Garuda

up to a certain point. But you will eventually have to drop that train of thought of just rewiring the brain.

personally I find its best to do it right after I get up in the morning. Its when my mind is already clear and I find it much easier to mediate. Also I try to carry on the meditative state I achieve in the morning throughout the day. Also the general consensus is to wait 2-3 hours after eating to mediate.

Initially no. With sincere practice it wont be needed.

yes, but many people cannot do that. Meditation is usually needed to get to that state in the first place or to make the now more prevalent . Q: How is meditation to be practised? Ramana.: Meditation is, truly speaking, Atmanishtha (to be fixed as the Self). But when thoughts cross the mind and an effort is made to eliminate them the effort is usually termed meditation. Atmanishtha is your real nature. Remain as you are. That is the aim.

(The jnani [one who has realised the Self/enlightened] knows he is the Self and that nothing, neither his body nor anything else, exists but the Self. ajnani - someone who isn't enlightened) Q: In the jnani the ego subsists in the pure form and therefore it appears as something real. Am I right? A: The appearance of the ego in any form, either in the jnani or ajnani, is itself an experience. But to the ajnani who is deluded into thinking that the waking state and the world are real, the ego also appears to be real. Since he sees the jnani act like other individuals, he feels constrained to posit some notion of individuality with reference to the jnani also. Question to a jnani: I see you doing things. How can you say that you never perform actions? A: The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside. Similarly, my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the radio, there is no one inside as a doer. Q: I find this hard to understand. Could you please elaborate on this? A: Various illustrations are given in books to enable us to understand how the jnani can live and act without the mind, although living and acting require the use of the mind. The potter’s wheel goes on turning round even after the potter has ceased to turn it because the pot is finished. In the same way, the electric fan goes on revolving for some minutes after we switch off the current. The prarabdha [predestined karma] which created the body will make it go through whatever activities it was meant for. But the jnani goes through all these activities without the notion that he is the doer of them. It is hard to understand how this is possible. The illustration generally given is that the jnani performs actions in some such way as a child that is roused from sleep to eat eats but does not remember next morning that it ate. It has to be remembered that all these explanations are not for the jnani. He knows and has no doubts. He knows that he is not the body and he knows that he is not doing anything even though his body may be engaged in some activity. These explanations are for the onlookers who think of the jnani as one with a body and cannot help identifying him with his body.

Says who? Seek the source of who is feeling this energy. Ask your self the question. Think about it. Where in the body is the thought coming from. Also go seek some medical help if you are that agitated.

No optimal time. Depends on the person. Also it depends what you eat. All about trial and error.

Q: Bhagavan, whenever I meditate, I feel great heat in the head and, if I persist, my whole body burns. What is the remedy? A: If concentration is made with the brain, sensations of heat and even headache ensue. Concentration has to be made in the Heart (spiritual Heart), which is cool and refreshing. Relax and your meditation will be easy. Keep your mind steady by gently warding off all intruding thoughts but without strain. Soon you will succeed.

Thoughts on this?

@Leo Gura He was a Harvard professor. I believe he got the LSD from the Lab to use for his research. So I'm assuming its legit LSD. After returning from a visiting professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Alpert accepted a permanent position at Harvard, where he worked with the Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service, where he was a therapist. Perhaps most notable was the work he did with his close friend and associate Timothy Leary. Both Alpert and Leary experimented with and devoted intensive research to the potentially therapeutic effects of hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals.

Anyone reached stillness during mediation? It is not just the calming of the mind/thoughtlessness but a pure subtle stillness. It is extremely subtle. Its hard to describe. I can get this 'feeling' (I say feeling, but essentially its just nothingness) during mediation and I try to hold onto it during the day but its no where near as intense. It fades away as I carry on with my day and completely vanishes as I work. Sometimes I regain the feeling randomly during the day, and I just sit there looking like I'm daydreaming but I'm completely still. Any ideas on how to make this 'feeling' last outside of mediation?

£10 is more than enough. I'm guessing that includes meals not made by yourself? I can spend £3-5 if I make everything my self.

@Bodhi123 Will read it this week. Thanks @Nahm Cool story, Thanks. Isn't that the end goal for everyone? I have read that you need to do 12 years of sincere practice for self realisation, but people have done it in less time? None the less I will put my hours in throughout the rest of my life. I have often thought of taking a week off work to meditate to take it to the next 'level'/make the stillness so profound that I cannot forget it and hold on to it as long as possible during the working day.

Negative, please tell.

Negative. I dont often mediate before bed. I just find it 10x harder to mediate at that time. My mind is just spinning in every direction.

Anyone meditate just before they go to sleep? When I meditate late at night I feel very sleepy to the point it was a waste of time doing it at night. But on many occasions I have meditated just before sleep and I was actually dreaming about meditating . Then when I wake up in the morning I meditate and it was so much more effortless than it is not meditating before sleep. It was as if I mediated subconsciously during my sleep. Anyone do something similar or know anything about this?

@Emily Looks like the Kundalini is rising. Happened to me exactly as you described. I have the same thoughts as the monk on this one. Just let it be and it will pass. When it happened to me I used to try and make it intense as I thought it was some sort of progression but upon further reading about this I completely ignored it and just shunned it as soon as I felt it. In addition to raja yoga there is another popular system called kundalini yoga. The practitioners of this system concentrate on psychic centres (chakras) in the body in order to generate a spiritual power they call kundalini. The aim of this practice is to force the kundalini up a psychic channel (the sushumna) which runs from the base of the spine to the brain. The kundalini yogi believes that when this power reaches the sahasrara (the highest chakra located in the brain), Self-realization will result. Sri Ramana never advised his devotees to practise kundalini yoga since he regarded it as being both potentially dangerous and unnecessary. He accepted the existence of the kundalini power and the chakras but he said that even if the kundalini reached the sahasrara it would not result in realization. For final realization, he said, the kundalini must go beyond the sahasrara, down another nadi (psychic nerve) he called amritanadi (also called the paranadi or jivanadi) and into the Heart- centre on the right-hand side of the chest. Since he maintained that self-enquiry would automatically send the kundalini to the Heart-centre, he taught that separate yoga exercises were unnecessary. The Self is reached by the search for the origin of the ego and by diving into the Heart (spirital Heart not acutal heart). This is the direct method of Self-realization. One who adopts it need not worry about nadis, the brain centre [sahasrara], the sushumna, the paranadi, the kundalini, pranayama or the six centres [chakras]. Q: Bhagavan, whenever I meditate, I feel great heat in the head and, if I persist, my whole body burns. What is the remedy? A: If concentration is made with the brain, sensations of heat and even headache ensue. Concentration has to be made in the Heart (spiritual Heart), which is cool and refreshing. Relax and your meditation will be easy. Keep your mind steady by gently warding off all intruding thoughts but without strain. Soon you will succeed.

Interesting, I might try this out. I saw another definition/use of yoga nidra which didn't allow progression.

It could be a sign of progression. I have felt something similar. I often entertained the feeling and tried to make it more intense and last longer. But it wasn't doing anything for me. When I was feeling this, I asked myself the question where is this feeling coming from/who is feeling it. The feeling vanished and I went into a deeper state of mediation which was much more effortless.

Isn't Yoga nidra a bad thing?

If don't seek anything I feel like I will just get stuck in the mud. Might try mini-mediation but usually I need 10 mins to get into a groove to meditate. mindfulness? Any more details on how to do this? l feel like this would probably just make me analyse everything like crazy and drive me in the opposite direction. Will give it a shot. But I wont progress 'spiritually' if I do nothing. I wouldn't have come to this forum if I hadn't done and 'spirtiual' practices I can kind of activate it. But sometimes I can go through the whole day without even thinking of it, getting caught up with work or whatever. By the time I leave the house the intensity has dropped to 10% of what it was in my mediation. Guess I need to make it more of a priority. It would 'last' forever If I sat with my eyes closed mediating. Its only when I move it slowly fades away, Right now it feels like two completely different states even-though the stillness is in the background of my working state.

@0ne Q: Does not death dissolve the individuality of a person, so that there can be no rebirth, just as the rivers discharged into the ocean lose their individualities? A: But when the waters evaporate and return as rain on the hills, they once more flow in the form of rivers and fall into the ocean.

Everyone has bad days. Just have to keep trying and eventually it will get easier and easier. My bad days are when I have had a shitty diet the day before.

Suggest she do this again