I started meditating about 2 years ago because I liked the idea of having better 'control of my mind' - at the time I thought it was a gimmick but to my surprise it actually works.
To begin with I found that after 20-30mins of closing my eyes and trying to think of nothing, I always came out of the session feeling a lot calmer. Fast forward to today and I can now isolate thoughts and throw them away if they are garbage, which I'm not gonna lie is a pretty useful tool to have. The brain has a tendency to replay bad memories over and over again (recent embarrassing social situations, or even random events from years ago can suddenly pop up) and they can affect how you go about your day to day when you overthink them - you get overly nervous about a presentation you have to do later for example.
But now I can stop the thought in it's tracks and just 'let it go', returning my attention to my work. Because you calm and slow your mind in meditation you are able to separate out how thoughts are formed and observe how they change your mood and how they make you react, which gives you more power over them in daily life.
@amelius It's been in my experience "results" vary widely with a lot of people. Part of the reason is that calmness is not the ultimate aim of meditation, but rather, a side-effect.
For some people, the practice of meditation will quickly surface up a lot of anxiety and existential issues. It won't feel calm at all. Having been lured into thinking calmness is the end-goal, meditation is written off as "not working", when in fact in this case, it worked all too well.
Just some food for thought. I had written quite a bit more on different threads:
Thank you so much for your writing on this issue. I second others' motion that you should write a book, but until you do, what book would you recommend for someone who wants to get started?
I usually give out book recommendations based on the person's interest. So I'll give my best shot for making a generic recommendation.
The first thing to understand is that books on meditation are not going to help you all that much. This is not something you try to understand intellectually. It is experiential. You are much better off attempting to practice. If you need help with practice, there are various groups and flavors of mindfulness meditation: vipassana, zen, insight, etc. There's going to be a flavor, and a group of people with whom it will feel right.
Barring that, hacker_9's suggestion of the Meditation sub-reddit is not bad. My suggestion though is to ignore the people talking about theory -- practice, find people who practice, and allow the issues and observations to surface up from there. It's a kind of empirical inquiry into yourself where you drive the discussion through your observations, rather than the other way around.
Now having said that, the most generic book on helping you practice meditation that I recommend is Mindfulness in Plain English. You can find this for free online.
I have also heard about Calm and Headspace apps and knew people who tried it. They are probably not a bad way to start -- though like all things, it comes and goes, and there will come a time to drop it and move on.
Traditional Buddhist teachings don't necessarily get into the psychological aspects of it. Or let me be more precise: the psychological descriptions don't seem to resonate well with Westerners, and is typically dismissed as part of empty ceremonies, or pre-modern descriptions of psychology. (For example: what does the Padme Family or the element of Air have anything to do with your day-to-day life?)
So a meditation practice can be paired with therapy, and will work very well if the therapist also practices.
That leads to the other book I would recommend, since people are interested in healing their neurotic patterns. There is a great book whose technique complements mindfulness meditation: Tsultrim Allione's "Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict". This book distilled out an older practice in a way that combines with gestalt therapy and presented in a way that is much more accessible for people who grew up in the West. Like the tradition it comes from, although the full method uses visualization methods, it ends with mindfulness meditation. Along with a regular practice of meditation, it's a great way to deliberately gain some insight into your subconscious.
I was reading through your posts and saw this:
"The second is this: when Shakti pierces the 4th chakra and/or the hrit padma (below it) ... you'll gain a kind of "compass". From there on out, you'll always have a way of checking which path to go. It might mean staying with kundalini yoga, it might not be.
The journey getting to the center involves piercing through the 2nd ganthri, learning to surrender. It will be like peeling an onion. You'll cry. A lot. And you'll know it is worth it."
This is related to kundalini yoga? Any recommendations on how to get started there?
I was speaking specifically to that person, not for the general case. Kundalini yoga is not the only way to awaken and work with the Kundalini. For example, a martial art enthusiast might check out Scott Meredith and Damo Mitchell's books to develop refined power and connect with Shakti through their martial arts.
Believe or not, you can get in touch with this heart experience that going to evangelical Christian revivals (there are some severe shadow sides related to this, however, there are Christian mystics around) or go attend kirtans. There are shamanic methods. Or just go to a rave and really open up your heart while dancing. Mindful prayers, asking to be guided into this will be heard.
Email me sometime. Maybe in the course of talking, what you say will remind me of a path that may really resonate with you.
Not very long at all. You'll notice a positive feeling even after your first session. I have a lot of room to improve but there really is no end. Really you just learn more about yourself and how fast your brain is always working as it jumps between memories. You see how it focuses, and observe how certain thoughts drift in and set off a cascade of reactions and so on.
Twice a day, morning and evening for 30 mins. I go on for an hour sometimes too. Once you get the hang of it though it is much easier to get into deeper meditation quicker. Thesedays I do 30 mins before sleep every other day. I know if I need to do more when I start feeling anxious more often in the day. Check out reddit.com/r/meditation for a place to start.
I don't remember how I started with meditation, but it was working in data entry that prepared me for it. Figuring out how to speed up my typing led me to the realization of how the mind is just layers of processes, and how training through repetition is just a matter of setting up a cue/response behavior in sub-conscious processes. Which can be physical (training to hit a baseball or ride a bike) but can just as easily be mental (training to become calm on cue).
It's not really about nixing unhappy thoughts. A lot of people misunderstand that as the purpose of meditation. It's possible to get into bliss states through some form of concentration exercises, and among my friends, we call them bliss junkies.
Rather, it's the avoidance of unhappy emotions and thoughts that create distortions, leading to neurotic emotional and mental patterns. These emotions and thoughts will arise on their own regardless of how you try to suppress them (and often times, suppressing them will make them grow stronger).
The basic practice is very simple at it's core: what arises will arises, what passes will pass. So when it arises, you allow it to arise -- and remain aware. When it passes, you let it go -- and remain aware.
As things that have normally been suppressed start surfacing up, it's as if you are "sweating out" these toxic thoughts. It will get worse before it gets better.
It goes deeper than that, since detoxifying isn't the ultimate aim either. It's the direct experience that what you think of as "self" is really an illusion. It's only after that, that things start get really interesting.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Buddhist teacher. Just a practitioner for more than 10 years and have read some of the texts. For best results, talk to a real teacher.
The illusion of self is a big deal in Buddhism and it can be confusing and daunting at first, but the concept behind it is really not that difficult to grasp. (Putting it into practice is a different challenge!)
One analogy I like to use is that of an automobile. The individual parts - the engine, the wheels, the chassis, the steering wheel, the gears etc - are all necessary, but individually, none of them are the car themselves. No one would look at a seat and say "that's a nice car!" Yet, we do just that in our daily lives.
We experience anxiety and fear and say "that's ME!". We go through several bodily experiences as "I, me, mine". (Which is NOT the same as saying this body is not you. Think of the car analogy. The tears are happening to you, but the tears are NOT YOU.)
Therefore, in all Buddhist traditions, we are taught to view all experiences as fundamentally lacking any self. This body, this experience, this thought, this taste/smell/touch, nothing has the self. Those are all beautiful but empty experiences.
Hope this answered your "illusion of self" question at least partly.
Buhddha showed we are all the same, at a certain level. One big pot of consciousness, if you will. Being disciplined at presence allows for the insight of this truth. And it's repeatable by others thorough practice of certain meditaion techniques. The illusion becomes an ovious point of dissonance at that point, thus the illusion of 'self'.
Some of the leading neuroscience is showing that what you conceive as the sense of self is something created by the brain. It does not exist the way you think it does.
That's not the illusion I was talking about though. It's one thing to read about that, but it's quite another to directly experience this. Like @kordless said, this is a repeatable process where you can see this for yourself. (And there's a great book written by a neuroscientist who also practices mindful meditation, and wrote about these two perspectives).
This is also not limited to the Buddhist tradition, though the sutrayana Buddhist teaches this as the primary thing and speaks the loudest about it. (There are ... realms, let's just say, beyond no-self and emptiness).
One-point concentration leads to very well-described states called jhana (dhayana). In deeper states, there can arise an orgasmic bliss, probably better than anything you can take.
There's a verse from one of Mitten & Deva Premal's songs that describe some of this bliss well:
I stood alone at the gateless gate
too drunk on love to hesitate
To the winds I cast my fate
and the remnants of my fear.
Concentration is not mindfulness meditation, though.
This stuff is hard to explain textually as it's more about feelings you have, but if I were to try.. during meditation bad memories will enter your focus and set off a cascade of negative reactions. But the deeper into the meditation you are the harder it is to shake your focus. Instead you end up observing these patterns of thoughts and how they evoke one another. Your let them have their moment in the sun and then they fade into the background as they failed to provoke you. Some stuff I've read suggests that the brain also may rewire these memories to permanently have less of an emotional impact. After many sessions you literally have to go out of your way to bring these memories back up!
I thought this paper was fascinating! Here is my brief summary of this paper.
This paper is discussing meditation in a fairly broad sense, which includes practices related to eastern religions (Buddhism, Hindu), abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), as well as modern practices found in a modern clinical setting (CBT).
They propose a classification of meditation practices. At the top level, there are three types of meditation: (1) Attentive Meditation, (2) Constructive Meditation, and (3)Deconstructive Meditation.
Attentive meditation has to do with controlling ones focus. These practices generally have the practitioner intentionally narrow or broaden their focus. Zen breath counting and body scanning meditation are examples of Attentive meditation.
Constructive meditation practices aim to create and strengthen healthy habits, or commitments to certain values. This could involve imagining what it's like to be others, or imagining yourself as an embodiment of certain values. Constructive practices may also have the practitioner contemplate their own mortality, so that they can consider what is truly important in life. Christians praying to God for strength and thinking about their immortal soul are examples of Constructive meditation.
Deconstructive meditation practices aim to foster insight into the perceptions, emotions, and cognition of the practitioner. Self-inquiry and contemplation on these objects themselves are often a part of this type of practice. CBT and other modern clinical techniques are examples of Deconstructive meditation.
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A couple other notes:
* All three types of meditation seem to be useful in different ways.
* It's uncertain to what extent do the effects of specific meditations rest on the frameworks, beliefs, and world views that underlie these practices.
One resource I've found to be a refreshing take on the nuts and bolts of insight meditation that I think may appeal to engineers is the free book by Daniel Ingram. http://integrateddaniel.info/book/
As someone who has done some meditation and spent some time as a Buddhist monk, I find this scientific treatment of the subject very interesting. When I was in the robe we meditated a lot under the guidance of senior monks who were very accomplished. Other forms of meditation were only mentioned in passing. I've heard many incomplete descriptions of the differences between various types of meditation and wondered if there was a good taxonomy somewhere.
If you're curious about current scientific research around Meditation, check out the Advances in Meditation Research conference at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC (http://meditation2015.com/) The one in 2013 had many great talks and interesting findings (like meditation causes "wakefulness" instead of helping you sleep).
I feel more balanced after meditation. But I have no way how to otherwise quantify it. For example, I'm also more conscious about being irritated when I'm irritated and can avoid feeding thought patterns that would prolong this irritation. Placebo? Neurological changes? Observational bias? Beats me, but I see nothing harm in sitting down, breathing, and observing my thoughts.
Imagine what it would be if you had lived little bit intoxicated for whole of your life. Then you would start sobering up.
You would notice more awareness, more focus, clarity and possibly well being. Rest of the world would seem less confusing.
Questioning the assumption that your normal wakeful mental state is the ultimate 'being alive and conscious' what your brain can do might be the first step. If you persist, eventually you see meditation same way as brushing your teeth. It's important part of maintaining your mental hygiene.
Yes! I have been trying for ages to convince people that the "normal" "sober" wakeful and attentive mental state is not the ultimate ledger of human perception. Most people immediately discard this thought, their minds responding to a strawman argument which equates sobriety with intoxication.
Meditation helps me deal with ADD and depression and increases my executive functioning immensely. I think it should be taught in schools to children-- the mere discipline meditation grants you is worth passing on.
Perhaps because they do. People with ADD pursue their interests obsessively. If one of those interests is programming, you'll find you way here. I did before I even uncovered ADD.
Because after a while some of us get totally fed up with living life the 'normal way': that is to say chasing one fragile form of happiness after another.
If it's peace you want, you really should look into Advaita Vedanta.
Happiness/sadness is but another duality. There is no peace in duality. Once you understand (as you seem to) that one can find no lasting peace in ephemeral things (money, status, physical pleasures) it's a natural progression to throw all the dualities away and seek the source, Brahman, the ultimate reality, formless, changeless. Of course given the extent of most people's social conditioning these days, it's easier said than done but anyone can do it.
It's not strange - how we live by default, that's strange. There's whole another original, normal way of dealing with life and situations.
To a logical person the easiest take away is that control over your senses / thoughts / perception frees up a lot of your capabilities with which you can do more - whatever that is, money making, art, nothing. You do it while truly enjoying it. It's great if you can pull it off!
Every human being wants happiness. Whether it's money, cool gadgets, attractive significant others, knowledge, volunteer work, exercise, or meditation, the general goal is to feel happy.
At least for me meditation has taught that happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral. It happens, then it goes away. Like other feelings as well. I'm not living for higher goals, but I'm more content by the present, whatever the present may be.
Pointless? No: If you are happier, you'll make people around you happier. If everybody tries to achieve that, we'll have a much saner society. Thus, we should take it as our responsibility to achieve a good level of happiness as often as possible (obviously not by making others pay for it).
I'm not sure we mean the same thing by the word "happiness", but like fsloth I'm not very interested in pursuing what I mean by it. I think there are other, better ways to get a saner society than to endlessly chase after transitory good feelings.
The idea here (that one gradually slips into with meditation or other mystical systems) is that there is no "You". Happy, sad, You, other people, all these "things" don't really exist, they're all illusions, mind constructs, artificial.
Once you see the world for what it really is (a dream), all the masks fall away and you're free to go on with your "life" unencumbered by artificial thought creations that another artificial thought creation ("You") thought were real.
Meditation is a specific exercise like yoga that has physiological responses (well, neurological in meditations case).
I've read western mindfulness literature, western zen-buddhist literature and some pieces from tibetan buddhists. All the advice on specific meditation techniques I've read there were sound.
The tibetan buddhist books usually flirt in some places with their traditions which can be a bit off-putting but it seldom affects the meditation itself and is something like "if you practice this 50 years and learn to levitate pleace don't brag about it".
So, zen buddhist or mindfullness books are usually fully fully compatible with a materialistic world view (like mine).
Well odds are there exists something relevant, but it probably falls under "quantum mysticism" or other such quackery (e.g. transcendental meditation has actual scientists backing it but you gotta pay 1000$ for the privilege and it's really a cult). Science and mysticism/philosophy don't really mix.
When you're doing meditation, especially no-mind meditation, physical processes are irrelevant, indeed the entire world is irrelevant. Looking for explanations or theories or systems in the scientific way is, on one hand, hard/impossible due to subjectivity and on the other, goes against the entire practice since you're inventing even more dualities and thought constructs when you should be tearing everything down!
I don't do meditation (and in fact get kind of irritated that practitioners of it seem to imply the only way to get in more control of your brain is through meditation), but I practice CBT. The idea is to be in greater control of your conscious and subconscious processes by being more aware of what's going on in your brain.
For example, I noticed that when people make suggestions on products I work on that have the potential to violate users' privacy, I tend to get defensive and argumentative over that point. Using CBT and practice, first I was able to identify the emotions that rush over me when that happened. Then, I was able to notice and acknowledge those emotions happening and finally I was able to control them and let them pass without influencing my behavior. The last step in the puzzle is finding out why that particular issue is so triggering to me.
After becoming aware of these things, I'm a lot less anxious, my relationships are much stronger, my communication is better, and I'm just in a better mood and happier in general.
Actually you do meditation. Just because "science" finally acknowledged and formalized the power of doing what your second paragraph describes, it doesn't stop being precisely what Buddhism has advocated for millennia with insight/vipassana meditation. You actually don't have to sit down in lotus position (or lie in bed) to practice meditation, that's but a convenient time and setting of intensive practice, but the goal is to have meditation be an all-encompassing activity permeating your life.
Many techniques of contemporary dance, for example, are meditation. They teach you to be aware of your full body in motion, fiber by fiber stretching and contracting, moment by moment. It's meditating on bodily impulses, not consciousness ones, but a trained dancer in action has in any case no consciousness of anything else but her body, rhythm and the abstract meaning (i.e. the image) of that, but those three get dissolved into one in dopamine and that's what people call "incorporating", you lose the sense of self.
CBT is the medical approach to mindfulness. You're looking at mindfulness through a microscope, that's why you can't quite make out the shape of the subject.
"I was able to identify the emotions that rush over me when that happened. Then, I was able to notice and acknowledge those emotions happening and finally I was able to control them and let them pass without influencing my behavior."
That is precisely one of the central practices in the meditation practice I am familiar with.
I started with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, by Burns, and it's really good but an overwhelming amount of information.
That being said, I do have an appreciation from mindfulness meditation as well as CBT. They complement each other very well. I'd recommend the audiobook Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World. It's a really easy way to get started and you'll definitely feel like your life has improved by the time the 8 weeks is up.
To begin with I found that after 20-30mins of closing my eyes and trying to think of nothing, I always came out of the session feeling a lot calmer. Fast forward to today and I can now isolate thoughts and throw them away if they are garbage, which I'm not gonna lie is a pretty useful tool to have. The brain has a tendency to replay bad memories over and over again (recent embarrassing social situations, or even random events from years ago can suddenly pop up) and they can affect how you go about your day to day when you overthink them - you get overly nervous about a presentation you have to do later for example.
But now I can stop the thought in it's tracks and just 'let it go', returning my attention to my work. Because you calm and slow your mind in meditation you are able to separate out how thoughts are formed and observe how they change your mood and how they make you react, which gives you more power over them in daily life.