Meditation
If you have watched television or movies consistently at any point in your life, chances are, you have heard about meditation, and how it, supposedly, helps to bring you peace.
The problem is, few people are ‘trained’ to meditate, and many people feel that it is a waste of time, even though they have never given it a fair trial. Now, what is the point of holding an opinion if that opinion isn’t an informed one? Is is so that you can be proven wrong?
I can’t really tell you the benefits of meditation unless you have also experienced deep meditation. If you have had deep meditations before, then you already know of the benefits directly, so there is no point in me explaining what those benefits are. Let nobody say that I don’t engage in pointless activities in the hopes that somehow, maybe, it won’t be pointless after all.
I’m going to dispense with the technical jargon that researches use to describe meditation. This is the only paragraph where you’ll see words like alpha-state, beta waves, and the like. Jargon exists for two reasons: to shorten a well known concept for easy communication among those who know that concept, and to confuse the rest. If I said “The method ‘float DivideUnsafe(int,int)’ in the class BasicMath throws an exception when a zero is passed as the second argument,” most of you out there would stare at me blankly, wanting to run away. A much smaller segment will know exactly what I said, and will tell me one of three effective solutions to that problem. Such is the power of jargon, that if I tried to explain the same concept without using specialized definitions designed by programmers, that it would take me several paragraphs to describe what I said in one sentence. Instead of using the jargon, I’ll use the layman terms so that everyone (myself included) can understand.
So, what is meditation, in easily digestible terms? It is an exercise where you consciously control your thoughts, usually accompanied by breathing exercises, visualization, and sometimes with verbal cues. Some meditation techniques also involve movement, such as Yoga. Entering the creative flow state is also a form of meditation. The methods to achieve meditation are varied, and different methods achieve different results.
Probably the most recognized methods of meditation are where you sit cross-legged with a straight back, breath rhythmically, and attempt to clear your mind. Most people give this a try, and after a few attempts, give up because of the difficulty of suppressing random thoughts. The people who can use this method successfully have usually had others guide them in person, giving them handy bits of advice as each mental barrier is reached. Unfortunately, I don’t have free plane tickets laying around to help people who want to learn this method, and the written word is very poor at anticipating an individual’s needs, so this isn’t a method that I can teach effectively. Learning this method is a long struggle, but the rewards are there, and in many circumstances, the lessons learned are very useful, even more than the lessons learned from the highly visual meditations. Of course, each meditation method has its strengths and weaknesses, so even such a powerful method as clearing your mind completely may not be the best choice for your circumstances.
Even though I can’t teach you how to learn mind clearing meditation techniques, I can help you learn how to use visualization meditations. These meditations can range all of the way from simply using your imagination, all the way to deep, trance like, full sensory meditations. Yes, you can meditate on eating, and be able to taste the food, feel it as you chew on it, smell it, see it, and if food made any noise, even hear it. That, however, takes a lot of practice to master, but it is within anyone’s ability, if they do indeed practice.
Tangent: I was considering putting a cliff hanger here to whet your appetite for more information, but I figured that it would be a bit counter-productive, since I can just type for a few more hours and have the entire post ready within a couple of days. Also, with how badly I procrastinate at times, if I don’t finish the article now, I don’t know if I ever will.
Here is the primary benefit of meditation. You’ll find it easier to control your emotions. I guarantee that, if you get nothing else out of meditation, that being able to control your emotions will more than repay you for the time that you spend practicing. Meditation also opens the door to some amazing insight into your own thought process. Now, who doesn’t like understanding themselves? Anybody?
I do have a word of warning, though. When I set out to learn how to meditate, I was very impatient. Please don’t make the same mistake that I made. Meditation is a skill that takes months to learn and a lifetime to master. I’m going to present you with a few easy steps, but take a month to work on each of these steps, rather than trying to master them all in a weekend.
The first step is to learn how to visualize objects. Close your eyes and hold a mental picture of a very simple object, such as a ball or a block. Imagine the object using all of your senses, including how it feels, smells, tastes, looks, and even how it sounds. (For objects that don’t naturally make noise, ask how it would sound if you dropped it on the floor.) Is its texture smooth or rough? Does it feel like wood, plastic, rubber, or glass, or some entirely different material? Hold that mental image in your mind for as long as possible, with all of your senses, until you can’t concentrate on it any more. Don’t be discouraged if you can only hold the simple object in your mind for a few seconds. For this first month, just work on being able to hold the image in your mind for as long as possible, up to about five minutes.
The second step is to expand your visualization. Think of more complex objects, such as leaves, feathers, and keyboards. Imagine as much detail as you can, such as the veins of the leaves and feathers, and the texture of the keys, and how some keys are smoother than others, and still other keys have their letters rubbed off. During this month, concentrate on expanding the detail of the objects, while maintaining the length of the visualization.
The third step is to multiply your visualizations. Think of many objects. While thinking of a leaf, add a feather. Make them interact, touching each other, pulling at each other, etc. Add a keyboard to the scene, then another complex object, until you can not add any more. During this, maintain the level of detail and the length of the visualization. By the end of this month, eight fully detailed objects in a scene for five minutes is very good progress.
The fourth step is to enter the visualization. The great thing about meditation is that you can see yourself from a first person perspective and third person perspective at the same time. While maintaining the number of objects, level of detail, and length of the visualization, take this month to practice interacting with the objects using your representation inside the meditation.
After this, you should be skilled enough to do any visualization meditation with proficiency. You can go ahead and relax the level of detail, because you will be working with far more objects than just the eight that most people can handle at full detail, but keep up the practice, so that your skills stay sharp. Perhaps for your first full meditation, you could invite your subconscious to take a human form and you can have a conversation.
I’ll also post a few of my favorite guided meditations, which I use as springboards to enter a deep meditative state. Stay tuned for these updates.
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