Marijuana and meditating

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

To be honest, I've never understood the appeal of meditation. I've done it on numerous occasions, sitting still for 2+ hours sometimes, focusing on breath and clearing my mind.

Then I open my eyes and get up and feel 0% of any effect at all. No more peaceful, no more clear, no more "in tune," just like I sat upright for wayyy too long.

I believe in the power of the mind and of deep thought, but I just can't see the benefit of meditating in that traditional sense.

I had the same problem for a while too Turny. As I eventually discovered, the problem with convention meditation is that all it teaches you to do, is sit there and meditate. The whole following the breath, clearing your mind, seeking peace and clarity; these are all just practice methods to train yourself in how to sit and meditate. But once you learn that, you have to change your methods to something more advanced. Meditation means roughly "the art of focus", and the basic meditation teaches you to focus on your meditation; that's it.

What I found is that you now have to figure out a very specific purpose/goal in mind, and learn how to focus on that. If you focus on breathing and sitting, then breathing and sitting is what you'll accomplish. But if you want to learn to, say, be more confident, then you need to work on clearly defining "confidence" in your mind, then focus on it with all your intent during the meditation.


Meditation isn't really necessarily such a mystical and vague practice. It is, quite simply, learning to focus your mind on one mindstate until that area of your brain because much stronger. Much like if you focus on a book you're reading for hours, the reading area of your brain will be stronger. Focus on inner peace, and the inner peace area will become dominant. It's all mental weight-lifting and repetition really.

[GreenDestiny]

thanks for the link to that site with the tones. I've experimented on and off with binaural beats, it's cool stuff... I was even able to use them to meditate with foods I was allergic to and cure myself of those allergies. I love the ones that signal your brain to release endorphines and stuff, its like a small free high.

For some reason I've never taken the time to meditate while high.... I know it would work great for me.

[Reefer Rogue]

Meditation isn't for me but cannabis sure is.

[MelT]

Hi Turny, I know what you're saying, but just doing a session of meditation now and again with no real aims other than to relax isn't really what it's about. If you do it on a regular basis then the feelings of calm really do carry over into your daily life - though looking to become calm or serene isn't the purpose of meditation in itself. As said above, what you think of as meditation is just a basic tool to help prepare you for the next stage of practise. But, if anyone just wants to sit in shamatha and stick with that then there are still tens of benefits.

Scientifically speaking, the benefits from meditation are impressive. There have been numerous studies that have looked at its physical and neurological effects, which showed that it can help relieve a variety of conditions, including high blood pressure, respiratory problems, addiction, chronic pain - whilst at the same time increasing creativity and work output.

Neuroscientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, has discovered that meditators move activity in their brains away from the stress-prone right frontal cortex move to the calmer left frontal cortex. This decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression and anxiety. There is also less activity in the amygdala, where the brain processes fear. In Kabat-Zinn's study, participants showed a pronounced shift in activity to the left frontal lobe, showing that they were calmer and happier than before. Not only that, but meditators also showed that they held on to the benefits meditation gave, even after 4 months of stopping practice.

An early study of meditation in 1972 showed that meditation actually lowered the biochemical byproducts of stress, such as lacate, which helped decrease heart rate and blood pressure in meditators.

Meditation also gives:
* Better sleeping patterns.
* Increased concentration and perception.
* Increased reaction time.
* Lower blood pressure and heart rate.
* Increase in the calming hormones, melatonin and serotonin.
* Decrease of the stress hormone, cortisol.
* Long-term meditators experience 80 percent less heart disease and 50 percent less cancer than non-meditators.

Happier, calmer, clearer, more able to focus â?? these are the qualities of a mind that is far more able to be creative on a daily basis. Meditation simply can't fail to help.

So, what is it?

A lot of people, myself once included, have a deep scepticism of anything to do with meditation and equate it with everything from yogic-flying to hours of belly-button staring and mumbling 'Auuum!'...
...But meditation is a simple, logical process, and not at all strange. Some people use it as a way to relax. Some people use it as a means of exploring their own minds, and yes, some people do it with the aim of reaching Enlightenment and Buddhahood. You use it to suit your own needs and practise accordingly.

Iâ??m not trying to say that, where it appears, meditationâ??s spiritual has no meaning or importance. What I am saying is that meditation can still be of benefit to you in tens of ways whether you want to follow that â??spiritualâ?? incline or not. Meditation is a powerful tool, something that anyone can learn and use to reach a calmer, happier mind in a matter of weeks. As the majority of the mental barriers to creativity are due to things like distraction, and prevarication, meditation will certainly help to clear, discipline and focus awareness and allow ideas to arise more fluidly. If meditation is regular (at least once a day) then the state it induces becomes semi-permanent and regular, spontaneous creativity will become easier.

I recently read a comment to a meditation blog, where the respondent said something along the lines of: â??Meditators are deluding themselves. No matter how good they get at meditation, no matter how long they sit for, it's not going to make their worries or day to day problems go away. It's not much more than a temporary fix and is therefore a pointless waste of time...â?�

To be honest, nobody learns to meditate to make the real world somehow disappear so that they don't have to cope with it anymore. Meditation changes the way you react to stress, and makes life easier to deal with when things go wrong â?? it isn't meant to put you into a state where you aren't fully aware of your life anymore. As for how long its effects last, the benefits meditation continue over into your daily life too, making the lumps and bumps of work and relationships seem that much smaller and less stressful. Meditation isn't a temporary quick fix, but something that can elicit deep and lasting personal change.

MelT

[Coelho]

To be honest, I've never understood the appeal of meditation. I've done it on numerous occasions, sitting still for 2+ hours sometimes, focusing on breath and clearing my mind.

Then I open my eyes and get up and feel 0% of any effect at all. No more peaceful, no more clear, no more "in tune," just like I sat upright for wayyy too long.

Well... maybe you only sat upright for a long time, and not medited in fact... this procedures, like sitting still, focusing on the breath, are only the "mechanical" part of the meditation. For example, the focusing on breath is only a device to help one to learn how to focus the mind in something, not the goal of meditation itself. The real subject of the meditation, which is the alterations of the mind, cant be properly described in words, and so cant be properly teached by words. Each one must experiment it by itself.
Its pretty much like smoking... one who never smoked could feel not inclined to smoke by only hearing what people says of how is to be stoned, because the words only cover a very small part of the experience. Yet, if this same person smoked and got high, it would love it. Because the bulk of the experience is something outside the words. And its the same with meditation. Only one who experienced a meditative trance, with all its mind bending implications, can properly understand it.

[Euphoric7]

The "aum" (actually spelled "OM") is first part of every mantra. Below is a list of 20-so mantras you can use (it's not necessary at all though). It's cool to learn 1 or 2 though, because like Terence McKenna said, Mantras are like tools for exploring the psychedelic realm (whether it's psychedelics, marijuana, or meditation). They can really turn around a difficult trip or experience.

http://www.yogaindailylife.com/downl...Mantras_en.jpg

[TurnyBright]

I guess it's just another thing I can't get into. Like butternut squash.

[GreenDestiny]

Hitting the right pitch/frequency for the OM or other mantras is a very important part, I believe. Resonant frequencies of body parts, the energies, etc... When you hit the right notes it sounds good and stimulates the body parts and stuff. That's what some of those tones and binaural beats try to do for the brain.

When you got more than one person in a room doing a mantra, at different frequencies, then the difference of those separate tones makes the low frequencies that we can't produce on our own.... unless you like to slowly beat on a drum. same thing really. The rhythms of nature and the body. Literally getting in tune with everything!


You might have seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind.... the 5 tones they use to sorta communicate with the aliens... from working with chakra tones I noticed that they were the same frequencies! Too bad they didn't play all 7 notes for the aliens.

[LuciferN]

I've actually had really good experiences with meditation as being high. My last really good one was an astral trip, got myself of earth and as far as Jupiter, as I was meditating sitting in the grass of one park at night waiting for my friends to come back from the liquor store. When they arrived I got back to my body in less than one second, that was a really weird feeling and walk back with them to the house with an surprising happiness and the impression to be as light as a feather.

[theforthdrive]

I have a problem in a lotus or non supportive stance. I have a back condition that doesnt allow me to do this at all. I have meditated before but it was always guided. OMG, once with the crazy indian and a drum where I had this lucid dream of riding the flying dog thing from the Never Ending Story! Good Times! anyways. What is the best position I can use?

Im interest in meditation started when I believe I popped out of my body once when under extreme pain and stress and of course herb and some phram. pain killers. At the time I was sitting cross legged, not quit lotus, on my couch. I kept having this almost panic attack that I was floating and then I would kinda freak, come to and still be on my couch with my finger on the keyboard! Should I keep this position or try something else?