secondary effect of relaxation??? Options

hi all,
well i tried the relaxation and pre-meditation step to remove thoughts from the mind.. the steps were on this forum itself but cant remember exactly where..
it consisted of deep slow breaths then when the eyes are closed try to concentrate on what you see "eyes closed".. if an thought comes, "flush" that thought when exhaling..
Well i did it and what i saw when eyes closed wre light spots.. i concentrated on them and there no big deal about it..
but after some seconds, the light spots took the form of a valley or two close mountains.. all was in black and bright white. .then i saw like a dragon creature fly above with huge wings flapping slowly...
well i was a bit scared coz i was not imaginig it but seeing it closed eyes...
I tried to bring some thought in my mind and it disappeared....
some seconds later a white spot changed into a persons face ... still black and bright white... i got really scared and tried to stop all...

Well could someone explain to me what happens here... Is the subcouncious trying to project images to my concious???

When you dream it can be very vivid and real.
When you relax the thinking brain the relaxed brain can bring up these images. Some people call this kind of experience astral projection, others just accept it as being images from the mind. You might like to try counting before each intake of breath...

1 breath in, breath out
2 breath inm breath out
etc up to 10 then start from 1 again.

This might help stop you drifting of into your thoughts which is what is happening at the moment. If you can find a local meditation class it will help you as group meditation seems to focus the mind a bit more.

Trying to remove your thoughts is not something I would do as a beginner, I started like this many years ago and finding it almost impossible, was relieved when attending a class on something else to find that noticing your thoughts but not taking much notice of them either emotionally or intellectually was very helpful and the effect of this was relaxing and it also eventually showed me that there is a side of me which is not my thoughts, which was what I considered to be a secondary effect but probably the purpose of the meditation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Hope that makes sense (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

This is a simple and effective pre-meditation excercise: Calming the Mind

Sorry I cant answer your second question though (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

as far as meditation goes, for me 'removing' thoughts or 'noticing' thoughts basically comes down to the same thing, it's just a matter of approach, i think? but i agree, the first time i read about meditation, i got some txtfile called 'still mind', it was part of some documents about lucid dreaming, and basically it contained a relaxation exercise and told you to not think about anything :-) [using the blue-sky w/clouds metaphore] .. anyway as a beginner that was pretty much impossible for me :-)
only after i got a book by David Fontana (i think it was called just "meditation"), a very friendly-written book, definitely good for beginners, also with pretty pictures :-) and easy exercises .. sorry i'm drifting off
for me, the most important tip is, practice (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) already after meditating five days every day for 10 minutes, it became soo much easier to clear your mind of intruding thoughts. at one time i just had the feeling a had them all there (the thoughts), filed neatly into some kind of thought-cabinet on the walls of my mind, with a big empty space in the middle (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

another thing i wanted to say is about the closed-eye visuals people are reporting. i see them almost every time i close my eyes. the cloudy shapes (which are usually red/brown/purplish with me, depending on the ambient lighting in the room) turn into really vidid images, usually faces, but nobody i know. they really look very vivid, like black-n-white video, not like some kind of rorschach interpretation of cloudy inkblot shapes. sometimes, often before i go to sleep, i also see a very vivid imagine of my bedroom, kind of from the perspective i'm (not) looking at, but when i close my eyes it always appears that i imagined(?) it slightly different than what i actually would see if i have my eyes open ..
i think it's really strange, but the images are pretty to look at, so i don't mind (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) i only wish i could look at them longer, it often feels like i'm straining my eyes, like i'm focusing on an object to close to my eyes [though i'm not sure if that's actually the case].

sorry for the long post, i can be a bit wordy (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) if anyone has any thoughts about this [interpretation, what to do with it, i dunno] i'd love to hear about it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

- poke

PS yes i know the scientific explanation would be that it's just the pattern-recognition bit in my brains that's kicking in [kudos to my brain then for making such realistic imagery (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ], but as you all know there's a multitude of different ways of looking at the same phenomenon, and IMO they're all true

My method of quieting the mind is by listening very carefully to any sounds in my environment.
This works great for me, and immediately. Thoughts do tend to creep in after a short while though, when my conscious mind gets bored, but as long as I don't follow them and just observe them, I'm generally OK.
The images may come from an initial stage of lucid dreaming, where one feels fully conscious in an environment of the mind's creation, but when this happens to me, it's always in colour.