Could you enlighten us with your preferred approach to meditation then? I’ve had very positive experiences just with simple breathing exercises, but I’d definitely like to improve.
Crap! I’m sorry I didn’t see this. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with LessWrong while I’ve been getting as far as I can with meditation.
a year late, hopefully you get this response so that it may have some use.
The prerequisite to Taoist meditation is about practicing being aware, and practicing controlling awareness. Controlling awareness requires being aware of what one is aware of, and so is also a practice of that.
Once one becomes adequate at being aware of anything for a sufficient amount of time, the next step is about figuring out how to find and fix the problems.
The most advanced way to fix a problem is to simply be aware of it until it goes away. maintaining awareness of the problem makes it go away on it’s own, without requiring any additional action.
However, that is too advanced for most people, and so there are other methods along the way.
Step one is to be aware of tension in the body. There are a myriad of ways to activate tension to make it much easier to observe, and thus be aware of. Breath control (both the fast and slow varieties) is one such way.
All tension in the body hinders the passage of fluids and mental signals. Neurons can be tense too.
Step two is to slowly try relaxing everything. This is the basic form of what is known as “dissolving” in meditation.
Step three involves a whole bunch of complicated ways of dissolving tension on deeper levels (Periostium is “deeper” than neurons are “deeper” than ligaments are “deeper” than muscles)
To make it less complicated, there is a common practice of breathing slowly while being acutely aware of a block of tension. And in that state, trying to focus the breath in the area of awareness (practice breathing into your stomach, then breathing into your whole body, to make this easier and safer).
In this step, emotions rise and come to light, thought patterns arise and come to light, and underlying ways of identifying concepts arise and come to light. The idea is that everything that comes up is a result of tension, and getting rid of the tension makes it not come up again.
Step four is about continuing to try to become better aware. continuing to be aware of deeper and deeper tissues, and corresponding cognitive processes (deeper and deeper emotions, thoughts, intuition, etc). To be aware of deeper cognitive processes, one must relieve the tension on the surface. As such, this is a long process of continuing to go deeper and deeper, going back and forth between steps 1, 2, 3 and 4.
It is possible to force the cognitive result of tension to change, or to push tension somewhere else. This can act as a temporary solution, and is sometimes necessary to deal with particularly strong or deep tension by forcefully removing the surface layers. Doing so usually causes tension to appear somewhere else, and on a equally deep or deeper layer. This is called the “fire method” of meditation.
The order of depth of cognition is: first physical feeling, then instinct, emotion, thought, intuition, identification (subconscious mental grouping), then last the “space” that is occupied by consciousness and cognition.
Each layer contains it’s own feeling of tension. Each layer also contains it’s own feeling of pain, which can be used to find tension.
After about ten years of meditating regularly, I got to the deepest (seventh) layer two weeks ago.
FYI: identification, subconscious mental grouping, is the source of karma. Intuition is about quickly(near instantly) solving NP-complete problems (the hardest part is figuring out whether the answer is true, just probable, or false and based on a false premise).
“preferred method” is hard to think about, since I only used others’ methods as guidance to create my own. Breathing is integral to any good method, as is relaxing tension. The fastest way to improve is to never go beyond about 70% of your ability. The goal is to continue to go deeper, resolutely. In essence, meditation is extremely simple; but not at all easy. The point of meditation is to confront everything you can’t handle, and learn to handle it. The method is really up to you. Taoist meditation is a path, with as many methods as there are martial arts moves (hint: there’s not very many).
Once you can use your intuition (which you may already be able to do to an extent), these next things become possible.
Once you get to the level where you can feel Chi, move your body and chi at the same time. Use your moving body to move your chi. Normal ChiGung is equivalent to fast, heavy breathing. Moving your body and chi at the same time is equivalent to slow, controlled breathing.
Step five is to “open” spaces in your body that feel closed. This feels like expanding the capacity of a body tissue. Most importantly, open your joints, to allow proper fluid movement. This should simultaneously improve your posture.
Step six is to “tonify” (acupuncture word), which feels like re-invigorating atrophied tissue (not that I’ve ever had atrophied tissue).
The next step requires psychic awareness (direct awareness of intuition), and I’m not willing to explain it without room for sufficient detail (I am working on a way to explain it properly).
The step after that happens on the deepest layer, and I’m not willing to explain that without going into extreme detail of everything before it (which I am working on).
I have been told there is a step after that, but I have no idea what it is.
I hope I’m not too late to give this advice.
I hope this advice is helpful or useful in some way.
I hope everything is at least vaguely understandable.
If you, or anyone else, chooses to follow the path of meditation, good luck. It takes the resolution to succeed at impossible tasks, with equal rewards.
Wasn’t visiting LessWrong with my profile for a long while.
Thank you for the detailed steps.
I suspect the down-vote is for the Taoist references where some LW’ers are heavily against references to Chi since they haven’t found substantial evidence for its existence.
For me, your post is a thumbs up: I appreciate the applicability of what you wrote.
Could you enlighten us with your preferred approach to meditation then? I’ve had very positive experiences just with simple breathing exercises, but I’d definitely like to improve.
Crap! I’m sorry I didn’t see this. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with LessWrong while I’ve been getting as far as I can with meditation. a year late, hopefully you get this response so that it may have some use.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/blr/attention_control_is_critical_for/6frz. In this post I describe the steps for learning the prerequisite to Taoist meditation. At the time, I was not able to properly describe Taoist meditation, despite being very familiar with it. I can at least try now.
The prerequisite to Taoist meditation is about practicing being aware, and practicing controlling awareness. Controlling awareness requires being aware of what one is aware of, and so is also a practice of that.
Once one becomes adequate at being aware of anything for a sufficient amount of time, the next step is about figuring out how to find and fix the problems.
The most advanced way to fix a problem is to simply be aware of it until it goes away. maintaining awareness of the problem makes it go away on it’s own, without requiring any additional action. However, that is too advanced for most people, and so there are other methods along the way.
Step one is to be aware of tension in the body. There are a myriad of ways to activate tension to make it much easier to observe, and thus be aware of. Breath control (both the fast and slow varieties) is one such way. All tension in the body hinders the passage of fluids and mental signals. Neurons can be tense too.
Step two is to slowly try relaxing everything. This is the basic form of what is known as “dissolving” in meditation.
Step three involves a whole bunch of complicated ways of dissolving tension on deeper levels (Periostium is “deeper” than neurons are “deeper” than ligaments are “deeper” than muscles) To make it less complicated, there is a common practice of breathing slowly while being acutely aware of a block of tension. And in that state, trying to focus the breath in the area of awareness (practice breathing into your stomach, then breathing into your whole body, to make this easier and safer). In this step, emotions rise and come to light, thought patterns arise and come to light, and underlying ways of identifying concepts arise and come to light. The idea is that everything that comes up is a result of tension, and getting rid of the tension makes it not come up again.
Step four is about continuing to try to become better aware. continuing to be aware of deeper and deeper tissues, and corresponding cognitive processes (deeper and deeper emotions, thoughts, intuition, etc). To be aware of deeper cognitive processes, one must relieve the tension on the surface. As such, this is a long process of continuing to go deeper and deeper, going back and forth between steps 1, 2, 3 and 4.
It is possible to force the cognitive result of tension to change, or to push tension somewhere else. This can act as a temporary solution, and is sometimes necessary to deal with particularly strong or deep tension by forcefully removing the surface layers. Doing so usually causes tension to appear somewhere else, and on a equally deep or deeper layer. This is called the “fire method” of meditation.
The order of depth of cognition is: first physical feeling, then instinct, emotion, thought, intuition, identification (subconscious mental grouping), then last the “space” that is occupied by consciousness and cognition. Each layer contains it’s own feeling of tension. Each layer also contains it’s own feeling of pain, which can be used to find tension.
After about ten years of meditating regularly, I got to the deepest (seventh) layer two weeks ago. FYI: identification, subconscious mental grouping, is the source of karma. Intuition is about quickly(near instantly) solving NP-complete problems (the hardest part is figuring out whether the answer is true, just probable, or false and based on a false premise).
“preferred method” is hard to think about, since I only used others’ methods as guidance to create my own. Breathing is integral to any good method, as is relaxing tension. The fastest way to improve is to never go beyond about 70% of your ability. The goal is to continue to go deeper, resolutely. In essence, meditation is extremely simple; but not at all easy. The point of meditation is to confront everything you can’t handle, and learn to handle it. The method is really up to you. Taoist meditation is a path, with as many methods as there are martial arts moves (hint: there’s not very many).
Once you can use your intuition (which you may already be able to do to an extent), these next things become possible.
Once you get to the level where you can feel Chi, move your body and chi at the same time. Use your moving body to move your chi. Normal ChiGung is equivalent to fast, heavy breathing. Moving your body and chi at the same time is equivalent to slow, controlled breathing.
Step five is to “open” spaces in your body that feel closed. This feels like expanding the capacity of a body tissue. Most importantly, open your joints, to allow proper fluid movement. This should simultaneously improve your posture.
Step six is to “tonify” (acupuncture word), which feels like re-invigorating atrophied tissue (not that I’ve ever had atrophied tissue).
The next step requires psychic awareness (direct awareness of intuition), and I’m not willing to explain it without room for sufficient detail (I am working on a way to explain it properly). The step after that happens on the deepest layer, and I’m not willing to explain that without going into extreme detail of everything before it (which I am working on). I have been told there is a step after that, but I have no idea what it is.
I hope I’m not too late to give this advice. I hope this advice is helpful or useful in some way. I hope everything is at least vaguely understandable. If you, or anyone else, chooses to follow the path of meditation, good luck. It takes the resolution to succeed at impossible tasks, with equal rewards.
Wasn’t visiting LessWrong with my profile for a long while.
Thank you for the detailed steps.
I suspect the down-vote is for the Taoist references where some LW’ers are heavily against references to Chi since they haven’t found substantial evidence for its existence.
For me, your post is a thumbs up: I appreciate the applicability of what you wrote.
Thank you!