what is meditation and how does someone do it?
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do not get into this rabbit hole of meditation.
you do not need it you can live fine without
meditation is just you forcing your thoughts to be quite
maybe someday listen to this guy called U.G Krishnamurti (not J.K Krishnamurti )
he was like a spiritual terrorist for me ,
just wiped everything in me like a clean slate
In the simplest terms possible: Breathe.
That’s it. No complex visualisations or mystical practice, just breathe and pay full attention to your breath. If you suddenly find your mind wandering (you will, constantly) return to focusing on your breath.
Meditation is a great habit. It is basically a way to become familiar with your subconscious emotional conditioning. It is spending time watching your subconscious emote and respond enough until that reactionary energy slows down. Great way to learn focus and understand and overcome your emotional responses to use your rational mind instead.
Meditation taught me how to calm my anxious thoughts and finally be free of the compulsion to think and just live in each moment peacefully.
Meditation, when you’re starting, is not about “clearing your mind” or “thinking about nothing” and it’s frustrating that people who don’t know how to teach make it more difficult than it has to be.
Focus on one thing (a word, your breath), and let your thoughts go by. When you catch yourself thinking about something else, let it go and go back to your one focus. That’s it, you didn’t do it wrong because you had a thought, letting go of the thoughts you have literally IS the meditation.
In fact, the more thoughts you have and let go of, the more you’re practicing meditation.
“I legitimately don’t know what “let it go” means?”
It just means recognizing that if it’s important you will remember it later (unless you left your stove on or something, in which case you can get up) and that you can abandon that train of thought and refocus on your intended focus.
You don’t need to grasp every train of thought until it’s done and get dragged down the river, you can just throw that log back in the river and watch the current of thoughts drift by.
I actually love using the visual of a single ripple in water to refocus along with a one word mantra. Every word is a visual drop and ripple in an infinite black pond and an out breath. It’s enough to drag my attention back, where maybe breath or word alone are not enough.
And by the time you need a new breath, the water is calm.
Or visualise a clear blue sky and every time a thought comes up you let it drift away as a cloud.
But also, for anyone new to meditation, try guided visualization meditation where it takes you through a walk or a setting! It’s much easier to understand the basics after enjoying a guided experience.
The guided meditations I listened to were about learning how to focus your thoughts. It’s natural to let your mind wander, so meditation trains your brain to be able to focus. Wandering will happen but you acknowledge it and then go back to what you were focusing on (usually breathing). There are also other kinds of meditations, but the focusing in is usually where you’d start. I think it’s a useful tool if you want to work on emotional regulation because you’re training yourself to have better control of your thoughts.
If you want to learn it there’s several apps that teach the basics. Headspace is a popular one and free, but not my favourite. Waking Up is my preferred app: the introductory meditations are free, they guide you through how to do it, what to think about, how to focus on your breathing. I just use whatever’s available for free on the app. There’s also alternative kinds of guided meditations on it, like one where you focus on detaching from your thoughts and observing them from the outside. This one helped me with some mental health issues because I learned to be able to see my emotions as something separate from my person. Emotions still sometimes get to me, but I can go back to what I learned to remind myself to let the feelings pass through me.
Meditation is a process by which we learn how our mind works, so that in life we can better direct the mind to do things we want it to, and not do things we don’t want it to.
Hopefully this has not been mentioned already but there is an app called “Headspace“ that I have found incredibly useful. There’s also a Netflix TV series by the same company… Both are very very worthwhile resources.
*reposting my response from a previous question about meditation:*
I’ve been meditating daily since 2000. Lots of people hear about meditation and enlightenment and believe there’s some way to gain a permanently blissful state. Lots of books about Buddhism explain that enlightenment is not something to be achieved, but to be pursued. As humans, there’s no way to achieve a mental state where nothing bothers you and you’re permanently happy.
What meditation can achieve is to simply clear your mind temporarily. Think of a cup that you use each day and maybe rinse out, but never fully clean. That’s sort of what your mind is like without meditation. Going to sleep resets your brain, but doesn’t fully clear out all of your emotions, thoughts, and worries. Meditation assists you by helping reset and relax your mind during the day. Instead of simply emptying out the drinking cup, you’re carefully washing and cleaning it.
Your body has 10 million sensors in it, 8 million of which are in your eyes. The second you close your eyes, your brain gets to go on vacation because all it no longer has to process 80% of the information your body is receiving. There’s a saying that the human body cannot be in an agitated state when the breath is regulated. If you’re breathing slowly, deliberately, consciously, your body relaxes and you can’t be upset.
The combination of shutting your eyes and focusing on slow, deliberate breathing allows your body to slow down, and clears out your mind. This is the act of meditation. It isn’t a permanent state, it’s temporary, but this mental and physical “reset” allows you to reframe and re-approach your existence.
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” – Thich Nhat Hang
Meditation can help you, immediately, in this moment. Will it change the way you think and feel forever? No, but it can relax you at the moments when you need it.
If thoughts were visible objects, meditation would be like seeing them in peripheral vision rather than looking at them directly.
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