What people still get wrong about meditation

By Heather Sundell

Picture this: it’s a quiet afternoon aside from two birds singing to one another.

A soft breeze blows past your face as you inhale deeply. You feel the sunlight warm your skin as all the muscles in your body begin to relax, one by one. You’ve never felt more clear or settled. …and you haven’t even left your living room. When people talk about meditation, it often conjures visions of remote monasteries nestled away into a lush mountainside or expensive retreats with incense, silence, and possibly even crystals. Oh, and loads and loads of paid time off. No one has time for that, which often equates to people thinking they don’t have time, or the means, to meditate. Here’s the thing, meditation is not a luxury for the one percent. It’s for everyone. And it’s a skill you can learn even without sunshine and songbirds. So before you open your mouth with an excuse for why it’s not for you, let’s debunk some of those myths:

Meditation requires me to clear my brain.

Of course it doesn’t! It’s actually kind of impossible to clear the in the mind. It’s science. Our fast running minds are actually an evolutionary trait that stems from our ancestors’ survival instincts to be constantly seeking clues and connections in a dangerous environment. That said, meditation isn’t asking the impossible. Completely clearing your mind of thoughts, while it might be nice, isn’t the end goal for meditation. The idea is to bring calmness and clarity, and if a few wandering thoughts creep in, you aren’t doing it wrong—just acknowledge them and let them go. Guided meditation is a great way to gently remind you to bring back the focus when you catch your mind running down a mental to-do list. Don’t be intimidated by believing meditation requires you to be superhuman. It’s a skill anyone can learn, even the most overactive brains.

Meditation requires a lot of time.

It may not be science, but it’s pretty safe to say that not many people have “free time.” We live in a fast-paced, connected world where everyone is always “on,” with adults spending 11 hours a day with their gadgets. This can make trying to find the time and space to turn “off” seem sort of daunting. We’ve reached a point where finding time to relax is hard, the time is precious, and there are many more things we’d all love to do with it besides meditation. Who wants to give up their guilty pleasure TV shows in favor of sitting in silence for long stretches of time? Not many people. Meditation—while still a commitment—doesn’t have to be a big one. Just ten minutes a day is beneficial for reducing stress and increasing mindfulness. Make it part of your day, just like brushing your teeth. It can be in the morning when you first wake up, in the afternoon, before bed, before a tough meeting, after a good date, really whenever you like. Meditation is so flexible, it’s easy to fit it into your ever-changing, always-busy schedule.

Meditation is really expensive.

Unfortunately, meditation is a self-reflective, mindful practice that often gets lumped into new age trends. Health trends have been known to sweep hoards of people off their feet with “all the answers”. This excitement can encourage people to spend whatever it takes on a new fad in search of optimal health. Have you had a $12 cold pressed juice yet? While this spell can enchant many, it can also turn some away, writing it off as a marketing ploy with no real effects. Sadly, many wonderful, time-tested practices of mindfulness fall victim to this sort of exploitation. Just as you don’t actually need to be wearing Lululemon to vinyasa flow, you don’t really need anything expensive to meditate. Forget incense, handmade Tibetan pillows, rare teas, gongs, or even building an add-on reflection room to your home. You don’t need to sign up for costly week-long retreats or collect a library of literature. Sure, you CAN do all these thing, but it’s not necessary. That’s beauty of meditation: it requires nothing but a small commitment from yourself—an investment with infinite returns.

Meditation doesn’t really do anything.

The modern human brain is only two percent of our body weight, but it uses 20 percent of our resting energy. This is exhausting for your brain to be running at all times. Imagine if you exercised the rest of your body at the same pace as your brain? It’s not possible. At some point you would need to rest and recharge, otherwise, you’d experience some serious burnout.

Read more https://www.headspace.com/articles/what-people-still-get-wrong-about-meditation

OSHO: Alertness Awareness Mindfulness

 Osho’s Meditation approach: alertness, attention, mindfulness. 

 Whatever you’re doing, just do it consciously, don’t do it mechanically.

I can move my hand mechanically. I can flow it very consciously, fully alert. And there’s a difference of quality. When you pass it with attention there is grace.

When you move it similar to device, there may be no grace, no splendour. When you are doing any form of paintings. . .

All the vintage religions have been telling you that your faith is a Sunday religion. Every Sunday you have to go to church, and for 6 days you’re free. This could be very odd. Six days God was growing this world.

He changed into quite innovative, in six days he created this complete universe, and seventh day there may be no mention that he went to church! In truth, after the ones six days he has gone for a protracted weekend. And it has been truly lengthy! According to Christians, six thousand years have surpassed. According to Hindus, 90 thousand years have surpassed. The weekend appears to be unending! Six days you do the whole lot, and seventh day you go to the church, pray, and your faith is completed.

Other religions give you twenty mins meditation — take a seat within the morning and meditate for twenty mins. These are not meditations. Meditation needs to be some thing like breathing, you can’t go on excursion. Even in sleep you need to keep respiratory.

So something you’re doing even simply respiration, then breathe consciously in. As you’re taking the breath in, remain alert. As the breath starts transferring out, stay alert. You are meditating.

Walking, just cross consciously, and you are meditating. My meditation isn’t always something break free lifestyles; it is something that has to be unfold throughout lifestyles. Your complete life has to be coloured by using it. So something you do, you are making love, however meditation remains.

You can not drop that even at the same time as making love. It isn’t always like your glasses, you cannot take it off! It is like eyes, they’re constantly there, you cannot simply take them off and positioned them on again. My meditation is a way of being aware of something you are doing thinking, feeling. On all 3 layers you need to grow to be aware.

A time comes that once you’ll sleep. . . Even then at the same time as you are sitting on the mattress, sit down in focus, lie down in awareness.

Wait for sleep fully watchful: whilst it comes, the way it comes, how slowly it descends on you, how your body begins enjoyable, in what points there has been tension, and now the anxiety is long gone. A day will come, really comes, when the frame can have gone to sleep and your meditation may be still there like a flame internal you, burning, fully conscious. This is the moment that I name your meditation is complete. Now even in sleep you could meditate.

So there may be no question, at the same time as you’re unsleeping you will be able to meditate, there is no hassle. And the man who can meditate in sleep might be capable of meditate while dying, due to the fact the same is the system. Just as in sleep you slowly slowly go deeper interior you, the frame is left a ways away, relaxed, the mind slows down, the mind pass on disappearing precisely the same happens in demise. A guy who is aware of meditation, by no means dies.

He remains alive, aware. Death is going on, he is there. When Socrates turned into given poison, he had accumulated all his disciples. One of the disciples asked, “Before you leave us, please inform us whether the soul survives or now not.

” Socrates stated, “Again you are asking the identical stupid query. Let me die and notice! I will die completely aware. Only two are the opportunities: both I am gone, finished with the frame finishing, and there’s no one left to be conscious, or the frame could be demise, and I might be entering into some other shape. But before dying, how can I say? I am so excited.

” And the person who’s making ready the poison is delaying, because he loves Socrates everybody loved the person, even the man who’s going to offer him poison is delaying. Socrates says, “This is not right. It is exact now time which you need to come. ” The man who turned into making ready the poison stated, “You should be loopy, Socrates.

I am genuinely delaying the method so that you can live a touch longer. ” Socrates says, “I actually have lived lengthy sufficient, and I actually have lived so totally that I don’t suppose I actually have left whatever unlived. My existence is entire, so don’t waste time. I am excited to revel in loss of life.

I want to see loss of life. ” And that is precisely the scenario of each meditator: he desires to see death too. And seeing it method you’re become independent from it, you are something eternal. And this experience of eternity, immortality, is authentic faith no longer worshiping a God, not a Holy Bible, now not a Gita.

Those are just for retarded people. Copyright© OSHO International Foundation www. OSHO. Com/copyright OSHO is a registered Trademark of OSHO International Foundation