When Are You An Advanced Meditator?

[Daphne]

Hi there

so I was thinking.. Sometimes people talk about very advanced or advanced meditators but when are you really? How can you or someone else say that they're advanced? Based on time? experience? If so, why does time matter?

what is the difference between beginner and advanced? 

I mean while meditating.. will thoughts still arise but only less? 

my english isnt the best but I hope you know what I mean?

[Azrael]

6 minutes ago, Daphne said:

Sometimes people talk about very advanced or advanced meditators but when are you really?

I don't know but it seems to me that meditation is like a lot of other skills. You begin and want to be the rockstar of your field. You really wanna bring it home and master it. You have no idea what you are really into. After a few months you come a little bit off your whole excitement and you start to see how it changes the way you go about your business. At some point you really just learn not to interfere any more and just let it happen, because you see that this is really the thing what brought you all the suffering in the first place, you trying to change what is. But you can't teach someone not to interfere any more, because by teaching and trying to interfere you lose it.

So, first you try hard. Then you try by not trying. Then you innerly give up at some point and then it finally comes to you. Basically, I'd say that somebody who meditated for 10 years has a complete other picture of all of this then I have with one year of experience. I guess that it deepens you forever.

Advancement - if we wanna call it so - will come if you focus on doing it for it every single day. The you wake up someday and say: I'm pretty fucking good at this. I just found out a few days ago that I can now sit in half lotus for 30 minutes because I mastered to sit in the Burmese posture. For me this is an advancement and I love it, but there was no technique I used to get there. I just followed along and it came when it should've come.

[Daphne]

Thank you for your reply.

 

I was thinking.. Ever session is always completely different, its never the same so in a sense you cant be advanced. There is no 'you' and really no time. So every experience will always be a new one..?

 

idk I cant really explain it.. sorry I guess I will have to go find out for myself what an advanced meditator could be

 

[Prabhaker]

On 7/7/2016 at 4:08 AM, Daphne said:

I will have to go find out for myself what an advanced meditator could be

Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible. And also only with effort, nothing is possible. Advanced meditator drop all techniques of meditation, he lives meditatively, he can sit silently, doing nothing. He can paint, he can play music, he can chop wood. 

On 7/7/2016 at 3:18 AM, Daphne said:

I mean while meditating.. will thoughts still arise but only less? 

When we walk , we use legs, While sitting there is no need to use the legs. While not talking there is no need to use words. Do not verbalize within. While not using the past there is no need to allow it to flood you. Dying to the past means becoming master of your mind, now you are an advanced meditator.