Meditation Options

There are too many meditation techniques to mention from relaxation, mindful, energy raising/chakra working, pathworking to chi kung or other martial art types of meditations. For me, I primarily use mantra japa (repetition of mantras) and void meditation with the primary purpose of controlling the patterns of my mind by overriding it with a mantra of my choice.

My full meditation routines is well over an hour which usually starts with bardon's pore breathing meditation to ground myself for up to 5 minutes, a void meditation for around another 5 minutes to further focus the mind, then I'll grab my rudraksha mala (prayer beads) and mentally chant the mantra "nama shiva ya" for one mala (108x), sometimes for 3 rounds. Then I'll do the mantra japa of a specific (and longer) mantra for 3 malas/3x108 (which takes about an hour to complete) and finally close again "nama shiva ya" mantra. Normally, these routines took me one and a half hour up to two hours which I do a few times a week. Half an hour the shortest when I'm not in the mood (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

At first, it is a challenge to just sit there with my asana since the pain and that barrages of irritating nudges of discomforts from my guts urging me to quit and go back to my comfort zone is overwhelming. With time and persistence, I managed to be able to make a little boxes/room/partitions in my mind where I can literally seal and contain these illusions of pains and discomfort there. It does seperates itself from me. There seemed to be two of me. The whining one and the wise ass chanting away single mindedly:D Does the pain really gone? Not quite and it will come back full force with only a slight thought of it, and all I did is to suppress it is with overriding/barraging it back with a single dominant - a more powerful and disciplined thought. That's the way you do it! I said to myself and I can imagine if I ever be in a torture camp, I already know and practice the pain management techniques (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

On mantra japa, in my experience - surface thoughts will naturally starts and persistently try to sidetrack me from "inflaming" myself with the mantra, but this will become less with persistent practices. By inflaming myself with the mantra I mean that I think nothing but the sound of the mantra. I hear it vibrating and expanding in my astral ears. I single-mindedly think nothing else but the sound of the mantra and the mala to keep track of the rounds. Keeping the tounge s t i l l from even moving a a bit to recite it and solely hear and feel the thoughtforms of my mind work to weave the mantra thus building up in power.

Once I did attempt to complete a 9pm-5am nonstop meditation but 3 hours which is the longest meditation I can withstand (the pains of the asana) before I have to stand up and relax the muscles and let the blood flows before continuing with it. I was 30 minutes short and finished at 4.30am with lots of muscle cramps and strains, mind farts (ie. oooh... what was the mantra? which part of the mantra was that again? how many beads did I missed while my mind wanders off?) and a variety of different asanas change to help ease the pain. In the end, it was truly like trying lifting a weight - literally a mind weight, I can no longer lift. My mind was really tired and exhausted for lack of meditation practice back then. A failure, but, for a full week afterward I did get the benefit of awakening a LOT more fresher, focused and awake! after for only 5 hours of healthy sleep, before my body and mind gradually reverting back to my lazy 7-8 hours of regular night sleep.
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How about sharing your own routines and your experiences?

Well my favorite method for meditation; draw a hot bath, turn on the bath room fan and play my favorite music. Then submerge myself in the bath tub. The sounds from the fan and the music drown outside noices and add to a relaxed atmosphere. The hot water is very relaxing. As I lay down I allow my body to float. What I do is I breathe. As I inhale my head raises with my chest and casues the bath water to move away from my belly. Then as I exhale my head sinks with my chest and the bath water rushes to fill the gap. This breathing generates waves and these waves act as a check point for me in my progress. Each cycle (water ebbing away from my center, inhaling air, then flowing inward with each exhale) represents energy flow and the water in motion generates energy. But the main factor is my breathing. I inhale for about 10 senconds then exhale for about 10 seconds (or until either I feel like I need air or water gets to my nose). As I exhale I sink and the longer I sink the more water starts to cover my face and the more relaxed I become. Then I inhale for a period of time and the sensation of floating upwards contributes to my perception of entering an altered state of mind. Exhale once again and the sensation of sinking does the affect. Do this basically untill its automatic and I'm practically asleep. But there comes a point where my eyes drift towards the bottoms of my lids where just a tiny amount of light gets through. Its this light I focus on and eventually what I see is this little slip of light turn into a kind of second set of eye lids. I then visualize these imaginary eye lids open (while keeping my real eyes closed). And then once my imagined eye lids are open I truely begin to experience an altered state of mind (my eyes also shift so that I'm looking up indtead of down. What I see depends on my intentions. What I even do depends on my intentions. This technique can be used as a staging ground for lucid dreams, pathworking, ap ect ect. Sometimes I'll use sented candles and bath salts. Sometimes I''l turn off the lights so that its totally dark or only candle light is visable. I could spend days describing what I have expierenced.

So thats, more or less, just the basic technique. I can say that I learned the hard the importance of closing my eye lids, my imagined eye lids. Because as long as my mind believes my second set of eyes are open it will continue to percieve an altered reality. Therefore I have learned to always close my second sight when I'm done for the day.

This post has been edited by Acid09: Sep 11 2006, 05:06 PM