Is meditation useless?

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, remember said:

who was talking about crawling up a mountain? since when are humans worms?

That is exactly what mediation is: worming your way up Mt Everest. If it sounds needlessly slow and painful, that's because it is.

[remember]

46 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That is exactly what mediation is: worming your way up Mt Everest. If it sounds needlessly slow and painful, that's because it is.

yes maybe if it`s all spiritual practice you are doing.

actually about the gate analogy - i think for psychedelics you could say the same. i´m not denying that i made the experience that people who took psychedelics even once, are more openminded. so in some sense they are also a gate to a dimension that would otherwise maybe stay forever closed. although psychedelics may then form a codependency, because people get used to them. not to forget those who have really difficulties not getting psychotically consumed by the psychedelic. that`s about the danger i see in them. while meditation also lets you stay more open for the small flowers at the side of the walk.

Edited December 18, 2019 by remember
small flowers at the side of the walk have always been a symbol for independence. also always stay worm, it`s cold outside ;-*

[Rasheed]

• Meditation is worth it. 

  I think this way because meditation allows individual to become aware of automatic-auto pilot negative thought patterns; stories; limiting beliefs; emotions. 

[Grateful Dead]

I noticed what I get from meditation is more useful in my normal everyday life, then what I get from psychedelics.
Meditation helps me to stay calm in most situations and it keeps me grounded. Psychedelic experiences are much more powerful but they also can make it hard to life in this normal reality if you are not grounded. I think you wont get far with psychedelics alone.
And I always liked meditation, I do it because I enjoy it.

[Shin]

1 hour ago, rNOW said:

This is why. True meditation isn't sitting in one place and paying attention to nothing. It's real purpose is to make you pay attention to whatever is in front of you without your thoughts interrupting you. 

We have to practice 100% of the time.

That's how it is done.

That doesn't mean sitting and doing nothing, or doing a specific technique or activity, that just means, being willing to be conscious whatever the circumstance.

Seriously guys (not talking specifically to you ?), forget avout having to do x amount of yoga or meditation or whatever, those tools are only there to make you understand what being conscious is.

Then you use those practices until you can't be unconscious, because that's how life is when you stop to identify as thousands of thoughts in your head.

Then the real spiritual work can begins, which is to die before you die, and realize there is no death ?

Edited December 18, 2019 by Shin

[Nivsch]

Meditation for 3 years showed in that the EGO has no free will at all.

And this is a basic form of enlightment I got last summer.

[Consilience]

Poorly done meditation doesn’t give much. Effective meditation has been absolutely game changing for me. Equanimity is an underrated tool in spirituality; the type of equanimity needed to literally sit doing nothing while feeling joyful and happy. 

[Shin]

If being able to sit and do nothing while feeling blissful as fuck is useless I don't know what is useful ?

I'm at a point where being locked up in a cell forever would be amazing ?

And you can too ?

Edited December 18, 2019 by Shin

[Austin Actualizing]

1 hour ago, Shin said:

If being able to sit and do nothing while feeling blissful as fuck is useless I don't know what is useful ?

I'm at a point where being locked up in a cell forever would be amazing ?

And you can too ?

How long have you been meditating and for what duration per day? 

[Dovahkiin]

I just finished a 3-month insight meditation retreat — non-stop vipassana — and the growth there seems no greater than that from a few trips I had this year.

 

I’m still glad I did it, will still practice daily, but the idea of seeing all the mind’s patterning and deconstructing it with meditation alone is starting to seem foolhardy.

 

There are so many monastics and serial retreatants who don’t seem to get anywhere. 

[Shin]

21 minutes ago, Austin Actualizing said:

How long have you been meditating and for what duration per day? 

3 years everyday all the time.

That's why I said meditation on the cushion is one thing, but really trying to be conscious all the time is very different.

In the first case it's 20 minutes a day to tell yourself you're doing something, in the second case you actually really want to do something about it.

You can «meditate» for decades and still suffer internally just as often as before you start, if you don't get what it's supposed to teach you.

[Consilience]

11 minutes ago, Dovahkiin said:

I just finished a 3-month insight meditation retreat — non-stop vipassana — and the growth there seems no greater than that from a few trips I had this year.

 

I’m still glad I did it, will still practice daily, but the idea of seeing all the mind’s patterning and deconstructing it with meditation alone is starting to seem foolhardy.

 

There are so many monastics and serial retreatants who don’t seem to get anywhere. 

How stable is your attention? From what I've observed, the mind doesn't start to seriously reprogram itself until attention can be stablized. 

[Dovahkiin]

@Consilience It varies. I've had periods of an hour with very few lapses in mindfulness, and scattered periods. Also, in vipassana you aren't typically stabilizing attention on one thing, but being with whatever comes up.

[Austin Actualizing]

20 minutes ago, Dovahkiin said:

I just finished a 3-month insight meditation retreat — non-stop vipassana — and the growth there seems no greater than that from a few trips I had this year.

Let me get this straight. You did 3 months of basically non-stop meditation and a couple of psychedelic trips yielded the same growth as that long meditation retreat?! That blows my mind!!! Would you say meditation retreats are even worth doing? 

[Consilience]

10 minutes ago, Dovahkiin said:

@Consilience It varies. I've had periods of an hour with very few lapses in mindfulness, and scattered periods. Also, in vipassana you aren't typically stabilizing attention on one thing, but being with whatever comes up.

Good point. Perhaps trying a more concentration oriented practice  like kriya yoga or samatha meditation would create noticeable differences? I used to have very similar viewpoints on meditation vs. psychedelics until I started actually training to have a stable attention span. After around 5 months of this work, I've gotten much more noticeable results from meditation, less craving, less suffering, more equanimity, more happiness during meditation... And perhaps most importantly, I've had much better integration from psychedelic trips. Ive noticed all deep psychedelic trips have a stability of attention, a honing in on 'now' that I don't normally have with my baseline state of consciousness. It seems as I've developed a more stable attention, the line between psychedelic states and baseline consciousness dissolves.

 There seems to be something extremely crucial about concentration, at least this was the case for me. 

Either way, you gotta find your own path. A 3 month vipassana retreat is fucking epic man... Insane but really impressive. 

Edited December 18, 2019 by Consilience

[Austin Actualizing]

Meditation seems useful as something to be used for foundational purposes

Edited December 18, 2019 by Austin Actualizing

[Dovahkiin]

@Austin Actualizing Yes, they're 100% worth doing.

 

I don't think I could have handled the psychedelics without having meditated for 3 years prior. I barely could handle the psychedelics as it happened. Also, you aren't gonna be tripping daily or anything, so meditation is a great thing to do daily to keep perspective and maintain a bridge of awareness between everyday life and spiritual work.

 

I also can't be sure how much I grew from the retreat, because there's still a ton of integrating to do. Maybe something tragic happens in two months and I handle it way more gracefully than I would have before. I don't think you can measure growth in any one moment because it mushrooms and unfolds over the course of your life.

[allislove]

I did 10 days of Vipassana for the first time this year, then, few months later, 125ug of LSD for the first time. If I would choose between the two, sure LSD, that was the mind-opening experience. 

Nowadays, I try to do a little of meditation every day and trips from time to time, works great for me. 

[Dovahkiin]

@Consilience Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. Kriya is the next big frontier for me.

 

Within meditation, Buddhists analogize vipassana to the sharpness of a blade and samatha to the weight behind it. If you want the blade to cut through delusion, you need to enjoy practice to some degree (samatha) so that you're motivated to have the insight. But also keep in mind that just cultivating happiness during meditation isn't insight. My practice was super enjoyable in 2017 leading up to a peak meditative experience, and afterward got hard and brutal. There seem to be seasons to a meditator's (or kriyaban's or psychonaut's) life and practice.

[Dovahkiin]

@Consilience What practices have helped you the most with concentration?