Is Meditation BS?

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Raze said:

It’s only dogmatic if you follow it dogmatically. 

They expect you to do practices without questioning or thinking about them.

Monkey see, monkey do.

Edited Friday at 03:32 AM by Leo Gura

[Yimpa]

[OBEler]

4 hours ago, joeyi99 said:

I did Kryia yoga nearly every day for 3 years before I had my kundalini awakening. I have never been the same since.

Wow and is it worth? How do you live now with Kundalini awakening.

[OBEler]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

They expect you to do practices without questioning or thinking about them.

Monkey see, monkey do.

Yes this needs faith. But in terms of yoga this may be needed. The body intelligence you develope during this practice is too complicated to describe. No need to thinking about or questioning the exercises. The results are there over time.

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, OBEler said:

The results are there over time.

Unless they ain't.

[OBEler]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Unless they ain't.

I would say it's comparable with bodybuilding.

People tell you to lift heavy weight, they give you  exercises and this will give you muscles. You will not see any progress in the beginning. You just do it. Questioning or thinking about them will not give you any help. You don't need a big understanding neighter.

After some Months you see the results. Same with yoga where you don't train muscles but your energy system.

The only question is if it's worth. Men are visually oriented. We can't see the energies. Doing yoga needs a lot more faith than bodybuilding where you can at least see your progress visually and also in others.

We need a tool to measure the progress of yoga exercises.

Edited Friday at 11:18 AM by OBEler

[CosmicExplorer]

@Leo Gura The key, which is not much talked about about mindfullness or Satipatthana is that it is not a continuous thing, you're not supossed to try to continiously focus on an object, it's always a punctuated event. Continuous half-assed effort is not the same as punctuated, commited effort. Each punctuated event of contacting an object at extreame level of detail and clarity may only last 200 to 1000 ms. It's more like doing reps in the gym. I highly recommend you listen to deconstructing yourself podcast, eposide "Am I mindful right now" with Michael Taft and Kenneth Folk in which they discuss exactly this misunderstanding of what mindfullness is.

[nerdspeak]

On 3/27/2025 at 4:58 AM, Leo Gura said:

I tried but it never really worked for me.

Maybe I would need to try harder, but there's only so much I can do at a time.

All of these spiritual things hinge upon people being genetically suited to it. It works easily for some and not at all for others. You can waste years of your life trying to make a thing work which you are not genetically suited for. You have to prioritize your time and energy well. It is murky waters. You can't know ahead of time what will work for you or others.

It really depends on the age you start too, I think. There’s a reason they used to start monks off as children.
 

I started Theravada stuff in my late teens and made insane progress. Could sit for 3-4 hours without a problem, lots of inadvertent “power realm” experiences.

i had to take a few years off from serious practice due to financial challenges and work, and getting back into it in my late twenties was ROUGH. It takes me 2-3 days of retreat practice to get to level of samadhi I used to achieve in 10 minutes when I was young. 

I may have also corrupted myself working in tech in NYC and doing pickup, and picked up some bad karma. But I think it’s mostly less neuroplasticity. 

Edited Friday at 04:10 PM by nerdspeak

[Jordan]

Hi Leo, I am curious if you still use the technique from the guided exercise for realizing you are god video. It seems like a good preparatory exercise before doing something like the mindfulness with labeling technique. Do you do any breathing exercises or forced intense focusing or any other preparatory techniques before your mindfulness with labeling?

I am interested in quitting my job soon to take 4-16 months to enjoy my life, learn some new things I am interested in, try out some business ideas for the experience and would like to meditate a lot more. I am very open to doing an intensive solo retreat if anyone has any good resources I should review to make the most out of my effort. I have just been doing the 20 min-1 hour at a time kind of meditation here and there for years.

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Jordan said:

Do you do any breathing exercises or forced intense focusing or any other preparatory techniques before your mindfulness with labeling?

I don't need that. Labeling is all I need. Or even more simply I can just concentrate on nothing.

Edited Saturday at 04:18 AM by Leo Gura

[Raze]

27 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I don't need that. Labeling is all I need. Or even more simply I can just concentrate on nothing.

But labeling is an insight practice which is more effective after high concentration is developed

[Leo Gura]

45 minutes ago, Raze said:

But labeling is an insight practice which is more effective after high concentration is developed

This makes no sense.

Labeling is to develop concentration ability. If you could concentrate you wouldn't even need labeling. And labeling is bad at generating insight.

[Hello from Russia]

@Leo Gura What's good at generating insight?

[Yimpa]

3 minutes ago, Hello from Russia said:

What's good at generating insight?

 

[Raze]

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This makes no sense.

Labeling is to develop concentration ability. If you could concentrate you wouldn't even need labeling. And labeling is bad at generating insight.

Quote

Q: What are examples of wet and dry insight practice?
A: The most common form of "wet" insight practice is awareness of the breath (ānāpānasati). In this practice one uses the sensations of the breath, either at a focal point such as the tip of the nose or in the whole body, as a meditation object for developing samādhi (stable attention and a bright, calm, and joyful mind). Awareness of breath sensations can also serve as a vehicle for insight investigation, so this practice simultaneously cultivates both śamatha/samādhi and vipassanā. The most common form of "dry" insight practice is noting, in which one continually attends to and assigns simple verbal labels to moment-to-moment experience. This is a dry insight practice because no attempt is made to cultivate states of calm, joy, and stable attention.

https://old.reddit.com/r/streamentry/wiki/faq

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Hello from Russia said:

@Leo Gura What's good at generating insight?

Questioning

[Something Funny]

@Leo Gura when you say that you need to meditate for 20-200 hours to start seriously challenging and rewiring your brain or to shift your consciousness, what do you really mean by that?

As a person who has never meditated this long, its really hard for me to picture the changes.

Do you feel noticably different? What happens to your consciousness when you hit 200 hour mark?

Also, will whatever feeling / change in consciousness it is go away after some time, like with psychedelics.

Or do you notice some permanent changes? What do they look/feel like?

Edited Saturday at 07:38 AM by Something Funny

[Leo Gura]

51 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

@Leo Gura when you say that you need to meditate for 20-200 hours to start seriously challenging and rewiring your brain or to shift your consciousness, what do you really mean by that?

As a person who has never meditated this long, its really hard for me to picture the changes.

Do you feel noticably different?

Yes, perception sharpens a lot after 100hrs of continuous meditation. You are aware in ways that you never could be in normal life.

Quote

What happens to your consciousness when you hit 200 hour mark?

Your perception becomes extremely sensitive. Like you can sense a fly fart across the room. I'm exaggerating, just so you get the idea.

Quote

Also, will whatever feeling / change in consciousness it is go away after some time, like with psychedelics.

Yes, you lose it all.

Quote

Or do you notice some permanent changes? What do they look/feel like?

Some mild permanent changes may happen, or may not. It's impossible to predict.

The hope is that you get some permanent shift but that usually requires many retreats, not just one.

What mostly changes is that meditation and concentration become easier in the future, so you can do it faster next time. The more retreats you do the better you get at it and the less hours you need to build up to a highly focused state.

For example, on my first retreat I got an enlightenment event on the last day. But it was short and it evaporated.

Meditation states evaporate just like psychedelic states. Unless you just do tons and tons of meditation retreats. It requires a monumental effort. It's like stopping the Titanic with a BB gun. You can stop the Titanic with a BB gun. You'll just die of boredom along the way.

Edited Saturday at 08:28 AM by Leo Gura

[Something Funny]

@Leo Gura I see, thank you.

Also, do you still find value in doing 20 min / 30 min / 1 hour of meditation daily, on top of long sessions that you do on weekends and retreats? Or do you think that short daily practice is not necessary?

Edited Saturday at 08:46 AM by Something Funny

[OBEler]

@Leo Gura what's your motivation then if you lose the consciousness state after a retreat anyway? New insights? But you had so many deep awakenings on psychedelics a retreat cannot compete with that.

You say there is no change in consciousness left after hundreds of breakthroughs on psychedelics? Have you not claimed that you jailbreaked your mind?

Is your goal to have a permanent shift aka being completely enlightened? I saw an interview with a German zen master muho and he has normal consciousness state during the day and he feels normal. If not even thousands of hours meditation can change you then I don't know why you do this at all.

Edited Saturday at 09:00 AM by OBEler