I agree Astreja, I think the only time we are "alive" is in the awareness of the moment.

Meditation helps us to control our brain activity so our awareness can be brought into the now.

The only time we experience suffereing is when are thoughts are in the past or in the future. Think about that one : )

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May your awareness be perfection

Meditation for me as either a way to completely clear your thoughts, or focus your thought... no plural. I first started trying to meditate when i was about 10 years old. It was for a different reason... it was because my cousins and i watched a movie about ninjas.

In one scene, the ninja was meditating and someone tried to attack him. He sensed the person and avoided his attacks. Being the kids we were, we thought it was cool and decided to try it. Sure enough... it worked. We would take turns trying to meditate by sitting down, close our eyes, and clearing our minds of any thoughts. My cousin would try to attack me from behind and sure enough, without thinking or even knowing what i was doing, i turned around to avoid his attack. That..... was.... COOOOl....

Then as i got older, i learned that meditating didnt have to be about completely freeing your mind of thoughts. It could be just focusing on a single thought. One day i was in my living room thinking long and hard about a pop culture quiz. My cousin came into the living room without me knowing, and tried to throw a tennis ball at my back. All of a sudden, as if it were reflex, i turned around to catch it. It was weird.

Another example was when i was in college, my biochem professor gave us a calculus problem to work on. I remember going to my next class thinking about the problem. As i was walking down a hall, i didnt see that one of my friends was walking towards me. I wasnt aware because i so busy thinking of a solution to the problem. Then as he came near me, he went to go punch me on the shoulder. I, unknowingly, threw my hand in the air to catch his fist, and i just kept walking. I didnt even realize/remember what happened until i saw my friend on my break and he told me what happened.

I know all the examples i used have some sort of violence involved , but the point is, when you clear your thoughts, or focus your mind on a thought, you become "one" with the environment as they say. It opens you to the flow of energy which we call life. There's just this unexplainable awareness.

I believe in this too. I always tell my gf that i love to take my time when im performing a task [like cleaning for example] because it let's me meditate. I feel good afterwards.

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[belief is NOT the same as TRUTH]

Most people think that they loose control when they are under hypnosis and can't hear anything that is going on around them. Once while putting my partner under, I played soft music in the background. After the session he asked me why I turned up the music during the session. But I didn't, the volume stayed the same the whole time. In hypnosis and also meditation the mind becomes still and are sense become more alert to that which is happening around us.

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May your awareness be perfection

That has interesting implications, Vivamis. Is the degree of suffering we experience also time-related?

For example, I can see the following conditions intensifying one's suffering:

- Duration of an event: An unpleasant thing often becomes more unpleasant the longer it persists; however, we can also become inured to it and cease reacting.

- Volume of thoughts regarding a particular incident or stimulus: The more often we dwell upon something, the more it tends to hurt.

- Distance between a remembered or anticipated event and the present moment: For this one, it seems to be an inverse correlation. Memories fade, as does the initial shock of an expected or imagined event.

Thoughts?

Hey Astreja,
By the way, beautiful name : )

Here my thoughts on:
Is the degree of suffering we experience also time-related?

Yes and No.
What stands out to me, is the question does suffering really exist? Or do we have a collective belief in suffering and therefore experience it?

When I grew up I used to fear dieing and I feared loosing my Mother and my siblings. I was terrified and had often nightmares. Today I no longer fear death, I have adapted a different belief that death does not exist. I taught my kids that death does not exists and they too don't experience the fear of it.

If I had not adapted a different belief, I might still be suffering.

Another thought that comes to me is of a woman that came to me for a healing meditation. She used a crutch and she was in much pain. I walked her through a healing meditation where she was able to relax and let go of the belief in being ill. She got up after the meditation and I asked her how she felt and she said fine, no pain, but as she left she used her crutch to stand up.

I think that even if we were to realize that suffering only exists in our mind, we have a harder time letting go of the habbits we have required based on the belief in suffering.

Is it not "normal" to grief after our loved one dies? Yet not in every country is death seen as something "bad". Some celebrate it and all eyes stay dry. Are these people delusional (love that word) or are they simply lacking the belief and memory of death being something "bad".

How much belief in suffering is actually programmed in our subconscious mind? What if I told you that suffering all together did not exists and could only be experienced if you had a belief in suffering.

Time does not really exists. Everything is happening right now, in this moment. If you remember in this moment a situation of the past that you have experinced as painful, you can pull that memory up and experience the same degree of pain, should you however dwell on it constatly, it might have never left you. If you have other feeling of Joy inbetween you have replaced a part of that belief and the next time you try to bring upo that memory, it will be harder to do and the suffering will be less painful.
Just my thoughts : )

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May your awareness be perfection

Ahh, that makes sense. Would it be accurate to say that dwelling on suffering tends to intensify its "real"-ness in our minds?

Giving attention to a thought can intensify the feeling associated with it. When dwelling on it you are looking for more things to associate that feeling with. Yet, if you took your attention away from that thought, you are out of suffering. It's that easy and simple. You can't be experiencing suffering unless you give attention to ia thought and can make an association with it.

That is why we can eliminate pain under hypnosis. Once that part of our memory is gone or blocked, the association with it disappears. Example: painless child birth or walking on hot coal. I was able to endure child birth pain without medication by focusing my attention on something else.

I don't believe in "laws" outside of ourselves, I believe that we create everything we experience through our claim of being (I AM). I think suffering is a belief and a concept we have associated great pain with, what ever that means to each individual.

When my brother died, I went into shock. I could not deal with it. I did not know how to act in great loss. I had never experienced someone close to me dieing before. I suffered to that degree that I was able to associate death with suffering. I had heard about loss from others and saw them suffering. I remember them crying and I remember all signs of experiencing pain and loss. That is how I acted too. I copied the behavior of others.

From the data base of our own minds will pull this memory. Of course this happens so fast that we are not aware of it. The subconscious mind is like a computer. Everything we have ever seen, heard and experienced and what we believe we have learned from that experience is programmed in this computer. If the subconscious mind recognizes a pattern it forms a belief, now without "thinking" about it, the computer runs it's program and creates our experience.

Hypnosis by passes the consciousmind and goes straight to the sub consciousmind and reprograms it. The same with affirmations or denials. I don't think this is the most effective way to end suffering. A more sufficient way would be to errase beliefs all together by replacing them with a belief that overrides them all : The Truth.

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May your awareness be perfection

The art of meditation is to empty the mind and have no thought. Most people have so much chatter going on, random thoughts that are uncontrolled. Many if not most of these thoughts are fear based and cause stress and anxiety.

The first step in getting to the no thought, is to gain control over thought. Meditation offers this opportunity by focusing our attention on 1 thing instead of many. What most people don't know is that being in the now, being in the moment or present, our attention is focused on that which is in front of us. This can be washing the dishes, gardening, focusing on breathing or staring at something. The goal is to put your attention on the task in front of you and bringing your attention back onto what is in front of you. Not will fully : ) but gently.

For those that suffer of abssesive thoughts I would suggest to put a time of maybe 20 minutes every day aside for your self. In these 20 minutes focus your attention on 1 thing. Try to use the same time to make it a habit, this is investing into yourself : )

Once control over thoughts is accomplished try to let go of thought. It is easier to get rid of one thought, then many thoughts. To do this simply say: be still. You might only be able to take no thought for a very short time. Maybe just a second, but that's o.k. the more you practice the easier it gets.

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May your awareness be perfection

That's one of the best explanations of meditation (and the value of it) I've heard yet, V! Thanks for that. Since I'm a bit OC myself, it's both a challenge and a necessity. This thread is an encouragement to me and I would think it would be to others. Your thoughts and suggestions are very accessible to any/every person.

Thank you Amy : )

There are many different techniques of meditation "out there". I find the ones that do not need additional tools, such as incents, candles, sounds and so on, the best. One thing everyone has and always has "with them" is breathing. Because of this meditation can be done while waiting in line even with your eyes open : )

As I stated in the previous post, the goal is to focus one's attention on 1 thing. When we use breathing, we focus our attention on breathing in and out. Visualize when you inhale that the air is gathering at one center point within you, let's say the stomach area. See the air you breath in gathering together at this point. When you exhale, see the air expand through out your body.

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May your awareness be perfection