The OP is asking for method and wants to reach Nirvana or "whatever". Making an effort to reach, having expectation for event to unfold are all illusory and nothing to do with life.
People say that there are many ways to meditate but what do they mean by this?
I could interpret this in 2 ways - Both are correct:
1) There are many ways to get into a meditative state
or
2) You can use the meditative state to do many things
I'd say that you can use literally anything to get into a meditative state and use the meditative state to do literally anything.
So what is the meditative state? For me it's a state of stillness, of pure awareness of what is, this first post anon here said it nicely and let me add one of my favorite quotes: "Meditation is the deliberate focus of unconditional awareness".
So for starters I'd say to first learn to relax your body and get loosen up (many people ignore this), maybe even spend your whole session relaxing your body, this works as a meditation because you will need to redirect your focus again and again on relaxing your body.
Afterwards I'd say focus on your breath, the olfactory anon says to "tune the breath" I have personally found that by just focusing on my breath it gets tuned and calmed on its own (just how Robert Bruce says in his New Energy Ways book that by just focusing pure awareness on a part of your body then that part knows how to relax and fix itself on its own).
After many sits your mind will silence and you will be left in stillness, it's now the time to do as the first post anon said and try to focus on the emptiness or focus on who is doing the awareness.
visualize emptyness outside, then, inside. Focus your awareness on this lack of both outside and inside. Then lose focus, stop.
It's not a philosophical thing (it can be interpreted that way I guess) it's a hypnotic technique to aid in meditation
(I'm the anon you quoted)
I see.
I've heard that one should focus on nothingness/emptiness (maybe this is the void some speak off)
However others, like this anon here 35834570 say that one should focus on who or what is doing the focusing/watching.
What is your opinion on this? I can easily get to a stillness/no-thoughts state, my breath then becomes like it doesn't exist, what should I focus on then?
(other anon with my first reply here)
When I focus on observer I usually get a thought loop. Something else is observing the observer ad infinitum.
Focus on nothingness/emptiness brought progress for me. You first gotta define a room/space to get something...
spend time cultivating concentratiom through the typical "focus on the breath" instruction.
once you can stably concentrate without distraction for minutes at a time, pick Amy sensation you notice. try to directly perceive that which this sensation is "happening to".
good luck, have fun.
It won't make sense to you unless you've either consciously gone through the process itself (via NDEs or meditation) and/or studied Tibetan Buddhism in some capacity. The text itself, it's meant to be read aloud after someone's death. That is why its actual name is liberation through hearing in the bardo (intermediate state).
Watch the following to get an idea:
The best method? Sitting down, closing my eyes, taking a deeper breath, stilling my thoughts or guiding them toward soem visualization.
That's it.
Decently performed meditation is less about some particular technique and more about practice and learning to handle your own thoughts. Some may fit you better than others, but no "technique" will give you a shortcut worth a damn.
I have a theory that the pepe poster who's always asking to be taught is actually an enlightened genius who already knows these things, and is just trying to foster good discussion.
As someone who is a bit along the path I can say meditation is a huge part of it. The other huge part is visualization. You have to imagine your energies and what they are doing to create results.
Well first you need to decide on a desired effect. Let's say you have a headeache. Imagine the pain from that headache flowing out from your head into the palm of your hand. Eventually you will actually feel the pain leave your head and sit in the palm of your hand like you are holding something. If you are bad at imagining you can write yourself a little mantra and repeat it to yourself. It works all the same.
Took cca. 350ug of LSD, thinking it was 200ug. I left my body for half an hour while sitting in bathtub with swimming trunks in luke warm water. I almost cried out of happines when I got to my senses, I was just glad that I can put on my shirt again on myself. That shit was wild.
Yeah I've felt that "glad to be back" feeling before, on 3g of shrooms. It's a beautiful feeling. Bad trips aren't fun but this is a powerful takeaway from one.
The average human needs first to disassociate from his thoughts, this may be a shocking event for some to the point they start making up stories in their head that they are going mad because it now feels like they have a talking radio inside their heads.
I say this because from my experience with guiding many people in mediation the average human literally lives on overthinking mind mode, the overconsumption of digital media probably multiplies this.
For me meditation is the ability of being aware of what is going on in your mind to the point that you can see reality without it being filtered by it.
Gf has DID and schizophrenia (for a lack of better term, she's constantly percieving stuff that isnt there), and I'd like to introduce her to meditation in a safe manner. Considering that if she feels she loses control over her own attention to real reality her hallucinations progressively gain more and more importance until it's all she can sees, how would you recommand we go about it ? The aim is to help her achieve a higher degree of peace and detachment from some of her thoughts.
It will probably take years of training but it all comes down to reclaiming her focus of awareness, neuroplasticity is real and she can do this even if she only has 1% of her focus under control.
I'd advice to start with somatic stuff, get her to feel her body, not think about feeling it but literally use her proprioceptive senses to get in touch with the feeling of her body being there, her mind will probably try to cancel the progress or even label it as dangerous or stupid but just refocus her again and again.
Apart from that add yoga/calisthenics or any other bodyweight program which makes you move your body and I'd also recommend cardio.
It's a cope practice. You can try for sure, but realistically unless you have a mental disorder like bipolar or schiz, your brain is far too rigid to just suddenly enter hallucinogenic states of being.
If you're totally sound of mind, you will not achieve ego death without using drugs to shut down your mind's processes.
It doesn't really matter, it applies to a lot of people. They just sit there and nothing happens regardless of whatever method or effort or non-effort they do.
Meditative states are basically altered states, and most people are hyper-sober at all times. Especially nerdy overthinking introvert type people you are going to find on internet forums. They can't just shift into weird states of mind at will. For every 10 people who try to meditate for however long they try, maybe 1 will experience any shift at all. Everyone else, placebo at best.
Personally I wouldn't bother with it. Especially having tried hard psychs, the idea that something like that will happen to me if I sit in silence seems ridiculous as a concept. If I really wanted "ego death" as per OP, I would just buy a bag of deems and be done with it.
Thank you for expressing your opinion.
'Altered states' can happen if you do a lot of concentration practice, but the ultimate goal is not that.
In meditation, the key point is not in weird states of mind but to remain in presence of awareness. For most people, they are very much lost in the mind with constant intrusive thoughts running around their head, which prevents them from simply being with themselves. They have to invent even more new bullshit around what boils down to simple presence.
For those people, there is dharana or if you want the quick and dirty method, psychedelics. Judging by what you wrote though, you have not succeeded at cracking your skull open. That is my opinion.
>the idea that something like that will happen to me if I sit in silence seems ridiculous as a concept.
Thing is, that it is indeed achievable, I did it, it took me 6 years of constant practice but now I am at a place in which I can sit and after 2 hours my body is asleep while my mind is awake, I then enter various states which are like LSD (I tried it in the past).
It can be done yes, it just takes time, also trying to be in a meditative state 24/7 during your whole walking life helps a lot.
Right but are you saying that for 6 years nothing happened at all?
Literally nothing happens for me, even though I have no thought in my head for extended periods. I can do that quite easy. Is having an empty mind meant to make something happen?
For 6 years some things happened, but it was mostly myself getting to know myself, accept myself, solve my trauma/fears, remember my old forgotten memories and forgive what happened.
Where you really in stillness? In true silence? Or the thought "Nothing is happening" was still there?
Did you totally abandon the thinking process to get into a feeling process? Did you then search for any resistance/fear you may have which you don't want to face? Maybe there was one which did not allowed for "things to happen"
All of what I'm saying is what I went through, your own path is all yours and I can't really give advice.
If you have in-ear headphones, you can do this. Play some peaceful music or white noise or just some sort of sound. And try to locate precisely where the sound is coming from.
With even most bog standard in-ears, the sound will have literally no spatial point of origin. So wherever you try to locate the sound you will grab at (metaphorically, in your mind) and find nothing but air. And just keep trying to place it. You can move the sound all around your head but you will never actually find it in any location.
Empty space outside, empty space inside. Focus the awareness on empty space, neither out nor in.
Having focused the awareness on empty space and having become empty space, drop your focus.
there is no outside nor inside.
and no meditation techniques
essentially this.
The OP is asking for method and wants to reach Nirvana or "whatever". Making an effort to reach, having expectation for event to unfold are all illusory and nothing to do with life.
People say that there are many ways to meditate but what do they mean by this?
I could interpret this in 2 ways - Both are correct:
1) There are many ways to get into a meditative state
or
2) You can use the meditative state to do many things
I'd say that you can use literally anything to get into a meditative state and use the meditative state to do literally anything.
So what is the meditative state? For me it's a state of stillness, of pure awareness of what is, this first post anon here said it nicely and let me add one of my favorite quotes: "Meditation is the deliberate focus of unconditional awareness".
So for starters I'd say to first learn to relax your body and get loosen up (many people ignore this), maybe even spend your whole session relaxing your body, this works as a meditation because you will need to redirect your focus again and again on relaxing your body.
Afterwards I'd say focus on your breath, the olfactory anon says to "tune the breath" I have personally found that by just focusing on my breath it gets tuned and calmed on its own (just how Robert Bruce says in his New Energy Ways book that by just focusing pure awareness on a part of your body then that part knows how to relax and fix itself on its own).
After many sits your mind will silence and you will be left in stillness, it's now the time to do as the first post anon said and try to focus on the emptiness or focus on who is doing the awareness.
visualize emptyness outside, then, inside. Focus your awareness on this lack of both outside and inside. Then lose focus, stop.
It's not a philosophical thing (it can be interpreted that way I guess) it's a hypnotic technique to aid in meditation
(I'm the anon you quoted)
I see.
I've heard that one should focus on nothingness/emptiness (maybe this is the void some speak off)
However others, like this anon here 35834570 say that one should focus on who or what is doing the focusing/watching.
What is your opinion on this? I can easily get to a stillness/no-thoughts state, my breath then becomes like it doesn't exist, what should I focus on then?
(other anon with my first reply here)
When I focus on observer I usually get a thought loop. Something else is observing the observer ad infinitum.
Focus on nothingness/emptiness brought progress for me. You first gotta define a room/space to get something...
spend time cultivating concentratiom through the typical "focus on the breath" instruction.
once you can stably concentrate without distraction for minutes at a time, pick Amy sensation you notice. try to directly perceive that which this sensation is "happening to".
good luck, have fun.
5 grams of magic mushrooms in a dark room. Your life will be changed forever in 3 hours
yes, changed for sure by falling into deeper, darker rabbit hole than whatever is your current existence. be careful of peak pleasures!
This just seems like a method for activating kundalini or something similar.
or activating psychosis
why 2/14 and 3:14?
I can convert to other religions with silly putty. I can. Eventually...
Videos on Meditation and being present:
Buy The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Book by Sogyal Rinpoch.
What is that all about?
It won't make sense to you unless you've either consciously gone through the process itself (via NDEs or meditation) and/or studied Tibetan Buddhism in some capacity. The text itself, it's meant to be read aloud after someone's death. That is why its actual name is liberation through hearing in the bardo (intermediate state).
Watch the following to get an idea:
gateway tapes, hemi sync, .flac can be found on the bay of pirates
https://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/anapanasati.pdf
you asked for the best
The best method? Sitting down, closing my eyes, taking a deeper breath, stilling my thoughts or guiding them toward soem visualization.
That's it.
Decently performed meditation is less about some particular technique and more about practice and learning to handle your own thoughts. Some may fit you better than others, but no "technique" will give you a shortcut worth a damn.
Hare Krsna Hare Krsna
Krsna Krsna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
I have a theory that the pepe poster who's always asking to be taught is actually an enlightened genius who already knows these things, and is just trying to foster good discussion.
Holy fuck bro. I’m schizophrenic, too
cheqd
As someone who is a bit along the path I can say meditation is a huge part of it. The other huge part is visualization. You have to imagine your energies and what they are doing to create results.
what do you mean to say about visualization? I don't know understand.
I've done a lot of meditation.
Well first you need to decide on a desired effect. Let's say you have a headeache. Imagine the pain from that headache flowing out from your head into the palm of your hand. Eventually you will actually feel the pain leave your head and sit in the palm of your hand like you are holding something. If you are bad at imagining you can write yourself a little mantra and repeat it to yourself. It works all the same.
ok... can you give another example? I have a good imagination, and can visualize. Are talking about LofA or what?
What is the best meditation method to raise testosterone?
I would really like to know this too. Will post cat pics for whoever can answer
Honestly, Cats are some of the best natural meditation practicioners. You can learn the nature of Zen by simply observing what a cat does.
300 push ups
400 mountain climbers
50 overhead squats
100 sit ups
2 mile run
5 times week
Took cca. 350ug of LSD, thinking it was 200ug. I left my body for half an hour while sitting in bathtub with swimming trunks in luke warm water. I almost cried out of happines when I got to my senses, I was just glad that I can put on my shirt again on myself. That shit was wild.
Yeah I've felt that "glad to be back" feeling before, on 3g of shrooms. It's a beautiful feeling. Bad trips aren't fun but this is a powerful takeaway from one.
Your breath is the breath of the universe. Focus on it.
nam-myoho-renge-kyo
>the terrain is your face
>the wind is your breath
>the birds/fauna are your thoughts
Theurgy, not vacuous mentition with no object but itself.
you're all braindead. the entirety of this website. users and lurkers.
>conveniently leaves self out of the equation
The average human needs first to disassociate from his thoughts, this may be a shocking event for some to the point they start making up stories in their head that they are going mad because it now feels like they have a talking radio inside their heads.
I say this because from my experience with guiding many people in mediation the average human literally lives on overthinking mind mode, the overconsumption of digital media probably multiplies this.
For me meditation is the ability of being aware of what is going on in your mind to the point that you can see reality without it being filtered by it.
Gf has DID and schizophrenia (for a lack of better term, she's constantly percieving stuff that isnt there), and I'd like to introduce her to meditation in a safe manner. Considering that if she feels she loses control over her own attention to real reality her hallucinations progressively gain more and more importance until it's all she can sees, how would you recommand we go about it ? The aim is to help her achieve a higher degree of peace and detachment from some of her thoughts.
You are the guru (Shiva), you'll have to figure it out.
It will probably take years of training but it all comes down to reclaiming her focus of awareness, neuroplasticity is real and she can do this even if she only has 1% of her focus under control.
I'd advice to start with somatic stuff, get her to feel her body, not think about feeling it but literally use her proprioceptive senses to get in touch with the feeling of her body being there, her mind will probably try to cancel the progress or even label it as dangerous or stupid but just refocus her again and again.
Apart from that add yoga/calisthenics or any other bodyweight program which makes you move your body and I'd also recommend cardio.
Appreciate the answer. I think I'll go with yoga/somatic stuff first.
You should leave a loaded gun for her to test her resolve
My meditation protocol: 20 min Mental Blackboard Visualization meditation, 20 min Visualization Third Eye meditation, 20 min Psionics
>blackboard visualization
Go on
Visualize a blackboard and write or draw shit on it.
Do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
Corpse Pose
It's a cope practice. You can try for sure, but realistically unless you have a mental disorder like bipolar or schiz, your brain is far too rigid to just suddenly enter hallucinogenic states of being.
If you're totally sound of mind, you will not achieve ego death without using drugs to shut down your mind's processes.
Your post is coping with why you can't meditate. Skill issue.
It doesn't really matter, it applies to a lot of people. They just sit there and nothing happens regardless of whatever method or effort or non-effort they do.
Meditative states are basically altered states, and most people are hyper-sober at all times. Especially nerdy overthinking introvert type people you are going to find on internet forums. They can't just shift into weird states of mind at will. For every 10 people who try to meditate for however long they try, maybe 1 will experience any shift at all. Everyone else, placebo at best.
Personally I wouldn't bother with it. Especially having tried hard psychs, the idea that something like that will happen to me if I sit in silence seems ridiculous as a concept. If I really wanted "ego death" as per OP, I would just buy a bag of deems and be done with it.
Thank you for expressing your opinion.
'Altered states' can happen if you do a lot of concentration practice, but the ultimate goal is not that.
In meditation, the key point is not in weird states of mind but to remain in presence of awareness. For most people, they are very much lost in the mind with constant intrusive thoughts running around their head, which prevents them from simply being with themselves. They have to invent even more new bullshit around what boils down to simple presence.
For those people, there is dharana or if you want the quick and dirty method, psychedelics. Judging by what you wrote though, you have not succeeded at cracking your skull open. That is my opinion.
>the idea that something like that will happen to me if I sit in silence seems ridiculous as a concept.
Thing is, that it is indeed achievable, I did it, it took me 6 years of constant practice but now I am at a place in which I can sit and after 2 hours my body is asleep while my mind is awake, I then enter various states which are like LSD (I tried it in the past).
It can be done yes, it just takes time, also trying to be in a meditative state 24/7 during your whole walking life helps a lot.
Right but are you saying that for 6 years nothing happened at all?
Literally nothing happens for me, even though I have no thought in my head for extended periods. I can do that quite easy. Is having an empty mind meant to make something happen?
For 6 years some things happened, but it was mostly myself getting to know myself, accept myself, solve my trauma/fears, remember my old forgotten memories and forgive what happened.
Where you really in stillness? In true silence? Or the thought "Nothing is happening" was still there?
Did you totally abandon the thinking process to get into a feeling process? Did you then search for any resistance/fear you may have which you don't want to face? Maybe there was one which did not allowed for "things to happen"
All of what I'm saying is what I went through, your own path is all yours and I can't really give advice.
If you have in-ear headphones, you can do this. Play some peaceful music or white noise or just some sort of sound. And try to locate precisely where the sound is coming from.
With even most bog standard in-ears, the sound will have literally no spatial point of origin. So wherever you try to locate the sound you will grab at (metaphorically, in your mind) and find nothing but air. And just keep trying to place it. You can move the sound all around your head but you will never actually find it in any location.
This will help you.