How does meditation work?

Meditation works by two ways. First you learn a daily method of meditating. Can you learn to reflect on it. It’s all based on the idea that you can observe what your mind is doing and see what it’s doing well and you can see what it’s doing to make mistakes, Miss perceiving things.

If you read lots of books on meditation, you’ll see a common theme. It’s hard for us to see what our mind is doing. We are using our mind to see our mind, and we are too close to everything to see, what is in our mind. If you put your nose on a painting and asked, what was the artist thinking? It would be hard to see what was going on. You’d see what was in the couple square inches in front of your eyes. But you wouldn’t see the big picture. What about what’s going on 6 inches or a foot away, or two or three or 10 feet away? And what about the whole process that went into the painting? What kind of paint was used. What kind of brunch? What are different colors and styles and brushstrokes? And what is it look like up close and far away? These in so many other questions, you would have to answer to see what’s going on in that painting as you look at it, as you have an experience with it.

With our mind. Our mind is constantly making impressions. Some correct good breath! Some are incorrect. Oh no, that means we are making the wrong interpretation, wrong, wrong, wrong conclusion, and then perhaps making wrong decisions as result, and getting even more disturbing and distressing experiences, I’ll be because of in accurate perceptions.

In the end, we have to admit, our mind was made in the Stone Age. Over millions of years, developed a habit of gaining impressions from the five senses and drawing, quick conclusions, for better or wars, driven by the need to survive from potentially life-threatening situations. Like a lion or bear attacking you in the night. Those who had quick reflexes And reacted appropriately, saved themselves and their family from a horror death. The truth is, that the most common predator of people was people. But the mind had to sort through information from interaction with other people. Were they lying? Were they deceptive? Were they acting nice in order to later attack us?even people within my own tribe or nation, were they trying to deceive me? Our brain evolved The event ability to sense the underlying, emotional or social motivation of what people said, based on their nonverbal behavior. They may have avoided iContact when they said oh it’s so good to meet you. And that meant my tribe is waiting over the hill to come and kill everybody in your village so they can harvest your fields And your territory. And the survivors were those who were not easily warm in those interactions.

So our brains have an automatic pessimistic attitude. When everything looks good, we tend to be suspicious. Do these other people have ulterior motives? If the sun is shining, does that mean a storm is on its way? And so there is a pushing our brain, competition, between thoughts that hope for the best, and those that anticipate the worst. This is what I called in Yang optimism and pessimism.

Now, I will say right off that I am an optimist. But cautious optimist. Someone who isn’t overly optimistic is that themselves up for a disappointment after disappointment. Their tile will go flat but they’ll buy a tire from the same company that sold them a bad one and it will go flat and a year and they will wonder what happened? To anticipate what problems might be and be ready for them. It’s important to anticipate. Motive. Maybe that tire shop is selling me bad tires in order to Make more profits, although their customers and employees don’t know it.

To be a cautious optimist. Anticipating problems, so you are ready for them, but still hopeful about the future and your prospects for making progress, because you don’t hope for that then nothing else is gonna happen.

That being said, let’s look at meditation. There are many schools of thought. High schools of thought. I mean a school is where they have one at principal, and that is the focus for their teaching. They may or may not say that out the outset. Again, there are many schools of meditation. Let’s look at some of them. And of course let the buyer beware. Once you buy into School, you may think it’s the best. But it may make you bitter cynical, and give up on your life. It may calm your anxiety, but leave you hopeless about the future. Or it may leave you hopeful about the future, but leave you with no tools to do anything good about it.

One School says you are nothing different than a flower or any animal. You will live and die. Except it. And that means don’t hope for anything. You’re gonna live, you’re gonna die, and there’s nothing much you can do about it. And when you die, you’re gonna rot and go into the dirt. And when you accept that you’re going to have peace of mind. You’re a worthless piece of dirt. And if that’s the truth, OK, better excepting it, right? If you don’t accept it, then you’re spending your whole life saying oh I think I’m worth something and you’re not and then you’re making all kinds of stress and “Shakespeare making Muff much to do about Muff nothing.

There are many other schools, possibly hundreds. If they don’t announce their underlying motivation then ask yourself why are they not doing that? Are they pitching me a sales pitch?

I might say one school or another school that I prefer. But does that work for you? You’re an individual. You have an individual history. You were born somewhere and you corrupt somewhere. Your parents said some kind of influence and now you’re out of school and working. You have hopes and dreams. If you wanna have a family and get married and have children. Maybe you want to work and start a business and contribute to the progress in this world by your individual progress, and the progress of your family. By that I mean you hope your children go to school and learn all kinds of things, and develop hopes and passions of their own. You hope they have individual Dreams that they start pursuing in school,. Once they graduate from school and get on their own, you hope that they do what you did. Come up with their own hopes and dreams, and make the most of their potential and feel good about it.

Well, keeping that in mind, how did these other schools match up for what your Hope and Green are? How do these other match up with your and it’s values? Your values are important. There are an integral part of you. You’re not just some DNA spinning out protein. You’re human being. You’re an individual. You have your own thoughts about even your own thoughts.

But they read about one school of meditation and they say just be in the present moment. That’s it. Well, what if you don’t like to be in my present moment, and you have hopes and dreams for things to be different than they are in the present moment? But if you value health and happiness, and there is a pandemic Sweeping near it, such as with COVID-19? Do you want things to be different than they are. Do you want to be vaccinated and protected the bet against this courage of humanity. Read about thousands of people dying from the disease. You don’t want a school of thought that says just accept the present moment. The present momently Really awful right now.

Do you want school of thought that accepts how things are, but also accepts that you have an individual, and your culture, your country, and make progress fighting stages of humanity. Do you want progress in both economic, prosperity and improvements in health and human rights. Then look for school of thought that advocates that.

I recently read a document from my meditation book. It reported to be quoting an expert. It said one day you will die. Look at other people who die. We all die. In fact, we see some people are dead, and their bodies are, black and bloated. Eventually a lot and fall into the Earth. Except that. If you don’t accept that, that’s your fate, you are just buying into an illusion of the way things are. We will all die. We will all rot.. Any thought to the contrary is just fighting the way things are and you are just mindlessly stressing yourself out. Hoping that reality is something different.

So this is an example of meditation from a cynical, nihilistic point of view. Cynicism and nihilism advocate that there is no progress. No individual can “go forward“ in their life. We are all born at one point and diet one point, and nobody’s going anywhere. We are just Pointless, meaningless, living things, living a while and dissolving into the unthink and not living molecules on the earth. We are just an interesting rearrangement of those molecules that are on the periodic table of elements.

I’m not making this up. There are many, profound and popular leaders in the field of meditation and also in fields of philosophy adopt this point of view. Don’t believe them. Maybe you are reading this at your phone. Or a book. Or a tablet or laptop or desktop computer. Either all evidences of progress with humanity. There is a much more rapid exchange of information on issues, such as what I’ve discussed. More than ever before people are becoming aware of different points of view on a certain topic, and that they have many many different choices at their disposal. They don’t have to believe what I say. They don’t have to believe what 100 other people say. They can reconfigure Different points of view and come up with their own points of view. That is the power of the human imagination. That’s the power of your own unique DNA.

Your brain has 2 million times more than all the 250 million connections in your brain, And that’s a lot. Computing power. What you do with your business, I’m just letting you know, your potential to think, to ponder, to consider many, many, different points of view, and come up with the one that works for you, uniquely, or your unique values, hopes, dreams, life experiences, and expectations.

The bottom line is the amazing complexity of the brain give you the capacity of who will. You can think how you wanna think. You can doubt and disbelief everything I’ve said so far and later, except some, and doubt, others, based on what helped you for your, personal goals. Maybe you want to graduate from high school and get a certificate in something, and later, get a job somewhere and get better wages, so you can, overtime rent apartment that allows you one day to get married, and have children. Good for you! You show your hopes and dreams. Now let meditation serve you. You should not serve the ideas of a certain school of thought of meditation. Why? How can I say that? Because you’re thinking person. You’re free to think how you wanna think. You’re free to believe how you wanna believe. of course I don’t have to tell you that. You already know that. So shop around. Fire beware. Lots of people make all kinds of claims, look at the claims that work. What do online reviewers say? What are the claims of the writers of a certain point of view? Do they go on to back up results with what they do or do they just collect your money from your credit card? This happens all the time.

How much did it cost you to read all this? Nothing. Nothing is your time and energy which is considerable and so I am respecting that.

So let’s get onto the kind of meditation works for you. It’s the method that you can do. When do you have free time? It’s a method that works for you. What are your hopes and dreams? What kind of meditation will help you realize them. And what are your mental health needs? Are you achy or depressed? Do you need a meditation method that helps with that.

With all that in mind, look for a meditation method that you can use, that you have the time and energy for, and that helps support your mental health, not break it down. You wanna avoid methods that are expensive. Any methods involved expensive workshops that caused hundreds of dollars For a weekend. Or more.

So realize this. You are in the driver seat.

A good starting point is the three level meditation. I have described this elsewhere, including my book prescription for a Positivity.

This book is basically all the techniques that I’ve seen work for my patients to start making progress, gaining peace of mind, and making progress in school, and in their work and family life. I made a list of all those skills, and then bundled them under the topic of positivity. While that name positivity may seem trite and useless, it just means these are things that work for people to make progress in their life as they define it. They are the expert in what progress means for them.

All this sound very academic. You may be reading this and it sounds like blah blah blah blah from one more baldheaded college educated guy and meanwhile you’re struggling to get to sleep at night.

So I recommend the three level meditation. I also call it the three-step meditation. Because it takes three steps. Number one focus on a repeating shape that you see. You might be walking and see shapes of leaves or tree trunk or squares in the sidewalk or bricks on buildings or Irregular shapes of rocks on the road outside your residence. That is one level of focusing. Focus on the outline of those shapes. This is a very specific thing. Then on a second level focus on just the shades of one color in that shape. You’re asking your mind to do a very specific thing, and then a second thing at the same time. Focus on the shades of red in the bricks, gray in the squares of the sidewalk, grays, and browns in the rocks on your road, or it might be shades of brown and tree trunks, or shades of green and leaves or bundles of Pineneedles. You get the point. Focus on the shades of a color within that shape. Now you’re doing two very specific things. Your mind likes to be busy and now it has two things to be busy with. But it can do three things. So it has room to use words. With words we can introduce distress. We can with words hope things are different than the way they are, and overthink about them, take things, personal, get caught, and what I could I should, And just generally make a mess of our mental health. We need to use words during the day. Why do I say this? Am trying to teach you how to think about things in the real world. I’m not trying to teach you a formula. Do ANC and then you’ll be happy. I’m not trying to teach you an ideology. Here’s the right way to think. Ideas 12 and three. oh good. You’re approved and you’re a good person and you’re one of us. No that just means you can’t think. You just think like other people think. You still can’t think about reality as you experience it. So that’s what I’m trying to teach you, and through the ages, that is what great leaders and meditation and philosophy of taught people. How to think about their life experience in such a way that they make their life experience better.

My leader is techno. He is a Zen Buddhist monk from Vietnam, and I saw him at a conference in Estes Park, Colorado in the early 2000s. Several hundred people came to a conference and listen to him talk and I was one of them. He answered many questions with humility, he didn’t presume to be the expert, and, the offered his opinion, but then ask people to think for themselves. He consider that people were there to gain more peace of mind and progress in their personal and coach real life. He was very much in involved in the world. He was very much, well put it this way. Here’s a guy who may not even be 5 foot tall. He is sitting on a stage on a chair. He is wearing a brown robe. He’s bald and elderly. But when he talks, you could hear a pin drop. To myself, I said, he is a quiet lion. He speaks with understanding about the mind and the urges of humanity For peace in our mind, and peace in our world. He’s definitely involved in the struggles for human rides, and all those associated things. But he still is a humble man, coming here to help people find more peace and happiness in their life. It was a very impressive experience. He has, since moved back to his homeland in Vietnam, in the years of his life, which I respect.

Meanwhile, I go to work every day with my dog which is not nearly so well. I don’t know how to finish the sentence.

So we’re on the topic of how can meditation help you. It can help you if you focus on the question, I want meditation to help me. I don’t want to focus on just doing what somebody else says, and their expert theory and all the experience and all their followers on Facebook and Instagram And TikTok. I want a meditation technique that helps me today start to make progress in peace of mind.

So I recommend the three step meditation as described above. If you do it once it won’t do you any good. If you do it twice, same result. But if you make it part of your daily routine, you’ll find I have more peace of mind. my mindless regularly wanders to the past the future overthinking, comparing to what other people think. After several weeks, you’ll find even more peace of mind. After month, you’ll find a progress in your peace of mind with the same results as described above. This is similar to the effect of an anti-depressant that starts working after week and does more each week, helping a results level off, hopefully with a good mood. Feeling good about yourself and good about your prospects for making progress, week after week, for your future goals.

So try the three step meditation. But don’t stick with my technique. That’s pretty tiny minded. You’re an individual. You are as unique as can be. With almost one septillion connections in your brain, there are perhaps septillions of different connections possible and other peoples brain. You are unique as all the sand, as all the grains of sand in all the beaches, all the oceans, on earth. Throughout history. Basically your unique connections in your brain which are equal to tend to the 14th power have a possible difference of connections of 10 to the 28th power which exceeds all the different possible combinations of all the different grains of sand on all the different beaches, on all the different rivers and lakes and oceans, on earth, throughout earth, history. So you are very unique. Your precious beyond words. Your life is meaningful beyond all imagination. So take it as such, and be careful with who you believe in what you believe. Because you are a person of immense personal. What you say, and do affects other people and everyone Has a great meaning as an individual.

With all that being said. I am sorry I had to say so much. It’s late at my night, and my heart is heavy with all the suffering I see in the world from wars and conflicts. I’m sorry I had to say so much but it was on my heart. But likewise, I care about you and I want you to be happy. I want you to make progress on your hopes and dreams. And maybe you’ll change what your hopes and dreams are, and I hope you do, and light of your wisdom, your understanding, and your inner Inner experience. But I still want you to make progress every day and feel good about it. I know that it is valuable, meaningful, and worthwhile to the overall history of humanity. The collective progress of humanity can’t happen without individual progress. Your part of the progress. Just like little streams, flowing into a lake lift up the level of that lake, and the 10,000 boats in that lake. it may seem like a minimal input from each stream. And the input may occur over weeks and months and years. But in the end the boats are lifted up and are free to travel as they see fit. Such as the collective effect of so many individuals, pursuing their hopes and dreams. in the end, it lifts up the economy and psychology of those in their county, state, nation, and continent, and I say, the world. So every little bit of progress lift up everybody else’s progress. I hope you appreciate that. If you’re reaching for a goal, and it is to make progress in your life, not at the expense of other people, you are part of the light in this world. This is a mindfulness teaching. Mindfulness teaching is an observation about a truth. In the reality of our human experience. Because it’s mindfulness, it’s not a ideology teaching. Ideology teaching is this is the way it is no believe it. I’m gonna beat you up or maybe even kill you. With mindfulness I set for an idea and ask you to consider it and in your thinking, the pros and cons. Is this true? What are the facts for it? What are the facts against it? If I believe it, what happens then. What are the first second and third consequences of doing that? Were those and keeping with my individual and cultural values? Do those help me make progress on my hopes and dreams, my short and long-term goals? If so, then, embrace mindful of values, as you come upon them, test them, we doubt the bad ones, and embrace the ones that can help you live the life you imagine. And that is my hope for you.