On Meditation and Some Other Things Other Than Meditation

[draconica]

Do you meditate, dear reader?

I don't want to impose on my dear readers the idea that everyone should meditate. It's not a wake-up call to go and meditate. Meditation is boring. There's nothing special about meditation. If I were to do so, it'd be a bit like writing "do you exercise, dear reader? oh exercising is so cool!! it has these and these health benefits etc etc". You already know all this. If you don't, well, you will still not learn anything of that kind about meditation from this post.

Instead, I want to talk what's it's like to meditate. Because some of you don't meditate, and some of you will never meditate, and some of you do meditate a lot, and some even treat their entire life as a big uninterrupted meditation. Let's just see what it's like to meditate and ponder on it.

Meditation is a focused concentration. To meditate, people are usually instructed to sit in a particular pose, but it's more of a spiritual tradition than requirement. Think of this pose as an instance of traditional tea ceremony over a tea party: you don't have to invoke the tradition to drink tea, and as such you don't have to invoke the tradition to meditate. In fact, worrying too much about the tradition is something that might ruin the effort to focus.

Now we kind of have to explore what is the focus and what is the concentration. These words are very similar in their meaning, and "focused concentration" sound a bit like "dead corpse". But ok, since we've already chosen that wording, let's stick with it. Focusing means pointing your attention to a particular sensation, and concentration means not letting the focus go anywhere else. The initial phase of meditation usually involves focusing on your breath. You breath in, you breath out. You notice it. It goes on for a while.

If all goes well, you will feel warmth. At least I do when all goes well. If you don't, you might feel some other internal cue that you're there. The goal of the meditation is getting you there. The state of awareness. The state of active noticing. You notice your feelings, your thoughts, your signals, your anything that is noticeable.

Why do we need to reach this state? Well, uh, you kind of usually decide in advance what you want to focus on and focus on that. The goal is never to solve a problem, meditation doesn't really solve problems. For that the usual recommendation is to go and solve the problem. That usually requires active thinking. Meditation is passive thinking: you notice, but you don't unfold your thoughts like you do. If you accidentally do, that's ok, that's what the mind does sometimes. Notice that. Remind yourself that you're meditating. Forcing thoughts away invites the thought of forcing the thought away, so you're in the active thinking phase again and it doesn't work. So reminding is a better strategy.

I didn't really answer the question of why we need to reach the state of awareness. I'm aware of that. The thing is, I can't answer this question directly. You don't need to reach this state. There's never an internal need or external need to be aware, because you're constantly aware of things anyway. But you may do fun things while you're in the state. You may repeat mantras in your mind. You may ask questions. Don't answer, just ask. Ask questions for which there are no answers. But why? Why would you do that?

Well, this kind of lets you invite these stuff deeper into your subconsciousness. You move your subconsciousness into a more receptive state then you invite things over into it. And they're integrated into you. Why? Because that's all you can do with an unanswerable question that still worries you. That's all you can do with a mantra. They have no effect otherwise. You can't ponder on them. So you do this thing.

What kind of effect should one expect from doing that? The easy answer is "none, because you shouldn't get attached to the outcome". The easy response to the easy answer then is "then I will not do that". So even thought the easy answer is the correct one, I must also give you the incorrect answer, which is "all kinds of things".

This answer is incorrect because subtle shifts you experience during meditation are not immediately noticeable. You can't have a perfect recollection of your internal state before and after the meditation. On the surface, you might experience relief, a sense of dread, a sense of having just meditated.

I didn't ask the whys to guide you into thinking that meditation is cool, but to help me articulate what is going on. A lot of times the question "why?" acts like a good pointer that prompts us to advance to the next step of the explanation when we're not sure what to say next, even if it doesn't serve a utilitarian goal.

But in conclusion I will anyway give you a utilitarian answer why you should meditate: it makes you chill.

But why be chill?..

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Do you meditate, dear reader? <<

Sometimes. We've done guided meditations in ritual. I'm most likely to use it when I get stressed; I like the Sa Ta Na Ma because it is both effective and discreet. Other times I meditate if I need mental clarity. I like moving meditations such as walking, where it's easy to get into the zone.