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Hello again, While studying, I came across quite a few different methods of achieving inner silence, quieting the mind, a prerequisite to most all practices, whether East or West, and crossing many cultural boundaries. The two basics I have reduced to pinpointing and flooding. An example of pinpointing is to focus on one mantra, a single sound, reducing everything in your concentration to a single point. An example of flooding would be the form of walking while holding a particular hand gesture that is not normal, and not focusing on anything in particular, but keeping the eyes open and using peripherial vision to let all sights and sounds around you flood your senses. As you can imagine, you can certainly come up with many variations of this same thing, and probably new ones that I have not logged. What I can say about it, is that when you have silence, sound can easily let you know, because it changes radically and in my opinion, faster than any other sense factor for me. What forms of silence for meditation have you used? How well do they work for you? How many use the form of rolling the eyes up in the head? Particular ways of sitting? Holding the hands in a particular fashion?

Perennial Philosophy/Perennial Technique: Spiritual Thesaurus (copied from a different thread I started, as it seemed worthy of it's own) My vocabulary of terms and practices is pretty much solely western or Indian/Sankrit/Yoga/Tantra, etc. Along those lines, does anyone know of any book, pdf or website (preferably an all in one source) that serves as a sort of spiritual thesaurus between the different traditions/geographical locations? Or a spreadsheet/chart? I believe/know there is a perennial philosophy (Truth is Truth, right?) and like to think that there's a perennial practice as well (hence the similarities between Self Inquiry/Philosophy systems [Jnana, Zen, Buddhism, Advaita, Gnosis, Sufism] and energy work systems [Yoga, Tantra, Neidan, Taoist, Tibetan, Christian Kabbalah, Kabbalah, Dhikr etc; humans are all built the same, right?]). If no such document exists then perhaps this would be an interesting project to take up on here/and through other forums. Part of me that likes to think of universal theory/practice is a bit apprehensive about starting on a new route and coming across potential clashes/dissonances throughout traditions, but I guess this is just ego attachment/fear.

Well, time to start my 1st thread. It feels so exciting! Recently, I've been dedicating myself to experiment various types of meditation. I started with this one from , which focused on being able to direct attention to the present moment. After starting to practice Aikido, I got in touch with Hara meditation by doing the Misogi rites of purification before the training. By doing that, I started to realize how meditation can be used to conduct energy with awareness. Once learning this, I started to search about it, and stumbled a lot on Qi Gong, Tai Chi, as well as other forms of meditation that worked to unblock energy fluxes throughout the body, broading the energy-conduction topic. So, for not being too widespread, I've been using the Misogi Hara meditation before the Aikido training, and in every day, I've been applying this Wim Hof Meditation -- a cross-pratice between Tummo and Pranayama -- mainly to improve my health condition (the resistance to cold temperature, as stated in the article, is a small plus IMO). However, I browsed through some articles here and saw people talking about practices of Qi Gong or Tai Chi to attain the same results. I'd like to ask: should I keep applying this meditation AND start Qi Gong or Tai Chi? What are your thoughts on these kind of meditations? Thanks a lot!

Here is a fascinating little book which actually contains instructions on the Bon practice of Dzogchen. The Stages of A-Khrid Meditation It is a fascinating read, especially when you realize the purpose of the gazing and dissolving the mind, and how to stay in the natural state. It also contains some interesting instructions on why Bon followers sometimes act like crazy people... it just a method of incorporating realization into every day activities.. Nice recap of the progression of practice.. TI