Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Meditation Page 2 of 3

The Basic Pattern to Most Meditation

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On August 10, 2022

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There are hundreds of types of meditation — maybe thousands. But most of them have a simple pattern.

1) Do something.

2) When you notice you aren’t doing that thing, go back to doing it.

Breath meditation:

  1. Follow the sensations of your breath.
  2. When you notice you aren’t paying attention to your breath, go back to paying attention to your breath.

All types of concentration meditation are similar. Here’s mantra meditation:

  1. Say a mantra (a series of words) over and over again, either out loud or mentally.
  2. When you notice you aren’t saying the mantra, or aren’t paying attention to it, go back to the mantra.

Discursive meditation (beloved by Western ritual mages, but not exclusively):

  1. Pick something to think about.
  2. When you notice you aren’t thinking about it, go back to the last thought you had that was on topic and continue.

Vipassana:

  1. Sense a feeling in the body. Mentally say what it is: “itch, pressure, warmth, happy, love, fear, hatred.” Go on to the next sensation you notice.
  2. Notice you are no longer doing the above, go back to it.

Loving-Kindness:

  1. Find or generate a loving feeling.
  2. Concentrate on that loving feeling.
  3. If you notice you aren’t concentrating on it go back to it. If you notice it’s gone away, generate it again.

Do-nothing meditation (just sitting, Mahamudra, etc…):

  • Don’t try to control your attention.
  • Notice when you are are controlling or intend to control attention. Don’t.

Of course there are details, and techniques and subtleties, but if you just remember “do something, notice I’m not doing it, go back to it” and stick to it you can make a lot of progress. This also means that you shouldn’t switch meditation types mid-season — that would break the “go back to it” part.

Notice here that the important part is “notice when I’m not doing it.” This develops “meta-attention” which is the ability to know what you’re doing. It may seem like you know what you’re doing all the time, but a few minutes of attempting to concentrate on your breath or an object should convince you otherwise.

This also develops your ability follow your intention; it trains your mind to do what you want it to do. All we really have is our intentions, but, as we know from when we decide to do something and fail, it isn’t actually easy.

Now, of course, what you intend to do and do matters. Different types of meditation have different effects. But most types of meditation have a loop which is, at its heart, really this simple even if you intend to do multiple things, like sit in a specific way, or have the tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth and have your hands resting on your knees with forefinger and thumb touching while doing nothing else, or concentrating on your breath or whatever.

The basics really are this simple, though the permutations are vast.

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How to Deal with Anxiety and Trauma Using Meditation

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On August 8, 2022

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One of the common pitfalls of “mindfulness” meditation is that practitioners become very good at noticing sense objects in their body. (More simply: feelings.) Now, if those feelings are negative, that can lead to more anxiety and fear, and if you contact the emotions around a traumatic experience, you can be re-traumatized; the trauma can become worse.

Understand how the mind works. When something bad happens, the mind brings it up again and again as a warning; “This was bad, you should watch out for it.” The mind is trying to be helpful (our minds/brains are not that smart, but they are trying to help).

If, when a negative feeling comes up, you don’t react to it, or you react with warmth/love/security, it weakens. If, on the other hand, you are upset, and you add an additional negative load to it, your mind thinks, “Oh my, this is still a danger, I should bring it up more often and stronger.”

So the key to using meditation to help with trauma and anxiety is to not react, or to react with warmth, love, or indifference.

This means that mindfulness and Vipassana meditation styles should not be used alone. A concentrated mind (from shamatha: concentration on an object like the breath or meditation, or a loving mind, from Metta or something like puppy meditation will react more calmly or even with warmth.

When that happens, the underlying anxiety or trauma weakens. Repeated applications will reduce it a great deal.

This means that you should always do more concentration and loving kindness meditation than Vipassana or mindfulness — at least a 2/1 ratio, and do shamatha and loving-kindness before you do vipassana. I suggest concentration first (breath or mantra are easiest for most people), then do mindfulness or vipassana.

If you contact an emotion you can’t deal with, immediately switch over to concentration, then after a few minutes, go to loving-kindness.

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Smiling at Death

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On June 10, 2022

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I don’t know what happens after death. I have two friends who have died and lived again to report. One says there was nothing, another had a classic near death experience. After reading a lot of case studies, I’m inclined to believe that reincarnation is fairly common (why everyone should have the same post-death experience is beyond me), but certainly it could be that death is the END, or one goes to the happy hunting grounds, or any of a number of any other possibilities.

What I do know is that when you die, you have to leave a lot behind. Everything you’ve owned, your physical body, and all the people, though perhaps some will rejoin you later. I rather suspect that, if oblivion isn’t what happens, that on losing the physical body you will also undergo some significant changes to personality, memory, and perception. (One advanced spiritual teacher told me that when you die, your physical life seems like a dream. I don’t know if they were full of it or not.)

But forget all the stuff about what may or may not happen. For sure, we’ll be leaving a ton of things behind.

When I was in my 20s, I spent three months in the hospital, and then a few years recovering. The hospital stay was so awful, including days of screaming, more dry vomiting than I can count, and complete inability to move for almost a month, that after I got out I swore that I’d never let it happen again.

I was very close to death for a few weeks while in that hospital, and the doctors actually didn’t think I’d make it. I had plenty of time to contemplate it, and when I came out I had no fear of death, because I knew that truly awful things happen in life.

Something changes when you face your mortality, not for an instant, but over a period time. I had to do it again later when I had heart problems (serious enough that I couldn’t catch my breath sitting down), and so I’ve done this more than once.

Add in my meditation training and something odd happened: I find the thought of death soothing. When I think something bad will happen or something bad does happen, I remind myself that, like Socrates, I’m human and therefore mortal, and I’m going to die one day. If I lose something, odds are it was something I was going to lose anyway.

And then I ask myself, “Am I scared of death?” and the inevitable reply is a chuckle, because the idea is absurd to me. Maybe there are hells and worse things can happen, but I know for sure that really, really bad things happen here.

And then, perhaps, I think back. The happiest year or two of my life were when I was around five, living on the beach with my grandmother and mother. I had virtually nothing then except clothes and a place to sleep: no possessions I cared about except a tiny heart-shaped booked my grandmother gave me in which she had written a story.

Happiness requires very little; remove misery, and happiness should bloom.

So when I’m anxious or scared, I move on to the ultimate anxiety or fear, and I find it empty, and then perhaps I keep it in mind for a time, and, for me, that is a near sure cure for anxiety.

Death can be your friend and your teacher. You’re going to have to face it one day; perhaps if you face it now, and ask yourself if you can be okay with losing all the things it takes, it can help you be free and happy.

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The Simplest Way to Control Consciousness

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On December 3, 2021

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I remember fairly clearly the day when, while trying to choose what to read in a bookstore, I realized that what I was choosing is who would control my consciousness — my mind — for a couple hours.

It wasn’t a thought I’d never had before; after all when we watch TV or a movie, or read a book, we want our consciousness to be changed for a while, but the “I’m letting the author’s mind control me” epiphany was direct, vivid, and somewhat alarming.

We think of ourselves as our bodies and thoughts, and as everything else as “outside” us, but that’s wrong. We never experience anything but ourselves, we experience nothing but our own consciousness. It is literally impossible to experience anything that isn’t yourself, including these words.

This is true regardless of your metaphysics. The material world may well exist, but what of it? At best, you experience it as a representation in your consciousness.

Because I’m slow, it took me about year to apply the “mind control” understanding to my environment. Every room I’m in, every vista I see, every road I walk, and every person I see or hear or talk to is in my mind. The environment — cars, people, walls, buildings — controls and forms my consciousness.

There isn’t any question that this effects me, what I think, what mood I’m in. There’s vast research literature on something as simple as the what mood different colors cause.

So my environment, my day to day environment, where I live, work, eat, sleep and walk, what I read or watch, and who I talk to or hug — that’s my consciousness.

Now I meditate, and I have more control over the emotional tone of my consciousness and the thoughts I think than a lot of people, but still, the environment is a huge influence. If I see people fighting, or I’m threatened, yeah, I can influence my emotional reaction, but I have to and sometimes I can’t. If, on the other hand, I interact with friendly, even loving people, it’s a lot easier.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

Likewise if I’m walking through some slum, full of despair, that changes my consciousness. If I’m in a beautiful room full of plants or pictures, I feel better than if I’m in a room of crumbling concrete, stained and stinking, because my consciousness changes to be like wherever I am. My consciousness IS my environment.

So the simplest way to control consciousness isn’t meditation (much as I have benefited from meditation) it’s to control your environment — the rooms you live in, sleep in, and work in. Your neighbourhood, if  you can. The people you interact with, to the extent  you can.

If something’s bad in your environment and you can change it to something better, you’re directly changing your consciousness for the better.

And even the most self-controlled, disciplined mind, is affected by environment. If you’re in an awful environment (and the most important part of an environment is the people), you have to constantly manage that; it’s a stress.

So beware of the environment you live in, please, and don’t assume you’re some Buddha who can just shrug it off (which, even he didn’t — and couldn’t — before he was the Buddha).

 

A Basic Meditation Plan Which Can Take You Far

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On November 3, 2021

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One of the reasons many meditators run into problems or limits is that they do only one type of meditation.

Vipassana alone can be dangerous, leading to de-realization or de-personalization. Even in good cases “dark nights” are common, and can mess people up. Vipassana is intended to make you realize you aren’t any sense objects, but without a buffer, that can turn into pathology.

There are other meditation types which are less dangerous, in particular concentration meditation and Metta (designed to create compassion), but even in such cases there can be dangers, and without insight meditation you’re also less likely to make real progress, especially as Metta and concentration, if you get good at them, both feel great and thus can be addictive without leading to awakenings or enlightenment.

Think of meditation as exercise for your mind: you wouldn’t do only deadlifts and no other exercise, and if you did you’d wind up hurting  yourself.

As with physical exercise, if you find it is causing problems the first thing to do is STOP.

All that said, I’m going to suggest a simple, effective and relatively safe mediation program for those who want it.

The program involves three elements: concentration, love and insight.

You will ALWAYS do concentration and love meditation before doing insight unless instructed otherwise by a teacher you trust. You will do at least twice as much concentration and love meditation as insight: so if you were doing a 30 minute session you would do 10 minutes of concentration, 10 minutes of love, then 10 minutes of insight. If you don’t have enough time to do all three,  you will skip insight.

Just do these three meditations, in order, for at least a few months.

Concentration

Choose an object of attention. Standard Buddhist is your breath. Standard Hindu is a mantra – words you speak or think (move towards thinking them) while paying attention to the sound of them. If you use a mantra it should be something emotionally neutral or unalloyed positive (don’t meditate on God, say, if you fear going to hell).

I suggest breath, but some mantras are:

  • “Roots” (an emotionally neutral word)
  • Om Mani Padme Hum
  • Om Nama Shivaya
  • Om Ah Bee Lah Hung Chit (Vairocana mantra)

If you use a mantra, you should do so with the breath. One syllable or word should be said or thought on the exhale or inhale.

If you use the breath, attention stays on the negative part of it–when you’re not breathing.

Step Two: Intend to notice when you are no longer paying attention to the object of attention.

Step Three: Put your attention lightly on the objection of attention.

Step Four: At some point, you will notice that you are not paying attention to the object. Pat yourself on the back for noticing that you aren’t paying attention the breath. Be pleased. Then:

  • Look at whatever you’re now paying attention to, appreciate it for a second or two without judgment, then think to yourself either “this isn’t important,” or “I’ll deal with this after meditating”.
  • Move your attention back to your object of attention.

REPEAT

Love Meditation

Imagine that you are hugging a puppy. (Kitten if you prefer.) Imagine your arms holding it against your chest, it’s warmth, it licking your face, and its tail wagging.

Now, just keep imagining holding the puppy, and intend to notice when you are doing something else: when you start thinking or feeling something other than puppy holding.

When you do, pat yourself on the back, pet the puppy, and go back to holding the puppy.

After You Get Good.

Once you can reliably bring up love, expand this. Start with other people or things you love (I’ve often used trees.) Then go to people you feel neither good nor bad about, perhaps imagine the people you met on the street today or yesterday.

Reverse Engineer

You’ve also been doing insight meditation, so when you can generate love for both those you love and those you are neutral about, you will do this exercise and as you do it, you will observe the feelings in your body, watching how they arise and fall away. The idea here is to learn how to generate loving feelings directly, without intermediate steps. Don’t worry if you can’t at first, for most people it’s hard. But if you stick to it, you’ll see that emotions don’t require objects and you’ll learn how to create them out of what seems like almost nothing.

Insight Meditation

There are a lot of different types of insight meditation. What you’re going to do, to start, is simply notice a feeling in your body, place your attention on it without judgment (as best you can) then simply ask yourself “if this sensation was not here, would I still be me?”

Do this for a few months, at least three. When you’re comfortable with it, and when you find that you can be detached from most sensations, move on to—

Microscope attention

Most people can’t feel their bodies very well. They may only be able to feel the general area of a perception: feeling only a finger, or hand, or upper right back, and so on. What you’re going to do is linger on feelings. Move to the edge of a feeling and try and reduce the size of your attention: focus on the smallest bit of the feeling you can perceive. Do this for 30 seconds to a minute or so, then move on after asking “would I still be me if this feeling wasn’t there?”

Hard Feelings

Insight meditation can be dangerous, both because of the possibility of de-realization and de-personalization and because if something traumatic comes up, you can re-traumatize yourself. This is why you will always do concentration and love meditation first: they create a buffer. However, if a feeling is too much, STOP. Immediately go back to your object of concentration, and meditate on that till  you feel somewhat calmer, then move on to your love meditation.

Last Words

This program can take you far. Remember the warnings and if something seems alarming, stop and consult a teacher. As with any other type of exercise, consistency is the key. Try to do it as often as possible. For most people results will take time, but many will find it beneficial after only a few weeks.

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Types of Enlightenment #1: World As Self

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On May 24, 2021

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In the West, this is probably the most common definition of enlightenment: You experience yourself as everything in the world, including people. Among others, this is the traditional definition for Hermetic Mages, though they don’t call it enlightenment. It is also the most common definition of enlightenment in Hindu folk tradition (though full Hinduism has many.) If someone says “non-dual” this is what they’re talking about.

This type of enlightenment is based on the simple fact that we never experience the world directly, but only through symbols created by our consciousness. You don’t see a tree, you see a symbol of a tree. You don’t know your body as it actually is, but only feelings from the body and reflections. You never experience another person as they experience themselves (their consciousness), but only see their bodies and actions — though we may get some hints of their inner experience through the various mechanisms of empathy.

But even with empathy, what we experience is ourselves, trying to mimic another’s state.

Human consciousness, which is all we ever know, is hopelessly symbolic. It is nothing but symbols for a world we will never feel directly. You cannot directly experience anything that is not you.

In this style of enlightenment, what changes is that you no longer feel an inner or outer; everything is you and it is felt to be you. This often occurs in stages, we have a hard time feeling animals and especially humans as ourselves, and they are generally the last to be integrated.

Unlike some other forms of enlightenment, this one is entirely theoretical to me: I’ve never had even a glimpse of it. But those who have, describe it as immensely enjoyable and freeing.

It is also in some ways a more truthful way of seeing the world, including yourself. A world may or may not exist, but you live in your consciousness and, in this style of enlightenment, you know that you are consciousness. This is the style of mysticism where the mystic talks about being the sun, the moon, the reeds in the river, the wind on flesh, and so on.

Getting this sort of enlightenment, or a glimpse of it, usually requires specific types of meditation. You can find some of them in this series of guided meditations from Michael Taft (to teach you how to do them on your own).

I’ll continue this series with other definitions of enlightenment such as “the end of suffering” and the Indian Jiva Mukti, which is the breaking of conditioning and thus the enlightenment of freedom (it also breaks the bonds of karma/fate/wyrd and so on, which is a lot less esoteric than it sounds; karma needs to no mystical mumbo-jumbo to explain). Tune in next time for more.

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Basic Puppy Meditation

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On May 7, 2021

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I’ve written about a variety of meditation types over the years. Here’s one of the best.

Imagine that you are hugging a puppy. (Kitten if you prefer.) Imagine your arms holding it against your chest, it’s warmth, it licking your face, and its tail wagging.

Now, just keep imagining holding the puppy, and intend to notice when you are doing something else: when you start thinking or feeling something other than puppy holding.

When you do, pat yourself on the back, pet the puppy, and go back to holding the puppy.

Do this every day, for as long as you want to, or whenever you’re feeling bad and want to feel good.

I assure you, this is a perfectly legitimate meditation that trains three very important meditation abilities.

Plus, puppies!

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Meditation for the Original Sin of Identification

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On July 29, 2019

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Humans are bundles of identification. We identify with simple things: our emotions, feelings in our bodies, thoughts. We identify with the patterns of those things, and call them “personality” and assume that we are our personality.

We identify more grandly. Perhaps we are a Muslim, and someone burns a Koran and we get upset. A person like us is hurt, and we are angry or sad.

Perhaps we identify with ideological positions. We believe in God, and someone says God doesn’t exist, and we are upset. Or, perhaps we believe there is no God, it’s impossible, ridiculous, and stupid, and when someone says there is a God, we get upset. (And yeah, I’ve seen this many times with more hardcore atheists.)

We want to use a group as slaves, on the other hand, so we decide they aren’t human. If they aren’t human, but sub-human, we won’t feel bad when they’re hurt. (Lack of pain from someone being hurt with whom you don’t identify is something that shows up, or rather, doesn’t, on brain scans.)

A terrorist attack happens in London, and Westerners are upset, but one happens in Baghdad, and we don’t care.

It’s all degrees of identification. From that which is close to us – from our daily sense objects of feeling, emotion, and thought in the body, to people living thousands of miles away or even ideas and ideologies.

One of the primary tasks for cultivating any spirituality worth the name is learning how to deal with this confusion. Generally, there’s two ways of doing it: Either you’re all of it, equally, or you’re none of it.

If you don’t identify, you suffer less. It’s that simple. If you have a bad thought but don’t think of it as “yours,” it bothers you less–if at all. Even pain is reduced if you don’t think of it as yours.

This is one reason why a major milestone on the path, in almost all traditions, is the realization “I’m not the body.”

But the key point is this: Less identification is less suffering. And, oddly, it doesn’t reduce the good things in life. It improves them. This has been my experience, and it’s the experience of advanced meditators I’ve talked to as well.

All right, all the introductory verbiage aside, here’s a simple exercise.

Find a sense object: It could be a thought, an emotion, or a feeling. (Nothing exists in consciousness except sense objects.)

Ask yourself this question:”If this was not here, would I still be me?”

Answer it.

Move on to another sense object.

And that’s the entire exercise. Do this over, and over, and over again.

Yeah, that’s probably going to be boring. That’s the thing about meditation, despite all the blather about bliss (which does happen sometimes) a lot of it is boring. What you’re doing is a directed inquiry into your actual existence and reprogramming what might be termed your subconscious. That takes repetition, repetition, and repetition, until suddenly something clicks, and a new way of existing takes place.

The difficulty of meditation is only in doing it right, and then doing enough of it.

Give this one a try if you’re so inclined, see what  you find out. Do enough of it, and see what changes.

Disclaimer: There are two particular psychological dangers to meditation: de-realization and de-personalization. These are dangers because the core insights of meditative traditions amount to “I am not what I thought I was.” This particular type of insight meditation aims directly at such a realization, and it can cause psychological problems if it goes askew, or in people who are already prone to these issues. If you have reason to think that might be you, you shouldn’t be doing this meditation.

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