Charisma Meditation: Increasing Conscious Bandwidth/Power in Daily Life

[ardacigin]

The following technique will enable you to increase mental powers and conscious bandwidth so that generating joy, ease and happiness will become second nature when confronted with a heated argument. (which can be viewed as the more challenging aspects of social life).

This is the foundation of meditation in daily life. 

Both attention and awareness - key modalities of mind perception - relies on a single resource pool: Conscious Bandwidth.

There is only so much to go around at any given moment and its batteries can be exhausted in a few minutes or it can be sustained efficiently for 24 hours. It all depends on how much conscious power is available and how efficiently one uses it. Both axioms can be developed to extremely high levels.

Being attention-oriented and obsessively focused on an acitivity (TV shows, someone shouting at you, trying to think about a complex topic etc.) immediately drains the conscious bandwidth too quickly and inefficiently. Without the supporting pillar of awareness, you'll feel fatigue, agitation, negative self rumination and a sense of 'I need to protect myself and my ideas'.

Conscious bandwidth also has a 'replenishing' factor where even when you feel fatigued, you can bring yourself back to a more efficient state without taking a nap or spending hours in misery.

Talking Meditation & Conscious Power Scaling

1- Start by sitting down to have a normal chat with someone close to you. Make sure that this person is not in an overly positive or negative while you attempt this. You'd like this person to be neutral, easy going and receptive as possible. 

2- There are two main components you'll need to be aware of while interacting with this person. Think of it as standard procedure in all social contacts regardless of who this person is:

Eye contact & No fidgeting.

 + Eye contact: His or her eyes are where your attention will rest for the entire duration of the conversation as you both listen AND talk to this person. Listening while looking in the eye may be easy but most people can't maintain eye contact while stringing complex thoughts back to back when push comes to shove. Especially, be extra careful to think thoughts and speak while looking someone in the eye. Averting your eyes or struggling to do this brings me to the second component.

 + No physical fidgeting: Mental challenges regarding thoughts and arguments are normal. However, fidgeting with your gaze or moving your body is not. Just like Strong Determination Sits are done without moving, so can be social interactions. This will generate tranquility and equanimity.

Of course, I'm not talking about being a machine. Your face can be reactive. You can make jokes, laugh like crazy etc. In fact, all of this is heavily encouraged. However, if you tighten your shoulders and feel some tension when someone asks you:

'What have you been doing this entire time? Did you throw out the garbage like I said?'

Your body needs to rest without physically moving as you are giving your verbal response. Without physical tension or bodily reaction. All answers will be given with words and facial reactions.

Add emotions to your presentation but do so without moving the body. This will facilitate tranquility and equanimity.

3- After you make sure eye contact and no fidgeting is stable, move on to spread the awareness to the entire body as your attention dominates your thoughts while looking at someone in the eye. Maintain the form as described in step 2. If you do avert your gaze or your body feels restless, return back to step 2 before spreading awareness back to the body.

4- After body awareness gets stable as you speak and listen to conversations without emotional charge, generate pleasant sensations and joy in your body while continuing to maintain form in step 2. Try to physically smile and find the joy in the conversation. You won't feel anything initially but as your conscious power increases, more energy will be available for pleasure generation. Keep at it and don't feel discouraged. It will get easier as you get more proficient.

5- As you get more skilled, you'll be able to do the same thing while in a heated argument. The structure of practice doesn't change. Merely your skills will improve so much so that while having emotionally charged discussions, it is easy to maintain equanimity and body awareness with form in step 2.

Done!

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Not only you'll become socially charismatic with this technique, you'll eliminate the egoic roadblocks that gets in the way of a true connection with another human being. Your practice will be consistent and permeate your everyday life as you get into the groove of it.

Mental fluidity of thoughts and effortless of speaking will resolve by themselves within this practice. Negative mental habits, impatience etc. will be auto-corrected by increased metacognitive awareness and body awareness this practice facilitates. 

Let me know your thoughts down below after trying it.

Much love,

Arda

 

Edited December 7, 2021 by ardacigin