Your Meditation Experience

[Dover]

Do you meditate?
When/how did you first learn to meditate?

Where do you meditate and how often?
What is your 'ritual' or process for meditating?
What is the most difficult thing about this process?

What happens during your meditation?
How has it affected your life?


One useful 'how to meditate' website:
http://natural-meditation.org/

[conscious evolution]

1. I meditate

I first started to help with staying sober.At first all I did was simple sitting and breathing exercises.I realized early on that I would need more advanced forms to really get the most from it.
This in turn led to my involvement in the Falun Dafa buddha school.I use the 'rituals' taught in that school.They involve a series of tai chi gong exercises combined with standing and sitting meditations,which can be done pretty much anywhere and anytime.
The two hardest things about doing them is learning to maintain the positions for long periods of time and learning to still the mind.
The effects have been pretty darned mind blowing.It has taught me to learn how to use the latent capabilities of the mind in a way that has altered the way I see what most people call reality and this has led to major changes in my life and how I live it.

Here is a link to the meditations and cultivation system I follow- http://www.falundafa.org/bul/audio-video/audiovideo_video.html

[I Have A Dream]

2. I have tried repeatedly to meditate, but I *ALWAYS* fall asleep.

My husband, who is a meditation teacher, says that that's OK, but it feels like a cop out.

I've tried more active types of meditation as well, but I get extremely bored and find it very difficult to force myself to do it even though I know that I need to do it.

Guided meditation exhausts me.

:(

[Idylle Moon Dancer]

3. I'm not exactly sure when I started

a likely candidate for when/how I started meditating is when I picked up Journey to Wild Divine
(a biofeedback game with pretty graphics and sound and lots of breathwork, for those who don't know)

but then I wonder if I was meditating all those years ago,
sweating my ass off in my parents' attic while annoying the neighbors with my crazy bass solos.
after about an hour of that, I would often feel light and clear.

I sometimes play trance loops on guitar and get lost in them such that I no longer perceive time.

And then there's the didgeridoo,
which gets me high when I can keep it going for long enough,
although my mind frequently wanders while I'm playing.

Once in a while dancing or yoga will bring me totally into the present.
For dancing-type meditation,
my best experience involved a bottle of mead,
environs with an assortment of veils and shiny reflective things and soft lights and trancy music,
a sensuous black skirt that I made,
and women in an assortment of strange, dark, sexy costumes who were not at all shy about dancing with me.
I don't know if I've ever been more present than I was that night.
It was awesome.

[sam sarrha]

4. meditated ~10 years, i heard the last 10 min of a Tibetan monk on NPR'S Noetic Science prog., i

was a hard core alcoholic..25 years, had given up all hope, just waiting for rock bottom to fall on me and crush me.

my wife had bought a "PIONEX".. YES FOLKS.. A PIONEX COMPUTER FROM QVC. a blazing 256 MB of RAM, a case the size of a shoe box, i had never used a computer, she knew enough to set up a search provider.. . i turned it on and figured it out, it took forever to load, we only had so many minutes a month, so i had to sit and wait for the blue bar to load, minimum of 10 minutes for anything, praying there wasn't a photo on the page.. i learned to meditate "on" the computer, while searching for information on meditation. i found soundstrue.com then got on spiritual catalog list. that was 1998.

i ordered cassette tapes, i have Aspergers syndrome, i have some difficulty reading anything but scientific and technical information, i am a mechanical technical savant. i worked at Boeing Space and Communications. they let us use an earphone for a tape or radio. i bought tape sets, and listened to them over and over. like Pema Chodrons 'When Things Fall Apart', it's about 4 hours, jack kornfield's 'Inner Art of Meditation" about 8 hours, then Robert Thurman's tape sets.. Dalai Lama.. Sharron Salzberg, lots more..i started meditating.. Insight Meditation, on my own thru the tapes.

i quit drinking, it just fell away, no craving.. i never think about it, we started working forced overtime 12/7 for 4 1/2 months.. building circuit boards for the Delta3 Rocket.. thru a microscope. i got up at 4am meditated for 45 minutes then rode my bike to work 8 miles.

after about 4 months of meditating i ran into a Tibetan Lama, he was making a sand painting, he invited me to it's disassembling. i went and was then invited to attend meetings at a Chenrezig Center, i attended 2 weekly meetings and saturday meditation, lots of special things.. like when the traveling monks come thru and stay a couple days.. i studied, attended 3 meetings a week and practiced for 4 years before i accepted 'Renunciation', at a teaching by the Abbot of the Dalai Lamas Monastery.

WHAT HAPPENS DURING MEDITATION: my meditation was primarily on the breath, about 20 % of the consciousness on the breath. when the mind strayed to the past or future, worried, planned, regretted the past.. etc etc.. i named the interruption as one would touch a soap bubble with a feather and let it go. usually.."thinking" "Fear" "Regret"

meditation consistently involves a series of interruptions while being in the now/the present. for the general practitioner interruptions are the norm, progress is slow, the process of meditation trains the mind.... among other things, it trains us to not attach emotions to thoughts, objects, people, concepts, etc. the process of letting go of discursive thoughts eventually carries over to our day to day waking world. to become proficient at meditation takes about a year or year and a half, a teacher is very important. but not essential, i had jack kornfield and Pema.. they led me to a local teacher.
being proficient doesn't mean the interruptions stop, but your reaction to them becomes appropriate and effective. you develop what the Tibetans call "Skillful Means". which is esoteric learning, something that happens without you knowing it is happening.

Pema Chodren's new book/cd "Don't Bite the Hook" is wonderful.. it actually evoked anger in me, and that really shocked me, tears of regret... i actually shouted.."Damn! if i had only known this as a teenager 2/3's of my life would not have been wasted in suffering.!!! i highly recommend it,, the finest gift you can give..book/cd set. i have donated 8 of her cd's and books to the local library. http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1218683863/ref=a9_sc_1?ie=UTF8&search-alias=aps&field-keywords=pema%20chodron

most difficult is regular meditation, i find it difficult now that i have no group to practice with.

[Dover]

7. "i quit drinking, it just fell away, no craving.. i never think about it..."

That's a beautiful example of not just how meditation can effect one's life, but also how effortless
even major change can be. Rather than focusing on 'the problem' we simply begin to put our energy and attention elsewhere and embrace a new reality.

[WhiteTara]

5. I began meditating in my 20s

I have had an extraordinarily difficult time trying to do sitting meditation. I have been literally propelled across the room from a sitting position to racing away. I spent a year and a day with the Krishnas and learned about mantras. That is my favorite form of meditation.

I have been working on sitting meditation again recently with more success. I begin with chanting to center myself and then do sitting meditation. I decided to start with a minute. I would say I am probably about at 2 or 3 now. I have a hard time being consistant. If I don't meditate in the morning, it is almost impossible for me later on.

My partner is a meditator and has given me several meditations...mostly to open the pineal gland. I think most of you saw this http://www.youtube.com/user/larryseyer I was fascinated. Anyway, I spent weeks trying to do what he was telling me to no avail. A couple of days ago, by accident I was able to stimulate the pineal gland and immediately I thought about it and it went away. But now I have the experience and I will try to repeat it.

[Dover]

6. I've shared my story before, here and there, in bits and pieces.

I never formally learned to meditate, but the craving for getting to 'that place' was there
for as long as I can remember. A place to commune more directly with myself and the Divine.
After a very difficult period in my life this longing got even stronger...and during a heavy Neptune
transit to boot! I was looking at new fangled 'sound tables' and other such things and came
across info on flotation tanks. I knew a little about them peripherally, but had never tried
it. So I kept that longing on the front burner and looked for opportunities to try it.
Back in ancient times many retreated to caves for such an experience, so the isolation (or sensory
deprivation) made sense to me, and actually seemed easier than fighting all of that 'noise' in
the environment. My first flotation was remarkable. Bobbing in the salt water (skin temperature)
for several minutes I knew enough to gently clear away my thoughts as they came up (I was also coached a bit about this by the tank's owner). Time began to disappear and I relaxed every muscle so completely that the weightlessness became a sort of release from the materiality. I lost sensation of being in water at all and wasn't even sure (in that darkness) whether my eyes were open or closed. I didn't spend much time pondering that, but it was part of the experience. Though I was in a fairly closed space I did not feel it, but instead felt infinite space.

I could hear my heart beat and breathing very intensely and it became a mantra or rhythmic centering device. Then it became like the sound of the ocean waves.
I was fully awake and aware...hyper present. Then, quite unexpectedly I felt all chains to this world drop away and I was off....out of body. At first I became frightened, but only very briefly. The rest of that experience cannot, and perhaps should not, be explained in any language I'm familiar with. But it was indescribably wonderful albeit very short!

So now I KNEW the place I had longed for existed and was available to me, and I wanted to get back there often. And I also learned through this and subsequent flotation experiences what I needed to do to achieve that so that I could learn to do it anywhere, not just in complete isolation or in a tank.

I guess it was important to know this FIRST, because it really helped when I tried other forms of
meditation. I'll do it lying down, sitting up straight with feet planted, in a recliner chair....
doesn't really matter that much imo. And I don't do it routinely, but mainly when I feel that
place calling to me or when I need a closer communion. And though my intitial 'travel out of body'
has not recurred, it is really just enough to know about that 'place'. The meditations are mainly for stilling and listening.

I think of meditation as learning to become a highly sensitive, completely present and open receptor.
Like a satellite dish. I can do that best when I'm still and silent. So I'm not that enthused about
guided meditations. In fact I find them distracting with their music and voices and creating imagery that isn't my own. But that's just me. I know others who find that is just the ticket.

So it's changed my life by guiding me to that space within myself that I knew was there all along.
And it is a sacred space that I create, like a native american might create a stone circle. I step into that space and in doing so welcome a more intimate connection with Divine source, with myself, with the ALL. It's like making time for any relationship, loving the connection that happens, and wanting more. It's not a chore. It's a joy.