Meditation as a work out

I've been meditating every day for a long time. About thirty-eight years. It never gets old. There's always something fresh going on in my head, which is both a delight and a frustration.

For most of my meditating life, I've approached it with a spirit of devotion. Or at least, semi-devotion. Meaning, I viewed meditation as a means of approaching what It's All About.

I felt that maybe "It," "All," and "About" pointed to God. Maybe Nature. Maybe something else. Whatever, the act of opening myself up to it seemed deserving of a bit of reverence.

So I got into the habit of bowing before I entered my meditation area. I wasn't sure who I was bowing to – guru, God, myself, Tao, ??? – but it felt right to do so.

I've given that up. I don't know whether this is a sign of progress or of retrogression, assuming there's any direction signs on a meditative path, but here's my current attitude.

It's a work out. Just as I exercise my body several times a week at an athletic club, so do I spend some time every morning putting my psyche through some concentrative/contemplative paces.

I've written about how meditation teaches the brain new tricks. It also seems to increase brain size. (For some reason I don't get junk email about this, in contrast to pitches for increasing the size of another organ.)

The brain size study looked at meditators who practiced Buddhist insight meditation, which the article says "focuses on whatever is there, like noise or body sensations. It doesn't involve 'om,' other mantras, or chanting."

But I suspect the same benefits to the gray matter would accrue from just about any form of meditative practice. A researcher says:

"The goal is to pay attention to sensory experience, rather than to your thoughts about the sensory experience," Lazar explains. "For example, if you suddenly hear a noise, you just listen to it rather than thinking about it. If your leg falls asleep, you just notice the physical sensations. If nothing is there, you pay attention to your breathing." Successful meditators get used to not thinking or elaborating things in their mind.

Religion is based on thinking, concepts, imagination, visualization, anticipation. You're told what a supposed divinity is like, and you try to tune yourself into this entity that isn't there – but is promised to await you around the corner.

All that is exactly the "elaborating things in their mind" that meditators try to avoid. So it's an antidote to religious fantasy, when practiced correctly.

A healthy work out.

Comments

As a living part of the engine of the universe, we also dance around the stillness at the core of ourselves. The core is what we seek during meditation just as a galaxy dances around its own core; it realizes its core by first expressing all of its forces, then turning them inward.

By the same token, we gain our forces, as you do through proper diet and exercise. Then you seek your center through meditation. In doing so, you bring all your forces to your core.

In Taijiquan, we begin from Wuji, which is the core. In this moving meditation, we "dance" around the core. The core contains our stillness although we are moving; the core is not part of the physical body, yet is at the center of physicality, and equipotential major groove, or a neutral point - just like the center of a galaxy.

When meditating, all that you have learned, all that you have experienced, all that you are is turned inward to charge your own "neutral point" even further, so that your center is unmistakable.

[Manjit]

hello Brian - just as an off-topic question, was wondering what happened to the forum?!?

Thanks.

[Brian]

Manjit, it's still there -- just rarely used. See:
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/mb/churchless

I took down the post plugging the discussion forum that I'd pinned to the top of the main blog page, because it was sort of distracting. And the lack of forum discussing showed that hardly anyone was paying attention to it.