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It took me a long ass time to get into meditation; mostly 'cause of ideas about meditation that isn't what you're actually doing in meditation. (Which incidentally is, I think, part of why meditation started being known by a different name now. More on that later.)
What meditation is, that finally helped me wrap my head around it, is teaching yourself how to Focus.
Your mind naturally wants to think of other things, so what you're doing while your meditating is focusing on a very specific thing (usually your breathing) and bringing your attention back to breathing however many times that is. If you get distracted, that's actually perfectly fine and expected, just follow the thought some more when you realize you're thinking of something, then return your attention to breathing. If you find yourself getting pissed/frustrated, that means you're thinking too much, which is perfectly natural and fine, just return to focusing on breathing again.
What you're trying to get into via meditation is a place where you're not really "thinking" because you're paying attention so hard to the very nuanced feeling of breathing, to pay attention so much that you realize that each breath feels different, and to pay attention so much that you're not analyzing anything or anyone or doubting yourself or hating yourself or second-guessing what you're experiencing.
Here is one of the first meditation exercises that I did where I really Got It:
Eating Meditation
Find three or four raisins or other small dried fruit/nuts that shall henceforth be known as "raisin". Find a place to be by yourself.
Pick up a single raisin, look at it, closely. Look at it from all sides.
What color is it? Where is it lighter? Where are the shadows? Do the colors change anywhere? Closely examine the gradients in color. Carefully look at the tiny parts in the cracks, at everything small about it you might otherwise have overlooked.
Feel the raisin with your fingertips. Feel it from all angles.
What is its texture? How big is it compared to your fingers? Are there dimples you can see smaller than you can feel? Is it grainy? Is it gritty? Is it a combination? Where is it smooth? Is it pliable? Does it make a sound when you rub your fingers against it?
Smell the raisin.
Do you smell the fruit at all? Is there any dusty smell? Bring the raisin close to your nose if you need to or poke a hole gently with a nail.
Basically, stare and feel and smell the raisin so much until you can reproduce that EXACT RAISIN in your mind if you close your eyes...this should take a ridiculously long time, which is why I recommend doing this alone because it'll possibly cause stares and comments that'll break your concentration.
Finally, when you feel like you can't see anything else new about the raising and when you can reproduce the sight/feel/smell of that raisin with your mind, put the raisin in your mouth.
Chew SLOWLY. Taste everything you can about the raisin.
Is it sweet, and if so what kind of sweet? Feel the raisin with your tongue, feel how it feels against your teeth, be fully in the moment with the taste as it spreads through your mouth and changes as your chew.
Don't swallow right away.
Instead, feel the urge to swallow come up, and push it away once or twice, then Decide to swallow, with intent.
Feel the raisin go down, as it slowly makes you that little bit fuller. Don't eat another raisin yet! Take the time to feel that little bit of extra fullness. Taste the after-taste in your mouth.
Look at the raisins you have left and while looking at them, choose one.
Repeat all the steps from before, but make note as how THIS raisin is different from the raisin that came before. Experience this new raisin as a separate thing; it has a different shape, colors. It has different places where it is rough and where it is smooth, different imperfections, different places that grit gathers. Notice all the differences.
Repeat the steps until you're out of raisins.
This meditation can be done with any food, but it's best to start with something small and textured first; something that's otherwise easy to ignore.
One of the main aspects of this is to really be In The Moment. Earlier I mentioned that alot of meditation now goes by another name, which is Mindfulness. My theory on this naming convention is to separate the procedure out from the impression of the process being mystical and difficult. The word Meditation sounds difficult; it sounds like something someone old and hardcore with many many years of either martial arts or religious training does, and it sounds exotic and Other.
Whereas being mindful, well, that's something that sounds common, no? It's a gentler word, more forgiving by nature, and something easily integrated into daily life. It calls for being aware of what is around you (what's ACTUALLY there versus what you THINK is there), being aware of what you are thinking, and being aware of your choices. It doesn't ask you to change the world, doesn't want you to change your thinking, and is not forcing you to change your choices; all it asks for is awareness.
The theory is that you can't fully change yourself unless you know exactly where/who you are at this exact moment (NOT what you want yourself to be and NOT what you think yourself to be), it'd be like taking the stairs in a stranger's house in the dark. Mindfulness is like falling awake, and the opposite of it is mindlessness.
Anyhoo, I'll be posting a couple times on the subject of Mindfulness, but with different applications and with various stories of results.
Future Posts: Walking Meditation (Mindful Exercise and Benefits), Body Scan Meditation (Pain Management and Self-Healing), Mental Structures (Self-Hypnosis and Psychic Shielding)
Helpful Links:
UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center - http://marc.ucla.edu/
You might find guided audio meditation helpful. Some mp3's are found here.
My main resource, it's style is more encyclopedia and cookbook - Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
A book with more theory, it's style is more warm - Wherever You Go, There You Are
A book about what Mindfulness can do - Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility
What meditation is, that finally helped me wrap my head around it, is teaching yourself how to Focus.
Your mind naturally wants to think of other things, so what you're doing while your meditating is focusing on a very specific thing (usually your breathing) and bringing your attention back to breathing however many times that is. If you get distracted, that's actually perfectly fine and expected, just follow the thought some more when you realize you're thinking of something, then return your attention to breathing. If you find yourself getting pissed/frustrated, that means you're thinking too much, which is perfectly natural and fine, just return to focusing on breathing again.
What you're trying to get into via meditation is a place where you're not really "thinking" because you're paying attention so hard to the very nuanced feeling of breathing, to pay attention so much that you realize that each breath feels different, and to pay attention so much that you're not analyzing anything or anyone or doubting yourself or hating yourself or second-guessing what you're experiencing.
Here is one of the first meditation exercises that I did where I really Got It:
Eating Meditation
Find three or four raisins or other small dried fruit/nuts that shall henceforth be known as "raisin". Find a place to be by yourself.
Pick up a single raisin, look at it, closely. Look at it from all sides.
What color is it? Where is it lighter? Where are the shadows? Do the colors change anywhere? Closely examine the gradients in color. Carefully look at the tiny parts in the cracks, at everything small about it you might otherwise have overlooked.
Feel the raisin with your fingertips. Feel it from all angles.
What is its texture? How big is it compared to your fingers? Are there dimples you can see smaller than you can feel? Is it grainy? Is it gritty? Is it a combination? Where is it smooth? Is it pliable? Does it make a sound when you rub your fingers against it?
Smell the raisin.
Do you smell the fruit at all? Is there any dusty smell? Bring the raisin close to your nose if you need to or poke a hole gently with a nail.
Basically, stare and feel and smell the raisin so much until you can reproduce that EXACT RAISIN in your mind if you close your eyes...this should take a ridiculously long time, which is why I recommend doing this alone because it'll possibly cause stares and comments that'll break your concentration.
Finally, when you feel like you can't see anything else new about the raising and when you can reproduce the sight/feel/smell of that raisin with your mind, put the raisin in your mouth.
Chew SLOWLY. Taste everything you can about the raisin.
Is it sweet, and if so what kind of sweet? Feel the raisin with your tongue, feel how it feels against your teeth, be fully in the moment with the taste as it spreads through your mouth and changes as your chew.
Don't swallow right away.
Instead, feel the urge to swallow come up, and push it away once or twice, then Decide to swallow, with intent.
Feel the raisin go down, as it slowly makes you that little bit fuller. Don't eat another raisin yet! Take the time to feel that little bit of extra fullness. Taste the after-taste in your mouth.
Look at the raisins you have left and while looking at them, choose one.
Repeat all the steps from before, but make note as how THIS raisin is different from the raisin that came before. Experience this new raisin as a separate thing; it has a different shape, colors. It has different places where it is rough and where it is smooth, different imperfections, different places that grit gathers. Notice all the differences.
Repeat the steps until you're out of raisins.
This meditation can be done with any food, but it's best to start with something small and textured first; something that's otherwise easy to ignore.
One of the main aspects of this is to really be In The Moment. Earlier I mentioned that alot of meditation now goes by another name, which is Mindfulness. My theory on this naming convention is to separate the procedure out from the impression of the process being mystical and difficult. The word Meditation sounds difficult; it sounds like something someone old and hardcore with many many years of either martial arts or religious training does, and it sounds exotic and Other.
Whereas being mindful, well, that's something that sounds common, no? It's a gentler word, more forgiving by nature, and something easily integrated into daily life. It calls for being aware of what is around you (what's ACTUALLY there versus what you THINK is there), being aware of what you are thinking, and being aware of your choices. It doesn't ask you to change the world, doesn't want you to change your thinking, and is not forcing you to change your choices; all it asks for is awareness.
The theory is that you can't fully change yourself unless you know exactly where/who you are at this exact moment (NOT what you want yourself to be and NOT what you think yourself to be), it'd be like taking the stairs in a stranger's house in the dark. Mindfulness is like falling awake, and the opposite of it is mindlessness.
Anyhoo, I'll be posting a couple times on the subject of Mindfulness, but with different applications and with various stories of results.
Future Posts: Walking Meditation (Mindful Exercise and Benefits), Body Scan Meditation (Pain Management and Self-Healing), Mental Structures (Self-Hypnosis and Psychic Shielding)
Helpful Links:
UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center - http://marc.ucla.edu/
You might find guided audio meditation helpful. Some mp3's are found here.
My main resource, it's style is more encyclopedia and cookbook - Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
A book with more theory, it's style is more warm - Wherever You Go, There You Are
A book about what Mindfulness can do - Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility
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What might work better than Sitting Meditation would be the Walking Meditation, which will be in my next post. A couple people who'd been doing the Walking Meditation managed to do Sitting Meditation because they learned how to focus enough in the Walking one.
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Humans actually have an amazing ability to focus and this is a skill that can be applied to using our minds in a completely different modality than the usual functions of relating to reality with our intellect. You start to become more aware that when we use our minds in a focused manner as an instrument of frequency, we can start to have a quantum effect on our manifested reality. So all kinds of magic becomes possible - this is how energy healing is done, in very simplified terms.
Not all cultures function from the same intellectual bias as mainstream Western culture. Many indigenous cultures, and specifically many African cultures (my own experience anyway), have an intrinsic comprehension that we have the capacity to hold a particular wavelength for an entire community - this is the function of griots and musicians, for example - especially drummers. The true master drummers in west African culture have an amazing sense of spiritual responsibility for maintaining a balanced state of mind, but because it's not languaged in a way that we can easily understand, we tend to not take it as seriously as eastern mindfulness and meditation practices.
Just a few random thoughts - I teach a system of active meditation and vibrational healing, and am in the process of formulationg a cross-disciplinary masters thesis in ethnomusicology, so these are the kinds of things I tend to think about. Which makes my brain a pretty weird place, most days :)
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Lately I've taken to envisioning hands. Hands of all sorts, molded after those of my mother, my family, my friends, my lover. Gentle, warm, friendly hands with comfortable, trusting touches. Imagining these hands on my face and neck, in my hair, sliding into my own really helps the relaxation process.
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Thanks for the links too!
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Incidentally, how did you come across this post? =D
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::points at icon:: I blame the hotness.