Meditation in Amsterdam - Meditation, Where to Begin?
As I start the first real blog entry for the Meditation in Amsterdam website I struggle to find the first and most fundamental topic to discuss.
Shall I begin by describing how frustrating meditation can be for a beginner and state how much I relate to this struggle? In other words should I utter a big "I understand" out there?
Or shall I begin with fundamental philosophy of self, or with the basic concepts of Daoism which underpin the approach that has now been proven by modern neuroscience to work?
No, I think that given our Western mindset, I'll spend a bit of time in this first blog entry elaborating on what meditation is not. This is a very Eastern thing to do, to define things in the negative and remove all the noise. Part of the reason this is done is to prevent the tendency to conceptualize and many of the topics related to the inner self are not about concepts but experience. But more on that later.
Part of the reason Meditation in Amsterdam exists is precisely to prevent practitioners to waste their time and dedication on practicing certain techniques that don't really constitute meditation.
Focusing
Focusing really hard on the task at hand and becoming completely immersed in it can be confused with meditation. But it isn't. A person can be excellent at this, all power to them, without practicing meditation though it can come quite close.
Relaxing
As you have, or are soon to find out, meditation is not the same as relaxing. It can often be very hard work and in the beginning also the cause of frustration. They say the old zen masters where quite fierce and this is the attitude that was (is?) needed to achieve the goals of meditation.
Visualization
There has been much buzz around the concept of positive visualization. The self help industry fills entire books on the topic of how, by imagining yourself having success, you can train your body to feel successful, plant the seeds of success in your mind and then, depending on the quality of the advise, you can lean back and see it happen, or go out there and make it happen.
Visualization is an interesting technique, but it is not meditation.
During visualization we are vividly imagining events, sounds, scenes, even smells and moods. Part of the supposed success of a visualization session depends on the degree to which we are totally immersed in the experience. As you will see from follow up posts, this is almost exactly opposite to meditation.
Thinking positive thoughts
While remaining in the self help isle, we come to the philosophy of positive thinking. Not much different than the one above, but with the difference that this one is more conceptual. It consists of repeating positive affirmations, positive phrases and by doing so on an ongoing basis, changing the language with which our subconscious operates.
Lately there has been an interesting twist to this technique which seems to make it far more efficient, which is to ask the brain good questions instead of force-feeding it with affirmations. Seems to work better as it makes the brain come up with the answer itself as long as the question is of good quality.
Needless to say, positive thinking is also not meditation. This is true pretty much by definition since, at least for the untrained mind, though is the problem we're trying to solve but....
Stopping Thoughts from Arising
I bet you didn't expect this one! Many people still believe that training the mind to stop thinking is the big M. We think that a successful meditation is one where we stop thoughts from arising in the mind and become agitated, frustrated and ready to give up when we find out that this is all but impossible.
You're probably quite puzzled at this point. This seemed to be the whole idea but now you're not so sure. If it's not this then what?
At Meditation in Amsterdam, we spend a good deal of time understanding what meditation actually is, and I intend to dedicate a few blog posts to the topic in the coming days.
Namaste
Pablo
www.meditationamsterdam.com
Shall I begin by describing how frustrating meditation can be for a beginner and state how much I relate to this struggle? In other words should I utter a big "I understand" out there?
Or shall I begin with fundamental philosophy of self, or with the basic concepts of Daoism which underpin the approach that has now been proven by modern neuroscience to work?
No, I think that given our Western mindset, I'll spend a bit of time in this first blog entry elaborating on what meditation is not. This is a very Eastern thing to do, to define things in the negative and remove all the noise. Part of the reason this is done is to prevent the tendency to conceptualize and many of the topics related to the inner self are not about concepts but experience. But more on that later.
Part of the reason Meditation in Amsterdam exists is precisely to prevent practitioners to waste their time and dedication on practicing certain techniques that don't really constitute meditation.
Focusing
Focusing really hard on the task at hand and becoming completely immersed in it can be confused with meditation. But it isn't. A person can be excellent at this, all power to them, without practicing meditation though it can come quite close.
Relaxing
As you have, or are soon to find out, meditation is not the same as relaxing. It can often be very hard work and in the beginning also the cause of frustration. They say the old zen masters where quite fierce and this is the attitude that was (is?) needed to achieve the goals of meditation.
Visualization
There has been much buzz around the concept of positive visualization. The self help industry fills entire books on the topic of how, by imagining yourself having success, you can train your body to feel successful, plant the seeds of success in your mind and then, depending on the quality of the advise, you can lean back and see it happen, or go out there and make it happen.
Visualization is an interesting technique, but it is not meditation.
During visualization we are vividly imagining events, sounds, scenes, even smells and moods. Part of the supposed success of a visualization session depends on the degree to which we are totally immersed in the experience. As you will see from follow up posts, this is almost exactly opposite to meditation.
Thinking positive thoughts
While remaining in the self help isle, we come to the philosophy of positive thinking. Not much different than the one above, but with the difference that this one is more conceptual. It consists of repeating positive affirmations, positive phrases and by doing so on an ongoing basis, changing the language with which our subconscious operates.
Lately there has been an interesting twist to this technique which seems to make it far more efficient, which is to ask the brain good questions instead of force-feeding it with affirmations. Seems to work better as it makes the brain come up with the answer itself as long as the question is of good quality.
Needless to say, positive thinking is also not meditation. This is true pretty much by definition since, at least for the untrained mind, though is the problem we're trying to solve but....
Stopping Thoughts from Arising
I bet you didn't expect this one! Many people still believe that training the mind to stop thinking is the big M. We think that a successful meditation is one where we stop thoughts from arising in the mind and become agitated, frustrated and ready to give up when we find out that this is all but impossible.
You're probably quite puzzled at this point. This seemed to be the whole idea but now you're not so sure. If it's not this then what?
At Meditation in Amsterdam, we spend a good deal of time understanding what meditation actually is, and I intend to dedicate a few blog posts to the topic in the coming days.
Namaste
Pablo
www.meditationamsterdam.com
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