MEDITATION - As A Spiritual Practice - No Dogma Allowed
DISCLAIMER: if you are a Bible Thumper or Islamist or any other such Religious Extremist trying to spread your religion, don't do it here. This thread is to remain free of such discussions. You will be smitten by your respective GOD if you do it here. This is a place for real spiritual progress or at least the discussion of such a thing.
NO DOGMA ALLOWED Also please try to stay on topic
Now that that is out of the way, this is about meditation practices and a place to discuss various methods and techniques. I have dabbled in meditation for a long time, but have not ever really gotten on a steady long-term regimen, unfortunately. But I really wish I would, heh. But the beauty of meditation is that it doesn't require any subscription to ridiculous dogma. So all the benefits of a religion, but without having to compromise your intellectual integrity with unsubstantiated beliefs.
So as far as techniques go I've done lots of counting breaths, counting length of breaths, just observing breaths, body scans, mindful awareness of sounds, experiences, sensations, thoughts, etc. Anyway, I finally got around to doing this technique from Sam Harris (see video below) and it seemed very practical and I can definitely see the benefits of it. I think essentially what I took away from it was just seeing yourself NOT as something encased in a body or peering out from behind your face that is separate from the world and others and is tossed around by thoughts, emotions, desires, etc., but you are simply consciousness itself, pure, unadulterated awareness and thoughts, feelings, emotions etc. don't have any real connection to your core being. You are actually separate from your thoughts and feelings. And this I have known intellectually for a very long time, but this is a practice to experience it. I think it's an attempt to get at a non-dual state of mind.
Anyway, please share your thoughts, insights or other good guided meditation audio here. There's a couple pretty good apps that I've tried, "Calm" and "Headspace," but I haven't actually paid for the full experience yet. If anyone has, please do share your experience...
I don't know where to post this, but the Lord has been laying it on my heart for the past few days to tell people about Jesus. This burden is so strong that I have felt sick and very desperate to reach out to others and tell them about Jesus. I asked my Pastor if there were any ministries I could do through my church to serve God, but all he said to me was that if there was anything, he'd let me know. God has been driving me to serve Him so bad that I don't think I can wait much longer for an answer from my Pastor, I am desperate here and I don't think he understands just how urgent it is to witness to the lost. People are dying and going to Hell. That is no laughing matter.
So I am going to write a post and witness to the lost on here...
Dear person much loved by the Lord,
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners like you and me. Have you ever thought about what happens after you die? I have. It has brought me much anxiety thinking about it, because I know that this life does not last forever and one day, we all will die.
A lot of people today do not think about where they will spend eternity, and this thinking is a big mistake.
But what happens after death? The Bible is the only book that can tell us what happens to us after we die. God Himself wrote this great book; it is probably the most important book that was ever written.
Do you mind if I quote some Scriptures? Some people get offended when I quote the Bible, but I never do. Do you know why? Because I am a Christian and I believe that Jesus is my Saviour. The Bible says so. And with that being said, I will give you some Bible verses to help you and educate you.
So what happens after we die? The Bible teaches that man is a tripart being composed of spirit, soul, and a fleshly body. At death, our souls separate from our body and goes back to God to be judged by Him. God will judge everything we do in the body, whether good or bad.
But here is the bad news. You see, nobody is truly a good person. You see, only God is truly good.
Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever hated anyone? If you have, then you have sinned. Killing others is also a sin, and yet you hear every day on the news that someone has murdered somebody else. Why? Because mankind are sinners and on their way to a burning Hell.
Rom 3:23 :
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Now that you know that no one is good in God's eyes, how do we then become good? How do we become vindicated before God? The Bible teaches that we need to have Jesus' righteousness but the only way to do that is to come to Him by faith:
Rom 10:9
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Rom 10:10
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
So you see that you need to believe in your heart that God raised up Jesus from the dead, and you also need to confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is the Lord.
If you die without Christ, you will spend eternity in Hell. In our modern world today, people think that Hell is a place of never-ending parties and good times. They think that all of their friends will be there. But that is far from the truth. You would think that these people have never read the Bible, or that they have never taken it seriously.
The Bible teaches that Hell is a place of never-ending fire and torment, and my dear friend, that is not very much fun (this truth has scared a lot of people). It is a place of tears and no hope. It is darkness and loneliness. You won't be able to see anyone at all. It is eternal separation from God Himself. Since God is the Source of Joy and Happiness, that means that everything apart from Him is tears, sorrow, and no happiness. And that does not sound like very much fun at all, doesn't it?
So my dear friend, for your own eternal safety, I pray that you will accept Jesus Christ into your heart today, and make Him Lord over your life.
If you have done this, you need to find a Bible-believing church where you can grow in God's Word. And you also need to find out what God wants you to do with your life, so that you may serve Him.
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
Though I'm not an atheist and am Christian, meditation has actually helped me through one of the most spiritually challenging times of my life when I was dealing with an existential crisis. For a couple of weeks I would experience these moments of anxiety where I was plagued by my greatest fear where I felt emotionally disconnected from everything around me to the extent to which I wasn't really emotionally present. I knew that the fear was irrational, but that knowledge didn't really get rid of the anxiety, and it basically flared up as an intrusive thought, so at first I would try to not think about it... which would lead to me thinking about it, or I would try to think about something else, which would either be a feeble attempt or only delay the problem of me experiencing anxiety whenever confronted with that thought.
So I used a sort of meditation and breathing techniques to get myself into a more calm and relaxed emotional state when confronting the intrusive thoughts so I could rationally dispel them and not be as disturbed by the thought whenever considering it, and that gradually lessened my anxiety, and now it's completely gone.
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Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
Nah Beni's God is unwilling to smite anyone even if they are threatening to smite him.
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Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
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Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
I've always preferred to meditate in as natural a fashion as possible: simply being conscious of being conscious, whether doing a formal, sit-down session, or going about daily life. To put it another way, I try to stay off autopilot as much as possible.
I also like meditating while dreaming, though this is rare.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
So what's your technique for staying in that "conscious of consciousness" state (sit down and daily life)?
You'll have to explain more about this. I am intrigued. I can only remember once or twice when I was a kid that I had sort of a lucid dreaming experience. I was just sort of flying up above my bed controlling my hovering. It was amazing, but I've never had a similar experience since.
For me, it is the recognition of a particular feeling, a very subtle tonal shift in the sense of one's presence. A trigger word/phrase (eg, "I'm still here"; "Reality check") helps, but ultimately, it is being attuned to a fine nuance of difference in consciousness, between being "On" and being "Off" (ie, on autopilot). Essentially, if you can ask yourself "Am I conscious right now?" you are, if only at a surface level. However, you're not even of mind to ask this when on autopilot. The difference is especially notable when first shifting from Off to On (often I'll ask myself, when I return to On is, "what brought me back?").
My general inspiration for this approach is Zen/mindfulness.
Lucid dreaming can be trained for. "As you are awake, so shall you dream." Closely related to "up and about meditation," one form of LD induction involves reminding yourself -- while awake -- what's happening (again as an eg, "Reality check"; or, "Awake or dreaming?"). But even with this, yeah, meditating while dreaming is a rare moment, though simply being aware that one is dreaming is not unlike up-and-about meditating.
The whole deal for both is not being on autopilot. The better you are At This while awake, the greater the chance this will carry over into dreaming.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Makes sense. So you just try to be conscious of your consciousness frequently? I wonder how much your approach differs from this guy's approach, if any (keep in mind, this seems to be worded for beginners and as simply as possible for anyone)...
The "you" he is referring to I think is just the very ground of being, pure awareness. That's how I understand it.
Yeah, that makes sense about it carrying over into dreaming the more you do it.
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Last edited by Patient_Leech on Aug 31st, 2017 at 02:00 PM
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
I do something close to meditation to keep myself properly oriented, except instead of emptying my mind of everything but awareness I'll focus it on my loved ones, my gratefulness for what I have, letting go of my resentment for other people and forgiving them, that kinda thing.
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Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Seems he is essentially espousing a mindfulness/metaconscious approach. Being conscious of one's attention is just another way of wording it; and the idea is to do it as often as one remembers, and, no stressing out when one forgets. The key is to make it as natural as possible, imo. Like breathing. But it's tough, given the "significant mental inertia" of the inner dialogue.
I would say it is the moment when one's inner dialogue has been minimalized, such that we begin to become aware of the felt-ground of the thinker, rather than being our thoughts. If I may, one begins to experience the start of the next phase: the unification of will. We go from being grounded in our thoughts to being grounded in Will, with thoughts as figures in that ground.
Pure consciousness? If one adheres to the perennial philosophy, that sort of Consciousness is waayyy beyond where we are.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
^ It's easy. A couple good apps with some free content that I mentioned in the OP are "Headspace" and "Calm." (That is if you have a smartphone). Sam Harris has said that he's working on a meditation app. I think I saw that he's beta testing it now, but I think it was just for Apple. I haven't really checked for it on Android yet (I have an Android).
I'm a fan of the Dan Harris (no relation to Sam Harris) book "10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story" Long-ass title, but a worthwhile read. Basically, he was an over-stressed modern guy who wanted to explore the benefits of meditation without the psuedo-spiritual "woo" that often accompanies it. He didn't believe in aligning his chakras, or {insert New Age-y spiritual idea here}, he just wanted to calm his mind and be a little bit happier. And it worked.
I do some fairly basic breathing exercises on occasion, and I'm trying to get to the point where it's a daily routine for me. I also use the Sam Harris guided meditations. They can be found in audio format here: https://www.samharris.org/podcast/i...ness-meditation
I've also invented my own variation where I take a piece of wisdom that is applicable to my life and I "meditate on it." It might be accompanied with breathing exercises, but instead of clearing my mind, my default state is the idea or quote, and it gives me a point to come back to when my mind wanders. The ideas become mantras that can then help in everyday life. Sounds similar to a couple practices mentioned above.
I haven't read through everything in this thread - I'm at work, and time is short - but it's a worthwhile topic imo.
^ Thanks for the contribution. Yeah, I wish I could make it a more daily routine, too, because I want to teach my son some techniques at the youngest age possible. Sam Harris' wife actually is involved in teaching children meditation.
Is there an accompanying app for that? 10% Happier? I think I've heard of it, but for some reason I can't find it in the android app store. Yeah...
KMC Community Forums
Jun 26th, 2017 04:01 PM
So what's your technique for staying in that "conscious of consciousness" state (sit down and daily life)?
