A dream. Dreams and fantasies can be particularly enjoyable, sometimes even helping to solve problems or to temporarily get rid of everyday routine or life circumstances. However, they do not make it possible to feel more versatile and involved in being, as it happens in the case of meditation. Dreams often make your life even more difficult.
Switching off. Sometimes switching off will create a short-term failure in a continuous stream of thoughts and feelings that flood your mind. At the same time, form something like an empty space, in which nothing happens and there is nothing but the very existence. Such "disconnection is the core of meditation and can be cultivated and prolonged arbitrarily. Alas, for the most part, disconnection is just a kind of dream.
Repetitive statements ("affirmations"). This typical practice of the so-called New Age religion - one of the forms of what is commonly referred to as positive thinking - aims to become an antidote to negative thinking. Generally speaking, this "negativity" is so deeply rooted in the human mind that affirmations only glide on the surface like a seafoam, and never penetrate deep enough - where your basic ideas and beliefs are.
Self-hypnosis. Relaxing your body and drawing in your imagination a safe, secure place, you can sink into a state of light trance. Being in this state, you can rehearse the role that you have to play in the theater or cinema, reproduce past events to achieve a successful result and reprogram your brain with the help of affirmations. Self-hypnosis differs from meditation in that it is as much a part of the current situation as possible (the main approach outlined in this book and focusing the attention of the person on the current moment), but in fact it is more like methods of healing and increasing productivity.
How delicious!
In this exercise, imagine that you have just arrived on Earth from another planet and have never tasted an orange.
1. Put the orange on a plate and close your eyes.
2. Turn off all thoughts and thoughts, open your eyes and look at the orange as if it were the first time in your life.
Pay attention to the shape, size, color and texture of the orange.
3. When you take the orange off the skin, pay attention to the sensations in your fingers, the contrast between the pulp and the orange skin, and its weight.
4. Slowly bring a slice of orange to your lips and pause a little before taking it in your mouth. Before you start chewing an orange slice, pay attention to the smell of the orange.
5. Open your mouth, bite the orange slice, feel the orange pulp texture, taste the juice in your mouth.
6. Continue to bite and chew the orange, concentrating on the play of sensations in your mouth.
After imagining that you are eating an orange for the first and last time in your life, make sure that every moment you eat an orange is fresh, new and full. Note how this approach to treating an orange differs from the usual.
Perfection of prayer. Ordinary or "asking" prayer, which is an appeal to God for help or a request for something, can be done by meditation, but even this prayer has very little in common with the meditation described in this book. However, contemplative prayer, also known as Horizon (i.e., the desire of the soul to be united with the divine), is actually a form of concentrated reflection, the object of which is God.
A dream. Soybeans, however refreshing or refreshing they may be, are not meditations, unless you are a true yogi meditating in a dream. Research shows that the waves generated by the brain during sleep are significantly different from those generated during meditation. Of course, sometimes it happens that meditators fall asleep while meditating - then sleep to your health!
Whatever your ideal - the ideal of vacationing, sex life, health and even the inner world - you pay too high a price to overstate your expectations. When it turns out that your life does not meet these expectations, you suffer and blame yourself for all mortal sins. If you made more money, spent more time with your loved ones, were a better lover, went back to school, lost more pounds... But your hopes were not fulfilled.
Perhaps you are one of the few chosen ones who managed to achieve everything they wanted. The problem, however, is that over time, you will get bored and want more, even if you don't, you will have to fight to defend what you have achieved and protect it from possible encroachments from others.
Great meditation traditions teach that the ideal earthly life (if you will, paradise on earth) is a myth. As they say, "Man assumes, but God has. You can also remember a popular joke: "If you want to entertain God, tell him about your plans. In other words, there are much more powerful forces in our world than you and I are. You can try as much as you like to control certain aspects of your life and even succeed. The problem is, however, that both you and I have very limited control over the circumstances of my life