Having read Veritas' article The Self and Its Search for Ultimate Meaning in the Enlightenment board, i got to thinking again on the subject of meditation and its benefits/goals.

Does anyone else here meditate? and would they like to share their experiences and thoughts on meditation.

Thanks

MEDITATION: -There are forms of meditation in every culture and concept of man and his relationship with the soul. Many of them have little to do with symbols or intellectual processes such as the illustration that follows. This particular kind of meditation comes from witchcraft and the Qabala that was re-written into Judaism for the purpose of using approaches that have long proven themselves and making people think the spiritual leaders were wise or powerful. It is contentious to some because it mentions the feminine aspect that is incorporated into the ancient knowledge of the Sphinx and was obliterated for many millennia by the Jehovah promoters who wanted men to dominate. The Shekhinah were once female goddesses in the Judaic religious complex. In short it knows and can show the nurturing aspect of our 'feminine' soul, and how it can open doors to major insights beyond the intellectual or social conventions.


"UNSHEATHING THE SOUL
PREPARE to meet your God. Prepare to devote your heart. Purify your body and select a special place where no one else in the world can hear your voice. Be totally alone. Sit in one spot in the room or the loft, and do not reveal your secret to anyone {Don't do it for peer acceptance or ego. Find you power spot by attunement to the room and earth energy, etc. The best places are in nature and you will 'feel' when it is right!}. If you can, do this by day, even for a little while, but the best way is to do it at night {Melatonin production increases at night-thus 'night-worker' is the meaning of melatonin.}. As you prepare to speak with your Creator, to seek the revelation of his power, be careful to empty your mind of all mundane vanities. Wrap yourself in your 'tallit' and put 'tefillin' on your head so that you will be filled with the awe of Shekhinah, who is with you at this moment. Wear clean garments, all white if you can. All this helps immensely in focussing your awe and love. If it is night, light many candles until your eyes shine brightly.


Then take hold of ink, pen and tablet. Realize that you are about to serve your God in joy. Begin to combine letters, a few or many, permuting and revolving them {This would be good training for people early in life and getting to know new languages.} rapidly until your mind warms up. Delight in how they move and in what you generate by revolving them. When you feel within that your mind is very, very warm from combining the letters and that through the combination you understand new things that you have not attained by human tradition nor discovered on your own through mental reflection, then you are ready to receive the abundant flow, and the abundance flows upon you, arousing you again and again.


Now turn your thoughts to visualizing the Name and its supernal angels {What is this kind of stuff, doing in a science section of an encyclopedia? There are forces and consciousnesses as science has proven. The name angel is one way man has conventionalized his inter-reaction with these forces.}, imagining them as if they were human beings standing or sitting around you, with you in the middle like a messenger about to be sent on a royal mission, waiting to hear about it from their lips, either from the king himself or from one of his ministers. Having imagined {N.B.} this vividly, prepare your mind and heart to understand the many things about to be conveyed to you by the letters being contemplated within you. Meditate on them as a whole and in all their detail, like one to whom a parable, a riddle {Triads of the Bards.}, or a dream is being told, or like one perusing a book of wisdom, pondering a passage beyond his grasp. Interpret what you hear in an uplifting manner, approximating it as best you can {Chant}. Based on what you understand of it, evaluate yourself and others. All this will happen after you fling the tablet from your hands and the pen from your fingers, or after they fall by themselves due to the intensity of your thoughts.


Realize that the stronger the mental flow, the weaker become your limbs and organs. Your entire body will begin to tremble violently. You will think that you are about to die because your soul, overjoyed at what she {N.B.} has attained, will depart from your body. Consciously choose death over life, knowing that such death affects only the body and that thereby the soul lives eternally. Then you will know that you are capable of receiving the flow. If you then wish to honor the glorious NAME {Which was not always the same force being addressed or summoned.} by serving it with the life of body and soul, hide your face, fear to gaze at God, and come no closer, like Moses at the burning bush. Return to the physical dimension, rise, eat and drink a little, inhale a fragrant aroma. Return your spirit to its sheath until another time. Rejoice in what you have, and know that God loves you.� (7)


Visualizing the colours of the light and breathing from Yogic disciplines is a much more commonly thought of meditation. There are as many ways to meditate as there are trees in the forest. Each one is different if only by the fact of each person being different.

Thanks dude, got anything personal to say on this subject? Do you meditate?

As I say in that piece - there are many means of meditation - my brother used to meditate after his first mile in a race or running - me I never could do that. I have done many and now find it second nature - no need to make a big deal of it.

The first thing I do when I awake in the AM is to consciously choose to connect with, or tune in to, G-d--that which is total, universal and all encompassing. The last thing I do, before I enter the unconsciousness of sleep, is to express the desire that I will remain connected to, and tuned in to, G-d. Therefore, meditation, for me, is 24 hour affair. Thus I find that everything I think, say and do is a form of meditation.

This is from the King James Version Philippians 4

4 Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.

5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.

6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

Those that have studied the reality of God and have been able to see beyond some of the twists in deciphering the original Teachings of Christ have found that What you focus on Grows.
Meditation is a gradual process in tuning the mind to the essence of life. Prayer, True Prayer is meditation, communion with the God.
There are as many forms of conversation with God as there are ways to approach the infinite absolute.

Choice is what you have the ability to do.
Nothing happens to you.
Everything that you perceive is a result of your choice.

Dan, how do you make lemonade if you chuck the lemons? If not lemonade then what should one make?

The incoming lemons are the result of the choices one makes within the understanding of reality.
If You throw away what comes to you and you fail to recognize why you have created it and do nothing to change the choices you make, the lemons will return again and again.

Always the mind thinks it is in control and in its dualistic reality it struggles with the projection of its self.

it's the same old bullshlt, Joesus, the bread and butter of your conversion sermon

Then why waste your time responding unless you like this particular lemon?

I don't know if you could call what I do meditating.I used to meditate-after getting into it on acid,but I do find it difficult.

But I am interested in Jung's method of active imagination,and I sort of thing of this as a precursor to meditation.Whenever I try to meditate,I get very tense(th opposite of what I want!),so now I just let my mind go,and see what images it makes,and treat them symbolically,in the Jungian sense of the word.I seem to find this easier,and interpreting the images is fascinating.

Ironically,the best experience I had whilst meditating was the first,on acid.I had a full blown ego-death experience and it left me speechless.I knew nothing about ego-death(or meditating)at the time,all I knew was that meditating was "thinking of nothing",and that you could do it on acid,but I didn't know what would happen.And boy,was I dumbstruck!It was like a religious experience,my life before and after the experience,if you know what I mean.Anyway,that was nearly fifteen years ago now,and I haven't quite repeated the experience since.I nearly have,but that is not the same as actually achieving full ego-death,and after not having much success with meditation since,I now take the different approach of understanding the images in my mind instead of trying to get rid of them,because I believe that they are just two different means to the same end(ego-death)anyway.

Dear Author

You wouldn't ask such a stupid question to bgin with, unless you weren't already preprepared or premeditating a stupid argument about meditation itself from all these other fools above me here.
And I just came to smash you silly little rat trap on all of their behalf's ,not mine, as do everything by myself.

Take this any way you damn well like.....because I care in places where you and they obviously don't!

LOve Jasper