Poll: Do you meditate?

Thanks for your reply. Going on a vipassana retreat and participating in a shamanic ceremony are definitely things I'd like to do at some point. All of my investigations have been solitary, for the most part, so I am ignorant of the collective side of things. (as a nerd, I am generally ignorant of the collective aspects of life anyway!)

I think if meditators were to study continental philosophy in particular, they would find many fruitful parallels to concepts in Eastern thought. Phenomenology involves examination of arising phenomena in a similar fashion to mindfulness, though I don't think it is ever as clearly explained. There is within it an attempt to overcome the subject-object distinction, and to re-frame the relationship between scientific objectivity and the lived experience of the human life-world. Unfortunately it is also some of the most impenetrable stuff ever written!

>>I've also found that " they have to rely on the cognitive, social and philosophical resources of their time and place." is not as big of an influence as you think it is.

I will take you up on that, but it might take me a few years. :)

If it's true that all that non-mystical meditation is, is just forcing yourself to not think about ANYTHING, it makes sense that a person would find it to be a way to stop worrying about things, and just sort of relax.

BUT, it seems like it would be more effective to simply take corrective action (mental or existential) in order to actually address the thing that you are worried about.

Perspective from a stone-cold atheist/philosophical-materialist that started daily meditation in recent months: there's nothing magical to it, but there is something to it.

There are many different explanations as to "how it works". These range from greater connections with supernatural beings to just giving your brain some quiet time to perform various housekeeping activities that it doesn't get a chance to do when constantly stimulated with computer/phone/tv.

If you want to know "what can meditation do for me besides waste my time?", here is my attempt at describing what it feels like and how it's beneficial. This is just my subjective experience. The first benefit of meditation for me has been to make me aware of the near-constant mental chatter going on in my mind, and presumably the minds of many other people in society. I knew it was bad but I had no idea how bad until I tried to shut it off for a few minutes. It's like when someone points out every time you say "umm" in a conversation and you suddenly become aware you are doing it constantly. As for the second benefit, imagine how you feel when you are in a pleasurable and carefree mental state. For example you are at a bar or a party talking to someone you just met who has similar interests and after 20min you have sort of a full body buzz going even if you haven't been drinking, the rest of the world falls away, and time flies by. Or if you go to the gym or do martial arts and you enter the gym stressed about work, then two hours later you walk out and are driving home, feeling great and the things that were bothering you earlier seem insignificant. Meditation builds a mental muscle that allows you to more easily slip into that groove. I'm still a newbie but there are times that I can slip into that state at will, walking down a crowded street surrounded by people.

"Arrgg! stop wasting my time and tell me how this is this going to get me money/sex/stock options!" If you are still looking for the immediately tangible benefit of meditation in terms of (input x) -> (output y) that will depend on your situation. I can however give you an example. If there is a room full of of stressed out uptight people and someone walks in who is more relaxed and "present" than everyone else in the room, other people in the room will notice this, they will subconsciously assume there is a reason, they will be more inclined to listen to that person. They are walking around with empty cups and that person acts like their cup is overflowing. The joke is the first time this happens you will have the thought "omg it's working, the 'trick' is working!" and instantly your new found charisma will evaporate. If you chase it you cannot have it, there are many things in life like this :]

As for method, I don't use candles, music, darkness, unusual sitting poses, or any other props. They obviously help some people but I have not tried them. I simply put my phone on silent, set my phone alarm to vibrate in 20min and put it on a table behind me. Sit in a chair and look at a point on the wall, be sure there aren't any screens or clocks in your field of vision to distract you. Once you are sitting looking at the point on the wall let yourself be present and not thinking about anything in the past or the future. The first two or three times you try this it will feel like the longest 20 minutes of your life and you will find yourself constantly thinking of chores, imagining interactions, and berating yourself for thinking. Don't judge yourself and don't "try" to not think. Newbies are often told that if they really need to focus on something, to focus on their breathing. Normally when you have a thought your mind seizes on the thought like a shark seizes on its dinner. Rather, be like the stone at the bottom of the sea and the thought is like a jellyfish. The thought appears, you are aware of the thought, but you don't engage it, you just let it drift by.

> But it seems quite sound from the perspective of many non-ordinary states of consciousness, animism[4], panpsychism[5], pantheism[6], panentheism[7], various types of shamanism[8] and religions which hold animistic, pantheistic, or panentheistic beliefs.

Excellent, doctrines do tend to be self-contained. IF X, THEN Y. In the mean time, I bring up an important fact: we have always depended decisively on how well we coordinated our ideas with reality, for the purpose of achieving technological efficacy. In this light, the doctrines you enumerated are undesirable. Judging by the rate of success, the former, scientific doctrines you enumerated are more workable and, as such, preferable for the purpose of adjustment to the conditions of empirical life.

> Do you accept the evidence of your own senses while in a non-ordinary state of consciousness? If not, why not?

We accept evidence that is reproducible. I will stop here and not answer the other questions that you followed with, out of politeness.

> So, "sound" or "unsound"? It all depends on your point of view.

See above.

> I'm just open to the possibility. Anything is possible, and I'm ok with that. I didn't use to be. I used to be quite dogmatic in clinging to what I considered to be a "scientific" and materialistic world view. [...] Who knows? Who is to say? I'm certainly no authority.

Take much care to ensure that you are not merely being open, like a scientist is to new evidence and a better "map" for the "territory"; but rather that you are doubting everything. And as someone once eloquently put it, there are two ways to glide easily through life: to believe everything, and to doubt everything – both ways save us from thinking. (There's also another less polite quote about being open minded)

That aside, I think you have gathered an extraordinary amount of very interesting knowledge in your pursuits, and I think that in itself was as incredibly useful affair.

I think that's largely true, but doesn't speak to whether meditation is actually worthwhile. And I'd think it's less true for people here. For myself, I never tried it until I started hearing of studies. After that, I found some nice secular material on it. I would have had a lot of trouble wading through much woo, and luckily that wasn't needed.