Meditation

soulsinging wrote:

i don't have an hour. i live in the middle of a huge urban city, but there are some very nice parks here. it's the hour i don't have to spare.

Even finding just ten minutes a day is beneficial. Set your alarm ten minutes earlier, do it before you go to bed at night........ make it part of your daily routine. It's an awesome way to start the day.

As to the racing thoughts the original poster asked about...... it just takes practice and patience. If people didn't struggle with the thought train, there'd be no need to learn to mediate. One good way of finding that space in your mind that is nothing but consciousness is to quietly ask yourself........ I wonder what my next thought will be? It's interesting to watch what happens. Once you find that space, it's a matter of learning to relax into it and observe it without thinking about it, if that makes sense.........

Earthgirl wrote:

I meditate every day... grew up doing it with my mom, all I do now is when i go for my daily 1 hour walk in a field.. I stop, sit down , close my eyes and meditate with nature... the birds, air.. sun.. and am thankful for it all. Mediation can be done anyway you like.

that is perfect.
i just seen you sittin out there
amongst earth.

i do the same stuff.
i go for my walk, sit on some driftwood,
under a tree, whatever, and write in the silence of nature's sounds.

There is nothing paritcularly special about meditation. It's a self-induced trance. Humans go in and out of trances all the time. Especially when watching television.

The concept is similar, yet opposite in ways to the theory of hypnosis. Hypnosis seeks to flood the consciousn with information, effectively disconnecting it from reality by getting it caught up in trying to decipher the flood of information. Another method, instant induction, uses a method to jolt the nervous system to disconnect consciousness while feeding a verbal command like "Sleep" to the subconcious.

Meditation, is the opposite method of reaching the same goal. The method is to clear your consciousness of information. A result of either method is the reduction of activity in the pareital lobe, which is involved in the sense "ego" or sense of self, autonomy. The sense of self is an important survival mechanism. Also common in meditation and hypnosis, is the increase of temporal lobe activity.

Next time you are watching TV and you gap out, or zone out and miss some of the show, recognize that you are in a trance. The danger here is that your not consciously aware of the TV material, but your subconscious is still receiving cues from it. It might be ok for purposes of this discussion to equate consciousness with inhibitory control and subconscious with preprogrammed behavior. In which case a loss of inhibitory control may very well be a bad thing.

Some studies show some bennefits for mental health and possibly longevity in favor of meditation/hypnosis. But danger lies in taking this too far and misinterpreting the implications of the experiences accompanied by such alterations of brain states. With a complete reduction of pareital lobe activity, one will lose any sense of separation, autonomy or self, which is an important survival mechanism.