{"id":2158,"date":"2010-06-08T20:17:10","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T19:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/?p=2158"},"modified":"2010-06-08T20:17:10","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T19:17:10","slug":"religious-and-secular-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/2010\/06\/08\/religious-and-secular-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious and secular meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The religiosity of your meditation is not something outsiders can ascertain.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was already planning to write this entry when I read something eerily related in The Challenge of the Mind<\/em> by Ryuho Okawa. He says that the purpose of meditation is to contact High Spirits, such as your Guardian Angel. If it was just to sit down and not think, trees and stones would do a much better job of it than us.<\/p>\n

That sounds a bit harsh. There are quite a lot of health benefits associated with non-religious meditation: Lower blood pressure, better sleep, better immune functioning, less tendency to smoking and drinking, better memory and a greater or stronger awareness in daily life. I have called it “defragmenting the brain” too, but there is \u00c2\u00a0even more than that. Still, in my experience, there is a clear difference between religious and secular meditation. \u00c2\u00a0I cannot say whether they meet in the end, because I have not come anywhere near the end of any of them, even after many years.<\/p>\n

My history with meditation began in my mid teens or so, when I learned it directly from God.(1)<\/a> I was praying and felt that it was terribly rude to just rattle off my own wish list and then hang up. \u00c2\u00a0God is not a grocer or something. So I respectfully waited after my prayer, in case God had something to say to me as well. \u00c2\u00a0I understand that some people do hear actual voices from Heaven, but I did not. \u00c2\u00a0(Which is good, because I have a more scientific personality and would likely have been scared out of my skin.) Instead, I felt a benevolent Presence. \u00c2\u00a0Kind of, when you pray, you have a distinct impression that there is someone there receiving your prayer. \u00c2\u00a0I suppose some people, perhaps all people sometimes, have to take this on faith. \u00c2\u00a0But I think most of us have had the distinct impression that we have “connection”. \u00c2\u00a0This was like that, only stronger, and it kept growing stronger. \u00c2\u00a0Like there was someone right by me that I could not see, but I could feel the aura of that luminous Presence.<\/p>\n

In less religious terms, it was very much like sitting together with a really close friend or family member who you don’t need to engage in conversation. In these cases it is possible to just be together without thinking of what you are going to say next, simply waiting for them to say something or not – it does not really matter. \u00c2\u00a0This was like that, only with awe and majesty thrown in. Kind of like if you could sit silently together with Abraham Lincoln or something. (Requires optional Time Machine.)<\/p>\n

From that experience of simply resting silent in the Divine aura, from this grew my religious meditation. \u00c2\u00a0It was an extension of prayer – it was the heart of prayer really. \u00c2\u00a0And it still is to many people, who would regard meditation with deep skepticism. \u00c2\u00a0“Meditation, isn’t that something that heathens do, and those New Age people? \u00c2\u00a0It is probably evil spirits!” \u00c2\u00a0But actually meditation has a long history in Christianity as well, although in the old days it was called contemplation, while meditation was a more active thinking on holy topics. Today these have been transposed, perhaps in the meantime there was a period of confusion where few people thought of such things at all?<\/p>\n

It was months later that a more experienced Christian caught me in the act of silent communion and asked me if I was meditating? \u00c2\u00a0So at first opportunity I looked it up. \u00c2\u00a0We did not have the Internet back then, but there was a public library in the town where I went to school. \u00c2\u00a0There I learned about the science of meditation, and I took up that as well. For years I practiced ever deeper meditation, until in my 20es I started having more and more supernatural experiences: \u00c2\u00a0Telepathy, extra-sensory knowledge and the occasional tiny blip of telekinesis. \u00c2\u00a0Scared, I prayed to God to make it stop, and I cut down quite a bit on both the frequency, regularity and depth of my meditation. \u00c2\u00a0The strange experiences pretty much disappeared after that.<\/p>\n

I have practiced meditation since then, but irregularly and not so deeply. Religious meditation in particular is something I have done only when drawn to it.<\/p>\n

Over the past year and some I have taken up more meditation again, now with the aid of brainwave entrainment. \u00c2\u00a0Using first Centerpointe’s \u00c2\u00a0Holosync and later Project Meditation’s LifeFlow, I have used sound waves to synchronize my brain waves. \u00c2\u00a0LifeFlow in particular has a broad range of different frequencies. \u00c2\u00a0While these tools do not actually cause meditation, they create a state of brain that is well suited for the state of mind that is meditation. \u00c2\u00a0During natural meditation, the brainwaves will smooth out and get slower. \u00c2\u00a0How slow depends on practice and some seemingly random element. \u00c2\u00a0With brainwave entrainment, you can reduce the random element and get there with much less training. \u00c2\u00a0I have not found this useful for the meditation itself, although being able to induce slow-wave instead of REM sleep in the morning has been nifty. Basically, I can’t see that depth (slowness) of brain waves leads to depth of the meditative experience. \u00c2\u00a0Your meditation may vary (and if so, please tell me. Actually, tell me anyway.)<\/p>\n

There does not seem to me to be any spiritual benefits to the brainwave entrainment technology at all. \u00c2\u00a0Your spirit may vary. \u00c2\u00a0I find that to me, religious meditation is still a different experience. \u00c2\u00a0Even though LifeFlow 8 induces a “feeling” in the brain that is very similar to deep prayer meditation, it is not it. \u00c2\u00a0It is kind of like visiting the house of a friend and everything is there except your friend.<\/p>\n

There are schools of Buddhism that do not relate to a God or spiritual beings, and yet practice meditation religiously. I would think that to them there is no such difference. But I don’t really know. \u00c2\u00a0There is only so much you can experience in one life. \u00c2\u00a0But luckily we have each other to learn from. So perhaps I will know one day, if I find someone who has the relevant experience.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

<\/a> “Directly from God”: Well, that was my experience at least. \u00c2\u00a0I have later come to realize that our connection to God may not be quite what it seems: \u00c2\u00a0Each of us seems to have a personal “branch office of God” in our heart, which can differ a bit from that of other people who also believe in God, even those in the same congregation, even those in the same family. \u00c2\u00a0Each of us has a separate “branch office”. \u00c2\u00a0I mean that for instance in each town there used to be a Social Security office, and you could go there for all your ordinary Social Security needs. \u00c2\u00a0It was unlikely that you ever had any other contact with Social Security. To the common man, this office WAS Social Security. \u00c2\u00a0But actually of course Social Security is a much more vast organization, and there are subtle differences in the way you are spoken to in one town and another. \u00c2\u00a0It seems to be the same way with God: \u00c2\u00a0There is much more to God than what any one of us knows, but at the same time God is represented in our hearts with all the Divinity we will ever need. \u00c2\u00a0If our needs for God grows, so does the God within. In this way, we grow toward each other in God, our internal God presence becoming more similar as the Light increases. \u00c2\u00a0If all goes well.<\/p>\n

This individual Divine presence is probably what Happy Science calls “High Spirits”, although in Christianity it is customary to only have one, not to chat with a large number of angels, archangels and Saviors. \u00c2\u00a0For us there is only one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus \u00c2\u00a0Christ. It certainly simplifies things. \u00c2\u00a0But of course there are actually many entities in Heaven that are far greater and wiser than we are. \u00c2\u00a0We just don’t play supermarket there, as we already have all the Holy Spirit we need, and then some. \u00c2\u00a0To quote a very old Christian from my home village: “We don’t need more spirit, we need to obey the Spirit we already have!” \u00c2\u00a0Which is of course a pretty good way to get “more”. Or that’s what the Presence in my head tells me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The religiosity of your meditation is not something outsiders can ascertain. I was already planning to write this entry when I read something eerily related in The Challenge of the Mind by Ryuho Okawa. He says that the purpose of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[68],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-mind","category-religion","tag-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaosnode.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}