Maddie

I very much agree. I actually had done some vipassana in the past but didn't care for it much. I mostly had been doing Samatha.

To address this point I have been relying more on my TCM knowledge lately for a lot of things in lew of the absence of meditation.

How does one go about doing this in practice?

Humor is my middle name. So there are mantras that have a specific function to improve karma by working out the bad and increasing the good such as the Zhunti mantra for one example. With meditation when the mind quiets down then one becomes more aware of their sankhara's in the fourth skandha. The fourth skandha of volition is where karma is made and where it is stored. Become aware of your sankhara's in the fourth skanda and you begin to process them. This is how meditation deals with karma.

I realize the timeline can get a bit blurry, but the relationship issue is long in the past. My situation with money seems rather optimistic, so again it does not seem related to my current situation. I noticed it got worse when quarantine first began and I had a lot more free time to meditate, and as an introvert I loved quarantine. The point being I had nothing else going on at all and things got way worse.

This is precisely why I switched methods. From energy to mind that is. *edit: not saying the energy methods are bad or inferior, but what my own experience was.

Yes this is always the case. I've come to view them not as "more resistant to change" but there is a LOT more karma/conditioning there to work with. So not so much a qualitative issue, but quantitative.

It's nice that some "get it". I think since my approach is more mind based than energy based, many of energy practice people don't always quite understand.

It's definitely gone on way longer than I ever thought it would. I had no idea there could be so much in one person. I have noticed much has changed for all my trouble, but then more things continue to surprise me.

Two main ways. Meditation (which I don't really do now) Certain Mantras I notice the unusual thoughts tend to follow when doing much of either of these.

I have noticed that when I work on karma more, this happens more.

I get that too, but what if the thoughts that come up are out of no where and totally out of character?

Something that I've noticed is that often after a lot of meditation or karma clearing mantras my thoughts get inexplicably kinky :-/

I just googled "meditation" and this was the image at the top of the list.

Very good. You make several good points. I actually got into this originally because I had been through a lot of traumatic stuff and was currently (at the time) in a bad relationship. I couldn't afford therapy and to me meditation seemed like a relaxation technique since most of the posters showed some girl on a beach sitting cross legged and looking relaxed. The things you mentioned are things I have been evaluating and are evaluating largely for the reasons you mentioned. *edit: This also causes me to understand the mostly merit based aspect of most popular religion. Most people can't handle cultivation.

Well I'm still glad you answered lol. I would be curious for you to elaborate on that a bit. Is this something you've experienced as well?

I have one for you now. After meditating do you find yourself sometimes bombarded with intrusive unpleasant thoughts that seem very out of character?

Something I am curious about that is related I suppose is how does one tell if someone casts a spell on them? I ask because this is not my field of expertise.

I wonder if this had anything to do with why Alexander the great's men didn't want to go any further once they got to India. Yes I know they had been campaigning for a long time and had been away from home for a long time also, but perhaps this was a contributing factor?

I find this one helps reduce desire.

They don't tend to encourage meditation? is that correct? Don't they pretty much only chant Nam Myoho.... or is that an over simplification?

Yes very much so to the paradigm question, I feel like everything I thought was my self or my narrative from the past is changing. When I am off I tend to nap a lot lately. As far as dreams go, I find that lately I have had a lot more dreams about things way in the past than usual.

Yes, and in addition being very sleepy.

There are various breathing methods. Dr. Yang of YMAA has several good books about this for example.

I've heard about scholar or Confucian qigong but never what it is, what it's done for or how to do it? Is anyone familiar with this?