Introducing The Family To Meditation

[Falk]

If you have a meditation practice going you are probably familiar with the benefits meditation can bring to your life to yourself and beyond and some of the effects of meditation can´t be described very easily.

Nevertheless i had some conversations with my sister and my mother in particular, and it fitted the conversation to bring up the topic of meditation and i told them that i myself am meditating and i would recommend them to meditate too.

They asked why? Why do you do it? Why should I do it? 

And to pitch the idea of meditation , to sell this idea and convince someone to do it is realy not that easy ... you can´t say "you will be rich" or "you will be happy" "you will be more calm" (since that might not be true at first, you might get confronted with experiences that are quite inpleasant at first and with the classic interpretation of "i always wanna feel this and that way" )

So how to do it? Anyone of you have introduced close ones to meditation successfully? I also found that it is a bit creepy to explain to your mother how meditation makes you transcende your ego  you have to choose the words very carefully or she might think you are in a sect now  which would be fine too but you can´t convince her that way) 

[Donald]

I went to my parent's for like a week and I told them I meditate 1 hour a day . 

My mother replied : You're going to become a monk now !!! 

So I just told them I needed 1 hour of " silence " and no further information or specifications. I just kept it simple , same thing with "friends" ( the very few I have) . As we go on this road , don't expect people to understand you. PEOPLE SHOULD UNDERSTAND (SELF -ACTUALIZATION)   ; it's another "should" statement.  If they will ,great , if not that's how it should be 

[charlie2dogs]

25 minutes ago, Donald said:

I went to my parent's for like a week and I told them I meditate 1 hour a day . 

My mother replied : You're going to become a monk now !!! 

So I just told them I needed 1 hour of " silence " and no further information or specifications. I just kept it simple , same thing with "friends" ( the very few I have) . As we go on this road , don't expect people to understand you. PEOPLE SHOULD UNDERSTAND (SELF -ACTUALIZATION)   ; it's another "should" statement.  If they will ,great , if not that's how it should be 

why did you feel the need to tell them that you meditate an hour a day?

[nbolt]

2 hours ago, charlie2dogs said:

why did you feel the need to tell them that you meditate an hour a day?

chatting with your parents is suddenly a weird activity?

[Donald]

@charlie2dogs It's not that I go around and tell to people , "Hey ,look I meditate , and bla bla bla " And I am not seeking "attention " . I'm just sharing something important to me , with people that are important in my life . Notice that I used the words "sharing" and not "trying to make them understand "  .

[Donald]

@Neill  His point is not that we shouldn't "chat" with our parents , it's the craving and how addicted /wired we are as a society/species to"chit-chat " .

[charlie2dogs]

13 minutes ago, Donald said:

@Neill  His point is not that we shouldn't "chat" with our parents , it's the craving and how addicted /wired we are as a society/species to"chit-chat " .

thats an ignorant statement

[charlie2dogs]

1 hour ago, Neill said:

chatting with your parents is suddenly a weird activity?

maybe you should re read my statement

[nbolt]

4 minutes ago, charlie2dogs said:

maybe you should re read my statement

whatever that means

[Saarah]

@Neill @Donald @charlie2dogs Maybe this is a good opportunity to demonstrate how we must look at reality as reality instead of adding assumptions, Charlie's question simply asked for Donald's motivation to telling his parents, but both of you assumed the question to be hinting at some other message of "chatting to your parents about this isn't necessary" 

its what we do with our conditioning and mind stories all the time!  

[charlie2dogs]

5 minutes ago, Saarah said:

@Neill @Donald @charlie2dogs Maybe this is a good opportunity to demonstrate how we must look at reality as reality instead of adding assumptions, Charlie's question simply asked for Donald's motivation to telling his parents, but both of you assumed the question to be hinting at some other message of "chatting to your parents about this isn't necessary" 

its what we do with our conditioning and mind stories all the time!  

thank you

[Falk]

The thing is my sister is depressed since years also has social phobia and it is hard to accept for me as her brother that her "mind/ perception of herself" is ruining her whole life basicly !!

Medication didn´t realy work for her as well so i thought, maybe she can try meditation and it would be great if it helped her, but she claimed she already tried it and it didn´t help. I then asked what she did and she said: "10min a day mostly dreaming off" , prooving that it doesnt work and it is shit

I then told her she has to commit to a lifelong meditation practice and do it every day 30 or 40 minutes with eyes open etc ... and she freaked out that i can´t understand her condition of beeing "ill" and depressed so long and noone can understand and a shitty meditation won´t change that ....

If she doesn´t start to change something profound her life won´t get better and it sucks to see her suffer that way! 

Any advise?

[Kath]

It's a hard one - my husband suffers from depression too, and, prior to his illness, was the most open minded and spiritual people I know. All I can say in your sister's defence is that depression is really insidious. It can make the sufferer feel so useless and worthless that, in the end, all they have is their depression - they get very protective of it in a way. It's an extremely tough one - and one that if you find a solution to, please share!! I would do anything in the world to be of support to my husband . . .  Having said that, I've suffered myself from depression and anorexia resulting from ptsd so know that the time has to be right for spiritual seeking. I certainly didn't come across it then and tbh, not sure I'd have been able to be open to it either. I suppose if it can be of help in any way, it can be of help to you - it's certainly helped me to be less judgemental, more open, more able to sit with him in his dark moments without feeling the need to fix him. All good stuff xxxxxx I feel for your situation with your sister. It's not easy.

I play Youtube videos in his presence so he may 'overhear' and something may resonate, and I've left books lying around . . . . . 

Edited June 22, 2016 by Kath

[Flicker_boy]

i tried really hard to convince friends and family to meditate, but they seemed to happilly ignore the possibility of practice, even though some of them even liked it on a imaginary level.

that's how sneaky ego is. they won't do it, they know what happens if they do, and all egos are shit scared of their demise.

egos need a image where they can project themselves. that's what you need to create to motivate them. and each one of them values different attributes.

for me, I've stopped trying to change people, this will only bring me suffering and they are perfect as is. I hope the chages my practice brings to my life inspire people around me, and if they want to talk to me about it I'll be happy to explain.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Lorenzo Engel

[Azrael]

@Falk good topic, man!

When I started meditating a little more than a year ago I was ashamed of talking about it because I didn't want to become that "spiritual", "new-age", "yoga-kinda", "hippie" person. I study computer science and I'm around a lot of very scientific people. My friends and family are very open-minded - but in no wider sense religiously or spiritually involved.

So, I basically kept my mouth shut for the first few months and just after some time I developed the confidence to talk about it - because I had some good inner transformations going on that came from meditation (or were influenced by it a lot).

To my surprise no one was really shocked or interested that I meditate (probably because I live in Berlin right now and you find meditation and yoga courses like every 10 yards ). Also, some good friends of mine are let's say interested in the psychedelic movement and they all know what we talk about here - trying to recreate it themselves and so they all were (also to my surprise) not foreign to that - some of them meditate sometimes as well and even know about astral projection and all that stuff.

So yeah, I basically told my family what it is like to meditate and I didn't tell them about the whole spiritual stuff. I find it is not a good idea to confront somebody with that who has not ambitions to find it for himself.

What I do is this:

Talk about meditation, what it does with you, how you change and when you want to get into deeper territory begin to bring up examples that are profound but against the normal way of thinking. Like you could talk about how a mirror can only reflect something if somebody looks into it and how this implies that vision needs somebody who see and something that can bee seen. Or who a few billion years ago the earth were just stones and over the years there came the oceans, then the forests, the animals and now us. And isn't it strange how beautiful nature by design is and how intelligent?

Things like that, easy to follow and going in the right direction. I also make sure that I don't bomb people with this stuff and that I take them spiritually where they are and slowly increase their radius if they like it. That way you can have a lot if fun.

My parents at least started meditating last year and they like it. I make a guess that meditation in like 10-20 years will be completely normal, like taking your meds right now is or like sleeping and eating. I feel that a lot of people begin to see how big this is and studies are proving right now one after another that this is fucking awesome.

So yeah, I think we are cutting edge here.