I listened to many hours of video teaching, by Osho, by S. N. Goenka, by Ven Ajahn Brahm, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, by Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron (Author of the book "The Warriors of Transcendence").
Cross referencing all the sources I mentioned above, and comparing them with my personal experience I concluded the following:
Meditation is about detaching consciousness from the senses. In the waking state, both the senses and consciousness are awake. In the sleep state, we lose both – our senses and our consciousness. What we try to do in meditation is to lose our senses, but keep our consciousness, and thereby break the identification of consciousness with the limitation imposed on it by the senses.
The five senses are sending us signals, each of these signals becomes a stimulation, meaning, it creates a sensation - pleasant or unpleasant. We react to the stimulation, not to the external object. As this lady says and I agree:
There is no problem in reaction to stimulations, as long as it is not an automatic reaction, or as Osho says - there is a difference between a reaction and a response, if you react, you are controlled by an external force. What makes the difference between a reaction and a response is the awareness. If you don't react immediately to a stimulation, you leave room for awareness; for mindfulness; for discretion.
If consciousness is attached to the senses, than a pleasure sensation imprints an addiction in the consciousness, and a painful sensation imprints a trauma in the consciousness.
Trauma and addiction are the reason why we react automatically to stimulations. How do we stop it? We let the light of awareness go into our consciousness. As Osho says, the light of awareness melts down all the negativity suppressed in our subconscious.
How do we amplify our awareness? We need to give it some room. If we don't leave room for quiet, between the time the stimulation hit us, and the reaction, we don't leave time for awareness to happen, and separate the consciousness from the senses.
Ven Ajahn Brahm says, the human being has two main aspects, the 'doer' and the 'knower', and we need to take the energy, or the attention, from the 'doer' to the 'knower'. Osho also says something similar, "meditation is doing nothing at all – just be the watcher on the hill. Contemplation is also doing, concentration is also doing. you can't practice it, you just have to understand it" I think that's way, in meditation, we put our awareness on one continues stimulation, like the breath, because moving the attention from one stimulation to another, is also a reaction. And even keeping the attention on one object forcibly, is a reaction – it is also a form of doing. You need to simply let-go, and sink into the object of meditation, effortlessness is the name of the game. Ven Ajahn says, you don't realy need an object to meditate on, if you are experienced enough, you can by pass this stage, and jump right to pure awareness. or as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it: the main thing is not the object of attention, but the attentiveness itself. Eventually the object of attention drops down by itself; you don't wait for the right time to drop it, as this is also 'doing'.
I find that the main purpose of a mantra is to quiet the mind. Also S. N. Goenka said so. I see we have 6 tools of doing, 2 hands, 2 legs, the sex organ, and... the head. The head is doing the thinking and the talking. In the middle of all the action organs is the heart, where the attention /awareness is. In meditation you stop the activity of all the doing organs, and activate the mindfulness organ - which is the heart (spiritually speaking). 'Doing' is a distraction, and disturbs the 'knowing'. As Ven Ajahn Brahm says: "if you take notes on a lecture, you don't hear parts of the lecture". The 'doer' and the 'knower' don't work together.
S. N. Goenka said: in vipassana, don't use a mantra. it quiets the mind very easily, but ... and then he gives reasons why not to use it. None of those reasons made any sense to me. And from my personal experience, if you are not a monk, living outside of the action, it is very hard to quiet the mind without a mantra.
In the YouTube movie "Spiritual Reality - The Journey Within" we are introduced to a form of mindfulness meditation and the instruction is not to chant a mantra, because chanting a mantra is an activity of the mind, and there for it should be stopped. This makes sense, as in meditation we try to stop the 'doer' and activate the 'listener' or the 'knower', as mentioned above.
I once heard in a YouTube video by Abraham-Hicks: "the way to meditate is feeling for a vibration or listening for a vibration… until before you know it you'll feel a detachment from your physical environment, and the reason you feel a detachment from your physical environment is because you are tuning into your inner world, where there is not sight, and there is not sound, and there is not smell, and there is not taste, and there is not touch…" According to that, how can a mantra be a meditation object? It is not a sense object that keeps your attention active, while the 'doer' goes to sleep; it is a doing by itself. Transcendental meditation always made me wonder, what is the object of attention in this meditation technique? In transcendental meditation you don't mess with your attention at all. once the mind is quiet, the attention moves naturally inwards, the technique itself is a mechanical process of repeating a thought in the mind, as I heard Maharishi saying so himself.
Therefore I think a mantra is not an attention object to keep the 'knower' awake, it is activity, but an activity that eventually brings the mind to its rest. From my experience, quieting the mind, on the one hand, while channeling your attention to a soft stimulation - like the breath, gives me the best result, therefore, on the out going breath I think the mantra, while on the incoming breath, I put my attention on the sensation of the breath. This way I cover both aspects, I stop the 'doer', while channeling the energy to the 'knower'.
How does the mantra quite the mind? I heard a few explanations: One is that you disturb the activities of the inner chattering of the mind. Or that the inner chattering becomes regulated and disappears like a background noise, like the constant sound of a refrigerator. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is quoting a sutra that says, the only way to quiet a disturbed mind is by doing one thing, he says it has to do with creating boredom on the thought level
Maybe it's the boredom that is causing the attention to move away from thought, because by its nature, attention seeks for interest, and attention feeds the thinking process. Once attention detaches from thought, the minds activity is slowing down, even though you're not supposed to resist your thoughts, because that would be also a form of 'doing'. The byproduct is the quieting of the mind, even if it's not the immediate result. Anyway, whatever the explanation is, my experience is that repeating a mantra quiets the mind, and it is a very powerful tool.
Hope you find this interesting. You don't have to agree with me, but I like to hear your comments.
Regards,
Daniel
Negative and positive are judgments
Recognize that something is a danger to you, is judgment?! A snake is dangerous, that is a fact, a matter of true or false, has nothing to do with judgment, if you say the snake is evil, that is judgment, but simply acknowledging that it is dangers to you, has nothing to do with judgment - some of your ideas sound like an "ideology". 😉 - The same goes for your deep belief that one is totally responsible for his life experience, as it is created by his choices, sounds like an ideology to me, not something that reflects reality as it is.
It's true that when you are in the receptive state, you come to realize that good and bad are not part of reality, because once you go above your perception, they are gone. But that doesn't mean nothing can harm you and there is no danger we should be aware of, and stay away from. A leprous can infect you with his leprosy, he apposes a threat to you, even if he is a victim himself, and is not evil, danger is a matter of true and false, not a matter of good and bad, can't you see that?
There is a difference between being in a situation which is potentially harmful to us and judging self to be in danger when there is nothing but our thoughts creating the perception of danger.
Yes understanding how this reality works and having a clear mind does not make us invulnerable to harm, it just makes us more aware of what is currently unfolding around us, this focus or awareness allows us to be able to choose an appropriate course of action to that particular situation, rather than being driven in a reactive state or auto pilot as you like to call it.
Danger is not a matter of true or false, it is a perception of what is or what can be, if we are angry and mindlessly cross a busy road, then we are putting ourselves and other in danger, if we are mindful when crossing the same road, then ourselves and others should not be in danger.
Can't say I agree with you on these issues. I guess we will not be able to see eye to eye on everything. 🙂
That is not a problem. 🙂
this focus or awareness allows us to be able to choose an appropriate course of action to that particular situation, rather than being driven in a reactive state or auto pilot as you like to call it.
I want to clarify what I mean by auto pilot.
First, awareness is not focus, when you focus on your cellphone while you are on a bus, you are distracted from experiencing the views seen through the window, so what are you then? are you distracted or focused? the answer is - you are distracted because you are focused! You are distracted from experiencing the views, because you are focused on your cellphone, focus is the cause of distraction. Pure awareness is when you don't focus on any experience in particular, that's why you are fully aware of all experiences - outer experiences and inner experiences like thoughts, sensations, emotions and intuition.
Action is a distraction because you need to make decisions in order to execute an action, and decision making requires focusing, so you can't be fully aware if you are doing something, unless this action doesn't require choices. In meditation you can either jump directly to the state of awareness, or you might need a helper which is a meditation object. A meditation object is a simple repetitive action that doesn't require any choices. What is guiding this type of action? I used to say it is the subconscious mind, because of this habit I had (and many others have too) to call any mental activities that is happening without us being conscious of it "the subconscious mind". now I call this "the intuitive action", what is 'intuitive action'? would you define it as a reactive state? :rolleyes:
A focus and an action do not need to be the same thing, when we are driving a familiar route down quiet roads, we can be focused upon something other than driving in our everyday thinking aspect of consciousness, because our sub consciousness or memory consciousness is doing most of the driving.
A similar thing happens with people that are good at texting, then will be having conversations with people, whilst creating a text message on their phones, they do not need to look at the phone whilst doing it, it is an automatic function of our memory aspect of consciousness, similar to touch typing as you are focused upon reading the information of a sheet of paper.
These are all things we have made a conscious choice to learn to do and once learned we can go into auto pilot at will, it is the same with inner divisional conflicts, they are things we choose to instigate, we have to learn to be that way, but once learned they are actioned as an automatic response from within consciousness, which is why we often hear people say I don't know why I reacted that way, or did that, it just happed!
So let us use your analogy of the using the phone on a bus to create a focus that is capable of distracting us from everything which is occurring around us, this type of focus is not our normal awareness state of focus, it is all consuming, similar to getting engrossed in a book, nothing else exists for us at that time but the thing we have chosen to be engrossed in, it is the same with a mediation focus.
One moment your awareness is full of the internal arguments and debates that are constantly occurring within your aspects of consciousness, then you choose to set a focus upon the breath, the breath becomes everything a singular focused intent which is so strong, that you are no longer aware of the discourse that is happening, the discourse is still there, much the same as the scenery and other people are still on the bus, but you have chosen to become singularly focused, so everything but the focus of intent goes out of focus and you become unaware of it, you are now in a state of mental distraction.
As you have made a conscious choice to instigate this state of being, you cannot call it an intuitive action, an intuitive action would be something which happens without you making a conscious choice.
I want to clarify what I mean by auto pilot.
First, awareness is not focus, when you focus on your cellphone while you are on a bus, you are distracted from experiencing the views seen through the window, so what are you then? are you distracted or focused? the answer is - you are distracted because you are focused! You are distracted from experiencing the views, because you are focused on your cellphone, focus is the cause of distraction. Pure awareness is when you don't focus on any experience in particular, that's why you are fully aware of all experiences - outer experiences and inner experiences like thoughts, sensations, emotions and intuition.
Action is a distraction because you need to make decisions in order to execute an action, and decision making requires focusing, so you can't be fully aware if you are doing something, unless this action doesn't require choices. In meditation you can either jump directly to the state of awareness, or you might need a helper which is a meditation object. A meditation object is a simple repetitive action that doesn't require any choices. What is guiding this type of action? I used to say it is the subconscious mind, because of this habit I had (and many others have too) to call any mental activities that is happening without us being conscious of it "the subconscious mind". now I call this "the intuitive action", what is 'intuitive action'? would you define it as a reactive state? :rolleyes:
No you can act totally unconsciously. You don't consciously think every time you move your leg to take a step.. You don't consciously think how to change gear when you are driving....the whole pattern is automatic.
an intuitive action would be something which happens without you making a conscious choice.
Can you give an example of what you would call an intuitive action?
No you can act totally unconsciously. You don't consciously think every time you move your leg to take a step.. You don't consciously think how to change gear when you are driving....the whole pattern is automatic.
I agree, I just wanted to understand what is controlling this type of action.
No you can act totally unconsciously. You don't consciously think every time you move your leg to take a step.. You don't consciously think how to change gear when you are driving....the whole pattern is automatic.
You do actually think when you move but you do not have to take notice of the thought patterns that are driving the action.
Please consider someone who has had a stroke, they have lost the connections that are associated with the way they had previously learnt to move, they now think move but nothing happens, they literally have to go through the learning process of coordinating movement and balance all over again to be able to move once more, then they will instigate a new program surrounding the new action of current learnt movement to replace the old broken one.
Can you give an example of what you would call an intuitive action?
Yes, the body has automatic actions built into it, they could be called intuitive though are normally called instinctive, like when you pick something up which it is very hot and you drop it before you do serious damage to yourself, this is dependant upon certain things being in place for it to function, if you do not have the pain receptors working in your hand then you will do serious damage to self in the same scenario.
In a sense whenever we go beyond our normal everyday programming (the things we have chosen to learn) we are opening up the potential to create an intuitive action, this is how a lot of healers and therapist work, they allow themselves to know intuitively what needs addressing without being told and sometimes let go consciously so they can function intuitively during the treatment or healing.
The reality is we are still in control, for just like we allow our memory aspect of consciousness to automatically perform actions we have previously learnt as a routine action like moving and driving, this is just another aspect of our consciousness that we utilising that does not work within the remits of what we have learnt or what we currently understand or perceive with our senses, in this situation we have made a conscious choice to become both the observer and the doer. 😉
The reality is we are still in control, for just like we allow our memory aspect of consciousness to automatically perform actions we have previously learnt as a routine action like moving and driving, this is just another aspect of our consciousness that we utilising that does not work within the remits of what we have learnt or what we currently understand or perceive with our senses, in this situation we have made a conscious choice to become both the observer and the doer.
Exactly! previously I was calling both of these activities - "an action of the subconscious mind", I wasn't making any distinctions between the various forces that work in the background of the mind. You helped me see things more clearly, and make distinctions between - repressed information, conditioning, thought patterns, belief systems, our perception that is processing the information, by giving it an explanation and a definition, and the simple awareness of the facts. I'm not saying we agree on everything, but now I do see things in a more detailed manner, putting everything in its place.
Now that I see things more clearly, it seems to me that Intuition stands out, as the main fruit of meditation. You open yourself by going into this receptive mode of pure awareness, so you can receive this guidance from a higher plane. All the other subconscious processes are build into you, but intuition is something else, you suddenly know things you have no way of knowing, it can't be coming from you.
Now that I see things more clearly, it seems to me that Intuition stands out, as the main fruit of meditation. You open yourself by going into this receptive mode of pure awareness, so you can receive this guidance from a higher plane. All the other subconscious processes are build into you, but intuition is something else, you suddenly know things you have no way of knowing, it can't be coming from you.
To me it is, intuition is inner tuition and/or inner guidance, it comes from within our aspects of consciousness the same as everything else within us does, our everyday thinking aspect of consciousness is very closely linked to our physicality, it struggles to perceive things that are not locked inside our physical timeframe that we perceive as our life experience, outside of this life experience we are something other, that something other which I describe as pure consciousness does not disappear when we are in this life experience, it is still here though not locked within the confines of this experience like the rest of our aspects of consciousness are, we just need to learn to communicate with self in order to get a handle on it.
It is this aspect of our consciousness which is an integral aspect of the oneness of consciousness in which all is one. 🙂
The reality is we are still in control, for just like we allow our memory aspect of consciousness to automatically perform actions we have previously learnt as a routine action like moving and driving, this is just another aspect of our consciousness that we utilising that does not work within the remits of what we have learnt or what we currently understand or perceive with our senses, in this situation we have made a conscious choice to become both the observer and the doer.
In meditation you sometimes disappear, and when gain your consciousness back again, an hour has past by, and you can't recall what happened during this time, are you in control in that period of time? :rolleyes: what happens during this time?
In meditation you sometimes disappear, and when gain your consciousness back again, an hour has past by, and you can't recall what happened during this time, are you in control in that period of time? :rolleyes: what happens during this time?
It is the same when we choose to go to sleep, we only consciously dream part of the time, the rest of the time we are unaware of anything, why because we are choosing to switch off and let go for a time, that will put us into a state of rest, we are still in control, we have simply chosen to become nothing for a while and if we are nothing then that requires no thought. 🙂
All this verbiage is enough to put anyone off meditation, Daniel. So is, I admit, my meditation diet - did you ever try it?
All this verbiage
Some people have a more analytical mind, usually men. If you have a so called "right-brained" type of mind, this discussion is not for you, but calling it verbiage is not polite.
Sorry Daniel, I was looking for a word which would describe it and found that difficult as I am Dutch. I had to look up a suitable word in the online dictionaries. Didn't want to be impolite!
Personally I tend to live in my head too much and do too much thinking, so have been trying to get away from that, slowly, for decades. Now I'm seventy, I'm glad I seem to be a little bit better at - what? Being? Would be lovely, wouldn't it ......
It's OK. 🙂
, I'm glad I seem to be a little bit better at - what? Being?
I've noticed all the important figures in the meditation teachings, like Osho, by S. N. Goenka, by Ven Ajahn Brahm, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and many more, gave long discourses on "what is meditation?", in these discourses they were analyzing meditation over and over again from different angles, and it never crossed their minds that the whole point is to stop analyzing and verbalizing and just go into a state of "being", what a shame... never mind, they'll probably get it in their next incarnation.;)
Thinking is not necessarily a distraction, if you take a walk and your thoughts prevent you from enjoying the walk, by hijacking your attention, that is a distraction. if you walk - then walk! if you eat - then eat! don't eat while thinking about other things. But what if you want to spend some time thinking about something, and you are not distracted by any unwanted thoughts, that is not a distraction! you what to think - then think!
Distraction is a thought conflicting to what you are currently doing, but when thought and action are flowing as one, that is not a distraction, so stop attacking thought as if it is the source of all evil.
You might find this interesting Daniel: . Give me the non-directive meditation anytime.
And what I hate is that practically any mention of meditating goes accompanied by a pic of someone sitting cross-legged and looking blissful. I wonder how many people have been put off by the notion that you have to sit in a yoga position to meditate properly. Rubbish.
That's how you can do it! (See attached file.)
I wonder how many people have been put off by the notion that you have to sit in a yoga position to meditate properly. Rubbish.
The posture is important, if you sit in an unstable posture , it prevents you from going deep into trance, because every time you start falling into the trance state, your muscles are becoming loose and you fall, and this fall takes you out of the trance state, so you have to have a stable posture, and the yoga postures are stable. I did the bormasian posture for a while, but now I simply sit on a chair, because my knees where hurting. but I sit in a very stable posture. So I agree with you, that you don't have to sit in a yoga position, I just noted that there is an advantage in a yoga posture, because it is giving you stability, it doesn't mean it is the only poster that can give you stability.
As for the scientific article you noted, the writer of this article brings up a theory, a certain explanation, I can have my own explanation. He can show some scientific findings that support his theory, but it doesn't mean you can't explain the finding in a different way. In my experience, if you focus hard on the meditation object, it prevents you from "letting go", I would not use the word "concentration", I would say I occupy myself with repetitive action, observing something repetitive is also a repetitive action, which needs no attention and is boring and eventually this is freeing your attention focus, the goal is not to be concentrated, but to scatter the focus, that's how I see it, from my experience. Other's can have a different theory, I've seen the best results when I didn't invest effort in concentrating, and that is what I share with others.
And the purpose is not to quiet the mind, it is to quiet your conflicting thoughts so that in this quiet you can become open and receptive to thoughts that come from a higher plane, which is what happens when your intuition controls your thought, and this could sometimes be a storm of thoughts and not quiet at all, so I'm not surprised that the MRI scan detected more brain activity in some forms of meditation.
Are Holen, the founder of Acem meditation, says you should not concentrate but focus. When you concentrate, you spend lots of effort at locking things out. Whereas focusing is more relaxed.
He talks a lot about 'free mental attitude': you should not judge whatever comes up in your head, just gently go back to the meditation sound, a kind of mantra.
focusing is more relaxed.
Yes, you can't just return your attention back every time you noticed it was diverted from the meditation object, there also has to be some kind of a soft consistency in keeping it on the object until you "lose it", that's what I felt. I agree.
Focus requires duality, you need to have some black and some white, now you can decide what you want to focus your attention on, like in this well known image:
If you focus on the black color, you see 2 faces but you don't see the vase, if you focus on the white color, you see the vase but you become unaware of the 2 faces, that's how focus reducing our awareness. In meditation, we take something simple and repetitive that doesn't change and therefore has no duality, and we point our attention at it. The problem is, that the attention can't focus on such a thing because it has no duality, so what happens is, the focus has to eventually scatter, and you go into a state of pure awareness. That is also why we don't use hard focus, because the goal is not the focus, but scattering of the focus so we can go into a state of pure awareness.
Oh. I just do it, and it works .......... (and all the better if I don't eat and drink and smell the wrong foods before).
And when I say it works, I mean it improves me in my relationships and awareness of others - and with myself, I suppose.
The theory is really not my thing!