so yea ... planning to do that now... but how does it work? what even is meditating? how long to do it? (or be it? and what is it? 🤔) and when they say needs to be daily do they like literally mean daily?
also anyone got the full episode of this one? 🥺 (love the guy, but cannot afford patreon right now)
thanks, love you all 🥰
thank you for your and everyones reply, really appreciate it! 🥰
i tried different meditating things over the last few days and really seem to struggle with the "focus on the breathing" aspect of it. if i focus too much (which is not a lot) i start to feel uncomfortable and eventually forget how to breathe, which leads to the sensation of not getting enough oxygen. even after stopping, it takes me like 10 minutes to not think about breathing anymore to be able to breathe normally again.
anyway, i got some of those baoding balls, which are super nice. i can better focus on the breathing somehow, as i get a bit distracted from it. but even with them, i cannot really sit quiet more than 5 minutes, because of all the thinking and impatience.
i get all kinds of random anxiety inducing thoughts throughout the day. they can circle or focus about hurtful things or seemingly (very mild, so not really; no trauma whatsoever, worst that can happen is a panic attack) existential threats, but are mostly about random stupid shit. just by being aware of those thoughts, as in oh look, thought A is coming, it will probably lead to emotions X and Y, should i ride along with it right now? i am able to stop ~80% of the shit that i could never stop before. kinda crazy!
also interesting is, that i can break actual hurtful/threatening thought spirals, but not random thoughts that have zero impact on my life. *like whats up with that elizondo guy, does the cia want me to believe aliens are real now? and do people really watch this hasan guy? *its weird how much those 2 questions alone will enter my mind again and again and again and again and refuse like crazy to leave, while i can somehow – with a simple 2-second choice – just not engage with personally deeply depressing or real-life actual frightening things.
crazy stuff. super glad, i finally got into it.
ps. what do you mean with
for my ethical practice idk, i was really "anti everything spiritual" the last 15 or so years. But my best friend got into all that, and then when I listened to this episode of refleft, it set off the whole thought process (and the one linked in the post made me decide to really start it). but yea, new to all of it.
Hey sorry for the late reply, I hope everything is still going well. I’m happy to hear that there is some benefit you’ve seen with meditation already. Meditation is a lifelong journey (if you’ll forgive my corniness lol) and it can also come in phases. In my life so far, I’ve had periods where I stop meditation completely and then come back to it when I feel like I need it. It would be better to be consistent and as one’s discipline grows it can/should be. But I’ve heard that for many people they have these “waves” in their life. Breht actually discusses it in the revleft episode you mentioned! That was actually originally posted on the Red Menace podcast with Alyson. They actually have a part II of their discussion: On Mysticism II: Enlightenment, Non-Duality, & Perennialism and I wanted to let you know of it. It’s an interesting episode as it talks about mysticism from a Buddhist (Breht) and Abrahamic (Alyson) perspective.
In fact revleft has a lot of episodes about meditation and mystical traditions across various religions. I’ll spam you with a few:
Buddhist Philosophy: The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path
Buddhist Enlightenment: Impermanence, No Self, and the Dark Night of the Soul
Awakening from the Dream of Separateness
Meditation, Materialism, and Marxism
On Meditation (Patreon Teaser)
[UNLOCKED] Buddhist Perspectives: Self-Immolation and Political Struggle
Is Marxism just Religion by Another Name?
Religion and Marxism: Thinking Through the Human Condition
Approaching Organizing and Spirituality w/ Rev Left Radio
Contemplative Practice and Political Struggle
St. Francis of Assisi: Patron Saint of Ecology & Brother to All Creation
Early Christianity: Psychedelics, Ancient Greece, and the Emerging Church
Sufism: Islamic Mysticism and the Annihilation of Self in God
I know what you mean by being ‘anti everything spiritual’. I was definitely like that, but I was still in to philosophy as I have wanted to seek solutions to the emotional problems I feel I’ve had my whole life. I found Buddhsim, but my anti-spirituality forced me to adopt a secular Buddhism. Then later I was interested in Lacan, existentialism, etc.. I then came back to Buddhism on a more spiritual level through realizing that there’s a lot of overlap between Buddhism and the concepts in Lacan (and other psychoanalysts) of ‘lack’, ‘The Real’, etc. It wouldn’t do any good to explain it, but I found a way to ‘make sense’ of the mysticism in a way that wasn’t too antithetical to my materialist worldview. In fact, I’d also argue that there is a lot in common between the metaphysics of Buddhism (or other traditions like Daosim) and Dialectical Materialism.
What really set this off for me was reading about the similarities between Tiantai Buddhism and Zizek’s psychoanalytic philosophy despite the latter’s criticism of Buddhsim Is Žižek a Mahāyāna Buddhist? śūnyatā and li v Žižek's materialism. The text was my introduction to Tiantai Buddhism, which actually opened me up to mystical ideas in a context I was already comfortable with. Unfortunately, Zizek is very much a western chauvinist and has become more and more cringe over the years.
Regarding my comment about meditation taking you to dark places if one’s not careful, Breht actually talks about that in the above episode I linked. Essentially, though, meditation is part of a mystic or, if you can stomach the word, sprititual practice. Certain spiritual truths may emerge when doing meditation. And if you don’t have the context or community to help you may find that mediation can worsen some existential crises or reintroduce trauma that you have suppressed. Imagine your mind as a pool of rough and murky water. Meditation helps still the waves so the murk can settle. When that happens you can see much further into the pool, but you may see things you aren’t ready for. That probably sounds cliche, but I think there is some truth to it. And Breh talks about how people who have been thrusted into intense meditation retreats can have trauma from it. If you are just meditating for 5 to 30 minutes a day, though, I don’t think you have to worry about psychotic breaks or anything. But, I wanted to mention this because meditation is part of a spiritual practice. Eventually, some truths will come out of it.
Another reason that it can be dangerous is that there are “gurus” and teachers who have done a lot of meditation. They probably have seen or felt certain truths on life, but they still end up acting unethically. They abuse their position and act ego-ically. Their meditation can give them greater control of some parts of their ‘selves’, but without an ethical practice they abuse what they’ve gained. Once again, meditation is just one part of a spiritual practice. Ethics must be part of it too. Some will say that by doing meditation ethical practice naturally follows, others disagree.
I hope you continue to do well, and best of luck!!
thank you so much. i will look at everything and continue. really apreciate it and wish you all the best too! ❤️❤️❤️