see if it works for you. If not then experiment untill you feel happy with the results. Hope this helped. :smile:

Yes it did :smile: Thanks for responding. (I was doing it anyway but hard to defend when I don’t know much about it)

Im basically new at this. Meditation seems to be a great thing to learn how to do. It seems that meditation can be very simple to do or very complex. Depends on your view of it. What I would like to do is find a place that can train me on the proper ways to meditate because there are so many ways to meditate. Maybe I dont even need to get trained on meditation maybe all I need to do is just relax and meditate.

I had this same thought Nice Dream and found a couple of yoga places but they are expensive. There’s some good meditative techniques on the web. I found the twin hearts technique and a few others but I started with books. Maybe when I have the money to spare I’ll do the yoga but books are good for now

It’s a good question and one i always felt silly for not really not really knowing. It’s so simple that it seems like there must be there to it - reading this thread has been very helpful, so thankyou everyone.

In the past i have been known to use the very popular “lying down and falling asleep” method…