My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger.
I was raised Presbyterian, but I'm not really going to church. I think the experience in meditation is pretty much where it's at for me.
Meditation is about getting to a place where you're approaching things in a more calm, centering place rather than allowing yourself to get caught up in it.
I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.
People think meditation is a huge undertaking. Don't think of it like that.
One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.
At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn't exist except as a part of everything.
Meditation is a vital practice to access conscious contact with your highest self.
I don't meditate in any formal way, but I often lie in bed or find myself in nature and enter into that state of quiet where I get images, feelings, or melodies.
I steer clear of any novel that gets billed as a 'meditation.'