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I hesitate to use the word meditation. To me, as well as many others, the word "meditation" conjures up the picture of a bearded man sitting cross-legged in front of an entrance to a cave or high on a mountain top. Climbing the mountain and reaching him is part of the arduous journey toward self-fulfillment, self-improvement. Once we find him we ask, "What is the meaning of life?" or "How do we achieve peace in ourselves and our lives?" This all-knowing man tells us the answers are "inside ourselves" and tells us to go and contemplate. I don't know if that answer was worth the journey!
There are various types of meditation - prayer is probably the best known, but there is also TM (Transcendental Meditation), mindfulness meditation, and from the Eastern tradition, Zen meditation, Buddhist meditation, and Taoist meditation.
The meditation encompasses such diverse methods as:
Formal sitting in which the body is held immobile and the attention controlled. e.g., Zazen, Vipassana
Expressive practices , in which the body is let free and anything can happen. e.g., Siddha Yoga, the Latihan, the chaotic meditation of Rajneesh.
The practice of going about one's daily round of activities mindfully. e.g., Mahamudra, Shikan Taza, Gurdjieff's "self-remembering".
All these practices have one thing in common - they all focus on quietening the busy mind. The intention is not to remove stimulation but rather to direct your concentration to one healing element - one sound, one word, one image, or one's breath. When the mind is "filled" with the feeling of calm and peace, it cannot take off on its own and worry, stress out, or get depressed.
According to Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of mind/body medicine, meditation can be broadly defined as any activity that keeps the attention pleasantly anchored in the present moment. When the mind is calm and focused in the present, it is neither reacting to memories from the past nor being preoccupied with plans for the future, two major sources of chronic stress known to impact health. "Meditation," says Dr. Borysenko, "helps to keep us from identifying with the 'movies of the mind."
Physical Benefits
Deep rest-as measured by decreased metabolic rate, lower heart rate, and reduced work load of the heart.
Lowered levels of cortisol and lactate-two chemicals associated with stress.
Reduction of free radicals- unstable oxygen molecules that can cause tissue damage. They are now thought to be a major factor in aging and in many diseases.
Decreased high blood pressure.
Higher skin resistance. Low skin resistance is correlated with higher stress and anxiety levels.
Drop in cholesterol levels. High cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease.
Improved flow of air to the lungs resulting in easier breathing. This has been very helpful to asthma patients.
Younger biological age. On standard measures of aging, long-term Transcendental Meditation (TM) practitioners (more than five years) measured 12 years younger than their chronological age.
Higher levels of DHEAS in the elderly. An additional sign of youthfulness through Transcendental Meditation (TM); lower levels of DHEAS are associated with aging.
Psychological Benefits
Increased brain wave coherence. Harmony of brain wave activity in different parts of the brain is associated with greater creativity, improved moral reasoning, and higher IQ.
Decreased anxiety.
Decreased depression.
Decreased irritability and moodiness.
Improved learning ability and memory.
Increased self-actualization.
Increased feelings of vitality and rejuvenation.
Increased happiness.
Increased emotional stability.
Transcendental Meditation is by far the most thoroughly researched in terms of its benefits for mental, physical, and social health TM is a simple mental technique, easy to learn and practice. Anyone can learn it within a few days and can begin to experience beneficial results almost immediately. Since 1958, 4 million people have learned TM and over five hundred scientific studies have been conducted on it at over two hundred universities worldwide.
TM is one of the easiest meditation techniques to learn. When you learn TM, an instructor gives you a word or phrase-your personal mantra-which you promise not to divulge. You are told to sit quietly with your eyes closed and repeat the mantra over and over again for 20 minutes at a time once or twice a day.
The mantra functions to focus your mind on a single idea, representing the "oneness" of the universe. You're instructed to assume a passive, accepting attitude while repeating your mantra. When distracting thoughts intrude, you're instructed to simply observe them, accept them and gently return your mental focus to repeating your mantra.
The first card-guessing ESP experiments were conducted by Rhine at Duke University in 1930. The cards consisted of five designs, now called ESP symbols, a square, a circle, a plus sign, a five pointed star, and a set of three wavy lines. The symbols were printed singly, in black ink, on cards resembling playing cards.
In the classic Rhine experiments on ESP, the subject tries to guess or "call" the order of the five symbols when they are randomly arranged in a deck of 25 ESP cards. The likelihood of calling a card correctly by chance is one in five. Therefore, it is possible to calculate how often a particular score is likely to occur by chance in a given number of calls. It was Rhine'' argument that when his subjects made high scores that could be expected by chance only once in a thousand tries, or once in a million, they displayed "extrachance" results, or ESP.
The early experiments faced several criticisms. Two were automatically dismissed: (1) The statistics were unsound which was refuted by the president of the American Mathematical Association. (2) That ESP is physical impossibility which begs the question.
Several appropriate criticisms were accepted by Rhine which he used to improve his experiments. Examples are: (1) There may have been sensory cues. An example of this is that if a strong light shined on the back of the ESP cards, it might be possible to see the symbol through the back. Currently to avoid this possibility the target card is covered by an oblique shielding, or kept far from the subject. (2) An experimenter that knows the target might whisper it or otherwise give a cue to the subject. Presently no one in contact with the subject knows the target. (3) More hits might be recorded than actually occurred.. Currently hits and responses are recorded by machine or by someone not knowing either.
In New Frontiers of the Mind (1937) Rhine said that ESP experiments were changing the way people thought the mind sensed information. Historically learned people held the human mind received information through the ordinary five senses, and that therefore, the mind is subject to the laws of the mechanical world. Laboratory tests have attempted to determine the existence of ESP, and discover the physical mechanism by which it operates. "The mind has been equated with the brain, and scientists search to discover how ESP registers in the brain/mind."
However, increasing evidence is demonstrating that ESP does exist, but it cannot be explained or quantified by physical laws; and furthermore, that the mind (consciousness) and the brain are two separate entities. Simultaneously, research in quantum physics points to the existence of a second, nonmaterial universe. So, the time is fast approaching when Western scientists must come to terms with the Eastern mystical concept: "that an extrasensory force exists in another realty, and intersects and integrates with the physical world."
Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by "laying on hands" and is based on the idea that an unseen "life force energy" flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If one's "life force energy" is low, then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.
The word Reiki is made of two Japanese words - Rei which means "God's Wisdom or the Higher Power" and Ki which is "life force energy". So Reiki is actually "spiritually guided life force energy."
PURPOSE OF THE CHAKRA BALANCING SELF-MEDITATION
The purpose of the chakra balancing meditation is to open and clear the chakras the Reiki way. It will align higher frequency energies and also purify/release any stored negative energy from your body/aura.
Fourth Dimension. Now, the final step. Take the non-infinite cube and extrude it in yet another direction perpendicular to the first three. But how can we do this? It is impossible to do within the restrictions of the third dimension (which will I refer to as realmspace in this webpage). However, within the fourth dimension (which I call tetraspace), it is possible. The shape that results from this extrusion of a cube into tetraspace is called a tesseract, which is a 4-hypercube. All tesseracts differ from other tesseracts in size by four measurements (equal to each other within a single tesseract) - width, length, height, and a fourth measurement, which I call trength. Looking back to the previous n-dimensional cubes, they all have the same trength, which is infinitely small. Just like the cube and square, all of the edges within a single tesseract are the same length, and all of the angles are right angles. If you expanded the tesseract infinitely, it would cover four-dimensional space.
The cosmos would make perfect sense … if it turns out we're living in a 10- or 11-dimensional realm where gravity is bubbling off a different plane entirely. At least that's what's emerging as the hottest concept on the frontier of physics.
The claim that the cosmos has more than the four dimensions we can perceive — that is, three spatial dimensions plus time — is exotic enough. But the quest to prove that claim brings in a virtual menagerie of mysteries: mini-black holes and dark matter, gravitational waves and cosmic inflation, super-high-energy particle collisions and ultra-powerful gamma-ray bursts.
Originally posted by biggie smalls
Is anyone meditating? There hasn't been one post in a long time.
Please just somebody respond