Oh, someone I can talk to! 😀
As long as we don’t meet in PRSI all is good
🙂 Thankfully the mods took care of it
🙂
I finished up
Insight Timer this morning. i have 3 lessons to go in
Headspace. Between those two, I prefer the woman's voice in the former over the latter, although they are both excellent.
The first sessions, man was I in the zone! It was like a new awareness of surroundings, although I have prevuiodly experienced this on walks in the woods, were I start looking at my surrounds as if it was the first time. Today I read about walking meditation, and said, Ah, hah!
😉 I also mention that seeing things in a new light also struck me during Runner’s highs, and during a marijuana high (the latter in my teens and was quite amazing).
Back to meditation, in later sessions, I admit as the newness wore off, my mind wandered a bit. They covered mindfulness, breathing, and manta. Breathing, and mantra so far have worked best. Mindfulness, seemed to be harder, because I’m not wishing for anything in particular other than more self awareness, insight, and a clearer mind, not reducing stress or feeling more love or overcoming any fears or building self esteem. Also inventorying my body seems to be a bust, although I heard my heat beat.
😉
This is what I was asking. After sitting though all these guided sessions, you almost walk away with the idea that meditation is someone talking to you, guiding you though each session. Then I look at all these courses, like
build self esteem,
or get over some exiety or fear, and this almost seems not like what I consider meditation to be, which is primarily a solo activity.
Here is another thing, guidance is great precisely because it gives you something to focus on, a voice. And although there are brief periods of time when nothing is said, mostly you are being talked to. I almost get the impression that guided courses, (some are rented) may lean more towards self help instead of plain meditation.
So the question, what’s next involves intermediate mediation course which I would think is not be a pep talk (conquer a fear) but an intro explaining what the purpose of the session is, and very minimal if any talking during focusing on one of the meditation techniques.
This is what I’ve noticed in my sessions:
- Very relaxed.
- With eyes closed, I see a canvas, sometimes dark swirling colors, but other times it would burst into a bright scene, sometimes with people in it. I think the latter is associated with a momentarily, wandering mind.
- Can hear my heart beat.
I’ll check out
GiantMind.
😀
I totally understand! I have exclusively done nondirective meditation (it’s basically Transcendental Meditation, just free), although I am also trying Mindfulness now (using
Calm).
I have to say, during some sessions I am totally out there, it feels like floating in space or something. In one occasion I found myself visualizing my mathernal grandfather; he passed away a decade ago at 99years and 11 months and we were kinda close. I won’t hide that during that meditation I almost felt like I could hug him, so a couple of tears decided to leave my eyes. Now, I don’t think that I made any “spiritual” connection (however, who knows?), but I am sure that at minimum my subconscious decided to bring up a very clear image of him, as if I needed some sort of reassurance. It was weird to say the least.
Some sessions are a whole different game, I am very distracted and a couple of times I actually finished more nervous than I was 20 minutes earlier.
I believe that one of the very important results of meditation is that it help feelings, worries, thoughts, ideas to surface. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are bad, but they are ME nonetheless.
I have to admit that I never experienced something similar. It is truly changing my life and my approach to things. First of all, it makes Viktor Frankl’s insight that our main freedom is to decide how WE react to external events something that is much easier to practice. I notice that I let things go much faster; I might have my occasional outburst if someone cuts in front of me (usually followed by a series of interesting words both in English and Italian), but I let it go in less than five seconds.
It is also making me enjoy the present moment much more. For example, the other day I was by the Reunion Tower in Dallas, at the Hyatt’s somewhat elegant lobby. I had to wait about 45 minutes for my wife as she had to meet with some people, which is boring in itself. To my shock, once I sat down in one of the chairs I relized that I left the book I am reading at home. I decided to not spend 45 minutes looking at my phone, so I went to the cafe in the lobby to get a Starbucks (a small black coffee, no sugar, no creamer... $3.45!!!!!!) and then I went back to my chair. You know what I did? I just waited. 45 minutes, sipping coffee (at times with my eyes closed), looking around, observing people, observing the place. I was alone with my thoughts in the midst of at least a hundred passerby’s. I don’t know exactly why, but it was a great experience, something that I used to do as a child or a teen (when there were no smartphones and I had to wait for someone, or my parents etc.) and that I totally forgot about. It felt weird, let me tell you. From the outside I probably looked strange (which is a sad statement), maybe kinda like Dougie
🙂 I think that without meditation I would’ve never have the patience to do just sit still, with a coffee, and observe the world. (Now, it can be objected that it can be done going in the woods, or camping etc.; as someone that loves the outdoors and visits many Texas State Parks every year, I think that it’s a fundamentally different experience. When we go outdoors we are outside of our “regular” environment; that is, what is in front of us is different than our regular routine so we still have to process many different new inputs. Being in the subway, on a bus, at work, or in a hotel is more “normal” for us.)
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@yaxomoxay, I tried step 1 of
1 Giant Mind and what I really liked about the tutorial is that the instructor did not talk for most of the 15min session. He set a modest goal and then let you practise it.
This is what I like about this type of meditation. There is really no “wrong” way of doing it. Just
hear your mantra for 15/20 minutes, and without any effort go back to it if you get too far from it. If you need to scratch your nose, just do it. If you feel you want to write some amazing insight you just had, just open your eyes, write it down, and go back to the meditation (that way the “insight” won’t bother you during the rest of the meditation). It’s incredibly simple and effective.
I noticed that mindfulness requires much more effort. Good effort, of course, but it’s still more effort. Even the count 1,2-1,2 coordinated with the breathing requires some effort and active thought. It’s absolutely good, I am not saying that it’s not, but I don’t think that as a meditative practice it will work for me. As a concept and as a practice it will work for me, being present is something I truly want and just the idea of actually tasting food is very very interesting.
I think that the 1GiantMind teacher (Joni) was a Transcendental Meditation teacher but got fed up with the cost of the practice, which I can understand.
I strongly suggest the book “Why Can’t I meditate?”. Despite the cheesy title, it’s an amazing book.
