Quote Originally Posted by TurnyBright
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.