Wow, you guys brought up some very interesting subjects this time around, subjects which I happen to have some experience in.
One of the things that seems worth mentioning is that I've had the same or similar experience to Mr Vaeni while meditating. I was involved with a GI Gurdjieff study group, and during the first 30 minutes of each meeting we did what was called a "sitting", which was pretty much just 30 minutes of complete immobility and focus on presence and sensation. I had absolutely no interest in meditation at the time (Gurdjieff himself writes nothing about the subject that I know of). I joined the group to read the books and talk about the ideas, like an intellectual salon I guess, but the meditation came with the package so I went along.
Anyway, this became something of a struggle for me. Firstly because my personality is strongly opposed to the idea of doing "nothing" or doing something that has no perceivable benefit. And secondly because over the course of the 30 minutes each time, my back would be killing me and my left leg would go completely pins and needles.
Well one time I was doing a sitting with the group, and I was thinking about a comment someone said about "being passive". I wondered to myself "How can someone even 'be passive', doesn't that very idea imply some sort of action to change the present state?" I don't know if this thought has any relation to the experience, but I was thinking it immediately before so it's perhaps worth mentioning.
Anyway, shortly after this, I felt like some sort of electric energy was pouring in through an opening in my head, and down my spine. As it flowed downward, the pain in my back went away for the first (and only) time, and the pins and needles feeling in my leg went away. I felt great in some inexplicable way, it wasn't entirely physically-based, and I felt that I had some dim manner of perception outside of my closed eyes.
This state remained throughout the remainder of the sitting, and even lingered after the sitting was over, like the afterimage from a camera flash. I brought this up to the people considered the "authorities" in the group, and they had nothing helpful to tell me. One woman said that this was a "validation" of the sittings and this angered me most of all. How was my experience a validation if 1) It is not stated beforehand as the goal of the sittings, and 2) no one is even able to explain what it is? Perhaps it was a cancer bubble bursting in my head and flooding my brain with poisonous mind-altering chemicals!
Anyway, this frustrated me that they could offer me no insight on this experience and so I didn't remain with this group. I sensed that something significant had happened in that sitting, and suspected that these people had no idea what was going on. Perhaps they did know what was going on and chose to keep it from me, but I had to act based upon my own understanding.
As an after statement, I have a strong hunch that meditation is the most useful to people who actually find it distasteful, and least useful to people who get some sort of benefit out of doing it. This is because I think an element of the process is the act against our natural "transactional" nature, to only do something in exchange for something else. You must do this something for nothing.
Having said that, I do not meditate at all presently, even after that experience. I can't seem to overcome this feeling that I must be "doing something". That feeling persists so strongly in me that I haven't owned a TV for about 10 years because I feel it will detract from my productivity. The mandatory nature of the group meditation was what kept me doing it for so long, even though I secretly thought it was worthless.
One of the things that seems worth mentioning is that I've had the same or similar experience to Mr Vaeni while meditating. I was involved with a GI Gurdjieff study group, and during the first 30 minutes of each meeting we did what was called a "sitting", which was pretty much just 30 minutes of complete immobility and focus on presence and sensation. I had absolutely no interest in meditation at the time (Gurdjieff himself writes nothing about the subject that I know of). I joined the group to read the books and talk about the ideas, like an intellectual salon I guess, but the meditation came with the package so I went along.
Anyway, this became something of a struggle for me. Firstly because my personality is strongly opposed to the idea of doing "nothing" or doing something that has no perceivable benefit. And secondly because over the course of the 30 minutes each time, my back would be killing me and my left leg would go completely pins and needles.
Well one time I was doing a sitting with the group, and I was thinking about a comment someone said about "being passive". I wondered to myself "How can someone even 'be passive', doesn't that very idea imply some sort of action to change the present state?" I don't know if this thought has any relation to the experience, but I was thinking it immediately before so it's perhaps worth mentioning.
Anyway, shortly after this, I felt like some sort of electric energy was pouring in through an opening in my head, and down my spine. As it flowed downward, the pain in my back went away for the first (and only) time, and the pins and needles feeling in my leg went away. I felt great in some inexplicable way, it wasn't entirely physically-based, and I felt that I had some dim manner of perception outside of my closed eyes.
This state remained throughout the remainder of the sitting, and even lingered after the sitting was over, like the afterimage from a camera flash. I brought this up to the people considered the "authorities" in the group, and they had nothing helpful to tell me. One woman said that this was a "validation" of the sittings and this angered me most of all. How was my experience a validation if 1) It is not stated beforehand as the goal of the sittings, and 2) no one is even able to explain what it is? Perhaps it was a cancer bubble bursting in my head and flooding my brain with poisonous mind-altering chemicals!
Anyway, this frustrated me that they could offer me no insight on this experience and so I didn't remain with this group. I sensed that something significant had happened in that sitting, and suspected that these people had no idea what was going on. Perhaps they did know what was going on and chose to keep it from me, but I had to act based upon my own understanding.
As an after statement, I have a strong hunch that meditation is the most useful to people who actually find it distasteful, and least useful to people who get some sort of benefit out of doing it. This is because I think an element of the process is the act against our natural "transactional" nature, to only do something in exchange for something else. You must do this something for nothing.
Having said that, I do not meditate at all presently, even after that experience. I can't seem to overcome this feeling that I must be "doing something". That feeling persists so strongly in me that I haven't owned a TV for about 10 years because I feel it will detract from my productivity. The mandatory nature of the group meditation was what kept me doing it for so long, even though I secretly thought it was worthless.
