Meditation Techniques and Goals

[Outsider]

I appears to be quite common for practitioners of meditation to use this practice to eliminate conscious thought. For example:

Meditation - when and where

When - The best time to meditate is in the morning after you have prepared yourself for the day. Rise about 15-20 minutes earlier and do it. Don't worry about how you'll know when the time is up, your body will automatically alert you when the allotted time is up. You can meditate at night also, but sometimes the work of the day may cause you to fall asleep.

Where - Find a place where you won't be disturbed by noises, telephones, or other people barging in on you. Sit upright either on the floor or in a straight back chair with a cushion so you are comfortable. Don't lay down in bed because you may fall asleep.

Meditation - the process

The object of the process is two-fold; to relax the body and to subdue the thoughts that continuously traverse our mind. You do this by occupying the mind with the process of relaxing the body. As the body relaxes, so does the mind. One never stops the mind completely, but one can achieve states of relatively long periods where the mind is silent. It is during these moments, no matter how brief they are, that we enter a state of the void, the null or nothingness. This is the state of being that the mystics refer as listening to God.

The process - Sit in your selected place and relax yourself. Take a few deep breathes paying deliberate attention to the sound of the air as it enters and exits. Focus your mind on your body and begin instructing it to relax. Beginning at the top of your head, instruct the muscles to relax, and then actually feel these muscles relax. Move on to the face and neck muscles, focusing your mind on instructing your body to relax these muscles and then actually feeling the muscles relax before you go on. Continue doing this until you have reached your toes. Then you will be aware of the relaxed state your body is in.

If at any time your mind drifts onto something else, just return it back to the task of relaxing your body parts. Don't fight or struggle against these thought intrusions, just let them go peaceably away, and continue the process.

Once you have completed the body part relaxation, then begin to relaxing the mind. You do this by beginning to count backwards and paying attention to the actual numbers. This way you occupy your mind with the process of meditation leaving no room for extraneous thoughts to enter. This helps to train your mind to focus. Start the counting from around 20 and imagine seeing the shape of each number as you count down. When you reach the bottom, start the count over again and when you reach the bottom again, repeat the process again. At one point you may disappear from the counting process and not be aware that you've done so. Its OK, don't be concerned, its part of meditation.

As you practice this process, you'll find that it gets easier to avoid the thoughts that are in your mind. Focus decreases the impact of random thoughts and allows you to drift into the state of nothingness.

No matter how long you meditate, you will always have days when the it seemed perfect and flawless and then you will have those days that seem like bummers. Its also OK because what counts is the overall effect. After you have practiced for a while, you will begin to notice the difference in your life, and you'll wonder why you didn't start sooner.

Remember to tell yourself, prior to starting each time, how much time you want to spend. Your inner clock will let you know when the time is up.

I do not meditate in this way. Although my personal meditation practice adheres fairly closely to the entire program laid out above, I always use imagery and fantasy to achieve an altered state, alternating back and forth between concentrating on relaxing or evocative imagery and relaxing my body. Towards the beginning of the session I will tend to imagine myself swimming deep into wells, walking down stairways, digging into the earth, or riding elevators down in order to achieve an altered state of consciousness, but once I have achieved a meditative state I seldom achieve a quiescent state but instead experience vivid dreamlike fantasies. When I feel that I am finished I find that I usually have to climb back up the stairs (or swim back up, etc) before I can move again. In my best experiences I have experienced the sensation of floating mentioned by some practitioners, and even the sensation of flight while imagining soaring through the clouds.

Ultimately I find the experience quite refreshing, and am able to derive tranquility from it while seeking an active consciousness. So why do practitioners attempt to still their consciousness rather than stimulate it? Is there some advantage to reaching a state of mental quiescence?

[Seeker]

Outsider,
I practice zen meditation where your goal is to empty your mind of thoughts. When an idea comes along, you acknowledge it and let it go, you do not visualize or really think of things.

When I find it hard clearing my mind, I concentrate on the breath, and sometimes I have to repeat a word like Ohm over and over in order to not let my mind pay any attention to other thoughts. I just acknowledge them and let them go.

To me, the goal from meditating by emptying the mind is to reach the inner me, the real "I", which is to reach pure awareness.

As a teenager I used to use prayer to meditate, where I would spend 10 - 20 mins in absolute concentration on my prayer. As a respect to God I would not let my mind drift.. Must have been something I learned in Sunday school.

I have also used some Buddhist chant music to aid me in meditation. Here, I'm not sure how to utilize the chanting, I find myself concentrating on the chant, then I may drift inside myself and the chant become background noise.

Obviously, there seems to be many different kinds of meditation. They all seem to aim for the same goal though which is reaching Awareness or enlightenment.

I will research the different types of what people call 'meditation' and write about it here.

Thanks

[tonks001]

I've have been meditating at home for a while now but didn't know that there are still more to learn. Thanks for sharing this info. I really appreciate it
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