Ideally, one should practice both mindfulness in everyday life, and formal sitting/standing meditation, as they are synergistic with each other. Like I said, basic concentrative meditation develops your concentration ability so that you can more effectively utilize other types of practical meditation- "field-work", if you will.

Then likely you haven't gone very deep at all... Your subconscious mind doesn't ever really turn off. It however can be tuned to a specific focus...

Meditation is a very deep subject. My understanding of it literally changes every year as I dive deeper.

As for your girlfriend and imagining an apple...most people can learn to do this relatively easily. The visions I'm talking about are coming from something other than the conscious mind...like DMT visions.

Peace

So I started meditating today, inspired by this thread. I have tried it here and there over the years, but I just didn't have the patience. Today I found it quite natural and am suprised to see how much I enjoyed it, how good it made me feel, and how time has passed quickly! I'm excited to dive into this. Thank you for the inspiration.