Posted by alexandra_k on February 3, 2005, at 18:05:39
In reply to Re: Newsweek article on religion and the brain, posted by smokeymadison on February 1, 2005, at 16:17:03
Okay, a bit more...
When you are conscious you are always conscious of something.
Firstly I heard that you were supposed to 'empty your mind of everything - just think of nothing'. But you can't do that. That is impossible. As a matter of principle and so I struggled with something I couldn't understand. Then I was told that another way is to focus all of your attention on just one thing. The way your breathing feels or whatever. But just one thing. Other things will occur to you and I used to think that meant I wasn't doing it properly. But now I get that other things will occur to you but meditation is just about refocusing your attention back to that one thing over and over and over and not getting upset with yourself over it but just accepting it and letting the other stuff 'bubble up and pass' and continually refocus you attention back again. You can even observe yourself following that process. (Though that is focusing your attention in a different way). I guess that the better you get at it (in the sense of the more practiced you are and the more control you gain over your attentional processes) the more you are able to just focus on one thing.
If you manage to focus all of your attention completely on one thing then that one thing is one thing no longer - it is everything. And everything is now and now is eternal. There aren't any distinctions anymore.
But you are conscious of something. How breathing feels or whatever. I found meditation easiest with feeling to start with. How breathing feels. The sensation. The only way to 'stop' thinking is to focus all your attention on something else. In this case how my breathing feels. If I catch myself thinking I refocus on how my breathing feels.
It is awareness (consciousness) of one thing. Normally our mental states represent things in the world. We don't see our representational states as representational states. We don't see sense data we see objects in the world. But by ignoring the objects in the world, by focusing on our experience to the point where it becomes everything the self other distinction doesn't make sense.
Distinctions don't make sense because one thing is everything and that is all there is and all there is is now and now is eternal. And everything is eternal..
And call it what you will...
But it is something interesting that one can do with ones brain.
It is something one can do.
And people report feeling better for it, so that is good.
But IMO with respect to capturing 'the way things really are' all it is is one way to look at a tiny little aspect of reality.
I dunno :-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:449954
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050118/msgs/452602.html