Meditation people roll call!

haha

i just started doing this lately

i meditate on death

I did it from about 1990-1996. Really want to start up again now but it's a tough battle with hectic nyc life/40 hour job/dogs etc. The practice works for me, for sure.

(I learned tr@nsc3nd3nt@l m3d1t@t1on, but didn't buy into any of the other rackets M@h@r1sh1 and company had going. Just the med technique, a la carte.)

I am an irregular practitioner of vipassana, which I picked up about 10 years ago

I could try the irregular practitioner strategy. I feel like it doesn't help me much unless I do the 2x a day pretty strictly tho.

Is it something you can learn in class and then practice alone once you grasp it or is it better in a roomful of people? I find the latter is often true of yoga. Something about energy, maybe just body heat.

How best for a novice to aproach it?

Very quietly.

2 hours a day is just too much for me. On the other hand, its one of those things I know I would find worthwhile if I was more regular about it. However, it seems kinda selfish to do 2 hrs a day - it would deeply inconvenience my wife, and I'm pretty sure our baby wouldn't dig it either.

x-post

Is it something you can learn in class and then practice alone once you grasp it or is it better in a roomful of people?

I can only speak for vipassana - which does not require any other people at all once you've learned it. Other people don't really add much to the experience, yr all just sitting there being quiet.

I did it in a group sometimes during the first year. After that, always by myself. This particular technique is extremely simple. Supposedly it matters a lot that you have the right m@ntr@ which they give you, you aren't supposed to share it with others, etc. I assume the m@ntr@s all come from a limited pool of Hindi nonsense words and they assign one to you based on general personality type/body type or whatever.

Sorry for all the pr00of1ng but i feel there's danger of g00glers with this subject.

xpost Shakey-- I meant two sessions a day, each one is only 20 minutes.

I could never ever do anything 2 hours a day except-- err, what I'm ostensibly getting paid to do right now...

vipassana is recommended as two 1-hr sessions per day (one in the morning and one at night) - sessions shorter than 1 hr kinda don't have the same effect.

jeez I dunno guys. I'm probably gonna have 45 minutes a day max if I'm lucky. I hate capitalism.

David Lynch does the TM 20-minutes a day thing. I've never done TM - I'm averse to mantras and gurus and whatnot.

I've been meditating seriously for fifteen-plus years. The technique I use mostly is to lie prone and experience my body as an energy field. The mind can sense any areas of the body where energy is concentrated/built up and you can, in a sense, put yourself inside that space where the energy is built up in order that it may dissipate around you. Another way to disperse energy is to imagine something like an acupuncture needle being stuck inside these pockets of energy, creating a hole through which the energy can escape.

The point of dispersing pent up energy, of course, is to allow it to go where it is needed. To balance oneself energetically.

Recently I've started focusing on the chakra wheels as well. I'm taking a class on chakras right now, actually.

Shakey, Yeah you do have to take the mantra part pretty much. But once you've learned the technique, you can just tell the TM industry to go have sex with itself.

TS: David Lynch vs. Doug Henning

Tim how much time do you spend per week on meditation?

i'd do what david lynch does

^ only half-joking

I'm actually always in varied states of being either in the spirit world or in this world. You get to the point where channeling energy is second nature - you're just constantly doing it. Lately, I've been going through an intense period personally and actually isolating myself and going into deep states has been necessary.

Was that supposed to be an answer to my question?

Haha, well, I mean to say that it varies. : D

Like, don't you have traffic or post offices in San Diego? Are you in deep states when negotiating those?

I'll visit San Diego, i think.

No, not deep states, but I'm aware of my energy and I can channel it.

The more you open yourself up, too, by working toward balancing your own energy field, the more access to your body and mind divine spirits have to help and heal you.

I can believe that. Soemthing similar happened with yoga when I was doing it regularly. If you want to explain it in those terms, that is. It didn't really feel like something divine was helping me, more like something internal and grounded.

We all have spirit guides who are with us at all times. They can work with your body.

Grounding relates to the root chakra at the base of the spine.

gygax!'s #1 secret myspace crush

Tim I am fascinated by your approach, especially being constantly in and out of such states. I wish I could meditate, as my mind is always so "busy". I can very easily imagine and get into a frame of mind where I can imagine energy and suchlike though. Curious.

Even apart from going into states of meditation, one thing you can do is to think about your muscles and just letting go of tension. The sphicter is the big one of course. The amount of energy released just by relaxing the sphincter muscle is great.

In medidation, though, it's dealing with the energy throughout the body, not just in muscles.

As far as the mind goes, the old analogy is that thoughts are like birds that appear flying through your mental space. We can always release them - we don't have to focus on them. It's in this sense that we realize that, ultimately, we do, in fact, choose our own thoughts and are in control of our own minds.

http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/advanced/dzogchen/meditation/fundamentals_dzogchen_meditation/fund_dzogchen_meditation_02.html

hey guys what'd i miss

I've been struggling to do morning half-hour zazen for a few months now; starting tomorrow I'll be regularly dropping by my local Zen Center in the early AM. To be honest I have difficulty sitting alone. I get a sense of strength from sitting with a sangha that doesn't come when I sit alone (though whether that feeling is 'strength' or 'it would be frowned upon if I aborted this session to go get a meatball sub, so I'd better stay on the cushion' remains to be seen).

I also do zazen in a hidden little corner of the library for half an hour during my lunch break.

I've heard positive things about Vipassana, but I don't really know anything about it. Any resources you might be able to point me to, Shakey Mo?

I figure my taiji and giqong count as meditation, when I bother to do them.

vipassana = www.dhamma.org

There is no hierarchy, no gurus, no theology, no religious dogma that goes along with it. There are no fees of any kind, it is completely free and open to everyone, and centers are staffed and run entirely by volunteers funded by donations. The meditation technique is what the Buddha himself practiced. I was also attracted to its combination of simplicity and rigor - the concept behind it is very basic but the practice itself is quite difficult (at least at first).

However, I should probably also mention that I did not learn vipassana in the US or in the presence of other westerners - I'm not sure what centers in the US are like, and I imagine you may find yourself in a class with a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types and/or that guy from Weezer. Fortunately everyone maintains silence.

There is no hierarchy, no gurus, no theology, no religious dogma that goes along with it.

And no results! Ha, just kidding. ;)

With hand on bar, world is silent.

I got some totally chill book on meditation that helped me learn the following things: get comfy when you do it, ie a comfy chair or bed that you like & just close your eyes. Don't worry about emptying your mind or not thinking of anything. Don't worry if bad or negative thoughts come to you, just let them sift through. Don't worry if your mind is "busy," just let the thoughts fly by you but don't really focus on them or ruminate. Don't go into it trying to force some particular emotional state.

You can use a mantra if you want. For a while, mine was actually 'solve et coagula,' haha. Any word I want, not made up ones. It's like when you say any word over and over, ie "chalk" or whatevs, after a while it means nothing & can actually grow to be very amusing. Then I started imagining an image of a turtle & somehow that really works for me.

I liked the book because it was like building your own approach. Once you figured out ways that worked for you, just stick with them and don't act like there are rules & regulations. Or experiment with other things or methods or locations.

He also made the interesting point that if you get places a few minutes early, you have time to relax & never have the stress of rushing or being late, which is basically as good as meditating. Awesome.

a lot of annoying new age-ish "seeker" types

That One Guy That Shows Up in Sandals & A Tie-Dye Asking About "Generating Energy"

He should buy a gasoline-powered anything, or eat a pear, or go for a run...all of which generate energy.

Yes, he should take out his pocket knife and prissily eat a pear.

Haha, I live in Berkeley. Everyone is like this!

annoying new age-ish "seeker" types >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the guy from Weezer

Now now, Abbott. The guy is a bozo, of course, but going for a run spends energy.

It creates energy via the krebs cycle & vellular respiration, ie the energy which you then burn. Potential--->kinetic. Or I could be totally wrong.

I am imagining this guy as the New Age Retro Hippie from Earthbound:

http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/snes/eb/images/clay/newageretrohippie.gif

Do you not have a teacher now?

No teacher, mainly due to nothing particularly being available. I'm affiliated very loosely with a local Buddhist group, but nothing official or regular. It's all been self-taught from lots of reading and listening.

If you can't get a teacher and/or therapist ... (I do recommend one) ... find an amount of daily meditation that works. Something where you're stretching and growing a bit, but that you can handle.

The standard guidance I've heard is once you're meditating roughly forty minutes a day, time to get a teacher. Below that, a teacher can be very useful, but you're probably not going to get into weird territory.

Most teachers probably wouldn't see emotional release during a difficult time of your life as a problem, but that's for you to judge depending on your circumstances. Maybe meditate after work?

Another thing I'll say is that a lot of teachers are accessible via Zoom these days.

This is great advice lukas, thank you. Things have calmed down since my message upthread *and* I've managed to find a day retreat for this coming Saturday so can hopefully speak to someone about guidance/teaching.

So Buddhism has this concept of the "near enemy" of skillful qualities - e.g. it's easy to mistake pity for compassion.

Note to self re: this morning's sit ... indifference is the near enemy of equanimity.

(this message brought to you by my splenius capitis)

Or the way it occurred to me at the time (when I realized, ugh, Christ, that really hurts, and it intensified and then released) was actually "pretending it doesn't hurt is the opposite of equanimity".

Ledge it sounds like you’re in the right path - fantasizing about longer distances would seem to be a great sign! But build up to those distances gradually.

^^ wrong thread, sorry

no no, I see the connection

How's everyone getting along?

I've got about 18 months under my belt now - 4-5 times a week, 20 minutes a time. I'm also going to my local Buddhist centre a couple of times a month for guided meditation.

It's difficult to 'measure' directly but I feel 'something' is happening. I'm still unskillful a lot of the time but have a degree of distance from myself that feels new.

I'm sure it's correlation not causation but I've recently changed jobs and the process felt deliberate in a way I've not really had before - as if there were a firmer hand on the tiller or something like that.

Not a silver bullet but...

Just got back from a six-day retreat. Gorgeous location on a forested mountain. Great teacher. And we were allowed to talk at meals which was surprisingly great. I think that might be my preferred retreat model, one absorbs the vibes better when you can talk to people.

I might have said this before but meditation is a very physical process right now. Subtle tension patterns coming and going. Not much that I can look at directly to help it along, just kinda have to sit there while it works itself out.

I would like to try a retreat. Maybe just a weekend to start - to see what I can manage etc.

I'd say my process is still very cerebral/intellectual. It's more physical when I meditate in the presence of others, I think. I'm less distracted with others, somehow. There's something intangible about the shared nature of group meditation.

Anyway yes to the 'not a silver bullet' but also, dang, I should have done this years ago.

otm

China ski, I’m curious what you mean by “a degree of distance from myself” up above?

I haven’t really gotten back into a regular practice since like December, when I was in a great groove of daily meditation that really helped with calmly reflecting and handling tricky situations and overall emotional awareness. But I feel like I’m still enjoying the benefits of that so I’m not beating myself up over dropping the routine.

China ski, I’m curious what you mean by “a degree of distance from myself” up above?

I guess I'm thinking about the Pali meaning of mediation being something like 'becoming familiar with' and how this translates to 'off the cushion' experience, where now I'm much more inclined to notice habitual responses and processes - in interactions with others but also interactions with my thought processes.

Yeah when things happen I'm less often fully engulfed by them (people talk about awareness "collapsing.")

How is everyone doing?

I've been struggling recently. I know intuitively that meditation is good for me, but I've been struggling with minor things like routine (maybe not so minor) and major things like *purpose* and where meditation fits into a wider schema. I've been so busy settling into a new job that I've sort of taken my eye off the ball. Coupled with this is that *all* my reading has been work-focused too and I need the reinforcement of study to make sense of things (study, to me, is partly where I escape, but also where I *think*).

I've been part of a Buddhist study group on Thursday evenings and have even clashed with a few people there. Nothing dramatic, just a sense of carrying negative energy into meditation and discussion while knowing it's not the subject that's changed but my approach/stance. We must fall into the furrows, I suppose. As is the way of these things, I picked up the right book at the right time and boom, there was a passage that brought things into alignment. I've stayed with the text since and the answers are right there. Amazing how it works.

Anyway, yesterday, I participated in a day retreat—mostly silent mediation. I feel like I've been bathed, sluiced.

i've been meditating regularly for about a month, 20 minutes a day, usually in the late afternoon or evening. it started off more in the realm of quieting my mind down and focusing on my breath. but since then it's expanded in a few ways. i've been pairing it with spirituality stuff in the contemplative christianity vein, inspired by one of my partners. nothing too doctrine-bound. he has some catholic background that he likes to selectively draw from (mystics). he likes to call his meditations 'centering prayers'. i think he likes some of the traditions. my background is mormon. i've had to destroy that whole thing and sift through the rubble for truth. i've gone through this process of making spirituality highly individual for myself, starting with my authentic self and applying simple and general principles in ways that fit me, bypassing traditions and the weight of them. so some of the catholic stuff is a little foreign to me, and i'm not super eager to understand it or claim it for myself. we had an interesting conversation about religious roots the other week. he would be very dismissive about mormonism (and rightly so), but there is still this funny thing where if someone else from a different religious background attacks it i get weirdly defensive. i want to be the one to throw it in the trash, if that makes sense. i told him this and it opened a moment of curiosity for him regarding it - or what might have been positive bits from it in my experience.

wow, that was a digression, and i apologize to anyone here for whom these kinds of religious concepts are beside the point. i've definitely noticed a few things. i'm not judging everyone and everything so quickly. there is more space for experiences to just happen to me. darkness is less cordoned off, less a thing i'm always desperately trying to forget about. meditation doesn't make it any easier to endure as far as i can tell, but it just makes it more fully integrated into everything else.

i forgot to add the important part after saying my practice has expanded in a few ways. the thing i've been catching glimpses of, that feels new, tenuous, very amorphous and somewhat challenging, is sort of a larger presence of being, of it knowing me and holding me. i think it's challenging because 'god' or 'oversoul' or whatever was so thoroughly debased in my experience. so in a way i'm trying to slough off my defenses. when it hits and i can sit in that place, of being held and known by a being-presence or under-spirit, it feels very good. my experience is that moment-based practice or presence is necessary to get there--breathing and breath-images are useful to me.

anyway, if any of this strikes a chord with anyone else, i hope you share your pov here or maybe even point to some of your favorite learning resources.

Great posts, map.

Integration is such a key concept in Buddhism. For me, it's partly a psychoanalytic concept, wherein the healthy state is one in which the conscious and unconscious are aligned - where unconscious material is brought into the light and given a language with which to discuss it. Impossible, probably, but meditation can provide a channel or an arena to facilitate this process. To some extent (always to some extent).

The other aspect is the more macro sense of integrating all areas of your life, so that your ethics, your diet, your speech, your meditation etc are all working towards the same goal. This can only aid the inner integration of the psyche. Written down it all makes such perfect sense of course, but well, life is a bastard and we've all got this maniac between our ears, sending us off down blind alleys.

I think you will find your way with meditation. I don't think it necessarily needs a Buddhist framework but some sort of guidance is so important to me - guidance and a community to share your pains with, who can keep you on track and help deepen your practice.

I realised today, I've only 'officially' been meditating for two years. It feels like so much longer in lots of ways. I sometimes imagine meditation sessions as if they were a series of lights strung out along an impossibly long set of telegraph wires, throwing bowls of light onto an unnamed road.

I haven't meditated at ALL in far too long, undoubtedly to my detriment. I really need to get back into the habit of doing it daily, but I struggle. Ideally I'd do it in the mornings, but it just never works out between my son being awake and asking me things, getting him out the door and doing the school run before my own commute, it just feels more of a chore than it should be. At night it's just too easy to get wrapped up in a book or a TV show or w/e and not doing it.

Obviously a me problem, but the longer I go without, the more difficult it is to make myself.

thanks for the posts chinaski. i'm curious, what kind of community have you found and how did you find it?

jon the thing that tipped me into doing it when i started for the first time a month ago (after meaning or trying and failing to establish a routine for years) was someone who was close to me also starting. that probably doesn't describe your situation so i imagine it isn't really helpful. the only thing that comes to mind as far as advice is just to treat it like you would any other 'me time' if you can, pleasurable medicine and not a chore. though truthfully it isn't always pleasurable, but that has just as much value.

I sort of stumbled into my community really. I'd been needing some guidance with meditation and googled my local area and came across a local Buddhist centre. I went along for a retreat day two years ago this month and was met by a guy who looked sort of surprised to see me and said 'I hope you like silence' in a soft voice and I thought, oh, maybe this will be alright.

The centre is in an old pub; it's ramshackle but that's OK. We meditate in a shrine room, which initially put me off because I'm pretty averse to organised piety, but it's that space and the people I keep going back for.

And totally get the lack of routine/time thing Jon. I can be pretty stubborn when it suits me and I always have something in my head that the Dalai Lama said: 'if you can't find time to meditate for 20 minutes a day you need to meditate for an hour a day.'

I found a little Zen center just a few blocks from my hours, turns out it's been there over forty years. It's in a historically gay neighborhood. There's a place where you can see a hole in the wall that was covered over, it used to be a passage to the house next door where they ran a hospice during the AIDS crisis. They have a morning sit and dharma talk on Saturdays at a very reasonable 9:30am. Been enjoying joining them when I can.

It's insane how much weird stuff is happening with my body while I'm just sitting there in meditation. Feels like riding a tiger.

love these posts guys, thanks for sharing

i guess i'm kind of finding a community in a way - partner 1, partner 2 and his twin sister. i could look around salt lake but the truth is i'm so burned out on this city and everyone in it. probably something i need to meditate on lol.

i never thought i'd go near christianity again, but the contemplative stuff is really clicking with me. it seems very similar to the bits of zen buddhism i've been exposed to but just using christian terms. i've been feeling .. it's hard to put into words .. my soul, basically. the goodness of it. held by everything, by an incomprehensible and vast presence. i feel good in a way i can't ever remember having felt. bad feelings haven't gone away but it feels more interesting to experience them. less of a sad slog. everything more spacious. the drama of traffic simply a clusterfuck of machines turning everyone into petulant children, including myself, and welcoming the tragicomedy of it. being less imprisoned by it. partner 2 shared a line from james finley that encapsulates the shift i'm starting to feel: "You can’t fit the ocean into a thimble, but you can drop a thimble into the ocean.”

lukas i loved what you said about your body in meditation. i've been locating my soul in my body. and yes when i sound those depths i feel like i'm being carried by something powerful and beautiful. even when i'm feeling the dark stuff. i took some notes from a yoga sesh yesterday afternoon fwiw:

"Feeling my soul as a solid form that takes up width in my belly, my chest, my hips and my upper legs, strong elastic bulbous tendrils forming at the edges. A solid, strong form that takes up space, that transforms the space it takes up into me and my essential aliveness, my health, my vigor, my softness, my assuredness, my lightness. Absorbing all the colors, it is black.

It has very many connection points, a seething mass of them, they connect to a network of action and meaning, those connection points drive my emotions. They've been used in the past, because they are very sensitive and fine, without having been given back to them the fuel that they need. They store traces of the past in them, but they can transform around the traces of the past, using it to discern and to filter, and a pearl grows around the grain of sand. I also haven't given it the fuel that it needs, I've been taught not to. By feeling it, knowing it, cherishing it, I start to understand what it needs and to feed it. So I can feel it even more.

Core and soul are related to each other in movement."

oh man so i forgot about this thread lol. that last post was from when i first started meditating. like a week into it.

anyway so i've kept it up. 20 minutes every day. there were about 2 months of twice a day. i did twice a day today and i'm thinking about going back to that. it was really, really there for me today.

meditation people how are things? and not-things hehe

I wanna get into it. what exactly do you do?? I'm not good at clearing my mind.

Focus on your breath to start

Things are great. I joined a Zen center last October after a moment I had at home where something just clicked in my head and suddenly I was sunk into something like samadhi for like two weeks. Hard to describe after the fact; it was something totally involuntary but I had a lot of unnecessary concepts still rattling around in my head. The whole time I was telling myself, "This is something I can't lose", but then it faded and I was simply left with less fear and anxiety than I'd had previously. Then after meditating mostly on Sundays for a couple months I had a great session on New Year's Eve that was an informal holiday sit and I ended up doing like three and a half hours almost interrupted and again something clicked in my head and I thought I could apprehend "emptiness". Then in February I lost confidence and hit a slump for a couple months, but I kept doing book clubs at the center that really helped straighten me out. I had another flash of inspiration working on studying a book in April and that carried me through a couple months, got slumpy in June, then realized I actually need to attend daily services at the center because I just cannot get myself to sit at home for forty minutes. I can sit by myself, like in a hotel room for instance, but it can't be in the place where I'm used to doing just anything I want. Anyway, this week the center's priest has been off leading a retreat and ironically, even though I couldn't afford to go, I've had another breakthrough just concentrating on keeping "don't know" mind in my daily life. I had to go over to my mom's to help her garden yesterday and the whole time spent there and out shopping for garden supplies with her was just effortless in a way that I've never quite experienced before. I keep referring to John Daido Loori's book about the ten ox-herding pictures, Riding the Ox Home, and it just makes more and more sense to me. When I started the book club segment for it, I felt totally discouraged, like I was maybe a spiritual fraud and not even looking for the ox, let alone seeing it, but then as I've been working on it, I realized that I've been having these "seeing the ox" moments for a long time. Maybe they're not great enlightenment, but they're pointers toward my original nature and totally valid, even the ones I had when manic and really confused. So somehow now I'm like, somewhere past there, I feel like my struggles with mediation these last ten months have really been phase four of trying to hold on to the ox, and now I'm in like phase five/six of ten, somewhere between taming the ox and riding it. I did an interview with the temple priest a couple weeks ago and that really helped too, as she basically encouraged me to keep on doing what I was doing. I was concerned that spending so much time thinking conceptually about the way I should act instead of putting butt to cushion was me wandering off the path, but then she told me that form and emptiness have to work in concert, basically, so bringing intentionality into my practice was important. Before I got into Soto Zen last year, I spent some time off and on in the Kwan Um school of Zen, and Seung Sahn's teachings about "only go straight, don't know" were really influential on me. I feel like I'm starting to manifest that in my daily life, which is the whole point of meditation, after all. So, great.

^ very cool.

I’ve drifted away from guided meditations and have instead been sitting each morning for 15 minutes, with coffee but before I touch my phone or other device. Eyes open and kinda focusing on breathing but not getting too hung up on that. My sponsor describes it as “letting the sand settle in the glass of water that is your mind” and I like that. A nice little routine that is like to repeat in the evening but haven’t gotten there yet.

I’m in the early stages of trying to develop a meditation practice. Previous efforts to get into app based guided meditations didn’t go far, this time feels different because I just started sitting in silence without expectations about it making me calm, delivering any outcome, or doing it right. But now I’m trying to learn more - I went to an intro workshop at a Zen centre here, and while it was a good experience, it didn’t feel like the right fit. I’m going to try a course at the Kadampa Buddhist centre here, to try something different. I think what I’m looking for falls more on the side of awareness - of my body, sensations, reactions, etc - rather than deeper concentration. Anyways, hoping to get more of a handle on it and find somewhere that feels like a good place to meditate with others, though I’m noticing a strong, automatic aversion to anything that resembles conventional religious services, so I might need to figure that out too.

i loved reading everyone's responses. full of the kind of energy that inspires me.

I wanna get into it. what exactly do you do?? I'm not good at clearing my mind.

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 13, 2025 3:50 AM (fifteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Focus on your breath to start

― Reggie Clanker (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, August 13, 2025 7:18 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i want to respond to this but i need to preface by saying i'm not well-read at all on the subject of meditation and my experience is brief and circumscribed by myself. so if there is something that ends up being helpful to you in this, that's why i'm writing it, but i'm very cognizant of my limitations and of how many ways there are of 'doing' meditation.

ok so yes, absolutely focus on your breath. it's such a surefire way to the magic of the present moment. that being said, when i very first tried meditation several years ago, i was hyper-focused on my breath and sort of like .. really tense about trying not to think. which ended up making it all feel like a chore and while i did feel some benefit to it, mainly in noticing my mind on its own, the practice didn't stick.

fast-forward several years and this time, the spiritual side of it has been unlocked for me, which makes it .. like, i have a deep desire to do it regularly now. there's nothing else like it. anyway, so my breathing feels less like something i'm "staring at unbroken and unflinching" and more like an invitation to a certain seat in a theater to watch a show, or a certain vantage point from which i can start seeing .. everything, or anything that comes my way.

i've gotten a lot of mileage out of a handful of "images" that help me get to the right place. they feel less like mental images and more like .. images i hold in my body. one is that i link my mind to an object - i imagine it as a ball of electricity or a drop of mercury. i also imagine it sort of sinking down into my body and taking a new place near my gut. and then the space around the mind is the space of meditation where the wind brings feelings that can't be thought. ok now i'm starting to get creatively mystical lol. this stuff is so hard to write about. another "body image" that has worked well for me is imagining that my mind is a boat floating along a river of the present, that the depth and flow of the river beneath me is endless, and that i just have to set my mind on it and let it be carried forward, undisturbed, and feel the flow. another "body image" that has worked well for me is imagining that my breath is incoming and outgoing waves over a sandy beach. breath in is "everything coming in and constituting" and breath out is "everything in me connected to everything else." but just staying with that scene of the ocean was a good way for me to move past the blocks i was experiencing from being too hyper-focused on my physical act of breathing.

as far as "tradition" goes i'm not really sure what's next for me. i started in the "centering prayer" context because of my boyfriend at the time. every once in a while i get a nice tidbit from one of their visible practicioners / teachers on youtube or whatever. but any time jesus gets referenced as more than a teacher - like as a mystical being or presence or whatever - i have a hard time being open to that. so idk. i do feel like i could benefit from finding my path in relation to others'. but the absolute love and serenity i feel from time to time just from practicing meditation - i can pretty much take that as an end in itself too, you know? but on the other hand i want more. so yeah, who knows - nice quandary to be in :)

Excellent post. Thank you.

its uh...yeah. that helps a lot. I've tried meditating a few times. I'd put on a Hosono record and just space out. for most of it I'd be hyperfocused like that but for a few minutes you could feel yourself in a space beyond body and mind or tangible thought. I'd tell you more about it but as I said, it's beyond tangible thought.

the other reason is my mind races a lot at night and I have a hard time falling asleep. the imagery thing you mention is interesting. as a teen the thing that would often calm me down is like...imagining the level of Mario 64 where you're just flying around in the sky trying to get the red coins. because there are no real thoughts or concepts there, just...up, down, side to side, whooosh

but I know what you mean. I have some images like that myself. one is sorta like...starting at a point and zooming out to reveal some vague planet shaped thing that represents the sum total of experience. there are other ones that have come to me with a little uhhh help

yeah you know it's funny, the friend who got me started with meditating again, he's a stoner but he absolutely could not meditate while high. i can do either, but i never get that high to begin with, we're talking 5 mg edibles mostly so just a slight fade. i think it's totally possible to meditate no matter what you may have in you, and i don't see why weed couldn't help get you there if you've already created a certain pathway associated with it. that flexibility is one of meditation's strengths. meditation never told me 'you're on drugs, baaad.' in fact it never tells me i'm bad. it just tells me that everything is. sometimes that feels rugged and liberating, sometimes that feels delicate, soft and mysterious. one of the youtube centering prayer people i like, james finlay, describes the feeling like "reading a bedtime story to a child."

still haven't found the secret to calm racing thoughts at night tbh, i feel you on that.

I don't think it would help me meditate, if anything it would make me worse and kinda seems like a waste of a good time. however it does help me come up with ideas that I think might later be useful.

as for racing thoughts...one general trick is imagining a story, with a setting and some characters, people who have nothing to do with you and your life, hell just some shitty Lord of the Rings knockoff if that helps. another is like...try to name a fruit with each letter. or five people whose names contain that letter. its weird because this stuff makes me sleepy, but I fall asleep when my thoughts are just bouncing around with no logical pattern...when I say "mind racing" I'm often thinking about specific things. when they get simpler and simpler is when I start to doze out. problem is sometimes you think "ahh yes, I'm about to fall asleep now", then you're awake again. oh well, maybe a topic for another thread

Good posts. Definitely a thread I wish was more active - an online Sangha is really valuable to me.

I wonder if the biggest thing is making it ritualised. Not in the sense of needing specific tools or incense or whatever, but in the sense of building it into your life. Have a routine, a place to go, a specific goal ('to be calmer' is fine!). And committing to it. I genuinely think it does need to be every day.

The second thing is to remove any expectations - from yourself and the meditation itself. You're not there to clear your mind, or become an olympian breather or a ninja of a concentration. You're there (to use the Pali word for meditation) to become 'familiar with'. That's the practice for me (and the dual meaning of practice/practise is so perfect here).

Third thing is how you can/might integrate meditation into your life. That integration of what you 'learn' about mind in meditation is the journey really, for me at least. Having a Buddhist framework for this helps me no end, but it needn't be that way for everyone. You can work this out as you go. You might be never need or have to.

And here's the thing, for me at least: shit is sloooow. I knew pretty quickly that this thing of ours was transformative but it takes its sweet time. I'd dig being kicked by a donkey and finding enlightenment that way but this slow unveiling makes total sense.

The simplest version of the 'meditation of breathing' that I know is this. 20 minutes, each 5 minute chunk being on at different aspect of the breath.

1. Count at the end of each breath. Count to 10 and go back to 1.

2. Count at the beginning of each breath. You're almost anticipating each new breath. Count to 10 and go back to 1.

3. Observe where the breath enters the body. So you might concentrate at the nostrils, the back of the throat. If this is too subtle, you can place your hand on your belly and feel it there.

4. Concentrate on the breath as a function of the whole body. The whole process.

It's weird how much time you can spend thinking about counting - am I doing it right? Am I being too 'loud'? Lol. I go for the 'soap bubble' approach. I'm not there to count, as such, but I want to acknowledge the concept of, eg, the in breath finishing, so I send up the most delicate of soap bubbles with a number on it.

I NEVER make it to 10 because I'm always distracted. No matter. Just go back to 1.

That's it. No expectation. No rewards for being good at breathing. No great unveiling order enlightenment.

I use these bells as signal for moving between each stage. It even gives you a minute or so to get comfy. (Posture matters, but that can come with time.)

https://www.freebuddhistaudio.com/audio/details?num=LOC63

20 minutes! god yeah my practice isn't that formal. my big limitation is that i do have scoliosis, kyphosis, chronic back pain... i can't maintain any one position for too long. i wish i could. i tried doing a lovingkindness (i'd call it "metta" but i can't do the diacritical properly) in-person with someone who's, i forget the word, but he's got an extensive background in buddhist meditation, for like four hours last year, and the back pain kept getting in the way.

i've been doing guided meditation off and on since before covid, 2018 or so. i do find that i struggle with establishing structure in my life in general. lately i've been doing, at the suggestion of my DBT therapist, short lovingkindness meditations - like 10 minutes or so, really basic shit - daily, and it's absolutely been transformative. i was really in a bad place and the lovingkindness meditation just turned me around completely.

my meditation practice didn't start out as being a DBT thing, but it's very connected to DBT lately. i don't think of it as "real" in a religious sense... it's very much westernized secular stuff. rather than sinking into a deep meditative state, what i strive for is to be able to re-center myself in the moment when i start spiraling. i _am_ a lot better at that when i used to be. i basically don't have SI at this point, at a lot of it is me being able to re-center myself when i start spiraling. it also really helps me deal with intrusive thoughts.

i hesitate to mention this, but a lot of my meditation focus is related in some way to my thoughts about kink and sex. orgasm for me is very much a matter of "letting go", and i have a _lot_ of trouble doing that, particularly with a partner. it's the ADHD... reaching orgasm does take a long time for me, and my brain has a tendency to show up in the middle and say "Hey, when was the last time you thought about the Armenian Genocide?"

i say "sex and kink" but kink is a categorically different thing for me. it's not sexual and at the same time it's not-not sexual. like that's not the focus or the purpose, it's just part of who i am. there's this weird thing where if my body can't wander off, it helps keep my mind from wandering off. it doesn't even have to be restrictive, just something like a simple diamond harness, which i have done on myself, helps. i'd like to be more emotionally comfortable with self-bondage, because i have found it effective, but there is a lot of shame, self-judgement, and emotional baggage involved. of course that's not for everyone and i know a lot of people are gonna have their own judgements around it, which is fine!

Good posts yourself, Chinaski. The most recent book I read is Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life by Shunryu Suzuki. I found it really helpful, especially this quote: "It doesn't matter whether your practice is good or bad. If you accept your practice as your own, then that practice includes everything." I was stunned when I read this because I have/had such a problem with judging myself and finding myself wanting. Not holding myself to a standard that I had mostly made up myself and was causing me such fear in my daily life really has made all the difference for me.

Kate, somewhere there's a story about Shakyamuni Buddha allowing one of his followers to lie down for meditation because that was the only way they could do it. You might try it?

I agree with servoret that lying down could work? I wouldn't be prescriptive about that sort of stuff - whatever works!

And 100% agree with the metta stuff, Kate. I've found it transformative too. But I think I always need a guide with it? There are too many 'moving parts' and I need someone to keep me on track. When it works though. Shit.

like 10 minutes or so, really basic shit - daily, and it's absolutely been transformative. i was really in a bad place and the lovingkindness meditation just turned me around completely.

oh man this makes me so so happy to hear kate. you can tell in your posts too! servoret i've also heard that lying meditation is an option (xpost to chinaski). i know there are certain effects associated with certain postures but i'm of the mind that however one can be comfortable is ok. i will let myself shift and move around a fair amount during meditation. or idly pull at hairs in my beard lol. i think a little bit of automatic movement, sometimes that feels ok to me.

judging myself or like ranking my meditation experiences has been a challenge for me too. sometimes they're very dramatic. sometimes they're quiet and neutral and matter-of-fact. sometimes i feel the gentlest purest love and sometimes i am blinded by deliriously absurd humor. sometimes they're messy and i spend most of the time thinking about stressors or work. welcoming and celebrating all of them is what i try to do too. with the messy ones, always at least once i come into awareness. that's just baked into the fact that i'm practicing. one idea that has stuck with me, again this is out of the centering prayer people, so use of the word "god" is prevalent, but it's this idea that meditation is about developing a relationship with god. and because god encompasses everything that i am, everything in me, it's about letting that be held by god and realizing god is able to be itself fully through me and in me. we hang out. the silence is me listening and then god listens back.

chinaski and servoret are giving awesome advice. for how to start and how to approach things. the 'unbroken block of time' thing has been interesting to me. it strikes me that the most important thing is to give yourself enough time where you can both lose track of time and stretch yourself out a bit, if that makes sense. i agree that frequent and consistent practice, at least daily, is important. in order to give the transformative stuff an opportunity to start soaking in.

i like to move myself to not-thinking if i catch myself thinking during meditation, because that's always a place of truth, but in all honestly i feel like sometimes the thinking i do after losing myself in meditation for a while is better and more intentional than than the thinking i do at random times during the day. or the thinking is more integrated somehow. i've found myself able to come to moments of resolution regarding all sorts of things in life in that space of half-quiet half-contemplation. that resolution is always something along the lines of, stay open, stay receptive, keep hold of the thread of god, of silence and presence. it can't lead you astray because it doesn't really lead at all, it occurs and asks you to witness it fully.

oh to be clear i absolutely do meditate lying down when i'm at home. on a firm couch. even lying down can be a problem for me sometimes... i do need to see a back doctor, quite honestly. but the lovingkindess meditation, with a guy named stephen snyder - it was great, he was great, i just do tend to get really fidgety. hypermobility _seems_ cool in theory but in practice it just means that i spent years putting my body in stress positions cuz i was so disconnected from my own body... i just have to adjust my practice to allow for the fact that i absolutely _am_ going to wind up fidgeting a lot, that fidgeting is just a normal part of my daily life like pain is.

i'm very into... i mean my relationship with christianity is complex. angel marcloid talks about her relationship with christianity, and her practice relates to this idea of god as "the great allower". and that's how i see god. i am personally angry at god for _being_ an "allower", for permitting things which i believe ought not to be permissible, and god - i was raised in the christian tradition, so when i communicate with god, it's jesus - just kind of shrugs and says yeah, i hear you, i understand what you're saying, and it's not up to you. not in a "fuck you" way, in a very kind of _validating_ way. like he's ok with me being mad at him and judging him for the way he does things. he's not gonna change the way he does things cuz i'm mad at him, but he's ok with me being mad at him.

one of the things that's helped me since my earliest days is that i do have the attitude of... it's ok for me to fuck up meditation, it's ok for me to be "bad" at meditation. meditation for me isn't about how deep or far i can go, what spaces i can explore, it's the practice of returning to the center, again and again and again. so in fact when my mind wanders off, as it does, i celebrate that, because that's another chance for me to return to the center.

time is one of the hardest things for me. when i was young and i still thought jello biafra was cool, i had the LARD record, and there was a song on that called "i am your clock". part of my ADHD is that i'm pretty time-blind. it's one of the things that keeps me from relaxing... there's always too much i want to do and not enough time, and so often i feel like i'm "wasting" it. i don't feel that way in meditation, mostly. i don't feel like time i spend meditating is "wasted". it's just that time doesn't always go the same speed. when i spend time meditating, when i'm really present in the moment and not doing anything else, time passes much slower than i expect.

i have, though... in a number of ways i've developed this sense of being. i'm aware of this inner core i have of joy and peace... i just get disconnected from it a lot because of the way the world is, because i do need to protect myself. one of my favorite things to do is to just lie in bed and exist. i don't mean sleeping, i mean just, like, feeling my body, feeling how much it's _my_ body, and experiencing the joy that comes with that. i think there's upsides to everything, and one of the upsides of having the life i've had is that there are things i just don't take for granted. my body might hurt, my body might be slowly breaking down, but it is _my_ body and will remain so, for as long as i'm alive. i'm not always happy with my body - a lot of times it irritates me, pisses me off, it doesn't do things that i'd really prefer it do, and i don't take care of it as well as i'd like to - but it is _mine_.

the other thing i have cultivated over time is curiosity. i'm naturally someone who does have a lot of curiosity. i can look at something and say "oh, that's interesting". i don't meet the standards fucked up patriarchal capitalist society demands of me, and i mean, they're impossible rules. at least i can meet my own standards.

anyway i'm gonna give the 20 minute meditation a shot and see how it goes.

that was interesting. really interesting. the time passed much more quickly than i expected. the main thing about the guided meditations is that they tend to have a voice interrupting really often, so i can't really get too deeply into a meditative state. after the third five-minute period, i actually had a startle reflex to the gong. i don't know if that's typical. i do have a real issue with hypervigilance. anyway it was nice. just taking a break from the constant monologue in my head. the other problem is, like, re-engaging with the world after doing it. i really enjoy nonbeing.

yeahhhhh i love all of this. love "the great allower".

i definitely have the startle reflex every once in a while when my phone goes off!

re-engaging with the world after doing it. i really enjoy nonbeing.

great news, you can enjoy nonbeing any time you want!

i started up twice a day again and i'm experiencing this thing that used to happen when i was doing twice a day a few months ago. i'll be driving around and everything about the experience in front of and around me - visually and sensually - has this staggering massiveness to it! all of the expressions of everyone in cars passing by. the trees become these endless seas of life. it's awesome! maybe even a little overwhemling. i feel stoned but i'm not stoned. and like my ability to handle "doing things", logistically speaking, is just smooth and humming along, so like if someone brakes suddenly or whatever i'm there, ready to respond. like feeling nonbeing as i glide through its fathomless depths also allows me to be present to "doing things" right now.

Just did a 10-day retreat ... over Zoom ... in an apartment building in the middle of a busy city ... in Albania. It was great! Would you believe I've been gorging on retreats for eight years now and only now am I learning to relax?

Think I've mentioned before feeling confused and somewhat discouraged about what was happening in my practice. Don't feel that way any more. Starting to understand some ways I got confused and made things harder than they need to be.

I also had a nice little experience in a 10-minute mini-sit during the retreat when I realized "hey, the 'you' that gets attacked by the inner critic ... that guy is made up!" Not sure if the nice lightness I've been feeling since the retreat will last but that felt important.

(Not the first cool experience I've had in a sort of tossed-off, informal "well this sit doesn't really count it's just for fun" - probably doesn't mean anything)

I also realized that I've never done metta using my own face as the, er, object. I use other people's faces because it helped stimulate metta. I guess I unconsciously avoided uisng my face because it brought up more complicated feelings. I think this will be a good practice for me.