How Does Meditation Work?

How do you go about meditating? I am wondering how it works and what it is good for. I mean how does it help people? Is it something that anyone can do? or do you have to have special powers or abilities?

Asked by Katie

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7 Comments
  1. Hi Katie,

    There are a few different ways of meditating. The two most common are: sitting in a comfortable position, where you won’t go to sleep, closing your eyes, and concentrating on your breathing, slow deep steady breathes. What it does is fill you full of oxygen, slow down the speed of your chakras .. and therefore your body, and helps to de-stress you, and let you listen to what is going on inside your mind. Most people have a constant chattering voice there. Then you start to focus on the words, until you get them to go completely quiet .. something that doesn’t happen to people very often. It is calming, rejuvenating and can be very healing. Always make sure you are ‘grounded’ and ‘centred’ .. you can look them up on the internet .. before you begin.

    The other technique is called Guided Meditation. This is when you listen to someone else, in person or via a recording of some kind, and follow what they tell you to do. You begin the same way, a comfortable, safe place where you won’t go to sleep, ground and centre yourself, close your eyes, focus on your breathing for a few minutes .. and then go on an adventure. You can use this process to discover all sorts of things about yourself, such as visiting with your guides, looking at past lives, visiting places you have never seen in your life .. or like me the lady said ‘go down to the beach and walk along the sands, go into the water and talk to the dolphins … ‘, and in the meantime I was climbing on the back of the dragon that had just flown in, and went and talked to some very wise men on the top of a very tall mountain .. if that happens .. that’s ok too.

    The third method is to use sounds to induce a state of calm, and heightened awareness. Ohm .. is a very good one. You begin the same way as the others, then say the sound, or one of the many others, over and over, focusing on it as you do.

    Meditation balances the energy of the body, mind and spirit connection, calms and heals. It allows you to find peace, and a wider sort of reality. It is something everyone can do. It takes time and practise to get it right. You might start out by going to sleep .. but keep working on it. One day you’ll have a gloriously peaceful experience …

    Definitely worth doing.

    Love & Peace
    Ama Nazra

  2. If you are meditating on the things of God you should be OK. If you are just meditating and just clearing your mind of everything, you can open up yourself to a not so friendi
    ly spirit world. At least a world that you have no possible way to know what might be effecting you.

  3. I learned a form of meditation when I was very young.
    AMA has a very GOOD understanding of it.
    There are MANY things you can do with meditation. The most basic is to clear your mind. Just like AMA said you head is full of a bunch of unnecessary chatter. Much like you computer having a bunch of stuff open on the systray at once. It slows it down and causes stress.

    Another form of meditation can reach outside youself. This one is usually NOT taught to beginners as it invites things or should I say you can meet things that aren’t of this (for the fear of sounding crazy) plane.

    Just like AMA said, sit in a comfortable position, relax and think of NOTHING.
    If you get in the state you will feel a little dizzy and try to feel like you are FLOATING right above yourself. It at this point you are in the transition state. Then you can find out what meditation is all about. If you can’t quiet your brain and get that dizzy feeling and float above yourself you will NEVER understand what we are talking about.

    I DO realize this all sounds CRAZY and I am actually a conservative scientist by trade (chemist) but I have seen first HAND the evidence of the reality of altered states.

    There is even an OLD Buddhist philosophy that says if you meditate on a clock thinking of some other place you can MAKE the second hand appear to STOP. During that time . . . . . People at the location you were placing yourself for the seconds that hand appeared to stop would SEE YOU THERE ! ! ! !

    Now in the ancient days this was done by dripping water and the person in the altered state would try to stop the water from dripping. Anyone else around the person would NEVER see a difference in the timing of the drips. ONLY the person in the altered state of meditation.

    BTW. . . . I actually learned about this in Martial Arts. It something still done commonly to this day and YES ! ! ! ! I have stopped the hand of a clock. . . . at least to MY perception. No one else would see this, just the person in the altered state. I have NO confirmation if anyone saw me in the Florida Keys however . . . LOL ! ! ! ! !
    But that’s where I was putting myself!

    Who knows ! ! Maybe someone saw me and then looked back and there was NO ONE THERE ! ! ! ! !

  4. Hi Jeff,

    I’m sure you made a great ghost. :-) Have you heard of ghosts seen during a crisis .. there are many tales of family members appearing to someone when they are still alive (in both cases) when one of them is in crisis .. perhaps they are zoning out too?

    The floaty feeling .. did your teacher say that was a good thing. To me that is what happens when a person is not properly grounded and centred .. you can float straight out of your body as your vibrations raise higher than the body can contain .. not condusive to safe meditation, IMO.

    As you say ‘reaching out’ can cause problems .. so I don’t recommend it to anyone who has practised meditation for a long time. Reaching in, however, can show you a whole different part of yourself. Aim for your heart, and let it be a door into a world of love that very few people experience when they are not meditating. That is where the energy of Spirit abides within us all.

    Love & Peace
    Ama

  5. Ama . . . .

    There was a Yogi that warned against external expression during meditation and spoke in your philosophical school. However, there were three other sources that I got the external meditations from. You don’t want to be grounded if you really want to try and actually SEE some other place. If practiced enough I’m told that one could have viewed where their enemies were and what sort of battle gear and configurations they had. I’ve never gotten past stopping the second hand for about what seemed to me about three or four seconds. It’s VERY hard to maintain that almost hypnotic state when you REALIZE the second hand has actually STOPPED. It sort of freaks me out and I snap out of the state right after I realized it stopped.

    I don’t do much meditation OR martial arts anymore. There is a book that I found that discusses this form of meditation and theoretical psychic traveling called:

    Stalking the Wild Pendulum

    There’s some crazy stuff in that book too but one of the chapters reflects very closely to what my instructor was telling me about the old Buddhists monks.

  6. Hi Jeff,

    You are either talking about astral travelling, or remote viewing … and what you were doing is stopping your perception of time passing .. taking yourself out of the earth plane to do that. There is no ‘time’ in the spiritual planes, only here, and only now.

    What sort of crazy stuff was in the book? I have been taught that if any part of a communication (of any sort) does not feel right, it is best to dump all the information and seek other sources. Good idea. In every perfect lie there is a large grain of truth, but the human spirit can ‘feel’ a lie. We need to learn to trust our feelings more.

    Love & Peace
    Ama

  7. Katie,

    There are many different ways of meditating and I have not done them all or even researched all of them myself. However, I would think that as a general rule when deciding what kind of school of meditation you might get into it should be a school of thought that resonates with you personally. As for myself I practice zen meditation of just sitting, or zazen I think is the formal name if you want to research it further.

    Basically how this practice works is keep it basic. Sit lotus style–which is pretty much indian style. I sit this way because the pain in my legs from being cramped helps keep me alert. Sit with your back straight not hunched over as this tends to put pressure on your diaphragm making it harder to get deep breaths. I put my hands one over the other resting on my pelvis. I’m sure there are other positions but I think whats most important is finding a position that balances comfort and not falling asleep; not “this position is holier or better than the others”. After that take a few deep breaths just to settle in and calm yourself. The aim of this meditation is just awareness of reality. Just sit there and notice well and notice as much as you can. This isn’t about focusing on your breathing or focusing on making your thoughts quiet this is about just experiencing with whats going on because whats going on just is; that’s the reality. Most definitely, your thoughts will go on about this thing or another thing; usually fantasizing or thinking that your legs hurt; that’s okay. Notice it, don’t judge it, and go back to listening and seeing whats around you. If you notice that your judging a thought or going back to a thought over and over (which you probably will) that’s okay too, just notice that and go back to listening and seeing to whats around you. If your breath is high and tight in your chest, notice that and just experience those bodily sensations. This cycle just keeps going and going.

    What is there to get out of this? Well you’re probably asking that because you’re hoping meditation will make you more calm, wise, know yourself better, be one with everything or be able to connect with God. I think that’s what most people have and that’s fine; it’s usually wanting something we don’t have that drives us to meditation in the start. These things will probably happen as a result of a dedicated practice but what happens after sitting for long enough we sit because there is joy in experiencing reality and sitting helps cultivate that awareness for reality. And reality isn’t always pleasant, at times it’s nasty and we don’t want to it be that way but it is the reality and there is joy in knowing and experiencing that.

    I know this a lot, and I said before that this was a basic thing; but to convey that simplicity takes some explanation before we know in our bones how simple it really is. Charlotte Joko Beck has a few books which you may enjoy if your interested in the subject.

    And no, you don’t need super powers.

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