This thread may be better suited for the spirituality section if a mod feels like they should move it.

Over the past year or so I've been developing my own spiritual practices. As of right now I focus mostly on meditation as a means for personal growth. I've found that continued meditational practice has sort of naturally grown into general awareness throughout my day. I've found that when I'm walking to work, or doing mundane tasks, it is very calming to focus on my breath and almost 'feel' my awareness extend to the environment around me. I don't quite know how to describe the state, but it never fails to improve my mood and put me in a clear headspace. It's really quite a gift we have to be able to feel so connected at any given time if we just take a moment to cultivate our awareness. I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with general awareness practices, specifically with one's personal meditation techniques. Do you have a routine when you meditate, what kind of awareness practices do you prefer, mantras...?etc...

I've also been wondering about a few other things, such as the difference between open and closed eye meditation. Personally, I tend to meditate with my eyes closed. I've gotten to the point where once I settle in, close my eyes, and focus on my breath for a few moments I can 'perceive' my thought process (consciousness?). It's not so much like I'm seeing it, but I can directly perceive my thoughts as they inherently exist in some dimension. Again, it's hard to describe--but this definitely helps me to visualize my thoughts, analyze them, and bring myself back to the breath when I find I'm being distracted by my thoughts.
When I try meditating with my eyes open, I find it very hard to enter this meditative state. My focus is scattered and I find I spend too much time manually blinking/not blinking.
What do you guys prefer? Open eye or closed eye meditation? What kind of things do you prepare for meditation with? (eg cannabis, harmalas, stretching, etc...)

Personally I love to meditate with ganja. Sometimes its nice to meditate without anything. There are so many schools of thought on this subject that you could read for weeks, months even and never find any clear path. But the way I see it is sort of like taking a lesson from the Tao Te Ching in that, the path that can be defined is not the eternal path. I take this to mean that instead of trying to do anything just flowing with ones nature is the tao, or better known as the way or path. If I feel like meditation after getting high, then I simply do. If instead I get the urge to mediate with a clear mind, then I do. Or even to try and focus on chakras. I just let it flow and live and let be. I think that's important with meditation. In a way its almost a catch 22 in the sense that trying to mediate is like trying to reach a goal. Trying to reach a goal is the ego trying to get something out of it, instead I try to let go of all that and just simply be. Sort of like some of the Buddhists and their nothingness mediation. In which the 'goal' is to not focus on anything or have a goal, but simply be a part of your surroundings and be in the now. To calm the mind and find that inner silence. When there is no sense of self, no sense of I, that is when you gain true awareness. Or so they say.

I even think something like walking is a form of it. I don't know how many times when I was younger I would walk home from school and not be able to recount any part of the walk, I was so engrossed in my mind that sometimes I would just simply stare at the sidewalk whilst thinking nothing. To me that is the most natural form of meditation. Hell you can apply that train of thought to almost anything. Fishing, smoking a cig, driving a car, whatever you want. But again I'm no expert on such subjects, I've just read a lot and over the years I feel like I've gained some sort of primitive understanding...

I hope you can find some meaning in my words

Love and light!

Great post! I like what you said about not trying to do anything but instead just flowing with one's nature; that definitely speaks to me. I often find myself trying to set up some kind of rigid practice, when in fact the purpose is to let go of rigidness and allow yourself to simply be.



^^This is pretty much what I try to do. I use my breath as a means of grounding, kind of like a metronome. It's constant and always provides me something to come back to and refocus my attention on when I feel I'm distracted or lost in fleeting thoughts. But the goal isn't to reach anything, but to allow my mind to free flow in it's natural state, free from social conditioning, neuroses, concepts. It's so rewarding to feel your sense of personal identity melt away, yet expand to the rest of nature. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has a series of verses entitled Observations Related to Examining the Nature of Mind which describes this state beautifully. I found reading these verses before a meditation session extremely helpful for recognizing the "desired" state of mind. (Ironically though, there should be no desire or goal of meditation...simply to be).
But here's a few excerpts from that section. I recommend reading the whole series of verses if you're interested.



And yeah, I feel that you can meditate doing literally anything. Too many people have this misconstrued conception that you need to formally sit down and have a specific posture to meditate. Yes, it helps, but one turn any activity into an opportunity to be aware.

I usually start by following my breathing, and bring my meditation to one-point focus. If I'm about to take a journey, I shall maintain focus on my intention for that journey and what I want to get out of it.

I don't always use it this way however, sometimes I use it solely as a pre-flight calming technique, and leave myself open to whatever the experience shows me. I also don't necessarily meditate just before I'm about to journey, as meditation's everyday uses are plenty.

Peace

Macre

Really think you have to find your own way, and the only good method is experimentation. Cannabis is a good example because everyone's got a different view on it around here. It's not going to ruin you or your meditation practice to try it once or twice or a dozen times to decide for yourself if it inhibits your process. What's important is that you slowly build up a repertoire of conditions (which are totally personal to you) that allow you to get into the headspace you want. You can learn a system or method from someone else, and it might be a really good one, but chances are you will never connect to it as fully as the person who conceived it, or as fully as you might to your own


Edit: Alan Watts, completely! The guy does get it
(@following post)

It is funny how life is full of little ironies like that

I will definitely have to look into that further. Also one thing I suppose I could mention from personal experience is rock climbing. Its been something I've been doing for about 5 years now but essentially its the same thing we're talking about. The focus of mind and flow that one feels is truly amazing. It gives me the focus of a zen monk so to speak, and yet even though I'm extremely active and moving and exerting tons of energy I'm at peace, my movements reflect my state of mind, calm and determined. Its amazing to me how sports such as these can be used to learn about ones own mind.

Also I'd like to point you towards Alan Watts lecture on meditation. Actually it seems to be a recent theme of mine to link people to speakers such as him. While I don't necessarily agree with any one person 100% on subjects I believe he is great because when I first heard of him it stuck a chord with me. One of those, "holy crap, this guy totally gets it" feelings. So I think much can be taken away from such a lecture, and many more of his.

meditation lecture

As it has already been mentioned, there are countless books and videos on meditation, so the topic is, indeed, a very vast one. Moreover, it appears that neuroscientists have become really interested in the effects these techniques have on reshaping various areas of the brain, and their research seems promising.

What I want to do it is propose a look at how amphetamines could be used as a tool for meditation. Such ideas are guaranteed to upset some folks here, so I'll make it clear from the start that I'm not looking for enlightenment: at best, I'd want to reach a point where I'm at peace with myself and the world as it is, not as I think it should be.

My meditation is focused on the body. Attending yoga classes for quite some time has gotten me to the point where I was quite fed up with the endless ramble about love and light, with a generous amount of Sanskrit words thrown in for good measure (from people who don't actually speak the language to people who don't understand it).

My goal was to get out of my head, and the encouragement to "feel there's something more" to the physical exercises we were doing was defeating that purpose and appeared, essentially, as an encouragement to fake the yoga bliss.

Now some of you guys who've been here for a while may have read my posts about the benefits of foam rolling. Over the past year, the practice has completely changed my relationship with my own body. I came upon those techniques accidentally and took an intuitive approach to the practice, by simply doing what seemed to work.

Eventually, I started researching it (on a side note, it feels great discovering there's a whole science discussing stuff you've ran into accidentally) and realized that what I was doing with the roller was much closer to somatic movement than to what your average personal trainer does at the gym.

I don't want to make this too long (late for that, i know..), so I'll just mention that as I got better at focusing my awareness on the muscle I was targeting, while trying to keep everything else relaxed and the breath deep and steady, the results came much faster.

As the body slowly lost it's tightness, I started noticing that the way I moved wasn't right. For example, as soon as I took a step forward, my shoulders would come up a bit, even though the neck muscle had gained enough length to keep shoulders down. This is the point where I started putting a lot of effort into bringing this sort of patterns, deeply ingrained in the body, into awareness.

And now the interesting part: the constant focus on movement patterns (including the breath, but not just the breath) slowly brought into awareness mental patterns that I had never before been aware of. I try not to focus on those, but just notice them and keep focusing on the body, which has worked for me.

Back to amphetamines (and I'm talking legitimate Rx, with controlled doses, not some street mess): left unattended, they will tighten about every muscle in the body, most noticeably the chest and back (resulting in difficulty with breathing, anxiety etc). However, if you start focusing on what the drug is doing to you, as you bring those unsavory body sensations into awareness, you may notice that you can reverse them, and then some.

On a different forum, a member said something to the effect that amphetamines will enhance the activity of that part of the brain you're using at the time. I don't know if there's any scientific support to the claim, but I can tell that if you take your adderall and set on studying for 10 hrs straight, your body can get very tight and you may experience all sort of pain. On the other hand, if you focus on the body, you can voluntarily relax it, and bring into awareness sensations that you could not access as easily (or at all) without the drug.

I keep my eyes closed, sometimes half open. I sit on a pad with a pillow and use the "quarter lotus" position. I personally can only meditate sober, but I do enjoy meditating when I'm coming down from cannabis

Meditation can happen while you are doing anything, the key that I understand is full immersion in whatever you are doing. I've never had the patience for the zazen style seated meditation. I remember a Watts quote to the tune of 'just peel the potatoes', so thats what I do.

I agree with a few posts above regarding meditating w/o a goal... travel as a wanderer as opposed to having a destination. I find that I get the most enjoyment of this wandering when i am:

Cooking. Its so easy to get lost in the processes, smells, sensations and delights of making food that my mind freely wanders without attachment and without effort. I don't have to focus on breathing or 'will' my way into meditation, I just cook.

Swimming (when I get the rare chance), just feeling the water and the process. So easy to get lost.

Painting. Particularly without a representational goal... just getting lost in the movements and the colors and the textures of paint. I used to be much more formal in art school, now I just paint for the sake of painting, and it is very satisfying. The mind just goes in all directions without any urgency or intention. The results are much more satisfying as well when I begin w/o intention, and allow the process to take over.

You get the idea. Playing music, even watching films can be immersive. And of course, psychedelics

my meditation practice just simple deep breath meditation, focus on breath and certain parts of the body, try to never expect anything or be asstonished by anything since just adds to more distraction, key is as little distraction as possible and thought is the big one, only through complete lack of thought am i truely able to let go of the self, eyes always closed, though have had some cool opened eyed sessions with open eyed visuals, i usually meditate sober except with psychedelics since such a great tool

yeah this was great to listen to while in a stoned meditation

Hahaha that's exactly what I did when I first listened to it as well.

Recently i've been focusing on my breathing. Meditation techniques vary on what goal you hope to achieve imo.
I want to enter the astral realm through meditation so i practice zazen. I have reached the hum so far if i practiced more often i'm pretty sure i would be there already (my breathing usually distracts me).

If you just want medical benefits of meditation you can meditate doing anything you are fully immersed in. If you can be fully immersed in something you will probably find you will be better at what you are doing. IME

Open-eye meditation is good for when you're a little tired and think you might fall asleep. I have found that keeping your eyes half-open and slightly out of focus is very effective. A plain white wall is good to have in the background as there isn't much to distract you.