Meditation techniques

[A human Being]

The thread Gem is referring to is here:

https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...88#post2182588

[Vajradhara]

Hi Unseeking Seeker. Thank you for your response. What are some good mantras to do? I used to do some like om mani padme hum but didn't know what it meant. And Om as well. Also you mentioned visualizations. What do you mean by that?

Thanks!

[Unseeking Seeker]

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

What are some good mantras to do? I used to do some like om mani padme hum but didn't know what it meant and Om as well. Also you mentioned visualizations, what do you mean by that?

There are a zillion mantras. If we recite them, are we not in doership, nurturing conditioned belief? Mind you, mantras do set up a vibration but can we resonate within?

Let the mantra come to us, is what I’d say. If silence is our ever present orientation, the universe will give us the mantra, should we need it. So we do nothing. We trust that God knows best how the rose will blossom.

Mantras, if just mindlessly chanted do no harm, in fact, it helps focus attention onto one activity. The same applies to any other meditation technique, which is actually not meditation but concentration. Our heart beats by itself, we do nothing, breath flows by itself, we do nothing, why then meditate … unless of course we are agitated and wish to use it as a healing tool, to calm down for a short while?

Having said this, in my experience, the beej mantra (beej means seed) is ‘Ohm’. It arose within, on its own. Several other mantras ‘came to me’ at different times, they play within automatically like the inner sound current. We accept but do not get addicted to any, because life is a flow, after a while there may be no need of the mantra.

Visualisation is also volition, a doing. We imagine a this or that image of God, a light or whatever and then reinforce it. Surely, is it not only a concept we are indulging in? Why should we presuppose what God looks like? Let Him reveal Himself to us the way He chooses. Why should we interfere?

All practices serve a purpose, I do not deny. But in my view, it’s like a crutch we should discard at some point along the way.

[Maisy]

I like pretending I'm somebody from the year 986 BC who lived alone in a forest with her wolf pet. Then I'm unburdened from all of these modern religions ideas. God had not been invented yet or religions or trying to become spiritual. One walked in the mystery of being I think. It's a type of mindfulness as it is a letting go completely of your personality. As I am walking as this other person from long ago, I try to experience the now as she would. If I am good at pretending (method acting) the world becomes a wonderful mysterious place full of beauty and magic. Complete peace for me. There is nothing to become or change or seek. No one had been born yet to tell or convince others they needed to do such things. Resting completely in the perfect and complete now.

[peteyzen]

Originally Posted by Starman

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. .

Very true, they are all forms of connecting to the divine. Meditation is a focus on one point, mantra is similar but the reiterated word/phrase usually has a very powerful vibrations that affect the person saying the mantra, this is why people use mantra often as a background noise going on in their head whilst doing other tasks. Prayer too is a connection with the divine, and often it is a surrender as well. As you say, they are all similar, these are the tools that the work is done through.

[peteyzen]

Originally Posted by Maisy

I like pretending I'm somebody from the year 986 BC who lived alone in a forest with her wolf pet. Then I'm unburdened from all of these modern religions ideas. God had not been invented yet or religions or trying to become spiritual.

I like the idea of this, existing in a time before all of the conventions and dogma, I can see the appeal.

[Vajradhara]

Thank you Unseeking Seeker for your help!