71–80 of 163 posts
LOL. From your wording and questioning, my guess is that you have been reading too much Meditation from a Western cultural perspective. And I would not be surprised if most of them are indeed, Scams.
My suggestion would be to travel to Japan and find the answer for yourself.
Guided relaxation exercises? Sure. And if having someone to guide you relax helps, whether you pay them or not, sure if you feel it helps.
Regulating your breathing and relaxing your muscles can calm you down. And perhaps that relaxed state will help you think. But that's it, nothing more.
> What exactly is [formula] At Harward a bunch of young guys appeared who had an interest in some ideas coming from the east. One is Daniel Goleman ("emotional intelligence" etc). Others developed their "western constructions" over it. That formula you mention in the title is one. > Some You are constantly confusing practical advice ("try this and that") with the real thing - as if the point were "sleep" or "focus" o…
> get an idea of the practical goal Any _practical_ advice to me? You say I get it all wrong, okay. But show me the right direction please, instead of “figurative” speach
The organic process for maturity is important: missing that, universities are overflowing (one's too many) with professors who make speeches about colour green while having been blind since birth, and conferences about sex while they being aged six-ish on the podium, and tomes "How to Understand Women" written from the cave in the desert they never left.
If you wanted to approach the matter systematically, plenty of literature is available for you to study - the more you consult (the starting text is not critically important), the more defined the paths for further reading. But why should you, really? What you showed in the submission looks like some form of curiosity. That would be the kind of coin that can buy you an ice cream.
If you approached the texts and you had no instruments out of wisdom to understand them, you would translate them into something they are not.
So, the practical advice contextual to the original specific question would be: examine a number of promising texts - but you would have to first be mature enough for them. So, for this part, lots of life and lots more liberal education and cultivation, and strong, honest intellectual practice, to grow some sophisticated discrimination, could prepare you.
And the practical advice that was literally given and you did not seem to notice, was: «maybe start with approaching Mathematics [...] solve problems» - so you will get acquainted with a special inner state core to that activity; other people "do sports" and talk about "the Zone". They are all special inner states that you develop - also organically, like maturity considered above -, and will give you the experience of non-trivial internal modalities.
But I still have severe doubts about some of these claims, because I wonder where the beef is. If, as Harris suggests, over time the practice gives you a kind of mental superpower, where are the mathematicians who ascribe their solution of a long-unsolved problem to meditation? Where is the evidence that meditation actually improves the functioning of the mind, aside from making its practitioners feel better? (The latter is valuable, but it’s different from the implied claim that I‘m skeptical about.)
There is a way out of this suffering.
The way out is by investigating and comprehending your experience.
That’s the gist of it.
Edit: you asked for personal experience:
Sitting on a cushion: calming and gladdening the mind by working skilfully with intentions, attention, and awareness to create the conditions for insight to arise
In daily life, off the cushion: cultivating awareness to notice what happens inside it more (to notice patterns about mental activities that lead to suffering and those that lead to happiness :))
If you didn't get it after years of trying why not just stop? Maybe it is useful to some people, but you are not one of them.
I can't say much about mindfulness meditation specifically, but I've been practicing Catholic (specifically, Iesuit) meditation weekly for over a year now. Also, after my first experiences with it I talked with a friend who tried some non-Christian meditation a few times (can't recall if specifically Buddhist or "secular") - he seemed to say there are apparently a lot of similarities between those (but I didn't explo…
Great comment. Thanks. Any particular Jesuit meditation books, retreats you can recommend?
About that, I can tell you that the material may be very scarce. Literature from other traditions may be many orders of magnitude more abundant - although possibly also noisy.
> But then isn’t our whole life a sequence of meditations? Because we always focus on something (with sleep breaks).
> Other gurus teach that meditation is “doing nothing”. Okay, but then again there’s nothing special about it, we all do it from time to time.
> Another way to look at it - just sit peacefully and observe your thoughts.
from my understanding, don't observe in your head, you observe the lowest point on your body when you are sitting. And you have to know your breath when it is in and out.
If you think nothing, you can sense your body.
Ex: when you work or play games or watch movies, and a moquisto bite you, you almost don't know. But while you observe, you can sense tiny things about your body, even if a mosquito touches your skin.
And It is hard to mediation when you don't know basically about Buddhism - This is my guess from what did you write.
I can't say much about mindfulness meditation specifically, but I've been practicing Catholic (specifically, Iesuit) meditation weekly for over a year now. Also, after my first experiences with it I talked with a friend who tried some non-Christian meditation a few times (can't recall if specifically Buddhist or "secular") - he seemed to say there are apparently a lot of similarities between those (but I didn't explo…
In this wording, what you seem to have found (recognized and acknowledge with surprise) is the internal state in which refined ideas are let emerge.
1. Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratna [0]
2. The Mind Illuminated by Yates et al. [1]
And plese steer away from awful sources. People, the modern day "influencers" are piggybacking on Meditation to sell their own stuff. And it is related to a lot of stupid concepts that higher practitioners of Eastern Spirituality themselves reject. "Kundalini"... My ass.
Meditation, when reduced to the physical technique itself, is utterly worthless, I assure you. There are several 5-minute videos that teach you meditation are shit.
________
Since you want to know about personal experience, let's do that.
I also fell prey to the snake-oil salesmen at first, who taught meditation in five minutes.
I tried for months and years, and nothing came out of it.
When I was going through a list of books recommended in Hacker News, I learned about The Mind Illuminated by Yates.
I bought it and started studying, and practising.
And, I promise you it changed my life.
I meditate from 15 to 45 minutes a day. Everyday.
I will list here some aspects of it.
I sit there, I observe my thoughts, and gently bring my mind back to my breaths.
Primarily, it is like "intuition training" for attention holding.
Whenever I am doing work or studying for my research, whenever my mind deviates, this training kicks in, in an automated way. I can very quickly bring it back. And it does get better with time.
My fully-sanctitious Pomodoro cycle went up from 20 minutes to 90 minutes. I can hold my attention, unadulterated, for that long.
This was the first benefit.
Secondly, I am much better at processing my own emotions. Every kind. I am much saner and calmer for it. I can process and handle and deal with all my emotions.
Thirdly, I am a much better decision maker from meditating. Before, I often suffered with my options. I could not decide what to do- from small decision to big.
Now, it's like my emotions are wiretapped and I know better what I want. And I can act accordingly.
And I am able to enjoy pleasurable activities more. Swimming, walking through the forest, eating favorite dishes, sex- all are much more pleasurable for me.
I feel the "training" from meditation kicking in when I want to have deep experiences.
I am also a better learner now. This could be a placebo. I always was a good and fast learner, but, I have more experience with myself now, but I feel this happened from meditation.
Meditation is hard. I always was interested in Buddhism (the non-spiritual kind. Read: What the Buddha Taught by W. Rahula [2]). And Buddha was a total no-BS guy. He asked people to experiment and if they didn't find the results alignigning with what he said, he said that he should not be listened to [3]. So, if he asked to meditate, and talked about its benefits, there must be something in it- that's what I thought. That's why I prevailed.
Learning coding took time. Learning Math and Spanish took time. Meditation should take time to be learned properly. Buddha, an athiest, an unorthodox, an uber-debater, and rationalist talked about benefits of it, and that made me prevail.
I am so happy for it.
Please reply to my comment if you have further questions.
I am currently on the deep peace stage. Seven times out of ten, when I try to be in the deeply peaceful state, I can be.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-G...
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrati...
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/What-Buddha-Taught-Expanded-Dhammapad...
[3]: https://becoming-buddha.com/ehipassiko-come-and-see-for-your...