Trying to stay conscious when meditating. Any advice ?

a reply to: GENERAL EYES

Just wanted to add something to this awesome post:

Ideally, all meditation should be leading to a constant and active practice of mindfulness.

To help stay awake while sitting, it can be beneficial to allow the environment to be a part of the experience. At first, it may just be some sounds, sights, etc. and the goal is to allow them all to be perceived as they are.

It can also help to keep your eyes open like normal, or even just partially while anchoring the sight picture.

a reply to: qmantoo

Two things will assist you greatly.

1. Practice detaching your awareness from your senses as much as possible during your daily routine. Imagine that your soul, the witness of your physical form is a pea-sized drop residing directly behind the center of your heart. Pretend that this part of you is what is observing the eye sight, taste, touch, hearing, scent, and thoughts and is entirely separate from these 6 senses. Picture your senses as 6 different television screens broadcasting each sense while your awareness of self just observes them as if it knew nothing of them. This will assist you greatly in reaching a meditative state.

2. When meditating sit on an ice pack and focus on its sensation, feel it, observe it, and just be with it. Alertness will be maintained when a meditative state is achieved.

Remember that the goal is not the goal, what you're meditating for is to achieve experiential realization of the real self that permeates beyond the physical body and through all of existence. Best wishes friend.

a reply to: EviLCHiMP

How is such detachment later on moved to unity?

Personally, I found similar schools of thought to lead to more mind tricks and stagnation. The mind simply perceives what we want it to.

It also created a tough habit to break in later stages, where-in incorporating the senses, etc. back into unity was made significantly difficult. I was used to viewing them separately, rather than working with them. This type of practice gives all precedence to the mind and it's machinations, frequently as a dominant, ruling force rather than any sort of "teamwork" or unity.

How did you end up reconciling these divisions and breaking the "bad" habits that resulted?

a reply to: StratosFear

Sorry I don't have any links to share on this subject....most of my techniques were developed offline before the advent of the modern internet. I think you might be on to something regarding pain being used as a means to transcend the physical in order to focus on the minds potential. Most of my early walking meditations covered extremely long distances for several days and I had to learn how to not focus on the heat, the weight of my pack or the pain in my feet from wearing boots and thick socks in the summer heat. If I had been a little wiser, I would have rotated my sandals into the mix more often, but I was young and still figuring things out back then.

Happy travels! See ya on the Road.

Try a different form of meditation like observational awareness and living in the moment.

Focus on things individually and experience them. Examine every part of it and get to know it. See your hand touching it and feel it, let all your other thoughts pass through.

You can try this with all of your emotions and all of your body. Become totally aware of your body and focus on the individual parts, move them and be aware of them while you move and touch and see.

a reply to: qmantoo

A couple of quotes from "Turning Confusion into Clarity" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:

Addressing the OP's specific issue:

This is somewhat out of context but relevant:

"You practice open awareness with 100 percent relaxation, meaning that whatever arises is perfect just the way it is.... If you relax 200 percent (posters note: meaning try too hard) then you get pulled in one of two directions: you try so strenuously to force relaxation that you become more tense or you become so loose that you slump over and fall asleep."

Meditation, of any kind, is meerly conscious awareness so you must be conscious of what transpires; if you are not, then it is not meditation.

I think there is a lot of confusion about what meditation is. It is not not-thinking. Nor is it a contest of some sort.

Another quote to clarify:

"Many strategies exist to annihilate thoughts, such as drinking alcohol, using drugs, overeating, needless shopping, or surfing the internet - activities that narrow the mind through addiction and complusion. Nowadays many people have the idea that mediation offers an effective way to get rid of unwnted throught. Many people think that the goal of paying attention to a flower, for example, is to supress or push away thoughts. This might work for a few seconds, but when we release our tight focus on the object, the thoughts flood right back into our mind. There is no lasting or transformative benefit.

Meditation does offer a sane way to work with out mind. but we do not meditate to get rid of thoughs. this is the number one misunderstanding Thinking, like breathing, is a natural activity. Trying to impose an artificial blankness is the exact opposite of how we work with the natural clarity of mind."

It's a very good book and though in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is remarkably useful for meditators of all religions and traditions or none at all.

a reply to: qmantoo

If you own a wristwatch, make it a habit during the day to check the time regularly, hopefully when you are meditating, you will "remember" to check your watch and wake yourself up.

When you are actually going to sleep, tell yourself that you are going to sleep this time, and tell yourself not to check your watch for the night.

It is also a means to gain control when dreaming - when you look at your watch (and do this while you are awake too) see if the hands are moving correctly, as watches do not function correctly in dreams.

a reply to: saadad

I have spent what I estimate to be 50-100 hrs reading everything online I found about lucid dreaming, OBEs, and AP. Have you read Monroe's 3 books, each titled with the word 'Journey' in the title? I read a book years ago that kind of creeped me out a bit re:OBEs.
Raduga's The Phase was a surprise. The first pages didnt hold much promise because they looked like tactical sales pitch-like, but when it was apparent it is not a pitch, but an actual GUIDEBOOK, I read through to pg 17 in the first night.
The 2nd night I re-read the several sections I would be attempting.
I had success that very same night with the 'swimming' technique.
The next night's early morning, I had another success. I was very pleased to have stumbled upon the resource.
I think I got the link from someone's post on ATS, somewhere.
Give the first 20 or so pages some active effort, to see if it resonates with you.
There's also a hundred accounts of travels by other people, which are interesting. Varying levels of experience & achievement.

its a matter of developing better concentration by trying to stop the brain from daydreaming when it occurs.

a reply to: qmantoo

qmantoo -- S&F for creating this thread, so much food for thought I need to go back over each post again.

TextIt seems that I blank out whenever I do 'meditation'. Now, I either go to sleep or I just blank out because when I wake up, I realise that I know nothing about the time I have just spent.

Have you tried meditating using a set of mala beads to keep you connected and to reduce the chance of drifting off? I teach yoga to beginners and they find the use of the beads helps them to remain quiet and not mentally write a grocery list or engage in other distracting events. It also has the desired effect of keeping the mind, and body, from falling asleep.

The easiest method I begin them with is to use the beads along with the breath to keep the mind from wandering. They simply sit comfortably and move the beads one at time as they breathe. Starting at the guru or sumeru bead (a larger, offset one usually with a tassel or charm attached) the first bead is used on an inhale and the next on the exhale, one breath on each of the 108 beads. Once all of them have been utilized and you reach the starting point again, turn the string and work it back in the opposite direction. The guru bead is the start/stop indicator and not used in the meditation process. Also the index finger never touches the beads as that represents the "ego" which has no place in the meditative state.


This video is the first of 5 that show how to make your own mala. This information was found at this site: the12stepbuddhist.com...



the videos for the other 4 steps are here:
www.youtube.com...

They can also be purchased at most metaphysical shops or yoga studios and supply stores. More information on malas can be found here:
www.tranquilabidingshop.com...

Hopefully that will help explain and answer any questions, please give it a try and would love to hear what you think.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

originally posted by: skunkape23
Don't try anything while meditating. That defeats the purpose. Let it all go.
Put the pieces together when you get back home.

That is so true! I find with meditation that "less is more" and if you go into it with an agenda to seek answers you will be sorely disappointed. Just learn to relax and let go, often the answers will find you. And sometimes you don't even know what the question was to begin with.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

a reply to: FormOfTheLord

When the breathing stops you can be sure your on the right path! I have had some of those meditations and they are indeed the best your on the right track if breathing naturally stops!

Apparently I went so deep into "Savasana" at the end of a class that I spooked the instructor and a nurse into thinking I might be in need of CPR. LOL, guess I was extremely relaxed that night, but still aware of my surroundings. My breathing was just so slow they couldn't tell from a distance.

Namaste,
YogaGinns

Closed eyes are for sleeping or rest. If you wish to meditate on the back of your eyelids, this method might work for you, but as you can "see" it's quite boring. Better to have an afternoon nap instead. Most meditation is about retreating from the senses and gathering insight into un-sensual experience, which in a sense, is merely retreating from yourself, as you must limit your own faculties to accomplish this. This to me is an obscenity.

If you learn to meditate and focus while at the same time refraining from tyrannizing over yourself and limiting yourself, your senses, your breathing, your movement, or your thoughts, for instance when you are fully engaged in the world around you, you gain experience in meditation that the usual meditation practitioners rarely go: meditation at full, rather than limited, capacity; meditation in the world, rather than inside a cave.

Coffee

Thanks all for your suggestions and comments.

That is the value of ATS - When we ask a question, there are enough members to give their comments that we are almost bound to get a satisfactory answer to our problem. Others with similar problems can find answers too, as long as the search function works OK. :-)

One more thought - I seem to be able to come back/wake up whenever I want to, so that I can place a time on the session and every time it will last as long as I decide. That might suggest perhaps that I am not asleep but just not conscious of where I am or what is going on. Often I am aware of 'returning' from somewhere but never being able to catch anything while 'out'. It is really frustrating. I am wondering if I have a mental or spiritual blockage somewhere which I need to somehow release?

I am fairly certain that I can move out of my physical as I have the sensation of coming back both from sleep and from 'meditation' sessions so I dont think I have a problem with being able to do it.

I realised quite a long time ago that the being which was chasing me while I rushed 'home' to the physical was myself being aware from my physical that the other part of me was returning. Since that time, I have never had any sensations of anything chasing back to my physical.

macro cosmic orbit, just fix your gaze single pointedly at a point directly in front of you at eye level and visualize the chi flowing down to the belly down the front on the inhale and then up the spine and the back out the crown during the exhale.
Try it in horse stance with palms facing up.
youtu.be...
Try YouTube and look up belly breathing, quigong and horse stance meditation, and macro cosmic orbit breathing.
youtu.be...
youtu.be...
I would recommend finding an advanced teacher you respect and follow those instructions.
Or which set of of instructions makes the most sense and just feels right (in a higher sense).