Meditation Is NOT BS!!!

[r0ckyreed]

I have been meditating more seriously the last week. I used to think that contemplation is far superior method and meditation is an inferior method. I know I have been a critic of meditation, but I can’t help but admit when I am wrong. I have to be true of my experience.

I had an insight while meditating today that meditation is actually more connected to the first-order than contemplation. Meditation is observing consciousness itself whereas contemplation is conceptualization about consciousness. This is so obvious but was easily overlooked. Contemplation by nature is second-order because it requires thinking deeply about consciousness itself. 

However, I still can apply the nuance that contemplation is still a good method for deriving insight. The second-order is connected to the first-order. There are some insights that contemplation will give me at the second-order that I may never get with meditation at the first-order. You can be amazing at meditation and not have the intelligence to know how to read a book or engage in critical thought, for example.

Both methods are essential. I still can see the value of meditation while also seeing the biases against contemplation in Buddhism and other nondual schools of thought.

Intelligence in the way that is commonly viewed is in the second-order. Just focusing on the first-order will not lead to the highest intelligence. But you will be deeply connected to Absolute Truth. Awakening doesn’t guarantee intelligence. Meditation doesn’t guarantee intelligence and complete understanding of reality. But meditation does connect you most directly to the present moment. 

I’m still trying to process what this all means. Insights can be first order or second order. You can have a direct insight without words that cannot be explained and you can have a conceptual insight.
 

What do you think?

Edit: My biggest hang up is thinking that contemplation and meditation are two different things. In a way, they are. One uses the mind to discern truth and the other shuts off the mind to connect to truth. I find that my meditation practice incorporates both stillness and critical thought. I have a bias towards using my mind. But both compliment each other. How can you contemplate effectively if you aren’t connected to the now. Contemplation requires some level of meditativeness to exist. If I can’t focus, be present in the now, then contemplation cannot happen. Contemplation uses skills from meditation but meditation doesn’t necessarily use the skills from contemplation. That’s the main difference I have noticed.

Edited Friday at 10:25 PM by r0ckyreed

[Hojo]

Meditation - looking into the ball of nothing without thinking

contemplation - looking into the ball of nothing and thinking

Since I have done most of my meditation hung over, think like hungover state ,sleeping all day,  you cant sleep anymore so you just lay there feeling sick staring at the dark cause the light hurts your brain not thinking at all. You can engage with imagination because you dont care you are not trying to accomplish something you are just looking cause you cant sleep and it hurts to think.

You want to stare at the nothing behind your eyes when you do it for a really long time it becomes an object.

Edited Friday at 11:06 PM by Hojo

[gambler]

  On 3/28/2025 at 10:58 PM, Hojo said:

Meditation - looking into the ball of nothing without thinking

contemplation - looking into the ball of nothing and thinking

Since I have done most of my meditation hung over, think like hungover state ,sleeping all day,  you cant sleep anymore so you just lay there feeling sick staring at the dark cause the light hurts your brain not thinking at all. You can engage with imagination because you dont care you are not trying to accomplish something you are just looking cause you cant sleep and it hurts to think.

You want to stare at the nothing behind your eyes when you do it for a really long time it becomes an object.

Hojo, you’re always dropping gems. 

[Eskilon]

I mean, it never was.

Congrats from realizing that.

[Hojo]

@gambler Ty this is the only place I will ever here that lol

[Santiago Ram]

Meditation is fucking Amazing.

I did some meditation this week and I had huge breakthroughs.

Im not sure why I even left this practice.

[Santiago Ram]

Everything is ONE.

Connected, intelligent, beautiful.

I want to explore my own Dream Fully

[Lyubov]

I think it’s very personal. I wouldn’t say meditation is less than contemplation / inquiry. They are just different tools / processes. I prefer self inquiry but I think it suits my personality more and my story more. Some do better with meditation. I do both. I think self inquiry is a bit better for people who have gotten themselves stuck because it allows for a more gradual re engineering of the mind. Meditation I’ve found does less of this if there is a bunch of shit in the way. It sort of cuts through it but you return to the stories. But at the same time meditation builds focus and it’s useful to be able to see different perspectives. Both are great it’s just personal which one works best. 

[aurum]

Meditation was never BS.

It just has limits as a tool, and many people want to perpetually deny those limits because they believe in it so much.

[kavaris]

You wanna get to a point where not-meditating and meditating are equivalent, where you could do either or, and its not a big deal. not many people know how to meditate, and that usually happens cause they listen to these wim hof people or watever thef--k, that have to keep their adrenaline up in ice baths or whatever else. Basically, you just have to recognize when some1s tryina teach you what serves their situation, and when its just like *normal meditation* i.e. something thats intuitive, sitting with your eyes closed. Once you start adding things to it, its likely going in the wrong direction. if it feels uncomfortable, your likely goin down the wrong direction.

[Aaron p]

To just throw something like meditation under the bus because there are more powerful methods in the pursuit of extreme god realization is extremely immature. Of course meditation has a very legitimate purpose. 

This metaphor might not be exactly harmonious with reality but I conceptualize it like this... that using methods like contemplation, meditation, concentration, visualization, yoga, etc is like setting up a carefully calibrated launch pad (spiritual foundation) and designing the rocket ship (know how to handle the trip).

Yeah sure, the launch pad and rocket design are probably less important than the actual fuel power required to get the rocket in the air (5-m)...but without basic calibration in the development of the correct launch pad, the rockets trajectory could be doomed. 

Any flaws in these fundamental attunements at such a central point will become instrumentally obvious if someone tries to fire up their rocket (smoking some heavy psychedelic) prematurely before they have the correct base established first. 

the rocket could go in the complete wrong direction, hell it could blow the fuck up... any number of problems could arise if the foundation is not established first. 

[Infinite Tsukuyomi]

Best to have a few tools in your arsenal for sure. 

[Yimpa]

All human shit is BS!