It's good that meditation works for you. But be aware after meditation session for some time person is able to accept more suggestions from others.
It's a grey area and to have positive results from meditation depends on each individual.
meditation
- Thread starter quarky
- Start date
-
- Tags
- consciousness
It's good that meditation works for you. But be aware after meditation session for some time person is able to accept more suggestions from others.
It's a grey area and to have positive results from meditation depends on each individual.
Yeah, I suppose there will always be a few loonies out there. But are those stories representative of the total population of meditators?
It's very much like exercise, in that there are so many benefits that if you could put it in a pill it would be very widely used. Helps with depression, sleep, anxiety, immune system response, blood pressure, compassion, empathy, resilience, happiness, etc. The new research is getting more and more robust. Admittedly, some of the old research was pretty lacking. This is a field on the upswing, not the other way around.
To say it depends on the individual, you could say that about anything. The average person is getting results, if they do the work.
This is a passable blog pointer to recent research, mixed with a few other things.
http://www.scoop.it/t/contemplative-science
One of the better researchers, Richard Davidson, gave a great talk recently on The Emergence of Contemplative Neuroscience, covering the history of the research. Pretty long, though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKKg3CDczpA
Almost everyone is experiencing a certain level of reality, sure. But you might be surprised how many unconscious assumptions are embedded in your experience. Meditation can help with that.
Moments of not-thinking, sure. But if you keep practicing, you can learn to think without becoming so completely absorbed in thought that you lose awareness of the here and now. Meditation in that way, is actually the ultimate skepticism - it helps you see that your imagination is not so real. It becomes much harder over time to be drawn into strong negative emotions based on your daydreams.
You may be misreading my intent in this thread.
I'm not extolling the virtues of meditation, nor promoting a particular brand.
I quit doing it, though mostly out of laziness.
I started this as an off-shoot of the "consciousness" thread.
My experiment, in my opinion, relates to some data on how the brain functions.
Meditation doesn't "work for me" anymore than studying butterflies works for someone else.
I merely found that sort of exploration compelling, and pursued it, with a certain youthful abandon.
I'm not selling any self-help books, believe me.
Adding: Unless someone has demonstrated error in them, sources are not outdated, just been right for a good while.
I'm having difficulty being serious.
Yet, this is a very serious subject.
Hopefully, I'll get into a fight with the ol' lady tonight, and I'll be in the proper mood tomorrow.
I just can't figure out what to fight about.
She has the uncanny ability to see through my fake fights.
it's kind of pissing me off, frankly.
(I'll show the bitch, and wrap this up, with luck, on Thursday.)
Yet, this is a very serious subject.
Hopefully, I'll get into a fight with the ol' lady tonight, and I'll be in the proper mood tomorrow.
I just can't figure out what to fight about.
She has the uncanny ability to see through my fake fights.
it's kind of pissing me off, frankly.
(I'll show the bitch, and wrap this up, with luck, on Thursday.)
Zeuzzz
Banned
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2007
- Messages
- 5,211
Sam Harris gives a great talk about consciousness and mediation here. He is speaking to a group of atheists and cajoles them into all meditating for a few minutes, and trying get them to live in the now and not the past or future.
Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment
I was quite impressed by his insight in this one, having not been very impressed with some of his previous talks.
Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment
I was quite impressed by his insight in this one, having not been very impressed with some of his previous talks.
dafydd
Banned
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2008
- Messages
- 35,398
I'm an atheist and I always live in the now. I find living in the future or the past to be an impossibility.
And moreso with no chemical assistance - and I am not big on chemical assistance.
JihadJane
not a camel
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 91,134
I don't believe you.
What's God got to do with it?
To be do be doobie doo
To be do be doobie doo
Yes.
Last edited:
Well,
I got to wrap up my story, even though I don't really want to anymore. It will be like work, trying to describe the pivotal event of that night, alluded to in the post above...but someone has to do it.
The process of allowing thought to run out; to exhaust itself...brings one up close and personal with all the craziness that is banging around in the noggin.
It's as if one never really noticed that stuff before, even though its mental soundtrack had been running, pretty much non-stop, for ever.
You feel ashamed at first, at the swill-heap of clutter.
So you pass it through a process; like a hoarder intervention, and you deal with each item, and let it go, maybe to the Good Will of mental dump sites.
Before I continue, let me assure you that I am a total mess now; probably couldn't even get in a cult now, much less start one. My mind is once again full of clutter and its voice yammers at me constantly. The worst example would be an irritating advertisement jingle. My mind wants to punish me, and I don't blame it, really.
I've gotten a bit side-tracked, but I really need to wrap this up.
Its difficult to describe the process if you've never engaged in it.
It's so boring, that there's nothing to do at all except focus on your breathing, and notice all the thoughts that try to arise.
So you get tuned into that process to a very subtle level.
on the way to silence, you start to notice a noise that is less than thought. It doesn't even manage to make a full word of thought. It's the impulse to make a thought.
You tune in on that.
And you let it run out of juice.
And you're left, in my case, with a pool of liquid contained by a barrier, surrounded by and endless expanse of the same fluid.
Now, impulses to generate thought have subsided, yet one observes the mental show.
Three aspects left to my consciousness:
The contained; the container; the beyond.
Immersed in this inner reality, I was able to observe that the container was made of the same stuff as the pond within, and the endless expanse on the back side of the wall.
And then, the wall dissolved, and 3 became one.
I don't know why, but the moment co-coincided with an enormous rush of bliss and warmth that lasted for many hours. It was as if all the brain cells were firing in unison.
It lit me up.
I had bumped into something immutable, and I was glad to know it was there.
It came with a pleasure that immensely exceeded anything else I've experienced.
(btw, i've candy flipped with loving partners. Orgasms, even in that scenario, could not compete with the state of no-thought.
Weird, eh?
I got to wrap up my story, even though I don't really want to anymore. It will be like work, trying to describe the pivotal event of that night, alluded to in the post above...but someone has to do it.
The process of allowing thought to run out; to exhaust itself...brings one up close and personal with all the craziness that is banging around in the noggin.
It's as if one never really noticed that stuff before, even though its mental soundtrack had been running, pretty much non-stop, for ever.
You feel ashamed at first, at the swill-heap of clutter.
So you pass it through a process; like a hoarder intervention, and you deal with each item, and let it go, maybe to the Good Will of mental dump sites.
Before I continue, let me assure you that I am a total mess now; probably couldn't even get in a cult now, much less start one. My mind is once again full of clutter and its voice yammers at me constantly. The worst example would be an irritating advertisement jingle. My mind wants to punish me, and I don't blame it, really.
I've gotten a bit side-tracked, but I really need to wrap this up.
Its difficult to describe the process if you've never engaged in it.
It's so boring, that there's nothing to do at all except focus on your breathing, and notice all the thoughts that try to arise.
So you get tuned into that process to a very subtle level.
on the way to silence, you start to notice a noise that is less than thought. It doesn't even manage to make a full word of thought. It's the impulse to make a thought.
You tune in on that.
And you let it run out of juice.
And you're left, in my case, with a pool of liquid contained by a barrier, surrounded by and endless expanse of the same fluid.
Now, impulses to generate thought have subsided, yet one observes the mental show.
Three aspects left to my consciousness:
The contained; the container; the beyond.
Immersed in this inner reality, I was able to observe that the container was made of the same stuff as the pond within, and the endless expanse on the back side of the wall.
And then, the wall dissolved, and 3 became one.
I don't know why, but the moment co-coincided with an enormous rush of bliss and warmth that lasted for many hours. It was as if all the brain cells were firing in unison.
It lit me up.
I had bumped into something immutable, and I was glad to know it was there.
It came with a pleasure that immensely exceeded anything else I've experienced.
(btw, i've candy flipped with loving partners. Orgasms, even in that scenario, could not compete with the state of no-thought.
Weird, eh?
Zeuzzz
Banned
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2007
- Messages
- 5,211
Science Is awesome.
But can those so deep into the empirical system ever step back and see the logical perspective vs the intuitive perspective ?
Both are in constant mutual symbiosis. It's hard to explain how and why, but trust me, they are.
Comprende?
But can those so deep into the empirical system ever step back and see the logical perspective vs the intuitive perspective ?
Both are in constant mutual symbiosis. It's hard to explain how and why, but trust me, they are.
Comprende?
Last edited:
You see math, I say system 2, you see art, I say system 1.
that's cool. Its not for everyone.
I guess the point of this thread was to point out that one can examine the workings of the brain, to some extent, from within...and that what we sense as consciousness is quite malleable, as well as being highly contingent on the process of thought.
And lastly, that we can willfully alter that process and discover and underlying reality, or, default zone...which, for whatever reason, is a blissful state.
This is obviously quite subjective, though there is a body of of similar subjective data, from all times and all parts of the globe.
When I discovered this default state of awareness, it came with a realization that it was there for everything. Spiders, trees, rocks, atoms, even.
Mods, feel free now to dump this thread in R&P, where it likely belongs, along with the consciousness thread. I've had my say, though I'm willing to go further, into an hypothesis that attempts a more science-based explanation of the possibility of consciousness being a back ground field.
And lastly, that we can willfully alter that process and discover and underlying reality, or, default zone...which, for whatever reason, is a blissful state.
This is obviously quite subjective, though there is a body of of similar subjective data, from all times and all parts of the globe.
When I discovered this default state of awareness, it came with a realization that it was there for everything. Spiders, trees, rocks, atoms, even.
Mods, feel free now to dump this thread in R&P, where it likely belongs, along with the consciousness thread. I've had my say, though I'm willing to go further, into an hypothesis that attempts a more science-based explanation of the possibility of consciousness being a back ground field.
dlorde
Philosopher
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2007
- Messages
- 6,864
Ah, hypnosis and self-hypnosis. Yes, I've used relaxation & auto-suggestion to quite good effect.
Quarky, I find descriptions of experiences such as yours very interesting and valuable. That's true whether from the most skeptical skeptic, or the wooest woo, or anyone in between. But practicing skeptics embellish less; they seem more able to focus on the actual experience rather than interpretations/extrapolations of the experience, such as "feeling the presence of God." (The downside is that, it might be harder to have certain types of experience, in the absence of prior expectations from a pre-conceived narrative.)
Narratives, experiences, practices. When examining other systems of practice, Skepticism focuses on the former, which is a good starting point. But once satisfied that qi, psi, ghosts, and Noah's Ark don't exist, how do you approach the experiences? You have to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that they do exist (as experiences), but the tendency is to dismiss them as interchangeable (dream = drug trip = creative flow = meditative state = orgasm = etc.) and/or irrelevant. That's overlooking an opportunity for understanding and common ground.
Respectfully,
Myriad
Narratives, experiences, practices. When examining other systems of practice, Skepticism focuses on the former, which is a good starting point. But once satisfied that qi, psi, ghosts, and Noah's Ark don't exist, how do you approach the experiences? You have to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that they do exist (as experiences), but the tendency is to dismiss them as interchangeable (dream = drug trip = creative flow = meditative state = orgasm = etc.) and/or irrelevant. That's overlooking an opportunity for understanding and common ground.
Respectfully,
Myriad