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| Levitation: "Escape Artist (Green and Red)" by Sam Taylor Johnson (artsy.net) |
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| Meditation in flight gets a meditator high |
(WQ) Sometimes when you close your eyes, you get a pleasant floating sensation, a kind of levitation or lightness, the uplift of joy and rapture. It does not always happen, and one need not cling to it and miss it when it fails to appear. It is just transient phenomena. It may feel like the head or consciousness is expanding in the universe, in space, in distant celestial worlds. Neither cling nor set up expectations that will surely disappoint and perhaps ruin one's practice. Stay "mindful" (dispassionately observant, acting as the witness of the mind and emotions rather than as the architect or actor). Meditation is about letting go, so to cling to a good feeling in meditation would be to learn a means of escape and then cling to the means without actually escaping.
What Is Meditation?
Mara Carrico (YogaJournal.com) edited by Wisdom Quarterly
An exquisite methodology exists within
the yoga tradition that is designed to reveal the interconnectedness of
every thing.
This fundamental unity (nonduality) is referred to as advaita in Hinduism. Meditation can be the actual experience of this union.
In The Yoga Sutras (better described as aphorisms), Patanjali
gives instructions on how to meditate and describes what factors
constitute a meditation practice.
The second sutra (not a discourse but one line, one sentence, one saying) in the first chapter
states that yoga (union) happens when the mind becomes quiet. This
mental stillness is created by bringing the body, mind, and senses into
balance which, in turn, relaxes the nervous system.
Patanjali goes on to
explain that meditation begins when we discover that our never-ending
quest to possess things and our continual craving for pleasure and
security can never be satisfied. When we finally realize this, our
external quest turns inward, and we have shifted into the realm of
meditation.
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| Is it? Does meditation feed our craving? |
By English dictionary definition meditation (a poor catchall translation of various Sanskrit terms) means "to reflect upon, ponder, or
contemplate, to revolve in mind." Most initial meditation is not about thinking or pondering.
It is instead about mindfully experiencing. That is to say, one silently watches, remains unbiased, unmoved, calm, dispassionate rather than doing what we usually do, which is to take everything as personal, as self, as ego.
It is instead about mindfully experiencing. That is to say, one silently watches, remains unbiased, unmoved, calm, dispassionate rather than doing what we usually do, which is to take everything as personal, as self, as ego.
- Ultimately speaking, things are impersonal. What things?
It can also denote a devotional exercise of contemplation
or a contemplative discourse of a religious or philosophical nature. The English
word "meditate" comes from the Latin meditari, which means to think about or consider [to revolve in mind or intellect].
Med
is the root of this word and means "to take appropriate measures." In
our culture, to meditate can be interpreted several ways. For instance,
you might meditate on or consider a course of action... More
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