i have started meditating but many times i cannot focus completely. i start to think about the things going on in the day and i cant clear my mind at all. the point of this meditation is to seek the darkness inside of me and bring it out but i dont even know where to begin. it seems like i need to stop ignoring what is inside of me, but i dont know how to start it off. another question; will this really help?
if anyone knows anything about meditation please share, i could really use the help

you could try transcendental meditation ™. I believe the main idea behind it is to find a quiet place, sit upright and comfortably in a chair, close your eyes, and quietly count your breaths until you achieve a clear, meditative state of mind. There is a lot of meditation info that you can pull up on google probably. I'm too lazy at the moment to do it myself.

There are many beliefs in regards to meditation. For the most part people are pretty ignorant of the process and what it is supposed to do.
What are you looking for? Peace in your life? A quiet escape?
The motivation to meditate is as diverse as the desires that humans have for the goals the mind can create.

For most who are looking for a peaceful place amongst the chaos the idea is that meditation is an excercise to take the mind from its thoughts and experiences of the day or even a lifetime of programs and self defeating thoughts.
The thing is, wherever you go there you are. If you are trying to use meditation to escape yourself then where would you come back to after the escape but yourself?

Meditation is a process of going beyond habitual programs, the chatter of the mind and its 100,000 thoughts a day that are the labels and experiences of the past. To take the mind deeper than the 10% level of thought that the mind habitually cycles itself in because it doesn't know how to do anything different.
Unlike knowledge that is gained from the societal gatherings of the combined thoughts from the same 10% level of thinking, the awareness of the Self, the person that exists beyond space and time, below the 10% level of mind there is no description that can match the experience.

The process of Yoga or "UNION" is to connect the outward collection of impressions to the inner point of conception and Consciousness. The place where all thought and creation originates.
The state of awareness that is anchored in that awareness has been called "The Peace which passeth all understanding" or "Praying without ceasing"

If you can anchor the awareness beyond the intellect and its gathering of definitions and realities the life becomes less of a threat and more of an experience of consciousness projecting life from thought. The peace is unbroken and eternal.
If you take the definition of meditation to escape reality without understanding what it is through actual experience or Union then meditation becomes comparable to the evening coctail or the placebo of mind altering substances which create temporary altered states but do nothing to anchor the awareness in anything more permanent than an experience or a memory.

Its up to anyone who wishes to learn meditation to be straight forward with what they are really wanting to create for themselves.

To alter the habitual patterns of life in its best interpretations of reality from experiences and intellectual concepts is the True purpose of human life. To understand who we really are above and beyond the musings of the minds best ideas in its attempts to decrease God into a concept, or human purpose into a relative idea is the only game in town.

Meditation is to connect you with the inner workings of the universe and yourself so that you can find permanent peace and stillness that will exist and permeate every thought and experience, because it is not anchored in anything that is relative, it will be anchored in the permanence of the absolute Oneness of the Atonement or At one ment of all spirit and matter.

Very insightful stuff.

Practically speaking, I find that to achieve a meditative state I assume the traditional upright sitting position, but after a time allow for my eyes to roll upwards as they would during sleep. The gentle rolling process of the eyes gradually brings darkness and gives the illusion of falling, from then on your mind will hopefully drift off on it's own. Just don't try too hard!

Sometimes when I am meditating, my leg/foot tends to fall asleep because I am crossing my legs. It starts to hurt.. pins and needles. How do I prevent this? What is a really comfortable sitting position? I have a hard time finding one sometimes.

Yoga or Union is union of the mind and the body but not in the discipline of maintaining postures. Body work is meant to facilitate the release of stress from the body but it can also be self defeating if it is not done with ease and in comfort. Any good Yoga instructor will not ask you to move into painful positions but to gradually ease the body into stretching itself and relaxing into position.
The same applies to the mind in meditation. The discipline to approach deeper levels of conscious awareness is a gradual descent not a forced invasion to nirvana.
Find a comfortable position in which the body can relax. Do not maintain a position that restricts the flow of blood to any part of the body.
Relaxing the mind and the body allows the body to heal itself of stress so that the mind is not preoccupied with the activity of the beliefs and the feelings that follow mental images and experiences, habitual thoughts and recycled past impressions.
This allowing of the mind to sink deeper into stillness is something that most are unfamiliar. Habit draws the mind to search for some kind of cosmic experience.
Meditation is not supposed to structure experiences during the meditation although it can be very relaxing at times. The real purpose is to return the mind and the body to its natural state of stillness and clarity in activity, at all times, in all experiences.
It's ok to relax in a big chair if you wish. The purpose of sitting upright is so the mind can follow the experiences of the absolute so one becomes familiar with it. Familiar so that it can be chosen for and recognized at any time in any experience. Many fall asleep in the beginning, but that is ok. The mind will become more alert with practice.
Pranayama is a great way to begin and it quickly relaxes the body prior to meditation.

Never force the mind or the body in any way during meditation. It distracts the mind and creates stress in the body.

you could get a really, really fat pillow or a little stool to half-sit, half-kneel on

You are suffering under the illusion borne of photos of the Buddha or others. One can meditate while running a ten K race or as the Dream Dancers all over the world do. The altered state of ecstatic meditation and the blissful attunement comes from many possible places in thousands of systems or disciplines and requires appropriate thought more than anything else. Hank Wesselman achieves 40MZ longer and faster than the yogis (His wife is a shaman teacher).

YES.

For myself I used to have three songs I listened to and stood while breathing the pranayama and moving my body at the torso from side to side with arms extended.

As I moved the arms at the point of achieving attunement I would begin to turn the hands alternatively up and down with the breathing (again as you say - do not think or force this too early in the routine).

You can take in certain energy ABOVE and BELOW as the hands turn up and down.

You can feel the fields of energy that surround us through the antennae or arms. These fields which the arms pass through become altered by your own energy. They attune with you and can be directed to their collective or coagulative sources which allow you to be in touch with all you have known or touched.

Symbols, fire, water at the ocean and many other expernal repetitive vibrations including the tire noise on a highway you drive upon are all interesting vehicles. In time the state becomes a part of your existence and can be accessed with no design and INTENT is always available.

As an example and in line with your thread What makes a God a GOD I offer the supposed 40 days in the desert of your namesake (A title Yeshua probably never personally took for himself.). There are many disciplines that have the test of incorporating energy for sustenance. Yogis are shown to gain weight over a five day period with no water or food. NASA is studying a man who has not eaten for over five years who gets his energy from the sun at sunset. I once was on a diet (Including vitamins) that allows me to lose a pound a day. After fifteen days I weighed myself and was five pounds heavier.

Sorry for the error. MY BAD!

[FONT=Geneva][SIZE=7][COLOR=blue][B][I][QUOTE]

I find meditating to music very relaxing..I am a singer and music is my life and breath.
I have just been told about the yoga smile does anyone else know much about this? And how helpful has it been to you.

There are many good programs out there some expensive and some cheap..that will help you to enter deep meditative states..think of it as training wheels for meditators.
They uise Binaural Beats to entrain your brainwaves and piut you into a meditative stae..

Centerpointe has some of the best (they actually go into delta range)but you can also get some less expensive ones to try like Brainwave Suite(only about $27 for four CDs not bad huh?) which has the normal Alpha, Theta range..(i reccomend Theta it is my absolute favorites state).

I meditate some 4-5 days a week for one hour, sometimes using the tapes sometimes not...when i do not use the tapes; it is even weirder experience than if i do..I can feel myself surfing the edge of the void, aand always get scared and stop short..

There are so many different ways of meditation..if you want check ouyt some buddhist books on DIAMOND MIND MEDITATION..
Like "Diamond Mind:psychology of meditation" by Rob Nairn...has detailed explanations and excercises to help with meditation..tells where you get stuck and what to do..
(just because they are buddhist techniques does not mean you have to don a saffron rob to use them..)

Cheers Erika

PureSilence.org

Robert,
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There are many disciplines that have the test of incorporating energy for sustenance. Yogis are shown to gain weight over a five day period with no water or food. NASA is studying a man who has not eaten for over five years who gets his energy from the sun at sunset.
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Tell me more, is this true or not?!
Where can I read about this?

Dear Karl

There are many things about these things in my books. I have had the experience myself.

The NASA study is going on right now - I will get you what I have on it from my Encyclopedia.

“NASA to study man who survives on liquids and sunlight
June 30 2003
An Indian man, who claims to have survived only on liquids and sunlight for eight years, has been invited by NASA to show them how he does it. Hira Ratan Manek - also known as Hirachand - a 64-year-old mechanical engineer who lives in the southern state of Kerala, apparently started disliking food in 1992, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. In 1995, he went on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas and stopped eating completely on his return.


His wife, Vimla, said: ‘Every evening he looks at the sun for one hour without batting an eyelid. It is his main food. Occasionally he takes coffee, tea or some other liquid.’


Last June, scientists from the US space agency verified that Manek spent 130 days surviving only on water, the report said.


They even named this subsistence on water and solar energy after him: The HRM (Hira Ratan Manek) Phenomenon. Mr Manek is now in the US to show NASA's scientists how he survives without food. The US space agency hopes to use the technique to solve food storage and preservation problems on its expeditions, the report said.


Mr Manek said he "eats through his eyes" in the evening, when the sun's ultraviolet rays are least harmful. He and his wife claim the technique is totally scientific. However, doctors warn that staring at the sun can make you blind.


His wife said: ‘He has a special taste for sun energy. He believes only 5 per cent of human brain cells are used by most people. The other 95 per cent can be activated through solar energy.’
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/29/...825280652.html�


BIO-RAM, OAK RIDGES: - In the April, 2000 issue of Scientific American that highlighted 'Quantum Teleporting' there was a brief report on the discovery from 1999 at Oak Ridges National Laboratory (key to Atomic Bomb research and Black Ops or secret programs) of a biological part of future computers.


The chlorophyll receptors of spinach have been used to make part of a computer chip. The report went on to say in three years they will have a complete circuit and self-powered chip. The self-powered aspect when joined with the peptides which self-replicate in Bill Joy's Wired magazine article will provide some truly interesting possibilities that Joy and Kurzweil (Awarded the 1999 National Award for Technology by Bill Clinton in March 2000, see Wired Magazine, Mar/Apr. 2000, for Bill Joy's article.) are confident will enable our human obsolescence as workers. It seems a little funny that one of my youthful philosophers 'Popeye' ('I Yam what I Yam'.) liked spinach and it will be part of this amazing aspect of technology. The Sylons of 'Battlestar Galactica' are soon to be a reality if we don't get our ethics in order. The 'Yam' also convinced leading botanists who felt there was no European contact before the second millennium AD that there was indeed trade and trans-oceanic travel with America. Actually that was the American Sweet Potato which might be only a yam in the vernacular.


Sunday October 26, 2003 sees the Toronto Star running an article about a different Robin Williams who is a scientist in Ottawa. The article is most interesting due to the fact that it shows how secrets run so much of science and the military is all over this one. Quantum encryption using the fact that photons exist simultaneously in two different forms “somewhat like having a version of yourself to go to work and another to run the household errands at the same time.� Yes, that mysticist Heisenberg is at it again. “Enter quantum cryptography.


Quantum particles like photons should be the ideal vehicle to carry the encryption key over ordinary communication channels – because of the Heisenberg uncertainty Principle.� (2)

Dear Karl

Your PureSilence site is Advaita Vedanta which one of our members is a big fan of - Solis. She has a friend who helped her a lot a few years ago. I highly recommend it.

The Essenes (There was no such name at the time - I think Therapeutae did this) are said to have existed on a full third less calories than would physiologically maintain their body. Theses practitioners lived to be 100 years old on average according to one analysis of archaeological origin.

I gained 5 pounds in 15 days on a diet I usually lost a pound a day on.

woowoo

by James Randi

A very strange news item showed up last week, one that brought a great deal of mail in here and caused some excitement in the media. It was a report that a man named Hira Ratan Manek — also known as Hirachand — a 64-year-old mechanical engineer who lives in the southern state of Kerala, India, apparently started disliking food in 1992, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. In 1995, he claimed, he went on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas and on his return he stopped eating completely. His wife told reporters that every evening he would look at the Sun for one hour without batting an eyelid. It was his main food, she claimed. "Occasionally he takes coffee, tea or some other liquid."



Last June, reported the Hindustan Times, scientists from NASA verified that Manek spent 130 days surviving only on water. The report claimed that NASA had even named this subsistence on water and solar energy after him: The HRM (Hira Ratan Manek) Phenomenon! Said the newspaper, Mr. Manek is now in the USA to show NASA's scientists how he survives without food, with the hope that they can use his technique to solve food storage and preservation problems on its expeditions.

The account went on to give details. Manek said he "eats through his eyes" in the evening, when the sun's ultraviolet rays are least harmful. His wife said: "He has a special taste for sun energy. He believes only 5 per cent of human brain cells are used by most people. The other 95 per cent can be activated through solar energy."

Well, Mr. Manek, I've often been known to dip into my gray matter deeply enough to use as much as ten percent, so I think you're a damn liar. And, here at the JREF we get all sorts of claims from people who say they don't eat, ever, and we stack those claims with the fly-by-flapping-my-arms and make-women-crazy-by-ESP presumptions. One guy tested in California a few years back was discovered to be sneaking out to McDonalds in the wee hours of the morning, though he claimed he only inhaled the burger aroma to stay alive... We didn't believe that...

Ah, but as the Hindustan Times story developed, it was discovered that Manek took a bit more than sunlight for sustenance. His wife had somewhat hyperbolized his claim — what a surprise! — and admitted that he also consumed buttermilk and fruit juices. The miracle begins to fade somewhat at this point, don't you think?

I wasn't too excited at yet another "breatharian" claim. What really interested me was whether NASA had actually expressed interest in this nonsense. Believe me, no federal agency can surprise me, in this period of our history where qualified physicists accept and endorse dowsing, the patent office issues patents for "free energy" machines, and hospitals officially allow witchdoctors in gowns to cast spells for patients. So I looked into that matter.

Theoretically, that sounds easy to do. In actuality, it's a horror. Go to NASA's official page, www.nasa.gov and you'll see. Look over the entire page. The only likely button there is labeled, "Contact NASA" at the upper right. Okay, press it. On this next page, you'll find 3 more buttons labeled "Contact NASA," all of which bring you back to the page you're already on. Remaining on this set-up, there's only one likely way to go, at the top center: "Multimedia." Press. Now you see 2 more "contact NASA" buttons, but you'll ignore those. In fact, you're stopped dead. There's NO WAY to "contact NASA." Give it up.

I had to abandon this quest, and I called a good friend who had an "in" with the system, who put me in touch with the person directly involved with the issues about which I had the question. I called, and told her my problem, to simply discover whether NASA was involved with this "living-on-sunlight" claim. Within half an hour, I was assured that no group within NASA had any knowledge of, nor involvement with, this nonsense.

Fine. That's what I'd hoped for. But within the hour, reading the web page of another group, a very well-informed and prestigious one, I was shocked to see that they'd been in touch with NASA over the same item, and had been told that NASA was active in this respect, with this man Manek! Who to believe?

Well, the official NASA spokesperson, Dolores Beasley, has now said she has no idea why press reports had claimed that NASA had invited Manek. NASA has no record of him being involved with them, in any way whatsoever. So, it's all a lie. What else is new?



more...

and more....


nasa sez 'no'

Fine. That's what I'd hoped for. But within the hour, reading the web page of another group, a very well-informed and prestigious one, I was shocked to see that they'd been in touch with NASA over the same item, and had been told that NASA was active in this respect, with this man Manek! Who to believe?

BTW

I certainly do not recommend any cultish or breatharian game. To do what few can do - through major discipline and attunement is not something others should imitate. I personally think that with proper vitamin and mineral supplements as well as exercise that a lot less calories are needed and the body will adjust and be fine - as to my personal intake of energy for weight gain - it was not something I was trying to do and it co-incideded with what I felt was an impending insurrection in Newark. In fact we left town just before a three day riot. It was bad vibes!

Dear Dan

This is truly hilarious.

I took that from your quote of Randi - word for word.

oops

I didn't realize you were plagiarizing, my bad

I guess putting it right after you also losted the same words was something I didn't think I needed to nootify you it came from somewhere else. And indeed you could tell (and did) that it was from someone else - you and Randi - both a lot alike.

Foot in mouth disease is the very thing Randi and Shermer (and you especially) have in abundance. I decopnstruct their work all the time in my books. One of his fans has sent him a lot of my dec0onstructing and asked him to respond to me. He did respond to Michael Prescott who is one of my author ccorrespondents - Michael rooted him a new canal in a nice way.

Actually Michael and I are skeptics whereas you are simply a lot like Randi except he gets more money for being ridiculous.

don't get too far ahead of yourself, R. You can make fun of me for not noticing your plagiarism and reading something that wasn't there, but your claims of my 'abundant foot in mouth disease' are simply hype that you only wish were true. As for your claims of 'deconstructing' Randi and Shermer and your buddy Michael's supposed dental work, I am not surprised that you would believe that (I don't, btw). And calling yourself a skeptic ? yeah, right...

(t4e two letters between f and i are disabled on my computer so im usin9 4 and 9 to repace t4em...)

back to t4e ori9inal post, i t4ink one of your problems is t4at youre meditatin9 wit4 a purpose.

I agree with RTB. I like what is called THE FIVE TIBETAN RITES
http://www.shapeshift.net/5tibetans/
http://www.10ac.com/five_tibetan_rites.htm
Do a google. There are other good sites.

This helps me get what I call the "PNEUMA EFFECT".