Secular Meditation

[FreeThinkerNZ]

I have always wanted to be able to meditate, as a way to help me to relax and ultimately to feel better.  I'm not interested in supernatural beliefs; I want to practise secular meditation.  If you have experience with meditation, I'd like to hear your thoughts, tips and suggestions, including any links to articles or podcasts etc.  I don't want to read a book on it, but I want to hear what works for you and how I could get started on this.  What benefits have you gained from meditation?

[Orbit]

I have always wanted to be able to meditate, as a way to help me to relax and ultimately to feel better.  I'm not interested in supernatural beliefs; I want to practise secular meditation.  If you have experience with meditation, I'd like to hear your thoughts, tips and suggestions, including any links to articles or podcasts etc.  I don't want to read a book on it, but I want to hear what works for you and how I could get started on this.  What benefits have you gained from meditation?

 

If you've never done any kind of meditation before you might start with guided meditation to get a feel for it. Just do a youtube search on "guided meditation" and jump in. Most guided meditation is secular, so that shouldn't be a problem.

 

Setting your intention is important if you're going to do it regularly. Part of this involves creating a meditation space for yourself, it can be as simple as a small table with a candle on it, or as involved as you like. Some people like incense, greenery/flowers, and a meditation bell. The ritual of lighting the incense and candle develops an association in your mind with the meditative state over time. As you progress, you'll find that you start to feel calmer the minute your light your candle. Think secular altar and you've got it.

 

The basic process of meditation involves staying in the moment, and letting any thoughts float by without latching onto them. This is accomplished by concentrating on your deep, slow breathing and relaxing your body and mind. It takes me about 15 minutes to do this and get into the zone. The guided meditations guide you through this process. While I mostly use free form meditation (not guided), I do recommend guided for a beginner. Once you have navigated the inner spaces for a while with guided meditation, you can start exploring free-form meditation.

 

The benefits of meditation for me have been greater insight, calmness, and clarity both in and out of the meditative state. The key is to do it regularly. I meditate every day for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes. Once you start doing it, you'll find you want to do it and will miss when you don't. 

 

This is what works for me; others may have a different perspective.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I've used different methods for different purposes. Some are simply distractions to focus my mind on something else and help relax. For example, I sometimes visualize a sheet of light laid out slowly passing down through the top of my head and down through my body until it passes out my feet. I can feel tension leaving me as I do this and by the time I'm finished (usually a minute) I'm pretty relaxed.

 

Other times I've held small stones in my hands and sat cross-legged, eyes closed and focused on my breathing, making it slow in through the nose, out through the mouth, listening to the sound of it, breathing like a singer with diaphragm, then slowly releasing it. This I will do for as long as I like. I find that my mind may start experiencing interesting thoughts and images, and I may feel waves of energy. Or I may not experience anything but relaxation.

 

Back in my Aikido days, I was taught to visualize a point of light at my center of gravity, midway between my belly-button and butt, and to see this expand as I breathed in so that the light envelopes my body and shines brightly, and then it shrinks to a point again as I breathe out. Again, this focuses the mind on something and brings focus and relaxation. One of the concepts of Aikido is that the overall relaxed body is more powerful than tensing muscles that don't need it. They will visualize water flowing through their limbs, which represents Ki or life energy, and this enables them to control which muscles are used during movement. I'm not exactly sure why it works, but it works well. Also helps if I have a muscle spasm to do this same water visualization, the muscle often stops twitching. This "relaxed vs tension" also applies in singing where people often feel they have to tense up to hit a high note, when the opposite is true.

[Leo]

You all bring up some good ideas.

I find much of the secular so-called self help literature to be as frustrating to me as the religious material that used to pass through Xianity. Only, I have less patience for any of it due to having zero guilt for dropping it.

I read a meditation article on the Art of Manliness blog, sorry FTNZ, it's not being sexist just an article for usually guys or people who identify as / with such, but the jist was intention. I don't really buy into the whole bit about thinking future things into existence. I can't actually do that with a straight face.

RE: so-called calming the mind, my experience has been like that of prayer from Christianity. Mind wandering, infernal frustration, and not sure I see the point. So much happens when I allow my mind to do what it does, wander, and I have often solved a lot of technical and personal problems when just working out or walking or something.

There are two things I do, though:

If I need to relax, I use that old method from the 1980s where you tense parts of yourself and relax it, breathing from the diaphragm, but without worrying about trying to arrest your mind / sit it still like Sunday school or something.

The second I actually got from the Mindfulness Solution but I don't fully do what it says: they call it "walking meditation". They want you to forego your past 50,000 years or so of human evolution and stop thinking about things, at least from what I read of their book. But all I do is go for a brisk walk, yes, usually with hills - not hard to find in Portland -, with the intent of just "walking it off". Don't deliberately try to solve a particular problem, just let my mind do what it does.

For those who don't have a distractable mind like mine, I guess you could probably make it work. What I'm saying is completely biased from my own opinion. My opinion: if you could pray easily as a Xian, you can probably do this stuff relatively easily. But if you're like me, and even when you were doing the speaking in tongues, your rational mind was off doing something else or attempting to convince itself this was real and not some illusion, the meditation thing as they would have it probably won't work.

[Orbit]

but the jist was intention. I don't really buy into the whole bit about thinking future things into existence. I can't actually do that with a straight face.

I don't know what they meant as "intention" but what I am referring to is intention, in the dictionary meaning, and it has nothing to do with wishing things into existence. Setting your intention simply means that you are focusing your efforts on doing your meditation seriously.

 

 

It is also a myth that meditating means that you have no rational mind, or that you're not using your rational mind. Human beings have both rationality and emotionality and they are both necessary to be a fully functioning human being. There's no need to deny the emotional aspects of your inner life just to stay in good with the atheist club. Atheists meditate.

[Leo]

I didn't intend to imply emotionlessness, not by a long shot. And I'm sure many atheists and theists meditate. It just seems, and maybe I'm wrong, but those who are successful at it are also those who are able to stop the chattering in the mind, and I'm afraid I am not one.

I merely postulated that perhaps those who as Christians or other theists were good at prayer and similar things might also be better at meditating. Of course I'm biased, being I have been equally incompetent at both. But maybe the link I think might be there between the two, may not even be there. Merely supposition on my part.

[FreeThinkerNZ]

Thanks for the replies, very helpful.

 

I came across this article today, about a program in some NZ schools teaching kids how to meditate.  There's some info in there about studies showing the benefits of meditation.  I thought what a great idea to teach kids about this stuff:

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/63216075/Putting-mindfulness-in-the-curriculum

 

 

[Leo]

I only wish to add one more thing to this thread:

Orbit hinted that I was claiming a club, or some sort of emotionless stoicism. However, allowing the mind to wander as I indicated, allows for emotion as well as thought. The sitting the mind still, concentrating on the now, or on prayer or on whatever one may want to, seems to me to be wholly without emotion. When I do let my mind wander, I might have thoughts of my loved ones, obviously creating a whole host of emotions, some of them too deep for words. I might hear the twittering, scampering and foraging of a bird overhead in an old tree in the neighborhood, which elicits all sorts of emotions, including a bit of anthropomorphism, wondering how it feels to be that bird up there. In fact, holding it all in, and remaining in a state of prayer or guided meditation or something of that nature, to me, appears to be quite emotionless. Thoughts, on the other hand, including random thoughts, always seem to generate emotion of one form or another.

Again, admitting my bias here, I've always seen life from the vantage point of a detached observer, to a point. But that doesn't mean without emotion. Quite the contrary. Detached may be the wrong word: External, perhaps.

So no, I contend that allowing the mind to wander as it naturally does, leads to greater emotional expression, and not less. But that may be just my mental framework.

[Guest Furball]

People tend to visualise something when meditating. I always found this distracting from the reason to meditate at all. I imagine nothing at all, complete clarity comes easier when nothing is brought to the mind and when things are brought to the mind, simply let them flow out of the mind. Just be an observer. As i just sit there breathing in and out and observing, i find that all things in life have no matter to them at all. Doesn't make sense i know, i guess it's different for everybody. -peace

[mikey101]

Observing breath is a simple one. Breathing deep and not just shallow chest breathing. and taking pauses between inhale/exhale.  Some people like to count. .

[Guest Furball]

I don't even observe my breath. =) I just breath

[mikey101]

I don't even observe my breath. =) I just breath

Nice.  I think the best practice is the one that works best for you.  Personally I want it to be simple and something I can do anytime instead of having to plan when I'm going to do it.

[seven77]

I've always considered meditation to be "oneness" with a task, a concentrated state of flow...where every action, every emotion, every thought, flows together into a singular point. There is nothing except IT and in IT, there is nothing.

 

My best flow states come when I am programming or working on complex projects like writing long essays or novellas or cooking a complex meal. I just AM during those times, I AM ONE with the task.

 

As far as clearing my mind, I take long walks like Leo described above. Here there are long trails and lots of open fields, so I will walk those. One trail has a beautiful view of creek and runs through a wooded area. I like it there, it is peaceful and sometimes I watch the deer as they run about in the wooded area. Another trail borders some soccer fields. I will sometimes cut across the fields and stand on a tall hill that overlooks the whole park. It is gorgeous at sunset, as the painted sky appears behind a suburban wasteland. A startling contrast, to be sure, but a welcome one.

 

When I was involved in the church, I would go to my mentor's house and meditate there sometimes. She lives out in a very rural area, far from the hustle and bustle of suburbia. Her back porch overlooks a pristine wooded area and a large lake in the distance. No noise except her St. Bernard barking occasionally and maybe a chicken clucking. When it rains, you can feel the storm roll in and watch the lightning in the clouds. I loved the quiet stillness, the feelings of oneness with nature and the beyond-ness of the skies and the woods and all of it unfolding in all directions, surrounding me in some primal way. To think that in ancient times, our ancestors lived in such a world, to be linked to it...was like being plugged into the universe.

 

I can see why some would call nature "God" and make up stories about how "God" came to be and why "God" does this or that, but ultimately, meditation is about hitting pause on your self for awhile so that you can seek...whatever.