What are you meditating for?

I understand that you believe fully that meditation is not the noise and drama...but I believe fully that you're wrong about that. Noise, drama and silence are all part of the same thing. You ARE the noise, drama and silence.

End pass unfortunately..

There is indeed no realisation to be had. You only want to realise in the first place because someone told you about it.

Meditators embrace the silence, but try to escape the noise. Not understanding they are one and the same.

I know you have over 4000 posts are are probably respected in this forum as a knowledgeable person. This and your writings suggest that you have a LOT of practice.

This is why you probably will not accept when I tell you that you simply don't understand....Just a big nope.

[God-Like]

Originally Posted by Argento

I understand that you believe fully that meditation is not the noise and drama...but I believe fully that you're wrong about that. Noise, drama and silence are all part of the same thing. You ARE the noise, drama and silence.

End pass unfortunately..

I would say that the noise, drama and the silence are of the mind .

Originally Posted by Argento

There is indeed no realisation to be had. You only want to realise in the first place because someone told you about it.

How on earth did you conclude that? You know nothing about my journey and what I have realized .

Originally Posted by Argento

Meditators embrace the silence, but try to escape the noise. Not understanding they are one and the same.

You tarnish all those that meditate with the same brush ? . In silence there is an experience to be had that differs from the noise .

Originally Posted by Argento

I know you have over 4000 posts are are probably respected in this forum as a knowledgeable person. This and your writings suggest that you have a LOT of practice.

This is why you probably will not accept when I tell you that you simply don't understand....Just a big nope.

How many posts I have made is irrelevant, what I do write about stems from what I have realized within 20 years of daily meditation . Perhaps this is why you don't simply understand from where I am coming .

x daz x

We can go back and forth if you like about realisation. I think that if meditation is about nothingness then it is impossible to realise nothing since the mechanism used to realise is ego. The only way out therefore is to stop it completely otherwise its not nothingness, its spirituality instead.

Sorry if I insulted you, maybe you understand something way beyond what I know....or it's the other way around, haha! I can't tell.

I guess our realities are very different. It's probably no big deal.

Thanks for standing up to me daz

[Miss Hepburn]

Yup, we're everything.
I think it helps being still.

[jonesboy]

I understand that you believe fully that meditation is not the noise and drama...but I believe fully that you're wrong about that. Noise, drama and silence are all part of the same thing. You ARE the noise, drama and silence.

I would say that we embrace all of those. We just experience what emptiness and form truly is.

There is indeed no realisation to be had. You only want to realise in the first place because someone told you about it.

There are many realizations to be had. They are realizations one can experience. That is the difference with meditation. It is not based on theory.

Meditators embrace the silence, but try to escape the noise. Not understanding they are one and the same.

Where do you get that from? Meditation is not about escape, far from it. It is about accepting what is and being in the moment.

I get that meditation is not escaping.....quite the opposite. My question was why meditate in the first place? To become happy, or peaceful, or to open yourself to the universe, or to stop certain emotions that arise during the day?
Basically each reason for meditation is that the person wants to change from the way they are now into another state of being, right? Or to realise something deep about their existence, right? If you meditate for any other reason let me know.

This would imply that the person is not happy with they way they are otherwise they would have no desire to change.

I'm coming off as such a douche here.....I'm nice really. I just want to leave no stone unturned..Question everything you know..even spirituality

Argento,

Hopefully I can shed a bit of light on the issue from the perspective of the Taoist alchemical tradition (which, more or less, describes many of my views on meditation).

This perspective posits that our minds/souls as humans are a mix of two energies:

1. Natural energy that is an inherent feature of our humanity and...
2. Acquired habit energies that we obtain from maladaption to the world

Number one is a bit more difficult to describe, but through figuring out what #1 isn't, we can shed some light on what our meditative practice should entail. Energies and actions that fall into #2 are those that lead us to hurt ourselves and others (when we hurt others, it is, in my personal experience, due to the fact that we ourselves are hurting... and we disregard others in the negligence that follows). An example is someone who stays in a bad relationship that actively hurts them because they fear loneliness... Or someone who spends all of their money to buy a big house not because it satisfies them, but to show off... and they go into debt as a result. Or more subtly, people adopt strong opinions because of their desire to be right or have a voice and they cling to these opinions even when they are patently false... having a false worldview too, leads to anguish.

From the standpoint of Taoist alchemy, meditation allows us to watch the mind wander and act as it will, and as we continue to observe over years of meditative practice, we can be aware of which energies fall into category #1 and which fall into category #2. There is debate among various traditions and individuals over whether it requires any degree of effort to remove the bad energies... but in my experience, I can at least say that the power of these negative energies weakens with only simple observation.

So to sum things up, I suppose you could say that meditation is the process of refining our souls and melting away the bad energies that we have acquired over the course of our lives. Only then can we consistently do good for the world. As long as we have maladaptive habit energies, we will be deluded by our thoughts and tugged about by our desires.

-TaoSandwich

[VinceField]

Originally Posted by Argento

For us crazy spiritual people, meditation is a staple of emotional wellbeing....It has been shown in many studies that the benefits of meditation are many and effective

This in itself is reason enough to scrap everything you say in the rest of the post (and thread). If something brings benefits which improve the quality of one's mind and life and is harmless to oneself and others, then there are no downsides, any way you look at it.

If we practice, it is for the sole purpose in bringing about a change in ourselves, but ultimately it is this attempt to change that is the root cause of the problem.

I don't believe you've explained this adequately enough to fully understand how or why "this attempt to change is the root cause of the problem," but I think I know what you mean, and I believe you are wrong. The root cause of the problem for which we seek to fix through meditation is the source of the unsatisfactory qualities of mind. The attempt to change these unsatisfactory qualities of mind have nothing to do with the cause of them. The attempt to improve oneself in this way comes from a degree of clarity in understanding that one possesses harmful qualities of mind and desires to act more skillfully and wholesomely so that they may eliminate these negative mental habits and acquire new ones which bring peace and happiness to oneself and others.

Therefore no matter how many hours we sit, the solution will never come. In fact, ANY desire to meditate for spiritual reasons negates any possibility of nourishment, but will give a nice relaxed feeling in the body and will help us be calmer and more effective.

This is false. Meditation has proven through countless examples to be effective in providing a platform of experience in which one is able to eliminate the harmful and unwholesome qualities of mind in which they seek to be free from.

What I'm suggesting is that meditation is for beginners who don't understand that it is impossible to understand...if that makes sense...Otherwise why would you even try?

The idea that meditation is impossible to understand, if that is what you were saying (it wasn't exactly clear), is simply a belief that clearly doesn't consider the experience of countless others in which deep insight into the nature of the self have been acquired through the practice.

It is a purely physical thing that enables us to be content with the material portion of reality. Once this is complete...then we can start to mature.

Again, false. Meditation is only effective at calming the body because the mind learns to be calm. Meditate with an anxious mind and you will experience no peace of body, as the mind directly conditions the state of the body. Meditation is a practice aimed at cultivating wholesome states of mind. If you want a purely physical thing, go to the gym.

Meditate to relax and heal the body of course...but if we don't finish with the practice at some point, we are doomed to failure.....We have to drop all ideas of it so that we can see though our own eyes rather than the eyes of a pedestalled sage.

There is no enlightenment! There are no Gods, no spirits, no evolution, no peace, no practice that can help us evolve.....As long as we have these ideas in our heads....no chance.

All beliefs, little wisdom.

So, tell us. What is the true way?

[VinceField]

Originally Posted by Argento

No need for inner work, There is no inner or outer world.
How can we possibly be oneness or nothingness if we have inner and outer?

The "inner world" refers to the activity and experiences of the mind. The "outer world" refers to the external environments and conditions of the physical dimension experience. These two clearly exist to any individual with normally functioning mental capabilities.

The ideas of "oneness" and "nothingness" are concepts that may or may not be valid. They are not absolutes which have the capacity of negating any other concept because they have not been proven.

[VinceField]

Originally Posted by Argento

All spiritual paths are irrelevant to what is happening around you.

What is happening around you is perceived by your mind. How your mind perceives its experience is based upon the conditioning and mental habits that it has acquired through life. The state of your mind directly effects the intentions and actions that you make.

A proper spiritual path serves to purify the mind from the distortions and defilements which give rise to ignorance and the harmful thoughts and perceptions which taint the way a person views and interacts with the world. Plus, it serves to purify one's actions, thus enriching the interactions that the person engages in.

These are the ways that an effective spiritual path is directly relevant to what is happening around you.

Not that I'm free....I'm saying there is nothing to be free from in the first place.

As a starter, you could probably fair well to free yourself from the apparent egocentricity that you are displaying by assume that your ideas of the world are more valid than those of others.

Also, realize that myself and countless others have come to completely different conclusions than you have after engaging in just as much and probably much more spiritual development work.