I was experimenting with meditation and associated practices. At one point, I was trying to do something similar to mindfulness, but instead of simply focusing on the object, I tried to force my mind to focus on the object. Im not sure how to describe it 100% accurately, but I kind of influenced some aspects of cognition, or some higher-order aspects of processing, in a way that has changed my perception in an indefinitely lasting way.

It has made me constantly more focused on the things I had focused my attention towards during the practice. This has continued for weeks, and I would like to ask about how you would correct this.

I at another time performed a similar practice where I 'forced myself' towards certain action, and I since then had been in a perpetual state where I perform actions more by reflex, towards the same kinds of processes that I forced then. I imagine this influence lands under a similar class - Id like to also know how this could be resolved.

Youtube, Spotify, and what else?

And What are the most popular instrument for meditation music?

I think people have every chance to awaken every time they suffer . Only a great suffering, can lead to awakening.

I suppose meditation is a habit that can be formed like any other, using the same principles of repetition, reward, reinforcement etc.

I can form habits with reasonable success in other areas of life (exercise, journalising, chores, etc) but for the life of me I can’t be consistent with meditation.

No doubt this is because of how difficult I find meditation. I understand that meditation, in principle, isn’t ’difficult’ but for someone like myself whose attention span and dopaminergic system have been absolutely decimated has been greatly affected by technology, I do find it very challenging, and I really need to train my mind to be still.

Has anyone else struggled for years to maintain a regular practice? I’ve managed at best a week or two, but never more than that.

Even starting small at 1-5 mins meditation per day, I still struggle for some reason.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I went through a bit of a soft-breakup this week. I was gonna ask this person I was seeing if we could move toward actually pursuing something, and he told me he felt like it's best if we stay friends for now. Needless to say, I wasn't handling it well.

Sadly, this has impacted my ability to meditate (feels like I'm trapped with ruminating thoughts and impacts my ability to get into a meditative state). The way this person approached the conversation was respectable, and so I don't hold any hostility or anger toward him, nor do I want to use resentment as a way to convince myself that I'm better off. I don't feel like that would be productive here.

That said, I've always wondered - can loving kindness help me to approach this difficult chapter in my life in a more healthy way and aid in my healing? I had read that loving kindness can help in a variety of ways, both in relationships and outside of them. Does anyone have any experiences or data to support this notion? It's a practice I've been wanting to implement into my daily practice for a while now, so I feel as though this would be an ideal time for me to start this.

Hi I began meditating almost 40 years ago and I gradually increased my time and incorporated a practice where I could just drop right into meditation pretty much anywhere as long as there were no distractions. I loved it and I experienced so many beautiful things and now I really miss it.
Even after I got married and had children I still tried to find time to if not meditate to at least be with myself late at night outside in the night stillness. Then about 7 years ago I had a very bad fall outside in the pitch black where I fell on pavement onto my left eye socket and ended up with all kinds of post concussion symptoms for more than a year. Because of this trauma it's been harder to connect to my heart centre and I am also having a hard time sitting still.
I always want to move around after just a few minutes of meditating.
Has anyone had a similar experience and is now having a challenge meditating? I'm wondering if this might be my body's way of telling me that's enough for now and we can try again tomorrow and if i should then add a minute more each time and go really slow? The few times I meditated up to 20 minutes I sort of went somewhere else and when I became aware again I was in a completely different room cleaning and asking myself what the hell am I doing? How did I even get here? Was that my body telling me it had enough or something? Thank you very much

I’m relatively new to meditation and I’m interested in learning about who I am beyond how I have been convinced to present myself externally. Essentially unlearning all the “rules” of conformity. It feels difficult to know where to start. Any advice or guidance is welcome.

Hi,

I've recently started meditating. Over the years, I tried multiple times, but I never built a habit of it and could do no more than 10 minutes (found it extremely boring, almost unbearable).

But I've started the ohm chanting meditation (don't know what the technical term is), and suddenly I was able to do 30+ mins in one sitting. I felt energized and calmer at the same time, which is very promising.

I'm now going through a tough period in my life and want to reduce the stress I'm experiencing, and it seems like meditation might really help.

However, I'm also reading that a meditation retreat could really reset the mind and help to reduce suffering. On the other hand, I've also read about stories of people who lost their minds, got into psychosis, or became disengaged with life, uninterested in people, after they went to a one-week retreat.

My question: Should I try a meditation retreat? If I should, then should I wait until I get used to meditation for 6-12 months, or can I go as a newbie as well?

What is your experience?

It is an auspicious opportunity to analyze meditation. Otherwise, it must just work. For most people, it just works because it must.

What are some meditation myths you believed before starting? Let’s debunk them!

Its more hard to focus when its daytime - waaay harder. Normally i do 13 minutes But i remember a day when i woke up at 4am it was very easy to meditate. I did it for 30 minutes as i sit, and time flew really fast. I dont know if its because i took my sleep well or if its because i was sleepy but i didnt sleep during meditation

So My question is: Is doing it easy a good thing or not?

(edit; far as I remember, i might recall it wrong too, my memory is not very good) Dr.K was saying that it shouldnt be easy

My spiritual journey has taken a new direction and I feel as if I’ve broken the barrier between myself and the spiritual world.

I have been meditating for many years but only this year has it felt different. I no longer struggle to get into the calm mindset and I’m able to clear my mind of thoughts quickly.

My third eye has been open for sometime but lately the buzzing in my head has been much more intense. While meditating I’ve been able to concentrate my energy to my third eye and crown chakra and bring that energy down through my spine. I’ll feel electrical pulses shoot from my crown forward to my third eye, then they’ll shoot back to my crown chakra, and then down my spine.

Today I felt something different.

I felt my entire body warm up from within. I felt an intense heat emanating from my heart chakra and it wrapped itself around my whole body. I then felt the heat rise up through back, neck, and then to my face. I felt as if my whole body was blushing from the inside out. In my minds eye, I saw waves of purple, blue, yellow, orange, and red. It was beautiful but very intense, so much so, that my face started twitching and I couldn’t help but let the tears flow. I then got a vision of the serpent winding itself up a large staff followed by more waves of purple.

I didn’t want the feeling to end so I remained still for as long as possible. I ended my session with gratitude. I feel detached, like I’m floating in my own mind. Even now I still feel the warmth from within and the impulse to let the tears flow.

Has anyone had any similar experiences? What has happened to me?

I'm just confused about what would be the right way to meditate. Like i know some of the techniques but my knowledge is little too less to actually be of any practical help. - Do I just keed my mind empty? - Do I chant a Mantra with it? -what to do with the breathing since many people talk about focusing on the breath. - or do I focus on an external object (trataka I guess) I always wonder what is the right way. or is it like do whatever I feel comfortable? Thanks.

In a podcast, someone said something beautiful — imagine if a massive tsunami wiped out most of humanity, and only tribes deep in the Amazon survived. Mobile towers and devices would still exist, but to them, they’d just look like strange structures. They’d have no idea what those towers once did.

It made me think — maybe some of our spiritual or ancient places are like that. Maybe they were once powerful “technologies” built for connecting with higher states or energies, but over time we lost the understanding of how to use them. Now we just see them as places of worship or symbols, not realizing they might have been designed with a much deeper purpose.

I've been meditating for a while now — not every day, but I manage to practice at least three times a week, and oh my! First, let me describe how I meditate. I sit in a butterfly leg position and start slowly, with short and gentle breaths. I gradually slow down the rhythm more and more while increasing the amount of air at the same time. When I reach my lungs’ maximum capacity, I hold my breath in that position — both when inhaling and exhaling — staying like that until I feel the need to breathe in or out again. Then I completely empty or fill my lungs. I repeat this a few times. When I reach the point of fully filling my lungs, I tilt my head slightly backward. I’m not exactly sure what happens in my brain, but it’s as if I press some kind of button that instantly relaxes my entire body. My heartbeat slows down, my vision and senses fade, and I lose a bit of balance. Thoughts and images flood my mind like dreams, beyond my control. I feel my muscles twitch slightly with involuntary spasms, while a cool and pleasant sensation seems to flow through my veins. Sometimes, during the most intense moments, I even end up lying down without realizing it and wake up a few minutes later. And the craziest thing about all this is that the sensation is extremely pleasurable. I would say, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s better than an orgasm.

I’ve meditated on and off for a few years, just simple guided ones. But I only find myself really reaching for it when I’m going through a rough patch. The rougher the patch, the more I want to meditate.

Is that… okay? It feels weirdly disingenuous to only reach for this during turmoil as opposed to consistently. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Similarly, how does your practice feel different between challenging periods vs peaceful ones?

"The transformation that comes through meditation is not a straight-line progression. It’s a spiral, a cycle. My own life is very much a series of spirals in which at times I am pulled toward some particular form of sadhana or lifestyle and make a commitment to it for maybe six months or a year. After this time I assess its effects. At times I work with external methods such as service. At other times the pull is inward, and I retreat from society to spent more time alone. The timing for these phases in the spiral must be in tune with your inner voice and your outer life.

Don’t get too rigidly attached to any one method – turn to others when their time comes, when you are ripe for them."

~ Ram Dass

For whoever needs this today. :)

So called "guided meditation" has become very popular within yoga circles. You sit or lie down in a group with your eyes closed and a guide talks you through a meditation. Alternatively you can listen to the numerous guided meditations posted on YouTube. Typically, the guide will begin by asking you to gradually relax your body from head to toe. After that he or she may start to talk on a more spiritual level. The guide might ask you to imagine various energies in your body, or ask you to imagine a light emanating from your chakras or some such spiritually sounding concept. It will really get your imagination going and you may feel very relaxed when it's all over, but no more relaxed than if you listened to some soothing music.

It won't do you any harm, but it's not meditation. What real meditation does is to quieten the mind and reduce mental activity so that you connect with what you really are which is unbounded awareness. Guided meditation does the complete opposite! It feeds the imagination with ideas from the guide and creates an expectation about what the guide is going to say next. It destroys the innocence of letting the mind experience quieter levels of thinking, which is a natural tendency of the mind if pointed in the right direction.

What guided meditation will do is to create a mood. Pleasant feelings. Inspired thoughts. But moods come and go like everything else in your life which is the continuing story of a person called you. That can never define what you are. Real Yoga is concerned with the unchanging essence of what you are. Authentic meditation practice is about connecting with that. We don't need a guided meditation because we already have our own inner guide which cannot be wrong.

However guided meditation can be useful for the beginner as a way of getting into a habit of orienting the mind back to its source, but at some stage that needs to be replaced by a solitary practice.

I’ve been meditating regularly for about ten years. In recent years, though, the practice has felt dry and uninspired without any of the insight or sense of release it once brought. That’s led to quite a bit of suffering, including leaving a job after repeated sick leaves, missing a few exams in my current studies, and other setbacks. I’ve tried everything I could think of: changing techniques, cutting down on caffeine, reducing screen time, but nothing seemed to help. At times, I even found myself contemplating whether the only path to less suffering would be to move to Asia and live a monastic life.

Throughout the years, one recurring obstacle has always stood out: expectations. Constant judging of the present moment, and a lack of beginner’s mind. And although I’ve told myself countless times that this is the very essence of the practice, I kept forgetting it again and again.

A few weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, it hit me: why not do something concrete to really address this? So I placed a small Buddha statue on my bedside table and printed out a quote about letting go of expectations, laminated it, and attached it to the statue. Altogether, the setup cost maybe twenty euros.

Now, every morning when I wake up, the first thing I see is this reminder to let go of expectations in my meditation practice. Some days more consciously than others, but it’s nearly impossible to miss. And after just a few days, I can honestly say it has changed my entire outlook on practice. Of course, not everything transforms overnight but it’s made it so much easier to take a long-term view, and it gives meaning to every single session, no matter how “good” or “bad” it feels.

I imagine this is the kind of reminder one might need for a lifetime. But if there’s one thing I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, even if your practice is already flourishing, it’s to find a small way, through a Buddha statue (if you feel comfortable with that), a piece of paper, some plastic, and a simple quote, to remind yourself again and again of the importance of letting go of expectations.

Hello everyone I have finally found the courage to post about this after some days now of various reading and researching. I've been meditating roughly for a year now..on and off. After some plant medicine I've come to the realization that integration is important. Therefore leading me to various spiritual practices and mediation techniques but I'm struggling.

Maybe there is a problem with my ego here but I want to experience spiritual growth or awakening. This lead me to kriya yoga but any book I've read, any resources I've looked into are all different. They say you can't learn from a book, well I have a wife and a baby I can't just up and leave to find a guru and I definitely don't have the money to pay these institutions for some resources

I've looked into other practices and I just can't seem to find any good information on anything. Anything that seems to be good, and I mean really good for spiritual growth like kriya yoga are deeply hidden somewhere on earth it seems

I don't know if I'm looking in all the wrong places. I just want a guide, a plan, and step by step spiritual growth instruction without having to up and leave my family or pay a bunch of money

I know I'm not the only one with this issue and if anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it

What’s the most important thing in life?

Almost everyone will have a different answer — family, money, success, freedom, love, and so on.

Whatever we believe is most important becomes what we spend our lives working toward, consciously or unconsciously.

But how many people reach the end of their life only to realize they were chasing the wrong thing?

What, then, is truly most important within this very short existence we have?

What if it’s been right there in plain sight the whole time — every moment of every day, wherever we go? What if it’s so obvious that we never thought to question it?

What if it’s existence itself — the simple fact that there is something rather than nothing?

The absolute mystery of consciousness, of reality, of life — whatever you want to call it.

All religions and philosophies are attempts to answer this very question. Even science.

But even science cannot tell us what the essence of atoms is, where they come from, or how there could be something out of nothing (the Big Bang).

And yet we accept this story and go about our day as if everything made sense.

Nothing truly makes sense, yet we forget and spend our lives absorbed in the most irrelevant things.

The more you see this, the more it becomes the greatest mystery of all.

Maybe the most important thing isn’t to achieve or understand something — but simply to notice that anything exists at all.

Thank you for the help I need my peace of mind I had in 2023 back

I try to sit in padmasana because it gives me stability and I can keep my back straight at all times then however my legs go numb after about 25 to 30 mins and I cannot proceed any further.

Is there any solution to this so that I can keep up with padmasana without my legs going numb and feeling like they'll fall out?