Can i medicate while sleep ? i am serious .
Apparently. There are Taoist practices and a yogic one called Yoga Nidra. I never had much luck with them though.
Poll: Do you meditate?
181–190 of 233 posts
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#182Tried it twice. Became so bored, that I just started sleeping.
That (can be) the point. I recently went away on holiday for 3 weeks. No ipad, no laptop, no camera, only took 2 books I'd read before anyway. I wanted to get bored because I wanted to see what's behind boredom.
Normally we go from one stimulus to the next, and when the hit of the previous one falls off we "get bored". But what if you take that away? What if you ignore that little voice that tells you "I'm bored"? There's still consciousness there. And this is what it can lead to.
What am I? Am I the little voice in my head that I have to placate, the one hooked on getting the little hits of dopamine, adrenaline or whatever other chemicals the body can produce? Or am I the consciousness that experiences everything and to whom the little voice is speaking? In that case, you can watch the little voice, and begin to take greater notice of the "watching".
I was in the tropics in the rainy season. So I'd sit in a hammock and watch the rain fall, or I'd go and sit on the beach if the sun came out. I'd just sit and listen and feel how the sounds played upon my consciousness. It is truly wonderful to be able to ignore this little voice, or more correctly, to re-evaluate its relationship to yourself.
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#183I practive Diamondway Buddhism www.diamondway-buddhism.org with 650 centers worldwide there's a place in almost every city. Check it out if you would like to know something about your mind..
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#184I recently started meditating, using the method in "Mindfulness in Plain English". So far, I've been able to meditate for between 1 to 3 hours at a time, every day. I do feel quite a bit of calm afterwards and during the deep parts of the meditation, and have also experienced some occasional hallucinations (like a feeling of intense bliss, like my arms are floating, like my chest is a hundred feet from my head) when…
It's not that what is in Mindfulness in Plain English keeps you avoiding painful experiences. It's that, that is the level of your practice right now. That's the distinction that Daniel Ingram made between concentration exercises and insight meditation. In the latter, you start by gaining access concentration to your object (breathing, or whatever), and then deliberately seek out one of the Three Fundemental Characte…
Thats something that bothered me regarding mindfulness vs. concentration. Mindfulness presupposes that the "Three Fundamental Characteristics" exist, and have the form described by Buddhist metaphysics. It tells you to take this on faith and go looking for them.
As a secular meditator I would prefer not to make the assumption that Buddhist metaphysics is correct.
I would like to see the creation of a kind of mindfulness meditation informed by secular western developments such as the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger for example.
I think that while the experiences of meditators and shamans of different traditions are genuine, in order to describe and systematize these experiences, they have to rely on the cognitive, social and philosophical resources of their time and place.
The experience might be eternal, but the material of understanding and explication is historical and tied to all kinds of hoary assumptions which often pass without examination.
The critical tools of modern philosophy and continental philosophy in particular can be extremely helpful for the meditator.
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#185A fantastic site for those interested in meditation is http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/ I would recommend the talks by Gil Fronsdal in particular.
The site has MANY talks on different topics including several courses on beginning insight meditation. As a non-religious person (atheist, actually), I found their approach and presentation to be very easy to accept (eg, a focus on practice rather than faith).
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#186I try to meditate about twice a week, but I haven't been keeping it up lately, so I put once a month. I started because there was a thread here where people described the benefits. I was (and still am) very skeptical of the self-reported effects, since there's a strong possibility of placebo, but at the same time, I figured if all these people like it, it's worth a try. Maybe it's just a placebo, but it sounds like a…
I'm not a zen master or yogi, but I can promise you that if you try to measure the results of meditation (Am I feeling better yet? How about now?) you'll wind up chasing your own tail and giving up. Anyone promising wonderful results through meditation is very likely selling you something. The effects of meditation are best compared to those of sleep. A good night's sleep doesn't make up for lousy sleeping habits the…
I'm not a zen master too. I used to be chasing my own tail by expecting something from meditation in order to measure my progress. how foolish I was.
Right now, whatever comes up my mind i just let it be and think nothing of it. Null.
Oh, by the way, I also do self-hypnosis at the end of meditation.
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you find any practical purpose to the "altered" states of consciousness? I would also like to suggest substituting the word "altered" with "disturbed". Would you mind telling me your thoughts on this (whether in connection with the above question, or not)?
"Did you find any practical purpose to the "altered" states of consciousness?" Yes. I found them very useful for understanding myself. They confronted me with many unpleasant (and pleasant) but important parts of my life and feelings that I was in denial of or just couldn't experience in ordinary consciousness. They helped me gain a lot of insight in to myself and in to the world. Another benefit was shaking my certa…
especially the possibility that things like trees might have feelings
While I don't want to categorically disparage having different experiences, even those that are drug induced... the notion that inanimate objects and even trees have feelings is fundamentally unsound.
If that is a result of your drug-use experience, then I might argue that you have reduced your brain's ability to align itself with experimental reality.
Just like a dieter on fen-phen can lose weight but damage his heart; please don't disregard the possibility that you can have an interesting experience but damage your mind.
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, another MSAE graduate! (I graduated in 1997, and went to MUM after that.) I've found TM pretty useful in my life, too. I still do it regularly. Nice way to step away from everything and re-center.
Oh wow, I never thought I'd find a Pioneer on HN :) I'm an '07 graduate! :)
Yeah, small world, eh? There's at least two others around, but they seem to be heads down building stuff right now.
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#189I meditate about twice a day, once in the morning and once before bed. Sometimes I get lazy and just meditate in the morning. My typical amount of time is 30 - 40 minutes. I typically use my breath as a concentration object and go into vipassana , though I have done others. I supplement with the teaching from Tsultrim Allione's _Feeding Your Demons_. If I don't meditate, I can feel my mind subtly destabilizing. It ma…
Is the feeling you get from meditation the same feeling as you would get from doing the same amount of sport per day?
Re: Poll: Do you meditate?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google: meditation fmri
interesting (wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation ) Of more than 3,000 scientific studies that were found in a comprehensive search of 17 relevant databases, only about 4% had randomised controlled trials (RCTs), which are designed to exclude the placebo effect.[13] Reviews of these RCTs consistently find that meditation without a focus on developing "mental silence", an aspect often excluded…
I was taught Transcendental Meditation in high school and learned some self-hypnosis techniques in college that I practiced a bit.
These types of meditation get you to focus/defocus your mind in active ways that appear to be beneficial.
If you're practicing some form of meditation that is just relaxing and daydreaming without trying to use your mind in a specific way - then it isn't really surprising that the results would be no different to relaxing and daydreaming or listening to music.