Concentration Vs Meditation Summary

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

“Until you get into access concentration, you ain’t got squat”.

This one practice will revolutionize everything you do in meditation. This is the heart of becoming a master in meditation. This will take you to the end of your meditation journey.

Concentration: Select an object and focus on it like a laser beam, consistently repeatedly until your time is done. In meditation, you let your mind go and surrender, whereas in concentration your disciplining your mind to focus on one subject. This is important because the best results come when you enter access concentration. You need the ability to stabilize your mind. Without this focus you cannot meditate or self-inquire seriously.

Your concentration is terrible because of videogames, texting, movies and so on. You need to develop this ability!

How to develop concentration? Sit down with a timer for 5 minutes to start. Then select an object to focus on and exclude everything else. Become very clear on what the object of concentration is. You have to discipline yourself with the objective of hitting access concentration. How do you know you’ve hit access concentration? You will go into this flow state and you will feel that your attention has shifted.

Start with a short duration like 5 minutes and increase it until you reach 1 hour. You can also do 2 minutes in the morning, 2 minutes on lunch and 2 minutes at night. Make sure you stay very consistent. Don’t increase your time if you are not consistent with your concentration during the period. You can smoothen out the object you are focusing on; it’s going to make access concentration easier to reach.

STRESS QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!

If you do 5 minutes of concentration before your meditation practice, you will notice that your meditation can become twice as better.

Different objects you can select

·         Hand positions (thumb and finger)

·         Breath

o   Tip of your nose (specially your nostrils)

o   Your entire breath (conceptualize it in a single object)

·         Pick a physical object to look at

o   Candle flame

o   Orange/Apple

·         A mental image

·         Select a color

·         Mantra (a sound that you repeat to yourself that doesn’t have a meaning)

·         A sound

o   A metronome

The key is selecting something and stick with it!

Q&A

-          How can I focus if I don’t have free will?

 

 This question comes from a misunderstanding of what is not having free will. No free will means that there is no doer in life that is doing, but stuff still gets done! No free will doesn’t mean that you cannot make decisions, it means that there is no free will to make your decisions. There is no you making decisions. The universe is concentrating.

-          This sounds so try hard…

Spirituality is one of the most rigorous practices you can find. For you to surrender, you will have to try very fucking hard.

 

 

Concentration practices will create jhanas, but they are not enlightenment. Anyways, concentration is key to gaining insight!

 

[Locomike]

In my concentration practices i have reached a point of distraction when i get ringing in my ears or start having involuntary muscle movements in my face my nostrils and mouth will start to kind of shake. Any one else have experienced what i have mentioned above? I would love to hear your experiences in your concentration practices or please share information if you know what i am explaining above. 

[Olive_Branch]

You will know it very clearly when that shift of focus occurs and you enter access concentration. It's that special flow state one gets into when being wholly absorbed in a task and also having integrated the necessary technical skills. Sometimes I feel as thought I'm just watching myself doing the work without slowing down. The conscious effort just falls out of it - it's really quite wonderful. Developing one's mind in this direction is a great thing, but I feel these methods are incomplete in that effort. They certainly produce the discipline needed to reach access concentration, but they don't do a whole lot to actually train and streamline your mental processes.

I think concentration practice methods might have a wider range of benefits than we know of right now. I've been experimenting with different techniques myself. Has anyone else had any good experiences with this stuff?