For the most part, I'm a hermit, but some people stopped by last night and we got to talking about the old days when we use to meditate. And how powerful meditation was in our lives. And somebody asked, "So why don't you just start doing it again?" After they left I started meditating. It really wasn't that hard. All you do is turn off the TV and shut off the computer and it happens automatically.
Are you sure you weren't just daydreaming? Meditation requires prolonged and fairly singular mental focus, ideally free from distracting thoughts, which doesn't happen all that automatically for most of us.
all meditation requires is sitting still and doing nothing. It doesn't matter if you are daydreaming, or thinking about all the people who have hurt you and how much harm you wish would come to them, or all the women you had sex with, or all the women you wished you had sex with, or all the women you wish you could have sex with. That only lasts a few fleeting moments when you are still and doing nothing. try sitting and doing nothing, it is very hard to do, but when you do it the prolonged and fairly focused singular mental focus free from distracting thoughts will happen all the time, even when you are trying to be singularly and mentally focused
yes it does, but when you are smoking you are not meditating. It is very hard to do nothing. Almost nobody ever does it. We are usually always doing something, even if it is just smoking a joint.
I don't know if it's possible to get completely quiet, but just attempting it sometimes is helpful for me. When I get all wound up, I tend to become more aware of it than I used to and so I take a few minutes to chill out. I don't see how there's any right or wrong about it. I guess there are a lot of different types of meditation out there... I'm reading this book in which the author talks about some different kinds---buddhist, and clairvoyance meditation. It's interesting and pretty funny actually--called What I did on my midlife crisis vacation---anyway, I just wanted to put my 2 cents in here since meditation's been on my mind lately.
I've just started meditating again, must be catching I used to do zazen - Japanese sitting on one's legs when my legs were in shape and fit, otherwise it's pure torture unless you're Japanese or a child I believe the minimum time required for the electro-chemical changes in the brain to take place is 20 minutes, then one may attain what might be described as a sleeping awake state how long one goes after that is up to one the other thing is the longer one continues regular daily meditation the greater the build-up of benefits there are, calm mind calm trading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zazen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi
I've recently started meditation, I recommend taking a look at '8 Minute Meditation by Victor Davish'. There are really no hurdles, you just sit there and do nothing - I've only been doing it for 8 minutes a day - it's more about getting into the habit. You can read about all the other different types of meditation, for me personally if I did that I'd probably think about meditation too much whilst trying to meditate. It really is as simple as sitting down and doing nothing, following your breath and not hooking onto thoughts, just letting them pass.
I just read a little into Samadhi - pretty fascinating - it's something I'll save for more research later, for now I'm having trouble sitting still for 8 minutes haha Do you have any experience at that deep a level?