I meant: in my experience of what others have told me, and not that I need to overcome that fear… I’ve spent the last few years doing just that… it was rather unpleasant, I can tell you.
I took that journey because I wasn’t content with where I previously was mentally, and I now feel much lighter and unburdened, of mind… so replacing the old/useless thought patters, with the new/useful ones. Quite the painful process, but it had to be done… for progression’s sake.
Perhaps because they don’t want to feel like they failed in the endeavour?
I find, that it’s a process of constantly moving forward mentally, and maintaining that constant state of flowing-thought.
Yes… circumstance made me (have to) do it. Now it’s just maintenance and upkeep, of which I’ll hopefully do for an eternity, to maintain the mind-over-matter state, of unfettered youth… an example being, going from a plank to a cross-legged-seated pose in one move, which I was recently able to do again, once I’d meditated on it for many many days.
So I’d say… meditation is about redirecting our energies, to achieve a desired outcome.
You seem to be advocating mindfulness, which IS helpful, but I feel that severing the connection to the “naughty monkey” as you called it, is possible and the true aim. Stop the thought train, for a little while anyway.
Severing the connection to the naughty monkey is not possible. No one is capable of doing that, not even the enlightened ones.The best we can do is to realize that there is a naughty monkey and thereafter learning how to coexist with it without getting influenced from it.
The problem here is that the enlightenment resides in all of us in the form of consciousness but it is amalgamated with the mind and cannot be separated in normal circumstances. Thus, the only thing that can enable us to realize our hidden enlightenment is mind but besides that mind plays its own tricks also. It is mischievous but it is the only mean which can help us to get these. So, in a way it is a necessary evil, evil but still necessary.
What do you say then about reaching or experiencing any of the stages of Jhana? I experienced the 4th stage just focusing on the breath. I felt separated from the naughty monkey then, if only for a short while. Eventually thoughts returned.
By unpleasant, I mean draining, both on my physical and mental well-being… all my energy, or what little I had of it at the time, was spent in a constant state of thinking and thought-processing, until I had gotten through all the mental clutter and on to a place of contentment and non-buffering thoughts.
Now it’s just about maintenance, and that’s a great place to have finally achieved arriving at, but it was a long and arduous route I took… and not the path most trod.
My guess is that happens in the majority of the cases.
So a necessity will always trigger the need to go there, to go beyond the self’s capacity for rhyme and reason and to have to reformulate/develop a whole new mind set.
Focussing on the breath is an easily available an effective choice.
As i found it, just like most of the other meditation practices, Jana Meditation as postulated in Jainism does not offer practical details. The details are incomplete and vague. The exact and precise step and step instructions are missing.
Having said that, if Jana is working well for someone, he/she should continue with that.
Satvapati, as named as a fourth stage in Jana meditation, comes quite late in the process. If you have read my all previous posts in this thread, i mentioned this fourth stage of Jana as the second Trigger point.
Here it is—
So, the fourth stage of Jana is this second trigger point as i mentioned in above post.
But, these is lot more than besides having concentration that happens at this point, which includes physical experiences too. I have not mentioned that yet but i will.
Secondly, i you have any other questions, i would suggest you go through the whole thread very carefully once again.
Sincere meditation certainly is quite physical and mental draining. Not only that, it also sometimes creates disturbances in normal life routine. That is precisely the reason why in old times, Extreme meditation was not prescribed for common people but to scholars only, wo had no worldly obligations. Having said that, practicing a little of it without going all in is quite doable for folks.
I immersed myself into it fully, like one does when taking a hot bath… I had nothing much else to do, and so it kinda just happened. Once started, there was no stopping… it made me very anti-social though, due to becoming submerged in mainly only affairs of the mind.
Yes, that happens in many cases, especially if one is able to cross the first or both trigger points. That causes so much new experiences and knowledge that it overwhelms one’s mind and as the result, focus and attention to routine life decreases considerably. That risk is always there for serious meditators. But, over the time, one can easily develop the capacity to live with it.
That happened to me too but I learned to cope with it.
For me, it was never about not having any other choice. Once there was a time, when I was almost ready to become a full time meditator forever and leaving the family but then I realised that it is not the right way, at least for me. I cannot turn by back to other obligations I have because I do that, my training and testing would not complete and I have to go through all that again I one way or other. I cannot escape my destiny ( karmas).
Oh snap that’s who I was forgetting earlier. ‘Guide’. Find that guy, dites. Talks like he’s straight out of the eighteenth century and I ain’t even frontin on that. Knows Latin and all that shit.
