{"id":9037,"date":"2013-01-26T05:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T05:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/01\/26\/meditation-how-long-and-what-to-expect\/"},"modified":"2013-01-26T05:43:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T05:43:00","slug":"meditation-how-long-and-what-to-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/01\/26\/meditation-how-long-and-what-to-expect\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditation: How Long and What to Expect"},"content":{"rendered":"

A student from Northern Ireland writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nI've recently been contemplating practising meditation. I decided to look up what you had to say on the subject, and I was happy to discover the "how to meditate"<\/a> post. I was just wondering though, how long should a person meditate, and what should a first timer like myself expect to think or feel during the first few meditations?
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How long? Between 15 and 30 minutes at first, working up gradually to an hour or more. <\/span>What to expect?  Not much at first.  Mind control is extremely difficult and our minds are mostly out of control serving up an endless parade of  pointless memories, useless worries, and negative thoughts of all sorts.  In the beginning meditation is mostly hard work.  So you can expect to work hard at first for meager results.  <\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
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At a deeper level, expectation and striving to accomplish something are out of place.  Meditation is an interior listening that can occur only when the discursive mind with its thoughts, judgements, intentions, expectations, and the like has been silenced.  Meditation is not an inner discourse but an inner listening.<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
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Of course, there is a bit of a paradox here: at first one must intend resolutely to take up this practice, one must work at it every morning with no exceptions, one must strive to quiet the mind — but all in quest of an effortless abiding in mental quiet wherein there is no intending, working, or striving.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Logic greatly aids, though  is not necessary for, disciplined thinking<\/em>.  Meditation greatly aids, though is not necessary for, disciplined non-thinking<\/em>.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Meditation is a battle against the mind's centrifugal tendency.  In virtue of its intentionality, mind is ever in flight from its center, so much so that some have denied that there is a center or a self.  The aim of meditation is centering.  To switch metaphors, the aim is to swim upstream to the thought-free source of thoughts.  Compare Emerson<\/a>: "Man is a stream whose source is hidden."  Arrival at that hidden source is the ultimate goal of meditation.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Swimming upstream against a powerful current is not easy and for some impossible. So this is a good metaphor of the difficulty of meditation.  The more extroverted you are, the more difficult it will be. <\/span>Why engage in this hard work?  Either you sense that your surface self has a depth dimension that calls to you or you don't. If you do, then this is the way to explore it.<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
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Meditation reduced to three steps:  <\/span><\/p>\n
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First, drive out all useless thoughts.  Then get rid of all useful but worldly thoughts.  Finally, achieve the cessation of all thoughts, including spiritual ones.  Now you are at the threshhold of meditation proper.  Unfortunately, a lifetime of work may not suffice to complete even these baby steps.  You may not even make it to the threshhold.  But if you can achieve even the first step, you will have done yourself a world of good.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea behind Step One is to cultivate the ability to suppress, at will<\/em>, every useless, negative, weakening thought as soon as it arises.  Not easy!<\/span><\/p>\n

Meditation won't bear fruits unless one lives in a way that is compatible with it and its goals.  So a certain amount of withdrawal from the world is needed.  One needs to 'unplug.'<\/span><\/p>\n

The attainment of mental quiet is a very high and choice-worthy goal of human striving.  Anything that scatters or dis-tracts (literally: pulls apart) the mind makes it impossible to attain mental quiet as well as such lower attainments as ordinary concentration.  Now the mass media have the tendency to scatter and distract.  Therefore, if you value the attainment of mental quiet and such cognate states as tranquillitas animi<\/em>, ataraxia<\/a>, peace of mind, samadhi<\/em>, concentration, 'personal presence,' etc., then you are well-advised to limit consumption of media dreck and cultivate the disciplines that lead to these states.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student from Northern Ireland writes, I've recently been contemplating practising meditation. I decided to look up what you had to say on the subject, and I was happy to discover the "how to meditate" post. I was just wondering though, how long should a person meditate, and what should a first timer like myself … Continue reading “Meditation: How Long and What to Expect”<\/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":[105,41,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation","category-mysticism","category-spiritual-exercises"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9037","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=9037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}