Meditation techniques
 

Want to start a thread on favorite meditation techniques. I used to do Zen meditation and chakra meditation. Hard to find the habit of meditating again. I lost that good habit. Looking for some direction on meditation.

Vajradhara

From the fulcrum of mind-body identity, mistakenly taking ourself to be only this form, what is in focus, is the ego or identity. The ego wants to expand its well being and so strives in life to do this or that, including meditation, as an activity to feel at peace.

So, meditation from the ego’s perspective generally looks at a shift into silence by employing force of concentration, maybe by breath watching, chanting a mantra, praying, attending satsangs, visualisations or trying to awaken the kundalini without knowing actually what it is.

In my view, we are so used to striving that we have forgotten how to abide in our natural state effortlessly. So, tacking this from the roots, I would suggest simply looking, feeling, watching whatever arises in our awareness but without clinging or interpreting, neither seeking nor negating. This we may term as mindfulness or emptiness. It is awareness self-aware, poised in the void, animated but doing nothing.

Slipping into this state as an orientation rather than a conscious doing, we are immersed in but not in bondage to thoughts, appearances and sensations because we assign no ownership to them, in fact, we as an entity too are not.

This is then a shift in the way of living, being, moment to moment, rather than a programmed gym-meditation activity. Or reworded, we prioritise living internally.

This looks like a Pure Being Aware of what IS...

Hello eezi-ulgen, haven’t seen you around in a while. :smile:

The shift in and out, that is from singularity to duality is from undifferentiated to differentiated awareness or we may say, from a field of unity consciousness to a polarised one and so the ‘trick’ if it may then be choicelessly conjured, is to bilocate, becoming, so to speak, both transcendent and immanent simultaneously.

I really do not care for the human drama and I love living in inner peace, a couple of the reasons why I do meditation. As soon as I awaken from sleep I sit and do quiet meditation. If I miss meditating for five or six days the chatter in my head threatens to return in a big way. I meditate to keep that chatter down to a whisper, or non-existent.

So I am trying to explain what motivates me to meditate. I guess most of all; I have had incredibly beautiful and awestruck experiences in meditation. I do not do mantra meditation, but I am doing sound meditation, light meditation, and breath technique. But in my opinion techniques are irrelevant once you nurture and build a quiet fullness within yourself.

Then the only technique you need to do is nurture that with your attention. There is a saying that “God does my meditation for me.” It is a river and you just jump in. I really do not try to control it. In my practice no insights or depth of experience occurs without humility and spiritual surrender. Don’t let your head rob you of the incredible experience that is within our hearts.

Wise words, whoever said them! We may say that we are not meditating but are being meditated upon.

WU WEI :hug3:

Hi Mate, the key is to do it as you would any task thats important to you. If the doctor said exercise your legs twenty minutes a day, you would plan that task into your daily schedule, at the same time every day. So do that, make it easy to do, at a time that suits you. The best way is to get up half an hour earlier than usual and use that `new` time to do it. Understand that this time is YOUR time, you have created it for you. It might help to find a local group and meet up with them once a week. I hope thats what you meant by needing help finding the habit again, or else I`ve barked a long way up the wrong tree LOL

Edgar Cayce, a noted clairvoyant, used to always say “meditation is listening to God.” Others have also proclaimed that prayer is how we talk to God and meditation is how we listen.

Just about every major religion has some form of meditation; Christian monks do mantra meditation when they chant. I knew a Christian who meditated and he would say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, over and over again to quiet his mind. Catholic priests and Episcopal priests do meditation, chants such as Gregorian chants are a form of meditation, etc.

It is common knowledge that Hindus and Buddhists do meditation, but Jews also meditate, their religion also does chanting, which is similar to mantra meditation. The same applies to Islam; their prayers are sung in a meditative fashion. Meditation is basically a one point focus and it takes many forms.

I'd go along with Petezen's post which is most practical.

The first link in a new thread called "Books on mindfulness..." is pretty good. It is an article called 'Mindfulness in Plain English' which has good information that can be readily applied.