@igm,
Thanks, I like his emphasis on simply watching your mind--I call it being intimate with your personal reality.
@JLNobody,
Thanks, he is one of my teachers... I thought I'd share... I'm happy you can relate your own experience with this explanation.
@igm,
I also like his reference to meditation as "nutrition" for the mind.
@JLNobody,
JLNobody wrote:
I also like his reference to meditation as "nutrition" for the mind.
I'm pretty sure I remember you, yourself, using those or very similar words.
@The Pentacle Queen,
One of the greatest benefit of meditation is that it increases your focus . Most big people meditate for hours long before they take on the job of saving the world .
@The Pentacle Queen,
The purpose of meditation is not to seek any benefit. If you do, you are lost.
“We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” - Alan Watts.
JL, was just looking through this thread after a long time.
Regarding the talk about relationships -- what do you do with the thought about seeing your partner again if you haven't seen them for a long time? Surely you can't help imagining that situation and what it would be like, and therefore projecting onto the future. I know one way of understanding that is that it is a projection, but should you try not to indulge the thought?
pq x
@JLNobody,
Meditalion is really healthy. It makes your body be in ballance with your mind.
@samson25,
samson25 wrote:
Meditalion is really healthy. It makes your body be in ballance with your mind.
Saying anything about meditation to JLN is like telling a painter to use paint.
@Gala,
In true meditation the breathing must become so small that it becomes unnoticed. No chest, no shoulders, no belly should give the least indication of movement. So I think the epithet "steady" applied to the breathing in meditation can't be very good epithet.
These are health benefits of Meditation:-
1.Lowers high blood pressure, lowers the levels of blood lactate, reducing anxiety attacks
2.Decreases any tension-related pain, such as, tension headaches, ulcers, insomnia, muscle and joint problems
3.Increases serotonin production that improves mood and behavior
4.Improves the immune system
5.Increases the energy level, as you gain an inner source of energy.
There are various benefits associated with meditation such as stress reduction, lower blood pressure, aids concentration, aids relaxation, promotes clearer thinking, helps with mental health issues, helps with emotional health issues and many more.
I am meditating on meditation right now...and I am getting nowhere. Perfect!
I suppose I am doing it exactly in the best minimalist Taoist tradition right?
@The Pentacle Queen,
I personally took on the practice of meditation in order to find answers.Different people have different views on what meditation/mindfulness actually consists of. My view is that meditation can be both helpful and unhelpful and so one needs to treat it with great respect and be careful how one approaches it. Meditation has the power to either build the individual up or dismantle the individual.
@vikorr,
That's really interesting. I've toyed with the idea of giving meditation a shot over the years, but haven't had the discipline to actually stick with it for any meaningful period of time. Your post inspired me to give it another crack. Cheers.
@The Pentacle Queen,
I decided meditation to develop other beneficial habits and feelings, such as a positive mood and outlook, healthy sleep patterns, self-discipline, and even increased pain tolerance. It helped me by improving my sleep pattern and also learned to hold self-control.
I've been meditating a lot on how to give up meditation on subjects that I cannot control...so far it has not worked!
Self control comes when it comes...and yes I do breath slowly from time to time specially when I am not running or I am asleep...
Today, once again as in many other occasions in the past, I got to read this poem from Fernando Pessoa "Pseudonym/Ethnonym" Alberto Caeiro...it always makes me feel good, alive and at peace with Nature and the World.
I thought in sharing it with you all, and I honestly hope you like it!
Quote:Fernando Pessoa / Alberto Caeiro: VIII. One midday in late spring
One midday in late spring
I had a dream that was like a photograph. I saw Jesus Christ come down to earth.
He came down a hillside
As a child again,
Running and tumbling through the grass, Pulling up flowers to throw them back down, And laughing loud enough to be heard far away.
He had run away from heaven.
He was too much like us to fake
Being the second person of the Trinity.
In heaven everything was false and in disagreement With flowers and trees and stones.
In heaven he always had to be serious
And now and then had to become man again
And get up on the cross, and be forever dying With a crown full of thorns on his head,
A huge nail piercing his feet,
And even a rag around his waist
Like on black Africans in illustrated books.
He wasn’t even allowed a mother and father
Like other children.
His father was two different people—
An old man named Joseph who was a carpenter And who wasn’t his father,
And an idiotic dove:The only ugly dove in the world,
Because it wasn’t of the world and wasn’t a dove.
And his mother gave birth to him without ever having loved. She wasn’t a woman: she was a suitcase
In which he was sent from heaven.
And they wanted him, born only of a mother
And with no father he could love and honor,
To preach goodness and justice!
One day when God was sleeping
And the Holy Spirit was flying about,
He went to the chest of miracles and stole three.
He used the first to make everyone blind to his escape.
He used the second to make himself eternally human and a
child.
He used the third to make an eternally crucified Christ Whom he left nailed to the cross that’s in heaven
And serves as the model for all the others.
Then he fled to the sun
And descended on the first ray he could catch.
Today he lives with me in my village.
He’s a simple child with a pretty laugh.
He wipes his nose with his right arm,
Splashes about in puddles,
Plucks flowers and loves them and forgets them.
He throws stones at the donkeys,
Steals fruit from the orchards,
And runs away crying and screaming from the dogs. And because he knows that they don’t like it
And that everyone thinks it’s funny,
He runs after the girls
Who walk in groups along the roads
Carrying jugs on their heads,
And he lifts up their skirts.
He taught me all I know.
He taught me to look at things.
He shows me all the things there are in flowers. He shows me how curious stones are
When we hold them in our hand
And look at them slowly. (…)
…………………………………
He lives with me in my house, halfway up the hill. He’s the Eternal Child, the god who was missing. He’s completely natural in his humanity.
He smiles and plays in his divinity.
And that’s how I know beyond all doubt That he’s truly the little boy Jesus.
And this child who’s so human he’s divine
Is my daily life as a poet.
It’s because he’s always with me that I’m always a poet
And that my briefest glance
Fills me with feeling,
And the faintest sound, whatever it is, Seems to be speaking to me.
The New Child who lives where I live
Gives one hand to me
And the other to everything that exists,
And so the three of us go along whatever road we find, Leaping and singing and laughing
And enjoying our shared secret
Of knowing that in all the world There is no mystery
And that everything is worthwhile.
The Eternal Child is always at my side.
The direction of my gaze is his pointing finger. My happy listening to each and every sound
Is him playfully tickling my ears.
We get along so well with each other In the company of everything
That we never even think of each other, But the two of us live together, Intimately connected
Like the right hand and the left.
At day’s end we play jacks
On the doorstep of the house,
With the solemnity befitting a god and a poet And as if each jack
Were an entire universe,
Such that it would be a great peril
To let one fall to the ground.
Then I tell him stories about purely human matters And he smiles, because it’s all so incredible.
He laughs at kings and those who aren’t kings,
And feels sorry when he hears about wars,
And about commerce, and about ships
That are finally just smoke hovering over the high seas. For he knows that all of this lacks the truth
Which is in a flower when it flowers
And with the sunlight when it dapples
The hills and valleys
Or makes our eyes smart before whitewashed walls.
Then he falls asleep and I put him to bed. I carry him in my arms into the house And lay him down, removing his clothes Slowly and as if following a very pure And maternal ritual until he’s naked.
He sleeps inside my soul
And sometimes wakes up in the night And plays with my dreams.
He flips some of them over in the air, Piles some on top of others,
And claps his hands all by himself, Smiling at my slumber.
………………
When I die, my son,
Let me be the child, the little one. Pick me up in your arms
And carry me into your house. Undress my tired and human self
And tuck me into your bed.
If I wake up, tell me stories
So that I’ll fall back asleep.
And give me your dreams to play with Until the dawning of that day
You know will dawn.
…………………………
This is the story of my little boy Jesus, And is there any good reason
Why it shouldn’t be truer
Than everything philosophers think And all that religions teach?
@The Pentacle Queen,
I meditation daily every morning before breakfast 4 tablets regular.
