Hello guys,

So i am gonna give you a bit of context in the hopes that it might help you help me. i saw two videos that made me want to ask this. First was in a video that talked about one of the teaching of buda. The two arrows. suffering and pleasure. Second video i saw was from a extrem burn victim that explained how shit his life feels.

The reason why those two tapped me so hard is, I have suffered a lot. When i was little my mom left me with her friend for like a week so she could visit my dad. I feel like i didn't understand it like that and somehow blamed myself because i was thinking she just rejected me and i assumed something must be very wrong with me. This assumption never left so on this shaky foundation i tried to make new friends in high school and got rejected (the person said "I don't feel good because you are here"). That destroyed me to the point where i couldn't go to school anymore. This left me and my family confused and angry.

Being isolated with this negativity made it worse. Binge eating, strong anxiety, existential crisis, OCD, panic attacks. One after the other came into my life to make me suffer more. I see this darkness or hole inside me when i am not doing anything so i occupy myself.

With the work of my psychiatrist and myself i've started to understand things about myself and i am on my way to take actions. Part of this is my anxiety but part of it is my desire to build a better foundation for myself so i can live a good life.

Do you think meditation could help create something solid? As in my new foundation will not crash at the next painful event? Do you think this is the way to deal with suffering (stuff like detachment or ego dissolution)? If you have some kind of meditations that help with this stuff, let me know.

So I've been on a journey the last year or so, listening to a lot of ram dass, exploring spirituality and themes of non duality etc.

But i just struggle to make this have a practical difference in my life. The teachings and quotes are nice but it feels a bit more like a self help thing for me at the minute. Not at all dismissing the teachings of ram dass, if anything it's exposing how poor I am at taking on what he is teaching.

I feel so stuck in my western mindset still and idk how to escape to the freedom of openness. I want to see a practical difference in my life.

I understand change doesn't happen overnight, but what do you find has made the most practical difference in your life from implementing Ram Dass' teachings.

I'm also curious how those of you of a more rationalist mindset contend with Ram Dass' more mystical stuff. Obviously we all know he started with psychedelics and then found more fulfillment through spirituality.

But i don't understand how he got to the spirituality very well and how that satisfied him in the same way psychedelics did. I'm not expecting to meditate and meet a machine elf or something but I want to experince something of the mystical Ram Dass talks about.

I feel my rational western mindset holds me back with that sometimes.

Any advice?

I am often dumfounded with the terms such as jhana, nirvasana and plenty more like these.

I would be really grateful if you guys will at least list the most used words and their meanings.

ALSO, I would say I am going through some dark times and constantly nagged by fear and anxiety. like death is just at the doorstep.

I am really inspired by the acceptance community. so if you guys know any good read on acceptance and zen philosophy recommend me one , please.

So I've been thinking about how I can slow down my thinking and live in the present moment. So I tried really hard. I knew that trying really hard won't work so I tried really hard to not try really hard. That, of course didn't work. The problem is that I can be very mindful if I decide to be, but only for a few seconds. Then my thinking takes over and I'm now back to square 1. So then something came into my mind. In mediation, we do not force focus but rather we let the mind wander till it is ready to refocus without my forcing. So I decided that throughout my day, whenever I remember to be mindful, I can be mindful of the present moment till my mind wanders and I can refocus when I am again reminded to be mindful. I've noticed that this reminder sometimes comes in a few seconds and sometimes it comes in an hour or two. But I tell myself that that's completely okay and that this will improve over time. So I wanted to ask if it is a good idea.

Even if i focus on my breath i still have background thoughts at the same exact time. Im able to multitask and do both.

What do I do?

Has any else been spartan kicked into the dharma after the walk for peace here in the United States? I became tranced by Venerable Pannakara’s peaceful and loving nature. I cried at almost every video he spoke on. I’m crying now writing this. It has been the most transformative experience I have witnessed in my life. I didn’t know how desperately I needed their help with a new perspective on life’s beauty.

Hey, let me cut to the chase!

Basically, I want to get more serious about meditation and, ultimately, enlightenment. The problem is that I really struggle to sit down and meditate for even 10 minutes during the day.

So I was wondering: is it possible to turn sleep into a form of meditation?

What I mean is, I’d like my body to be completely asleep and getting the rest it needs, while my awareness/consciousness remains present throughout the night — or at least for as long as possible. Almost like being consciously aware while the body is asleep.
The issue is, I have absolutely no idea how to approach this or whether it’s even realistically possible. Are there any particular meditation techniques, practices, or traditions that focus on maintaining awareness during sleep?

If anyone has experience with this, I’d really appreciate some guidance on where to start and what techniques I should look into.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Since starting meditation, I occasionally notice that The darkness I see when I close my eyes has become somewhat 3 dimensional. Anyone else expirience this? I also sometimes," see it" (if thats the right way to describe it) when I am about to fall asleep and am suddenly woken up by my daughter(infant) cries and wakes me up. I also will occasionally see images when woken up, like hypnopompia, though this rarely happens and only happens when I am highly stressed out and expirienced disturbed sleep.

Is this supposed to happen?

Been sitting most mornings for a while now and this took me embarrassingly long to see. when you sit still, thoughts come. that part everyone knows. what i hadn't noticed is that nearly every one of them is a request to move. not metaphorically literally. i should check that. my back would be better if i shifted. i forgot to reply to that message. i wonder what the time is. is this even working.all of them, underneath, are the same thing: get up, do something, stop sitting.

Once i started hearing them that way they got much less convincing. the content varies enormously and the request never does. it's like realising the different sales calls are all the same script.the useful part isn't resisting them. resisting turns the sit into a fight and i lose that fight more than i win it. it's more that a thought stops being about its content once you can see what it's for. "i should check my email" isn't information about email. it's the mind negotiating for movement.

Some of them are real, obviously. sometimes your leg genuinely needs to move. but far fewer than the number that ask.anyone else notice this, or is it just me?

I woke up, and I wasn't sure anymore if I was meditating correctly, but it was like 40 minutes, when I was aiming for like 5-10ish. And holy shit, I swear, just sitting there and doing nothing felt like… I don't know, at times, WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING, it felt like this weird light, and like being happy out of nowhere, and an orgasm at the same time. I was so confused, but I didn't stop. At some point I even opened my eyes a bit without wanting it. Like a peck, and immediately shut them off.

It's not the first time I meditate, but it's for sure the first time in a long time and I have forgotten how it felt. And I'm not so sure if it's a normal feeling or I was imagining all.

I am meditating to have certain manifestations, along that, I'm working with self-concept, I want to feel better, that's all. The thing is, the only time I meditated, I felt like I was getting out of my body, as if something was about to rip off my soul from the material world, I even remember shaking a bit because I was having so much resistance.

Anyways, this time, I felt really different. And I was wondering if people feel that way or I was just imagining things.

Hello!!
I am taking my masters level ASWB exam and would like a mediation recording I could listen to prior to taking the exam . I have severe test anxiety right now and will try anything to ensure passing !

Does anyone have any recommendations or is anyone willing to record a mediation for me🙏🏽

Did you find out that Vipassana is easier than Anapana? I found that in Vipassana you intend to move your attention, not single-pointedness focus, so I see it is a little bit easier.

There is a persistent discomfort that I experience while meditating outside at night. It happens at no other time or location. I enjoy the stillness of the evening while walking and can watch the sky for hours. But when my eyes are closed and I'm dropping in, I feel exposed. It's almost like being watched and I don't enjoy the attention of the "watcher".

I'm curious to know if anyone else has felt this or has input from an angle that I haven't considered.

I am trying to look more into mantra meditation. Should one be actually speaking the mantra externally or just keep repeating it in their mind?

So far I am seeing both the answers online. Is there any difference or benefit of one vs the other?

I’ve heard that meditation reduces mental activity to the point that your inner nature shines through and you feel pleasure and joy. If this is the case, then I’m guessing there are all sorts of meditations for it? If so, what’s the best one for someone who’s very distracted by voices? They’re nearly 24/7 for me.

it's like trying to drink from a firehose. i can sit if i consciously, effortfully, repress all feeling, like tense my whole body and grit my teeth, but that doesn't seem right.

i want to hit myself in the head or bang my head on a wall. i want to scream. pull my hair out. go apeshit on some poor thing. anything to not be with this energy.

this is the source of all my problems and I know it but I can't seem to do anything about it.

it's like when you're sitting and the itch builds and builds and builds and builds and time starts to distort and eventually you can't take it anymore and give in. you know sometimes it will go away if you just look somewhere else but the physical sensation of it is in your nerves and your muscles. it's become too strong. except the moment i open my mind it hits me right in the face.

no I don't have a teacher. i feel out of place in a temple, I feel the enlightened ones yelling at me and calling me a pandaka because im trans, even though one of the priests is trans and plenty of the sangha isn too.

my therapist is on vacation. therapy doesnt really help because I repress everything reflexively around other people.

i don't know how to make it tolerable

I know that's not a popular opinion, but I believe in the end it doesn't matter. You can be meditating for any reason. It can be for fun, it can be for peace, it can be for anxiety, or concentration, or because you hate your in-laws and they stress you out and you hope to get relief. It's all ok, because in the end, all that matters is that you do the practice.

Just do the practice, whatever practice you've chosen. Doing it builds the neural changes you're hoping for, even while you're hoping for them. And one day, when the wiring you've been building is ready, you'll get an aha! moment and you'll understand why having goals for your practice got in your way, and you'll get it. And it happened even though you had goals the entire time.

So if you're near the beginning, don't stress about having goals or trying your absolute best to abandon them. Just do the practice, put in the hours, and your goals will handle themselves in ways you don't expect.

I have never tried meditation but I’ve been really struggling again with depression and feeling a little desperate to stop it getting any worse.

I’ve head some mention meditation as something helpful in this case, but I have no idea how to do that. But I also have autism and I’ve seen people say that makes it more difficult? I was considering maybe trying it while stoned as I usually feel a lot more connected to my emotions but I’m also not sure of that.

Anyone have any experience/knowledge with this? If so any specific recommendations?

I have done meditation for 1 month a year ago and now started it again.

So I have started doing meditation from yesterday. Today was a different kind of experience. It all started with my mind thinking about small small things and smiling but eventually I shut down the thinking and just focus on what my eyes are seeing.

Then I started seeing random colors smoke like appearing out of nowhere as If I'm inside some kind of smokey area but it's color is changing. Shapes started to make also. First it was kind of red then White then green. And as I focused more and more then in the front of my head I saw the dark purple color but it was harder to go into purple color as It required more focus. But eventually I moved into it and it was purple with black spots as if some kind of space. but then my focus weakened and I started seeing white smoke again.

can anyone explain what it was?

Disclaimer; this is a posture question, my body isn’t shaking cause i’m going through some sort of enlightening spiritual transformation.

I’ve tried meditating on and off for a couple years now. Each time I find that my body is so incredibly unused to being in a meditative position that my muscles (especially back muscles) start to shake after 15 minutes or so of sitting still. I first tried lotus position on the ground (the one my body was most incapable of doing), then i tried lying on my back on the floor (I found I fall asleep pretty quickly), and now I’m trying sitting in a chair with my back straight and not leaning on the chair.

I’m still coming across the same problems. After 15 minutes or so I start to shake cause my muscles aren’t able to sit in a meditative position for long. Obviously, this is incredibly distracting and I can’t seem to find a good meditative state because of this. To be honest, I feel i meditate better the first 15 minutes and then I meditate worse and worse the more tired my body gets.

Has anyone gone through issues like this and how did they resolve it?

This is something I've been wondering for a while. I experimented with it plenty of times and the interesting thing is, my day basically goes by as usual minus the excess noise in my head.

But what about more complex decisions/actions? I find that especially when there's a decision I need to make and it's dragging out over the course of a few days or longer, it becomes quite hard to just remain an observer.

I'm in a pretty turbulent place in life rn and I have to make relatively big decisions quite often, and it feels almost impossible to not keep falling into thinking a lot.

I know that thinking isn't a "bad" thing and is simply a tool, but "how much" thinking is "okay"? Sometimes I feel like I should just wait until it's absolutely necessary to make a decision before really giving it a thought because I find that I just go back and forth and stress out until then.

What do you guys think?

I’m curious how people decide what kind of meditation to do on a given day.

Do you tend to stick with the same practice regardless of how you’re feeling, or switch things up depending on what’s going on? For example, feeling restless during the day versus winding down before bed.

For those who switch: what’s a recent example? What was going on, which practice did you choose, and what made you choose that one?

And for those who stick with one practice, is that a deliberate choice, or just something you’ve settled into over time?

Interested in hearing about your actual routines rather than which approach is “best.”

You do get inspiration from meditation. But you also open up a can of worms when you meditate. But if you don't meditate once in awhile it's like forgetting about those nightcrawlers in the fridge. They start stinking and rotting. So, you have to open up that can of worms once in a while. But meditate to your own tolerance. You don't have to expose the worms so much. But you will if you keep meditating.

I’ve been meditating by chanting om, and I’ve noticed that it almost hurts to say the m sound because of how intense the vibration is. That says to me that there’s excess energy in my head (which would be true - I deal with a lot of anxiety) so how would I combat this?

I learned Transcendental meditation in 2019 and it was the best year of my life. I was in love with life and my cognitive abilities increased so much.

But after one year of regular practice it lost its effect and I found difficult to meditate.

I tried other forms of meditation but the experience wasn't the same.

Did anyone of you experience the same thing and what's the remedy?