I am dabbling and reading on the old Wizardforum also. With webarchive.org it is still possible to read things, which is nice! I would like to bring some of those discussions to this 'new' WF forum. We have a lot of people in our community that were not on the old forum, including me. And people who were on the old forum had quite some time for some personal growth. So plenty of room for new discussions. I try to tag these posts every time as #old WF to be able to filter those 'new old posts'.
One of the threads I want to bring back is that about misconceptions about meditation, it is worth while to have this topic again on this 'new' WF too. For new seekers, it is quite a topic. For seasoned practitioners is can be nice to reflect on that.......Add your ideas about misconceptions, add your experiences, add misconceptions I didn't mention in this OP.
Misconceptions about meditation:
***Meditation requires spiritual or religious beliefs.
***I don’t have enough time to meditate.
***It takes years of practice to receive any benefits from meditation.
*** a meditation is only successful when I reached the empty-mind-stage
Meditation needs no mantra; it doesn't need faith, a defined spiritual "path", or any belief at all. The proof is in the pudding - it either works or it doesn't! It's only good to you if you feel you're getting some benefits by doing it. I've chosen to do it. Meditation is simple and it takes as little as 15 minutes a day. There is no set form, no need for a guru or master, no degrees, no initiation, and no requirement to babble-on with gibberish, special phrases, or what amounts to nonsense words. It doesn't take years of practice - you can do it right now and it'll work for you, as there is no measurement of "progress". There are no requirements
You could stop trying to change things and just listen to your thoughts dispassionately and not actively trying to change them, by just watching what you're thinking about, without any guilt or "shame". This meditation is similar to self-hypnosis and magick, but it's neither! It's simple enough and it avoids killing off the Ego like Eastern Thought wants you to do by starving it to death by filling your mind with just one thought like "OM", so, there is no Mantra here. There's no special techniques or formula to memorize, you watch, just watch.
You can relax your body first: Sit in a comfortable chair. Bring your attention to your feet and tense them and relax, then tense your legs, let them relax, then move that tension/relaxation wave upwards toward your head, relaxing your whole body completely.
Close your eyes and bring your attention to your whole body. You should feel it tingle. This is your neural body sense. Bring your attention only to your right hand, it will also tingle. As thoughts arise, just
watch them dispassionately. When you drift away or get lost, gently bring your attention back to your hand. Don't make judgments, react to anything, or judge anything, especially yourself, or
try to change anything. Just observe your thoughts. As you watch them, things will slowly be resolved - it takes some time. When you get lost in your thoughts, gently bring your attention back to your right hand again. If something is persistent, like music (you've memorized a lot more than you know), then bring you attention to what you're "seeing" with your eyes closed because it isn't completely dark ~ there are "lights" there so bring your attention to them and watch, and then bring your attention back to your hand. Occasionally, bring your attention to your forehead and "see" your hand (in your mind's eye) moving to your forehead, and maybe it will go there in time.
Source: This is my version of Roy Master's old "Foundation of Human Understanding" meditation from what seem like ages ago.
- beautiful !