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A Meditation Thread

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Bas Sarkin said:
I would like to share how I personally managed to stop my brain from racing, and to become physically and mentally relaxed.

You can manage this by holding your breath, and observing when your CO2 levels in your blood becomes unbearable (the feeling of choking). At that point, exhale slowly, and take a minimal amount of oxygen in. If your body panics, take more oxygen in. The goal is not to feel suffocating, but to hover just above that point in a relaxed way.

You will notice your body does not need much oxygen if you don't move. And by having little oxygen, you 'tell' your body to relax even more. Soon, you will notice that the biggest user of the oxygen is your brain. With a little practice, you can disconnect most if not all thought patterns. Slow down your thinking. Slow down your feelings. Just observe.

Soon you will have minimal flow (dualism) in your body, your thoughts, and your feelings. All that will remain is consciousness. When you totally 'see', deeply understand, that 'you' ARE that consciousness, you can start using your body, thoughts, feelings again. But now from a perspective that those things (body, thoughts & feelings) are not you: but are observed by consciousness. Not 'your' consciousness. Ego does not exist, but in your brain, as a construct.

It is my personal experience that that consciousness is 'in the background': everywhere. Our bodies/thoughts/feelings are just point of views: for the One Consciousness that permeates through all things: humans, animals, plants, rocks, the sun. Perhaps I can make an analogy with paper (consciousness), and the molecules, the body/feelings/thoughts that 'write' on this paper: manifesting themselves on this paper, in this universe. Our ego thinks that we are the drawing. But we are the paper. And there is no 'we'. There is only paper. And things manifesting on that paper. Which we then call 'me'. But in the core: its only paper: the cosmic background consciousness.

Its hard to talk about the experience in words. I hope this makes any sense to anybody.
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I really enjoy swimming underwater. The underwater bit triggers an instinctive economy of movement and cessation of mental effort. Thinking about it, maybe this is my alternative to skydiving…

[Disclaimer: DO NOT attempt this in combination with psychoactive drugs!]
 
I recently made a commitment to meditate more.

I stopped meditating for a period of time due to life and whatnot. Life started to suck pretty bad and so I decided to go back to meditating and make an attempt to heal myself. For the past few months I have been meditating every evening for about 20-30 mins. I would stop around this time and feel like I didn't want to stop. I enjoy the time I spend in meditation now. There has been a switch, I am not restless, my racing thoughts are less frequent, my internal dialogue is improving.

This switch occurred after sitting and watching this madman I have in my head (I say this lightly). This crazy mind I have creates such marvelous thoughts and also very dark ones. I avoided the dark ones for a long time. As I sat, I had no choice but to watch the way I think and I suddenly felt as though all these thoughts belonged to someone else. The story was no longer mine, I could see the illusions my mind would create.

Most thoughts come and go, no problem. Some repeat over and over. It was those thoughts that pointed me towards something special. Those thoughts were the ones I did not want to think about. The bad thoughts of my past traumas as a kiddo, fear of my present moment and feeling like I was failing in life somehow, and fears for my future. So I went deep into each one, felt them until I had tears at times, felt it and acknowledge the pain that was there. This thing screaming out over and over. The unacknowledged shadow waiting to be seen. When I did this, I found the core, I found pieces of myself, a soul retrieval if you like.

Found the pieces, found the core and then let it go. I forgive anyone who has caused me harm in my life and any pain that came as a result of that harm. I let the story go. Now i can sit in peace for the most part. I still have racing thoughts every now and again, sometimes those old memories and feelings pop up, I still get sad, angry and the whole range of being a human being on this crazy planet. I anticipate struggles and that is just fine with me. Bring me my pain and fears and let me see it, let me heal it, to heal it I must be right next to it. No longer pushing away or pulling something in. Allowing life to breathe and be ok with whatever comes into my life. It ok to struggle, in fact that is where we can learn the most.

I vaped some lower dose DMT while meditating recently. I had strong CEVs, geometric patterns and my emotions were all over the place at first. This calm found it's way to me and it felt like dipping into a hot tub. That ahhhhhh feeling. When I has that feeling I saw the following. Not worth a trip report per se, but I did write down my impressions of this vision right afterward. I thought it might be worth sharing here on this thread. I am out of my mind at times lately.

I keep seeing this black circle within a pitch black background. Not sure how I can see this black circle at all, it's almost like it has a glow to it compared to the black background. This thing contains everything in the universe and yet nothing at the same time. Even calling it a circle or black is not right. It's in my minds eye and I can only see it if don't look for it. I did not see it before. It was right there the whole time staring me in the face, it was behind everything else. I felt like I was inside and outside of it, like looking in a mirror. When I looked at it I felt as if I belonged, I was a part of it. It could not exist without me and I cannot exist without it. This was not just for me, it is for all beings in this universe, we are all connected by this black circle mirror that is hard to see.
 
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I've recently completed a third year of practicing "western" occultism seriously. One performs various highly specific rituals night after night (with variations) with one's body while forming various gestalts mentally simultaneously. As part of the practice the effects of these actions are predictable and expected, a measurement.

"Really it's all window dressing for interacting with "MIND" or God or Reality (the real one) , ", some goofball said. This statement begs the rebuttal.

But I meditate and practice buddhism as well to hedge my bets i guess, or i suppose that buddhism and meditation came first and they mesh perfectly with this later practice so why stop
 
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Practicing the Diamond Sutra
In this class, Ken McLeod invites students into a direct and sometimes disorienting encounter with the Diamond Sutra, using daily aloud recitation and in-person dialogue to shift attention from conceptual understanding to lived experience. Rather than explaining the sutra, Ken helps participants feel how its repetitive contradictions interrupt habitual mind and open a different kind of knowing. Over time, students discover the sutra isn’t something to figure out—it’s something that works on you.
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Very worthwhile series for any meditator. May all be well 🙏

Edit: Ken finished his translation of the Diamond Sutra and wrote a book on it after the course. I'm reading it right now.

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