How to meditate properly?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by hesitant_man

I'll take it a look, I meanthat I commit this hindrance.




I understand, the mind associates this with sleeping. Also I've read that the ego when doesn't have anything to do, then it tries to sleep.




I understand, yeah, the issue with guided meditation is that I just follow what the speaker tells to me, so I am not focused on my breath at all, and I don't have my mind totally empty, due to what the speaker is saying.

So, in the end, now I am doing meditation on my own, instead of doing meditated guides.

Thank you

When I studied meditation in a formal Buddhist context we started with the breath awareness and nothing else. In the formal sense this was practiced 11 hours a day. We woke at 4am for a two hour session, then from 8 til 11, then from 1 to 5, then from 5:30 til 7:30, before a dhamma discourse about the teachings. The breath meditation was practiced for at least 4 days totaling something like 45 hours of that practice. After that practice brought calm focus and sensitivity of mind needed for the more subtle aspects of full body awareness, we'd proceed. Body awareness has a few stages as well... but I can;t really go into all that... I only mean to say that the guided meditation which JB posted covers in 40 minutes what took me some months to accomplish, which why I consider it to be ...um... impractical. I find guided meditations are often like this. I can only speak from my own life experience, you see, and it's not like what I say is knowledge or true, or even advice. It's just conversation which you discern as seemingly sensible or not. It only means that you have be the one in the drivers seat ultimately free of influence. I merely suggest the simplest possible meditation is practiced to a small degree of mastery before moving forward to 'next steps'. But this is just what I say as it is my view. It's not knowledge in the form of me knowing it is true.