What is meditation?

[SleepGOTweird]

That face! There it is!

[JoSac]

Yes it is very hard to try a dileberitly interpret meditation and new ways of thinkin you aren't used to yet (guessing your fairly new at this).

Also if your looking for answers or whats not, one tip is don't try too hard, thats when you get confused and read a message wrong. You want to take it for what it is, and if it don't make sense now, maybe it will in time.

JS

[RyanParis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation

[Nostic]

The idea of "meditation" is too vague and wispy for me. Everybody has their own idea about what it is. But what does that matter to me personally? For me, it's similar to kundalini. Everyone who has had energy sensations along their spine has had a kundalini experience, right? I have yet to figure out the real mechanics of either kundalini or meditation, so I try not to make either my focus. And my mind is too polluted by other peoples ideas of what these things are. But my instinct tells me that what is said about these things is just the tip of the iceberg.

But I can say that I DO know what energy work is, and I do know how to do a multitude of breathing practices. So that's what I focus on, and I see where it takes me. And often I find that these practices lead me to conclusions or ideas that I've never seen mentioned in any book or heard from any speaker. But what I think is important is that you base your conclusions on empirical evidence- the things that you experience. Just do the work and see where it takes you. The ultimate answers you may never find, but the journey can be one hell of a ride

Also realize that what you experience may just be the trunk, the tail, or the leg of the elephant, but not the elephant itself. http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index...tter=B&spage=3

Try not to be weighed down with your ideas or other peoples ideas of what something is. In the end, that just limits your experiences. What other, experienced people, have to say can be very valuable and very useful, but at the end of the day, it's just hearsay.

[Korpo]

Bravo, Nostic!

Oliver

[ButterflyWoman]

Also realize that what you experience may just be the trunk, the tail, or the leg of the elephant, but not the elephant itself.

Uhm, you can't experience a part of the thing without having experienced the thing. If I grab hold of the elephant's trunk, I didn't experience the elephant? What was it then? A snake? A vine? A large piece of pasta? No, it was an elephant. It just wasn't the whole elephant. It was an experience of that thing we call "elephant" however.

By the same token, if I have a bite of the cake, I've actually tasted the cake, and if I put my hands on the wall, I'm only touching the part of the wall that my hands can reach, but it's still the wall...

[star]

Whats worked for me is letting my breaths slow down. I have the goal of a single breath a minute. but no time limit. I also tend to allow myself to follow my thoughts to the source, which can be the subconcious or a chakra.

[Korpo]

Sometimes it is helpful to look from the other way, so here are two accomplished meditators explain to where meditation took them.

Adyashanti is, as little as I know about him yet, into "non-conceptual meditation". His meditation has no focus. Everything is observed as it is, unchanged. Nothing is focused upon, only awareness itself.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

Silence and stillness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence, stillness and awareness are not states and can never be perceived in their totality as objects. Silence is itself the eternal witness without form or attributes.

As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and awareness becomes free of the mind's compulsive contractions and identifications. It returns to its natural non-state of Presence.

(Adyashanti, "True Meditation", http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?...r&writingid=12)

Bruce Frantzis is a Taoist meditator, following a Chinese mix with both Buddhist and Taoist influences. Here the mind focuses on the blockages/attachments that bind our awareness and prevent us from being free, dissolving them. The more blockage is gone, the more the meditator moves beyond the self, concepts, etc.:

When you begin to experience spirit - the third treasure - you move into the depths of your awareness and essence - you begin to realize at the very core of your being that which is not bound by time and space. At the level of spirit, you begin to become spiritually alive, connected with yourself, others, and the environment in a profound, unified way - a genuine spiritual process has begun.

With additional practice you will start to experience emptiness. Everything will seem to be without content. Ordinarily, we experience both external and internal objects in the world as having shape, size, and some kind of content. Everything has an inherent identification or meaning that the mind can grasp. As emptiness is accessed through meditation, however, your spirit starts increasingly to transform the energies of your perceptions of solid objects and stored mental images. Even though another person or a house or tree or airplane is still present (that is, exists for you), they are experienced as having no substance. They are literally nothing (emptiness). As you start perceiving every tangible thing as nothing, you discover that nothingness becomes simultaneously full of Universal Consciousness, which is potentially able to become anything.

[...]once in a while you spontaneously catch a glimpse of the unchanging source of emptiness and fullness that cannot be expressed verbally. There quite literally are no words to describe what you become aware of. It is just what it is. It is known by many names in many traditions; the Chinese call it the Tao.

(Bruce Frantzis, "Relaxing Into Your Being", "The Three Treasures and Emptiness")

This is, of course, ambitious stuff. This seems to be what happens when you follow meditation to "its end". Or like Tom put it very aptly recently:

just know what you are experiencing while you are experiencing it, because it creates a gap between the awareness and the experience. As the gap increases, you begin to see that your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and even your mind itself are not you. The process goes on until nothing is left that you can call you. At that point everything will be reversed - you are not separate from anything or anyone. That's the funny thing about zero and infinity.

(from here: http://forums.astraldynamics.com/vie...11253&start=15)

Oliver