Meditation

Transcendental, 20 minutes twice a day. My morning meditation I usually do on the train on the way to work, I do my evening one as soon as I get home, before I get ready to go to training. If I'm feeling particularly stressed or unsettled, even a couple of repetitions of my mantra and I feel like it brings me back to "normal" a lot quicker.
It's not a huge impact for me, but I definitely feel sharper when I come out. I try pretty hard to avoid missing it.
#Granklife himself is a huge believer and has been doing TM for years, he's the one that got me interested.

I have a daily practice of silence based on the Orthodox hesychastic tradition - once or twice a day, essentially sit in silence for a period and repeat a short phrase, in Orthodox practice that is typically the Jesus Prayer (in Russian "Gospodi Eesusee Kristi, Sinni Bozhe, Pomelyu Mya Greshnava"). The key is to suppress all other thoughts as they arise - don't inspect them or engage them, simply dismiss them. It's very hard. Rather than timing it, I use a "chotki" (kind of like a rosary) and after so many repetitions stop. There are many psychosomatic benefits to the neptic/meditative part - not just stress reduction, though the prayer itself is meant to become an independent, living thing throughout the day over time - you may have read something like Salinger's Franny and Zoe that talks about it (or less probably The Way of the Pilgrim).

Mantra based meditations can be very helpful (TM and what Greg was talking about with hesychastic). The mantra is a strong device to help you focus on, probably easier than just focusing on your breathing.

I find it interesting that in Catholicism when you go to confession the priest makes you repeat the same prayer dozens of times. "Ok you thought about sex, say 20 Hail Mary's and 12 Our Fathers". Coincidence? I don't think so. I think the idea is that if you're doing bad shit, you could probably be helped out by some meditation.

If you look at the hesychast literature (primarily collected in the Philokalia) there is a lot on breathing and body posture, but I think there is a universal consensus that is for someone who is under direction of a spiritual guide in their practice - the initial focus is on "watchfulness" and control of your thoughts. The idea is that as you gain control over things that spontaneously intrude on your mind you can slowly gain control over yourself more broadly. I don't know much about Catholic absolution - the Orthodox view is generally that the Church is a spiritual hospital to which you go for healing/wholeness. Confession is a bit different - typically its a discussion in the center of the Church in front of an icon and the priest will give some guidance on how to deal with issues you are struggling with. In that sense, its very complementary to the neptic/contemplative discipline - some priests will give a hesychast-like practice as a prayer rule in the context of Confession, but since the priest doesn't really give absolution the intention is clearly therapeutic. In some sense, the whole "system" works a bit like Cognitive Psychology as a therapeutic technique.

Random thought manifests partly because of neural crosstalk from sensate input; the potentials ride the loopings in the midbrain into higher brain centers where they produce random the thought. To be able to cease the arising of thoughtforms, the resonant modes of the various sensate inputs must be transformed from their normal sense-ful yang resonance to their quieted yin resonance. Only then once you experience that can you stop the bubbles of thoughtform energy from forming in the midbrain; only then do you know by experience how much energy the normal yang resonant mode consumes. They almost form like bubbles of carbonation on the side of a beer glass and detach at the slightest perturbation. But then with more training you can recognize that bubble and like squeezing a balloon, just 'stop squeezing' and that pop-out disappears.

The white belt analogy to breathwork is appropriate...the awareness game begins after that; the medulla literally becomes programmed with the instruction set practiced - the more mindfully aware, the more thoroughly the instructions are imprinted, and it becomes like riding a bike, where the programmed instruction set carries forth even while sleeping.

One starts with breath because it is the loudest and most persistent sensate feedback. There's some good threads here about some aspects of this e.g. co2 references here but the fine tuning at the neural level takes place when one learns how to stop the 40 cycles per sec active resonance of the olfactory nerve - this wiggles right into the midbrain's logical looping process that is part of decision making that the brain does based on sensate inputs.

This is why we cant feel ourselves hurtling through space at ungodly speeds from a vantage point of...[completely undefined] - because our vestibulocochlear nerve is not attuned to detect such a movement - it is completely irrelevant in the context of human evolution. Incidentally, limiting input from the vestibulocochlear nerve is why to stay still and have a quiet environment, ideally speaking.

The eyes have a push-pull configuration with the muscles that move them, but those muscles are also intrinsically cranial nerves - this is where "look at the nose" came from, but "at" is a mistranslation or misunderstanding - the root of the statement is the relaxation of cranial nerve input. The most relaxed configuration is looking down past the nose neither too high nor too low; neither to the left nor right; not focused on anything either too close or too far away. Eyelid muscles also have cranial nerve input, so about halfway is where neural input is smallest.

Herky jerky gut mechanics while breathing will agitate the vagus nerve branches and send counterproductive feedback and prevent the heart from settling. Pushing the breath duration, one has to mitigate the blood co2 meter and the fact that air perceived by the olfactory nerve will cause heartrate increase and trigger desire to breathe more. Another reason to breathe through the nose is that there is good enough oxygen uptake that the sphenoid sinus will oxygenate the midbrain, but that's something to keep gentle because too much of that will give you a headache.

Regulation: regulate until regulated, train the awareness to stay focused.

Neural input is a HUGE component

Dont use anywhere that air touches to actually facilitate the movement of air as you breathe - this puts the onus of breathing on the diaphragm and gut motion. Efficiency of breath is capped when the sinuses and air passageways are buffering the incoming air pressure. (Imagine how in efficient an engine would be if the cylinder walls could move, lol.)

The diaphragm's anchor against the spine, is the big fold-sheets of diaphragm culminating into two tendon-bands around T12-L1-L2-L3. Pull from this attachment point as if you were pulling a large sail attached to a rope. The "Gooch" spot was a martial arts secret for umpteen generations because of how much additional martial power it added - so that expands with the breath and contracts along with the front of the abdomen; both those structures should culminate as one, so that the energy of their interaction can be maximally (phase) coherent. Those two structures support the exhale, whereupon a slight "roll" takes place into the next inhale. One should work on smoothing those transitions out - for once you can breathe without setting off the olfactory nerve, and the transitions are smooth - you will reach a point where you cant even tell if you're inhaling or exhaling at that given moment. All of these coherencies and streamlining of processes will come together and as practice evolves...then one can get a sense of what fluxenergy in the gut is.....gung, if you will. /2nd battery pack added

The best meditation you can do is Trance work. Or more technically, getting into the mind awake / body asleep state where your brainwaves are in theta and eventually delta. Being in a trance automatically opens energy channels and in conjunction with energy work techniques like tactile imaging will develop you psychically and spiritually 50 times faster than other methods.

Tactile imaging is as it sounds- you imagine tactile sensation through your body such as a sponge soaked with hot water being rubbed down your legs, or a tennis ball bouncing up and down your spine, or a paint brush being circled around your palm. Basically anything you can imagine with a tactile sensation. This has the effect of stimulating and developing your etheric body. Open energy channels are essential to consciousness, period.

The whole sitting down focusing on your breath thing doesn't accomplish much. You really want to maximize your results in as little time as possible. If you are going to actually sit down and "meditate" you should have a clear and strong goal for doing so. MINDFULNESS on the other hand is essential and not only should you be focusing on your breathing at every waking and sleeping hour, but you should be aware of every square inch of your body, aware of your surroundings, aware of your mind. It becomes second nature because it IS your second nature. Your first nature is consciousness, and your second nature is to be conscious of what you are.

And regarding having a still and silent mind- thats like putting the cart before the horse. A silent mind is your natural state. Your mind is so damn noisy because your energy channels are all clogged up, astral entities are parasitically leeching off you and living in your etheric body injecting their thoughts, and especially in modern times the swarm of media and cellular towers transmissions fills your mind with endless noise. The global elite satanists have also layered on very strong black magic to Hollywood blockbusters and all television for that matter, which glue to your etheric mind and loop endlessly. Ever heard the phrase "I have a song stuck in my head". Yeah, because it's literally stuck in your head.

So in conclusion, every waking moment should be a "meditation". Free your etheric body of astral parasites, media programming and black magic and open up your energy channels and your mind will be serene like a deep and crystal clear lake pretty much all the time. And it doesn't weaken your ability to think- on the contrary it strengthens it.

A few years, albeit not very consistent.
Main reason combat PTSD.

Do you I have rough days/weeks? ... Definitely.

Has it helped? In some ways it has been the most profound and unique training of my life. If only I started to practice it regularly and in a more dedicated fashion years earlier. Would have saved me many ugly episodes.

Train your mind. Develop fortitude as you do with your body. Reconnect. Sipmle but worthy concepts.

I mostly use the headspace app... 15min. But I've tried a few techniques and will participate in "mindful in May" program. (Google)

(Sometimes its tough to strongly disagree with someone without sounding like a dick about it, so...roll with the writing style :cool: Enough of what you wrote is in direct opposition to years and years of my efforts and experience.)

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Originally Posted by Primalredemption

The best meditation you can do is Trance work. Or more technically, getting into the mind awake / body asleep state where your brainwaves are in theta and eventually delta. Being in a trance automatically opens energy channels and in conjunction with energy work techniques like tactile imaging will develop you psychically and spiritually 50 times faster than other methods.
(If I had a buck for every time I've heard someone say X method is way faster than others...certain mind/energetic methods are faster than others, but breathwork is the underlying foundation beneath it. One cant just trick his nerves.)

Any time I've heard someone emphasize trance work, further questioning has revealed significant misunderstanding of the process...the deepest of my meditations I am every bit as aware as I am at this moment responding. "The void" is not oblivion; optimal quiescence is a matter of paring back physical processes to their bare fundamentals, it is an ongoing dynamic efficiency game, in a sense.

There is some conflation of cause and effect....what EEG (electro encephalo gram) measurements have said about the state of the conscious awareness (while someone meditating is in a controlled setting and has sensors placed on them and scientists trying to figure out how the brain behaves in deep meditation,) is just describing desired outcomes with a vague and undefined path to get there. (Part of the issue with surface EEG is that they are rather limited in their ability to measure what's going on deeper inside the brain - and if an accurate EEG is to be taken, then sensors need to actually be placed in deeper regions of the brain. Dont take my word for it though, this is from neurological studies and empirical measurement. MRIs have at least been able to look internally a little more, but still, the fact remains that understanding some outcomes does not necessarily convey understanding of the fundamental processes that produce those outcomes.)

This is like saying a lot of middle class families have college degrees, therefore if we make sure more people have college degrees then we will necessarily have more middle class families. I hope you see the logical fallacy there.



The whole sitting down focusing on your breath thing doesn't accomplish much. You really want to maximize your results in as little time as possible. If you are going to actually sit down and "meditate" you should have a clear and strong goal for doing so. MINDFULNESS on the other hand is essential and not only should you be focusing on your breathing at every waking and sleeping hour, but you should be aware of every square inch of your body, aware of your surroundings, aware of your mind. It becomes second nature because it IS your second nature. Your first nature is consciousness, and your second nature is to be conscious of what you are.
Maybe its an irony that what is apparently a slow plodding rote method is actually the way to get the better deeper longer lasting and highly reproducible phenomena - solidly, quickly - so that the signposts happen every session. "Doesnt accomplish much" is perhaps one of the whitest of white belt statements ever uttered on this subject. One does not simply snap his fingers and attain deep meditative states any more than one could roll on the mat a few weeks and think he'd give Eddie a run for his money. I highlighted reasoning for this in my previous post - this is no different than training for a ufc title bout if one is even thinking about reaching for the brass ring. (Breathwork is but stepping foot inside that door, though. Energetically surpassing a physio-spiritual coefficient of friction is a long hard path.)

And regarding having a still and silent mind- thats like putting the cart before the horse. A silent mind is your natural state. Your mind is so damn noisy because your energy channels are all clogged up, astral entities are parasitically leeching off you and living in your etheric body injecting their thoughts, and especially in modern times the swarm of media and cellular towers transmissions fills your mind with endless noise. The global elite satanists have also layered on very strong black magic to Hollywood blockbusters and all television for that matter, which glue to your etheric mind and loop endlessly. Ever heard the phrase "I have a song stuck in my head". Yeah, because it's literally stuck in your head.
I'll agree that a silent mind is the natural state (of consciousness itself) but I the reasoning is not the same. (I've established the physical reasonings why these things happen and they are well supported by research, not to mention "restrain the senses" is emphasized in many, many different disciplines, and my reasoning above is the why that is common to all of these various disciplines.) Perhaps I didnt describe the neurological processes in an easily readable enough manner, but they are absolutely the underlying issue for why a human brain spins thought from idle energy - it is a default overflow valve for unharnessed energy. Misunderstanding is the notion that simple focused awareness is enough to quickly and efficiently get the result and some assumption that training this for years and extracting every last efficiency from it wont yield much of anything else.

So in conclusion, every waking moment should be a "meditation". Free your etheric body of astral parasites, media programming and black magic and open up your energy channels and your mind will be serene like a deep and crystal clear lake pretty much all the time. And it doesn't weaken your ability to think- on the contrary it strengthens it.

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I dont think I'd be quite as confident in my writings as I am if I had not...
-been training this for 14, 15 years
-spent first 3 years of training almost exclusively on this
-have had a wacked enough life that events have hurt my efforts here and there, so thus I have gained and lost and gained again, and with each immersion of practice-time-chunks I have had the same repeatable results and road signs - things like metabolic boosts like that of a first month's working out, simply by longevity breathing and arranging the physical in as efficient of a configuration as possible. 8, 10 separate practice chunks in my life I have arranged all this and by this point its no less familiar than driving across town to my parents house.
-taught dozens this and then some - and a couple people here and there get it enough and when the practice points are followed the benefits are well conveyed....I dont know that any of 'em were reaching the minute and a half mark that I was, because nobody put in that much effort to it...when you can average such durations over the span of hours...every day...and seeing these results over and over and devising a method that's thorough enough that 5-10 minutes of sitting and there's already *that* deep meditation happening...



Sorry bro but seeing someone write things like breathwork doesnt accomplish much, it is facepalm worthy and disappointing, it'd be like hearing a fighter say "I can strike well enough that I dont need a ground game - ever."




Spending 15 or 20 minutes here and there will not convey significant benefit - one really wont start to realize significant benefit from this until one has made a habit of at least an hour a day using efficient techniques - this is why its best to arrange affairs so that it becomes part of getting ready for bed at night (and it'll take a couple months of it before any real significant benefit amasses, but make no mistake this directly ties into Ohm's law resistance calculations and is THE way to increase energetic amplitudes - lower the resistance - the deeper the yin, the more potent the spark of yang arising from it.)

When one gets very deeply into meditation, at first, one is able to get those cool very quiet moments like if you hold your breath....once the breath is rolling well, then the states last longer and longer - but make no mistake, if you lose the focus of awareness for a moment, then byebye, its *that* precarious at first. This is the reason to blur the transitions between inhale and exhale, and one is really only able to do that well once all of the efficiency gains have been realized. (Are you getting why this is also preparing to learn how to die?)

That's where it becomes a mind-awareness game, its like standing a pencil on its freshly sharpened tip.

Once enough work is done that the states can be stabilized, the mind can be stabilized, things are maintained in this highly efficient state...

Well, the first time I realized the energetic connection between energy amassed and duration of breath able to be sustained, I drank 3 days in a row on a July 4th weekend and went from 1:20 breaths thursday to barely being able to do 25 seconds on monday - voila, breath duration is partially a function of energy amassed in the gut. Verified this one a couple different ways also. I will end here before I ramble too much further, I type fast as a mofo so sorry for being a bit verbose.

I will say it again: sitting down and focusing on the breath doesn't accomplish much. It's a basic tenet of self awareness and EVERY waking moment should be focused on your body, mind, breath, surroundings. Is prana real? Of course. But just sitting down focusing on it doesn't accomplish anything.

I don't think you've ever gone into a real trance otherwise you would not knock the method. What you are doing with trance work is basically integrating the subconscious mind with the conscious mind and establishing a neural connection so that you are "awake" while dreaming and Dreaming while awake. You are training your brain to be in theta and delta while awake. The energy channels are opened up faster than any other method because the mind awake/body asleep/lucid dreaming/astral projection state is a HIGH ENERGY STATE with a fully active kundalini. What took you 15 years of sitting could easily be accomplished in 3 months by a total beginner.

Further more, once you gain something of substance you can never lose it. If you find yourself "losing" 10 years of sitting and breathing and notice a drop in your metabolism (lol) just from missing a few sitting sessions, maybe you did not accomplish anything of lasting value. Here's what I have achieved with my methods:

-impossible to go unconscious, even when consuming high amounts of alcohol or mind altering substances.
-complete lack of fear. I literally cannot feel the emotion of fear because it is a biochemical function of the reptilian/mid-mammalian brain and my mid brain has been integrated into my Neo cortex.
-bio plasticity: severe impacts that would break a normal persons bones instead cause my joints to pop very loudly as they absorb the impact.
-hyper respiration: I can sprint at full speed for a minute straight and breath completely normal and relaxed immediately afterward.
-control of he weather: I have done this one two occasions straight from a trance state
-instant manifestation: I have created an object using only my intent
-energy orgasm: I have had an orgasm without ejaculating.
-horse stance: I can hold a horse stance indefinitely
-transmutation of poison: I can transmute lethal doses of poison by processing the accompanying energy behind it.
-ability to instantly ground others: my energy field is so strong and my level of integration so deep that I can instantly ground another person just by looking at them. They immediately start transmuting their emotions in my presence.
-complete transcendence of the fight or flight response: there is no adrenaline spike in my biology anymore. But I function better than ever before.

So I think the results speak for themselves. Of course not everyone will achieve the things I have because it takes a shit load of will power, focus, determination, perseverance, courage, self honestly, and hard ass work. People would much rather just sit on their ass and breath LOL.