How to Meditate by Lawrence Leshan Flashcards
(39 cards)
Why We Meditate
Why Meditate? We meditate to access our Human potential, to be closer to ourselves and to reality, to open more of our capacity to love and zest for life and enthusiasm, or our knowledge that we are a part of the universe and can never be alienated or separated from it, or our ability to see and function in reality more effectively. An adult can be called a, “deteriorated child.” In other words, it can also be used to “come back home” to who we were as a child. A common thing for most to experience is that when they enter adulthood, they feel that they lost something precious. Almost as though they had lost life itself. They find that they had it right when they were young. Meditation is a way to get back to that place, exactly! As I always say, I do not believe that it makes sense that our existence would fundamentally be unpleasant by nature. Therefore, meditation will get me back to my original (child) state. :( People who “grow up” and use meditation as a way of “going home” described meditation and its use to us, “We are all in a widowed state and our task is to remarry.” (HOW SAD! I WILL TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO BE THEMSELVES). Many serious explorers of the human condition have come to the conclusion that human beings have a great potential for being, for living, for participation, and expression than they have ability to use. These explorers then developed training methods to help people reach these abilities; meditation is one such method. All of these methods, I will add, have much in common.Through meditation you will receive the knowledge that you are already, everything that you are working toward, in other words, you are already there, you are snapping out of it? Or it has been 10 years, you are realizing that none of that was real (in my mental state I noticed my awarenesses of it all) so you are coming in to what to do next??? Putting it all into perspective? It is coming INTO, perspective?? Slowly? In any case, SOMETHING is happening. Your own growth and becoming is a serious and important matter, worthy of working well for. The point of meditation and mystical training is personal development. If intelligently and seriously followed, it will provide growth and bring you further along toward your goal of the vision you have of yourself. Thomas Merton says, “the Westerner retires to the cloister in order to become MORE involved in the world (this is my motive! ), not to retreat from it (as most mystical society members traditionally do).Meditation is concerned with helping you reach a state of being that is not common for the general population. Abraham Maslow says, “When we are fully realized under the term ‘human,’ transcendence experiences are common.” After you are awakened fully, you can experiment with Meditation and have fun. You can pick ones that go with your mood, try different types, you can do guided meditation, listen to classical music, etc.
The Way of Learning to Meditate
Just as a person who works out inveterately and has immaculate hand eye coordination, form, and proficiency, you will become comfortable and confident with ANYTHING that you decide to master, use simply have to use repetition to build up your strength. As you do repetition to master a thing, you are building that muscle :) , in the very same way you build a muscle when you repeatedly lift a weight. Something to note, when you use repetition, and you are on your way to learning something, remain consistent and steadfast until you reach your goal, from beginning to end without a break in your effort. The law of Cause and Effect affords you the knowledge that if you are working toward something, Cause, you will get the Effect, which is, your goal attainment. To use the exercise analogy again, you may or may not “suddenly” pop out with a full muscular physique. You could simply gradually progress and gain a better physique as times passes. **Of course, radical paradigm shifts are possible as well.In the past, admittance to esoteric schools took 3 to five years to locate and another few year to gain admittance. To work with a Sufi teacher, would take that long. They were underground and hidden. Meditation is the fusion of a disciplined mind and a creative Spirit. Meditation heightens sensitivity! (Scientific proof!). **Some mystics alternate between contemplation (thinking) and meditation.
What is Mysticism?
Mysticism, from a historical and psychological viewpoint, is the search for and experience of the relationship of the individual himself and the totality that makes up the universe. The results of this attainment are a capacity to transcend the painful and negative aspects of everyday life and to live with serenity, an inner peace, a joy, and a capacity to love greatly. In Western tradition, there are 3 paths to mystical development, ascetism, illumination, and meditation. Asceticism is fasting, self-flagellation, and severe self-discipline and avoidance of all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons. Illumination, the sudden tremendous change in personality integration and understanding. Meditation is the tool that you can most easily use. *Note, I already fast :) . **Yoga is a type of mystical training. The major mystical and meditation training schools are Yoga, Zen, Sufi, and Gurdjieff. 9. Mystical schools strive to give you greater efficiency in everyday life and comprehension of a different view of reality than the one we ordinarily use. By “comprehension”, we mean an emotional as well as intellectual understanding. Mystics, people involved in the occult, are realists. They deal with solid reality. They face life, which is a natural attitude.
How to Meditate
1When you meditate, do it in a relaxed manner. Do not put pressure on yourself about it. Enjoy this time to be with yourself and whatever else you encounter during that time :) .
Duality in Physics
In physics, the principle of complementarity states that understanding fully some phenomena would require it to be approached from two different viewpoints (polarities). Each viewpoint, solely, would tell only half of the truth (it would be a half of a whole).
Breath Counting Meditation
a type of meditation is called, Breath Counting. It is designed to teach and practice the ability to do one thing at a time. It can have immense psychological and physiological benefits. Do it for fifteen minutes. You can stand, sit, whichever you like. Look at a clock so you can see when you have reached fifteen minutes. Do not move your head. Count, in your head each time you breathe out. Count up to four, and then begin again at one. If your thoughts stray away from the counting, bring yourself back to the counting. The goal is for you to never think about anything else but you’re counting. Stop once you have reached fifteen minutes on the clock. 9. Used in Zen Training. It is structured of the Outer Way.
Your attention is allowed to be on counting only. Count each exhalation you make. Count up for the length of the exercise.
Your Mental Lack of Discipline
During your meditation journey, you may be surprised at how disconnected we are from ourselves. You may notice some lack of discipline in areas, where you refuse to do as you desire. For instance, in the Counting meditation, you may notice yourself diverting to other topics in your mind, as opposed to doing the exercise. The fact is it is YOUR mind, and nothing else. You pretend at freedom by behaving in an undisciplined manner (an action that most humans commit). To put it plainer, you say that you want one thing, and then behave in another manner. Or you have certain feelings, and act out another. You must live honestly in every moment. So, what is behind this behavior? Must it simply SINK IN to my head that, all I have to do is live honestly at every moment (this is in order, by the way), never lying about my experience to myself or anyone else? Why do we humans do it? Only when one is free of the tyranny of the whim of the moment can you be called truly free. When you are free in your whim some states.15. Excerpt from the Bhagavad-Gita, a long poem with much to do about meditation and mysticism written in India between the second and fifth century: “The wind turns a ship from its course upon the waters: The wandering winds of the senses cast man’s mind adrift and turn his better judgment from its courses. When a man can still his senses I call him illumined.”
Do Not Expect Miracles
**NOTE: Leshan, says that major psychological break throughs are not possible with psychotherapy or with meditation, you will not have “magical enlightenment moments”. He says that you may simply understand, and that is all that happens. I do not believe that life would be unsatisfying, of course, but there could be something to what he is saying here. What I am working at is that we ARE ok. We have so far, as human beings, been getting into our heads concerning “not being ok” because of… etc. and it isn’t true. Then we snap out of it with a sober realization that, “I was ok all then time”. This is true! However, how are we able to “get confused about being ok” in the first place? More is to come on this :) .
How Does Meditation, Feel?
Leshan says that meditation does not “feel” like anything is happening and that is common for people to look for heightened sensation in meditation and if they do not receive it, they give up. The meditational experience HAS to feel like something and be an experience of itself or else you would not know that you were meditating in the first place.
The Line of Logic is Challenged in Physics
The Michaelson-Morley experiment demonstrated that there were situations in which 2 plus 2 does not make 4! Out of the pressure created by this paradox, physics developed a new way of perceiving reality (as we have said meditation will do for us). The crucial aspect of this history is the fact that a paradox forced a new way of understanding reality into being. The concept of perceiving the world as working on a different metaphysical system than the usual mechanical view had been stated in physics for a long time. It remained for Einstein to generalize it to ALL of reality and to demonstrate that it was a valid way of conceptualizing what is.
The Simple Act of Doing will Reward You Deeply
A psychological effect that grows out of meditation is prompted by the work itself. It is not so important how well you do at meditation, how effectively you are doing at not thinking of anything else for instance, but rather how diligently you work at the job. It is the steady work where one gently and firmly and consistently brings oneself back to the task at hand that strengthens (and brings to light) the Will, Purpose, goal-oriented behavior, ability to bar distractions, make choices, etc., and facilitates the personality reorganization that is part of **our growth toward maturity. It is also the consistent work that increases our ability to give ourselves whole heartedly and completely to whatever we are doing at the moment and increases our competency. Experience has shown that those who stay with this kind of work have increased competence and confidence.
Take Programming Out of Your Being
Arthur Deikman, a psychiatrist knowing a great deal about meditation, sees it as leading to “de- automatizaiton of perception and behavior.” Automatization is the process in which the repeated exercise of an action or a perception results in the disappearance from consciousness of its intermediate steps. De automatization is the undoing of automatization. This is done by reinvestment of action and perception with attention. It is not a regression but an undoing of a pattern to permit a new and more advanced experience. The crayfish sloughs its rigid shell when more space is needed for growth. In the same way, the mystic will shed the shell of automatic perception, of automatic affective and cognitive controls to perceive more deeply, reality. One can see from this definition the reason for remarkable freshness and clarity of perception. Things seem to have more “suchness.” Red is redder. Water is wetter. We see with fresh eyes the things that lacked our attention. There is a “cleansing of the gates of perception.”
Oneness
We are all unique unto ourselves and special, and at its polarity, we are all One. Everything is linked together in an intimate web and related to one another. From a scientific point of view, everything in the Universe IS connected, there is nothing that is not related to everything else. Therefore, everything DOES effect everything else.**It is the large things that give our life the meaning it is to have, not the mechanics and details. The meaning and validity of our lives is given to us by the Oneness. Be careful when applying hard, fixed form to things- or structure. When you are in tune with the Oneness of all, you act as though everyone and everything is holy and treat them as you would yourself.
Learning to Care for the Self in Meditation and PsychoTherapy
In all good psychotherapy and in meditation, there is a therapeutic factor which is rarely mentioned. It is the careful paying attention to ourselves at our “best” and “worst” that we train ourselves to be concerned with our total being, this involving our best possible relationship with ourselves and others, which we realize is a deep need of ours. In learning to take ourselves seriously we learn how to garden and cultivate our being, and therefore, the being of others . I am learning to truly be myself or remembering to, for meditation is giving me maturity, self-responsibility, and effortless authenticity of self (being myself).
Physiological Effects of Meditation
Meditation seems to produce a physiological state of deep relaxation throughout the body, coupled with a wakeful and highly alert mental state. Central to the response to meditation is the lowered rate of metabolism, which breads the **lowered rate of oxygen use and production carbon dioxide, in effect. During meditation we are focusing and doing one thing at a time and in this case, the signals we are giving our body as to how it should respond are simpler and more coherent during meditation than at any other time. Throughout our daily lives, we are telling our body to physiologically do many things, all at once. Meditation is where we are sending out one signal at a time. The effect of this is physiologically positive and there is a strong tendency to normalize reactions, to behave physiologically in a more relaxed and healthy manner. Where tension and anxiety usually dwelled, there is an increase in mental awareness and alertness and a decrease in physiological tension such as increased heart rate and metabolic response.
All Roads Lead to Nirvana
There are MANY types of meditation. We will discuss the four major classes because most of them fit into these four. Another way of labeling these classes would be to call them “paths of meditation,” they are routes that take you to the same desired goals of meditation that I have previously described. The four major routes take you “home” through the intellect, the emotion, through the body, or action. How do you choose with route to take? You start with the one that feels most comfortable to you at the time. The area in which you personally feel strongest and most secure (of course, this advice is meant for before you reach enlightenment and a state of consciously existing in reality. Once you reach this point you do not need your training wheels any longer and you can challenge yourself to climb spiritual heights through meditations that utilize paths that you are not familiar with or that are not outright comfortable to you yet, such as the Body mode). **All lead to the same place eventually. One teacher of the mystic way, Rabbi Nahman of Bratislava, wrote, “God chooses one man with a shout, the other with a song, another with a **whisper.” It can happen anyway Brittney, to reiterate, be open minded. **The good test of whether it is working is that the meditation ought to make you feel better when you do it than when you do not do it. After EACH meditation, sit with yourself and ask yourself if you feel better than you did BEFORE you began meditation, how do you feel in comparison, is the way you feel increasing? If you are doing the right work for you, you should feel more put together, more of one piece and less fragmented. If you do not feel better using the specific method, stop and pick another one. **IF YOU PERSEVERE, WITH THE MEDITATION THAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU, THEN AFTER A MONTH OR SO, YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF BECOMING ADDICTED TO FEELING GOOD AND RIGHT AND YOU WILL FIND YOUR MOTIVATION INCREASING TO CONTINUE THIS WORK REGULARLY.
The Path of the Intellect
The basic structure is that the student reaches an intellectual understanding of the two realities, the two ways of perceiving and relating to the world, and then through a series of training exercises- meditations- deepens this understanding. At the same time, he is strengthening his personality structure by the discipline. The meditations force him to see and perceive differently and he attains a total organismic comprehension.Habad Hasidism utilized the path of the intellect for the Hebrew tradition. Habad is an acronym of three words: Hokmah (wisdom), Binah s(intelligence), and Daat (knowledge). Baal Shem Tov is the founder of Hasidic mysticism.
The Path Through the Emotions
The Christian monastic who spends years practicing his devotions, ceaselessly working at his ability to love, **to feel, ** to accept, expand and express his Caritas, his caring, is on this route. This focuses on emotions that loosens the feelings and expand the ability to relate to others, to care and to love. They tend to use unstructured meditations. The basic theory held by meditational schools of this kind is that the more free, untroubled and complete a human being is, the more he has overcome the stunting of his growth due to his cultural training and early experiences, the more he will naturally love and better relate to others. Some schools focus on loving the self, others, or God. They all arrive to the same place of loving all three and All. There is no separation, so learning to love either one leads to full caring for all three and All.
The Route Through the Body
You learn to be aware of one’s body and bodily movements and to heighten this awareness through practice until, during the period of meditation, this awareness completely fills the consciousness to the exclusion of anything else. Practiced consistently, it leads to the same results as do the other routes. A Dervish dancer of the Sufi mystical tradition said, “We bless the Lord by dancing… because dancing kills the ego, and once the ego has been killed, there is no further obstacle to prevent you from joining with God.” There is the Hasidic tale of the great Rabbi who was coming to visit a small town in Russia. All the towns people had prepared important questions they wished to ask of the wise man. When he arrived, the Rabbi came to their meeting space and he could tell that all in attendance were feeling tense. They were worried about the questions they had to ask the man. For a time, he said nothing and then he began to softly hum a Hasidic tune. All present began humming with him. He began to sing the song and all began singing with him. Then he began to dance and soon all present were caught up in dancing with him. After a time of being deeply involved with the dance, all fully committed to it with thinking of their dance and nothing more, each one became whole with himself, each healed the splits within himself which kept him from understanding. After at time, the Rabbi gradually slowed it to a stop, looked at the group, and said, “I trust that I have answered all of your questions.” In the complete absorption in one’s bodily integration and bodily movement, the meditator is brought slowly and gradually to doing just one thing at a time. This integrates the different bodily aspects with each other and with the personality in particular.
The Path of Action
It consists of learning how to “be” and perceive and relate to the world during the performance of a particular type of skill. Various skills such as archery, flower arranging, aikido and karate, singing and prayer, rug weaving, etc. In Christianity there is the, “Little Way of Saint Teresa of Lisieux.” Her way consisted of doing all the small tasks of everyday life with the knowledge that each one is a part of the total harmony of the Universe. They were done with love and WITH TOTAL CONCENTRATION (**FOCUS) and the attitude that this task was the **MOST IMPORTANT THING TO BE DOING AT THAT MOMENT (what have I been saying? That life is important at all times! You have been thinking and feeling that at times it is, at times it is not. This is the law of Attraction working. She is connecting with the reality and fact-what she KNOWS to be true and accepting nothing more- that her life and everything in existence IS important and crucial at all times. Precious. **I would venture to guess that she may have been dealing with feelings that her life was not important or perhaps that ordinary tasks and that side of life was insignificant and she wanted to transmute this DELUSIONAL conception. EVERYTHING IS always valuable and crucial. It has been MY experience of life (such as finding it difficult to connect with my emoitons at the current moment and feeling “flat”) that was a complete delusion and false, life is going on right now and we always connected to it- You therefore are always within the realm of being loved and significant. Note, lately, and during my years of suffering, I experienced life as being significant for some and not for others. That it is important on these occasions and not during others. Therefore I made these comments previously mentioned. The long hard practice disciplines and strengthens the personality.
How to Meditate
The first piece of advice for when you first begin to meditate is to not be concerned with doing it “well”. Be relaxed about it and natural. Gently bring yourself back to focus, do not fret. The first major effect of meditation is strengthening the personality structure which comes from CONSISTENTLY doing it. ** That is the most important factors of meditation, CONSISTENCY. Other initial benefits of meditation are increased ability to relate and cope with the world, ability to accept and express your own feelings, etc. There is more, you will also attain a new way of being in the world. Meditation Instructions: Find a silent place and time to meditate. If you are drawn to a certain area, that is swell, too. Give yourself permission to make constant slips from the directions. Treat yourself as if you were a much-loved child. If ever you stray from the directions given for the meditation simply GENTLY yet steadfastly guide yourself back to focus. You must do the one task, and nothing more; THAT, is meditation. **It is important to note that during meditation, you focus your mind on doing that one task and nothing else. This is how you largely attain enlightenment (re enlightenment?).
Meditations Woes
**In some cases there may be times during meditation when you feel dry, or dull, you may even feel like nothing is happening, however this CAN be a part of the learning curve. You must focus on the task further and proceed. Work HARDER at it during these times. The moment will pass and you will overcome it and grow as a result. “Patiently, little by little, a man must free himself from all mental distractions, with the aid of the intelligent Will,” – The Bhagavad-Gita.
Structured and Unstructured Meditations. Inner, Middle, Outer, Way.
In this chapter we will learn about mental meditations which are done in your head and without bodily movement, you stay in one position. Then there is the difference between structed and unstructured. Structured meditation is one that precisely defines what internal activity you are to do. The Breath Counting was a structed meditation. It is rigorous and hard work. Working in a hard (or focused) and disciplined manner toward its accomplishment breeds mastery. An unstructured meditation is quite another thing. In doing it, you think about a subject and simply stay with the subject and your feelings about it. You work with a wider area than in a structured meditation. The subject chosen maybe a word, an image, a phrase, a concept, or a problem, etc. You keep thinking about the subject you have chosen and explore your reactions and feelings about it. It differs from “free association” (following your inner reactions wherever they go) in that you keep yourself to the subject itself and how you think and feel about it. Thus, if you are meditating on the question, “How do I Love?”, what follows is, “How do I Feel about these Facts?” You keep your mind revolving around these two centers and if you stray away, you bring yourself back to them. The purpose of the unstructured format is to loosen and free your own personality structure in a particular area, as in to love more, to be aware of and accept your ability to feel, etc. If done consistently under the aid of the will to integrate oneself more fully and to grow, it will have this desired outcome. The active will must be present, directing your attention more and more fully toward the subject and your relationship to it. IT IS, IN ESSENCE, MAKING you see that you have this thing already inside of you (whichever subject you choose to focus on) and it forces you to awaken to it and unlock it. To honor its existence. To STOP LYING to yourself as if you “don’t have it” already- YOU DO. You have it all inside you already, everything you keep talking about and this is something you Know as a child meaning, it is an instinct. It is self-evident. **Notice: For any real value, you must CONSISTENTLY repeat meditation for a period of time to encounter real changes and lasting results. You will do best to combine meditation styles, structured and unstructured, so you can exercise both your mind and free your emotions. **Also, a combination may produce the fastest results because you are giving movement to both parts of you (search for them online). The structured will train the intellect and release the emotions slowly, and the other will do the reverse. In Meditation there are Outer, Middle, and Inner Way Meditations. Middle strengthens your ability to remain calm and unflappable in the face of outside events. Reduces claims of how things “should be” therefore you respond to them with less irrelevant emotions. Inner increases awareness and acceptance of your own emotional life and feelings. It becomes easier to express them and enjoy them. In particular, the doing of the work of the outer gives special strength to one’s feeling of competence and the ability to cope with the world. Confidence in self and the resultant ability to make decisions quickly and accurately are increased.
Meditation, Mysticism, and the Paranormal (ESP, etc.)
When you begin to meditate, ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) will occur often. Be warned, FOCUS on the meditation and do not take interest in any “phenomena” that may occur during. The EXCEPTION is, if you get the answer to a question, you may stop and understand it, and think about it (this topic only). When you are finished meditating, you can consider the phenomena that occurred, freely.ESP points to another part of our being, a part of our potential for existence and relationship. We are suppressing our paranormal ability. This part we must develop to reach a full humanness. The major price that we pay for not being in contact with our full being is the loss of zest and joy in our lives. It breeds aggression, a miserable disposition, and suspicion of others. We also must come into our awareness that we are part of the Universe, and one with all, that separation is illusion. This awareness is another thing we repress. These are the 2 reasons mankind is ALWAYS in a state of unfulfillment. **Awaken people and deliver them to their true selves and reality, this will create a strong bond with them and it will also pay well. Meditation heightens sensitivity! (Scientific proof!). **Some mystics alternate between contemplation (thinking) and meditation.
