Interesting meditation method: "zooming in"

[Carl-Richard]

Stare at a grainy surface under decent lighting. Pick one area, lean in if you like, and try to see smaller and smaller details. Pretend that you're zooming in and trying to see the atoms of whatever you're looking at. Try to find the smallest detail you can find, and then zoom in even more and find an even smaller detail. 

Posture is not that important, although pick a posture that is relaxed and allows you to keep your head decently still (even when you're leaning in). When you feel tired, simply switch to meditation with your eyes closed (do nothing).

It works well as a concentration exercise that you can do before your normal meditation routine. I do think it's superior to more bland concentration exercises (e.g. simply staring at a point), because it has a goal-oriented aspect to it and even creates a sense of progression, which motivates you and sharpens your focus.

One major way of how it works to induce a meditative state is that in order to see smaller details, you have to keep your head more still, and in order to keep your head more still, you have to be more relaxed. It creates a feedback loop (kinda like biofeedback): when you see more details, you can track what your body was doing as you saw more details, and this makes you more aware of what makes you able to relax and thus see more details and thus become more relaxed, etc.

This feedback mechanism is technically how the progression of all meditation works, but the visual nature and relatively complicated but also simple nature of the task makes the feedback immediate and high-fidelity and thus more efficient. It might have some drawbacks, like posture, but it could serve as a useful variation to a stale meditation habit.

You might notice your vision becoming clearer, which is a fun side effect (and not surprising, as you're essentially training yourself to pick out details). I use it before I read, as I feel that it speeds up my reading. If you only care about the meditative benefits, it could create a synergistic effect with other meditation methods by sharpening your focus.

Edited April 4 by Carl-Richard

[Davino]

@Carl-Richard That's interesting I'll try it.

I know there are also zooming out meditation techniques. In Indian literature it is considered that one is a master when you are able to zoom into something for infinity and to also zoom outside the universe for infinity. The contraction and expansion sides of meditation.

Now that I remember I used to do this with a far away utility pole I saw in front of my meditation window

Edited April 2 by Davino

[Egodeathrow]

i used to do this while trying to see atoms when i was in gradeschool

[Davino]

3 hours ago, Egodeathrow said:

i used to do this while trying to see atoms when i was in gradeschool

Cool😎

[BipolarGrowth]

I used to stare at the center of the x at the top right of a browser as a meditation technique when I had a boring retail job that gave plenty of downtime. There would become a clear point/dot within the center of the x while sufficiently concentrated or focused. It was a fun method. 
 

It’s interesting that you mention vision becoming clearer, because my vision would become cloudy and eventually slightly psychedelic/trippy the longer I stared. My eyes would become dry which is part of why this happened. Blinking a few times would bring my vision back to normal. 

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

I used to stare at the center of the x at the top right of a browser as a meditation technique when I had a boring retail job that gave plenty of downtime. There would become a clear point/dot within the center of the x while sufficiently concentrated or focused. It was a fun method. 
 

It’s interesting that you mention vision becoming clearer, because my vision would become cloudy and eventually slightly psychedelic/trippy the longer I stared. My eyes would become dry which is part of why this happened. Blinking a few times would bring my vision back to normal. 

That sounds like the "stare at a single point" meditation methods I contrasted the zooming method to earlier, which I've also tried, and they do make your vision cloudy and trippy as you're doing it. That has to do with your eyes getting dry as you said and the desensitization of receptors in your retina as you're keeping your eyes fixated and not moving (as well as the usual visual snow/static interacting with these changes).

The thing about the zooming method is that you're not necessarily keeping your eyes fixated at one point, but you can be actively moving your eyes as you're trying to find the finer details. In a sense, it's like a form of moving meditation, where there is an explicit goal and often a dynamic behavior to reach that goal. Also, the effect of the vision becoming clearer that I was referring to is experienced afterwards as you end the meditation and go about your normal tasks, not during the meditation (although that arguably by definition happens during the meditation as well).

Edited April 5 by Carl-Richard