{"id":3741,"date":"2019-06-02T04:58:17","date_gmt":"2019-06-02T04:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/02\/the-trick-in-meditation\/"},"modified":"2019-06-02T04:58:17","modified_gmt":"2019-06-02T04:58:17","slug":"the-trick-in-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/02\/the-trick-in-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trick in Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a good session on the black mat this morning from 2:55 to 3:35  ante meridian. When I went to the mat, I was riding high on the wild horse of the mind, and of course enjoying the ride as I always do.   But I reined in the beast within five minutes or so and slipped into one of the antechambers of quiescence where thoughts persist but at a slower pace and of a nobler sort. For example, "Who is thinking these thoughts?" "I am thinking these thoughts." "Who am I?" And then the thought arose: to identify the thinker of thoughts is to objectify that which, as the thinker of thoughts, cannot be objectified. Of course, THAT is just another thought: it is the thought of the irreducibly subjective, and thus nonobjectifiable ultimate subject of thinking. Just another bloody thought! And so still at a remove from the Source of thoughts. But then I slipped a little deeper down as these thoughts vanished. Next thing I knew I caught myself falling over. I had fallen asleep. This was about forty minutes into the session. And that brings me to my point.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trick in meditation is to achieve cessation of all thoughts while remaining fully alert.  So you need to do two things: rein in the wild horse of the mind, and then abide in full alertness in the resultant mental quiet. <\/span><\/p>\n

But this is only the first stage in meditation proper.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a good session on the black mat this morning from 2:55 to 3:35  ante meridian. When I went to the mat, I was riding high on the wild horse of the mind, and of course enjoying the ride as I always do.   But I reined in the beast within five minutes or so … Continue reading “The Trick in Meditation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}