Insight.

[Gem]

Imagine I made up a delightful story and in a soft wise spiritual voice told it to you, and you closed your eyes and imagined yourself as the character in the story. It's such a nice story that you feel very happy and peaceful afterward, but that soon wears off so you come back for another wonderful story.

What insight did you gain?

Of course imagining wonderful scenarios improves your mood, but does it give you insight?

If you want to see it 'as it is'... it's like watching a river flow by. You don't add water to make the river deeper, you don't imagine it sounds some other way, you do not do anything at all. You sit on the bank and simply enjoy what is there.

[Gem]

Insight is to see what is there.

People find it irresistable to impose their will on 'what is', and by using volition experience what they prefer, but for insight there is only what happens.

When you learn meditation, it is almost always the case that the instructor will ask you to alter something. 'Breath deep into the belly' or perhaps 'chant like aum' or maybe 'imagine a staircase'... and to do anything like that you need to act volitionally.

When you watch a river flowing, you do not change it, you do try to make it different somehow, you just watch it 'as it is'.

[Gem]

It's not a popular tread.

I wish I could say something fantastic and tantalizing, but what? Make a promise like enlightenment? Then this would be interesting as something most desirable could be gained.

Insight isn't going to gain anything, only see what is already there. You did not gain the river. The river was already flowing. You just stopped to watch it.

[ellespirit]

Thank you Gem that was a perspective worth considering.

[Xan]

It occurs to me that insight comes from seeing in... within oneself.

Maybe...


Xan

I don't like guided meditations myself, and don't even use music. I am a purist, hoping only to increase awareness of what is.

Breathing into the belly, on the other hand, is natural. In fact, it is quite healthful and cleansing. As children, that is how we all breathe. It seems like good advice to a person looking for guidance on how to start with meditation.

I am already breathing and I have a belly which expands so thankfully when I breathe full and deep. Quietly observing that miracle until the mind is free from itself seems like it would be a sound meditation practice for those unable to "get there" instantaneously.

[Gem]

If the breathing is already happening, that is how it is. Insight sees it 'as it is' (and not in the way you want it).

First the breath is occuring... then you watch... and seeing it, decide it should be different, 'I will change it. Make it deeper. Put in belly'.

When you watch the river you do not add water to make the river deeper, you do not place weirs to move it where you want. You just sit and watch it.

If volition is used you will see what you prefer, but insight is into 'what is'.

Originally Posted by Gem

Imagine I made up a delightful story and in a soft wise spiritual voice told it to you, and you closed your eyes and imagined yourself as the character in the story. It's such a nice story that you feel very happy and peaceful afterward, but that soon wears off so you come back for another wonderful story.

What insight did you gain?

Of course imagining wonderful scenarios improves your mood, but does it give you insight?

If you want to see it 'as it is'... it's like watching a river flow by. You don't add water to make the river deeper, you don't imagine it sounds some other way, you do not do anything at all. You sit on the bank and simply enjoy what is there.

When I listen to a story or even guided meditation, I get lost in the "what is". I do not specifically seek any sort of insight.

I use internal questions and mantras for that.

In regards to visual meditation, I enjoy the journey of what it is. When the journey so is most of my attachment.

I just reflect back and say "that was pretty neat".

Music while meditating is always just distracting to me.

Guided meditation, to me, is just that - 'guided'. Not scripted, or contrived, or fabricated. To me, guided meditation just establishes a setting.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players..."
~Youknowwho~

In life, we discover who we are. We also participate in who we are, as do all those who contact our lives in one fashion or another. This is what the world does.

Meditation, to me, is Going Within. When we open to the experience we are inexplicably able to experience ourselves in such an intimate and immediate manner as is otherwise impossible. Sometimes we have experiences in which we have an innate sense that we are all the players - and yet other times it seems flatly impossible that the perspective and depth of understanding comes from ourselves. In these experiences, the simplest explanation is the most fantastic, but little else accounts the facts.

Most often the experience is beyond words, conveying through feeeling fundamental truths of our existence that we can understand in no other way. In these experiences, even though we may be conscious of only feelings, we are also aware that somehow the experience itself is changing us through some direct energetic fashion. When I think about it, I think these are the most inexplicable of all.

In all of these experiences we can learn about ourselves, and through ourselves about the larger world and universe, through the sense of connection and interconnectedness innate to the experiences, if we have the courage to go deeply enough. There are the insights we seek.

Few experience these things the exact same way, nor is every type of experience for every person - but there is a vast correlation between individual experiences in their essence - and it is an act of will to ignore this, IMO.

Originally Posted by Gem

If the breathing is already happening, that is how it is. Insight sees it 'as it is' (and not in the way you want it).

First the breath is occuring... then you watch... and seeing it, decide it should be different, 'I will change it. Make it deeper. Put in belly'.

When you watch the river you do not add water to make the river deeper, you do not place weirs to move it where you want. You just sit and watch it.

If volition is used you will see what you prefer, but insight is into 'what is'.

I don't really understand, are you suggesting that if a person becomes aware of their breath, and chooses to make it deeper as a means to focus their awareness within, that they are doing something wrong?