What happens when you meditate?

[Athanor]

It is very interesting that in most forums about the side-effects or negative consequences of meditation nobody tells a word about the brain. So here I come to tell you some things.

 

Brain consists of billions of tiny never cells called neurons which create a neural net.

Meditation's effect on the neural network is very intense, in fact, it is just as intense as thoughts' effect. A thought, if regularly repeated (especially if emotionally supported) creates a synaptic path. A thought is actually stored between two nerve cells, which connect to each other with a synaptic gap (actually, many of these gaps hold a thought). These gaps are flexible: if a thought is repeated, the synapse gets stronger; if a thought is not repeated then the gap gets larger and eventually the synapse breaks.

Now, the thinking process relies on these gaps. It says: those thoughts which are stored in a stronger synapse will rise faster and will connect to more things (this is association), while those thoughts which are stored in a loosened synapse, or which doesn't have its own synapse (but it's stored through many synapses' complex system) will rise harder. This is how your memory can quickly give you something what you recently think about, but not so easy something what you don't think about for months. While you study, you know what you've learned. After a few years you forget many things...

 

Meditation is the mental state of non-thinking, which means that the time of meditation, if you are really not thinking, makes virtually every synapse loosen. So the main side effect of meditation is actually the main purpose of it. While you let the synaptic connections which hold your bad habits and evil thoughts to loosen up and break, you also let everything else go the same. Imagine that if you'd reach total non-thinking, through all the levels of the mind right down 'till the source of awareness, and you'd keep this up for at least 3 weeks, then you'd have a great chance that when you get out of it, you'll be a zombie, for what you'd actually do is that you'd erase your thinking patterns (your synaptic connections) out of your brain.

 

Sounds weird, huh?

 

Well, you don't have to worry that your heart and digestion is driven by your brain and what if you erase that connection... Vegetative functions stimulate the synapses while they are in process, so your heart cannot forget to beat

 

It is said that great masters can meditate for weeks and they don't become zombies. So what do they do different? Well, it took some time for me to figure out and I still might be wrong with this, but I think that the difference is deep down in the mind, just before you reach samadhi. As far as I could observe through my own meditations, there are some levels of thinking which you can practically turn off systematically, one after the other, by mere practicing.

• The top is the everyday thinking, the level of inner conversation, where you form the words and sentences you speak.
• Below this is another level of thoughts which consists of more images and less verbal content. This is where you become aware of your mental images.
• Below this level are very subtle memories. They feel more like static ideas, not so much dynamic, but you can still feel that your awareness rises from somewhere below, and it comes through these memories before it actually grasps something.

So you can actually observe the process as your awareness uses association, and creates a connection between your past memories and your everyday life.

 

This mental connection between your past and present is the basis of thinking. You can't think in any other way than this. Even babies are born with lots of synapses (actually, new-born babies have more synapses than adults) to have something to compare their present experiences with. So I think when you get beyond this level then you can either let your awareness vanish, or you can guide it somewhere, preferably to samadhi. Losing your awareness will not lead you to samadhi, it will lead you to becoming a zombie.

 

Now, I couldn't get to this so far but this seems to be logical to me.

 

Just before you freak out and panic because you don't want to become a zombie you should know one more thing. Just as your brain can be wired to learn new things and forget learned things, it can also be re-wired to remember forgotten things. So it doesn't really matter what you forget, or how much you feel that meditation makes you more stupid every day (although you feel great), because if things get too bad, you can undo this whole mess and you can get your old bad habits and evil thoughts back

[OneSeeker]

Interesting line of thought, something that never crossed my mind: meditate and erase your brain patterns.

 

Personally, it doesn't worry me much. Maybe I've already turned off too many circuits. But I don't believe that brain = mind or vice versa. I think mind -- soul, to be more precise -- creates the body, including the brain, as a vehicle for operating in the physical world. The fact that thinking actually helps determine the structure of the brain could be evidence of this. And maybe what happens in meditation is the mind returns to itself in its non-physical mode of existence, leaving the brain to keep operating the vital bodily functions until the mind comes back and starts stirring up thoughts again.

 

Thoroughly "unscientific," I know. Everyone should ignore me, probably.

[fizix]

Original post written as if some sort of authority; fallacy is written all over it.

[everseeking]

Original post written as if some sort of authority; fallacy is written all over it.

 

You been drinkin Haterade, brah?

 

 

As for the subject, there are some methods of meditation that have you cross your eyes looking downward. The nerves which control eye movement are cranial nerves, which link with deeper brain centers (cant remember which ones) but anyhow, these centers are involved in/responsible for a lot of major things in the body, I think some hormonal, among other stuff..

anyhow, the trigeminal nerve (5th cranial I think) when damaged, causes the eyes to rotate upward and outward.

 

So, when you quiet the mind, cross the eyes looking down, and breath from your belly, you are 'stimulating' the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 10th cranial nerves, IIRC..

 

Interesting coincidence.synchronicity. When I have more time, Im going to investigate this further.

 

 

;-)

 

Nathan-

[Phoenix]

Losing your awareness will not lead you to samadhi, it will lead you to becoming a zombie.

I hope no one would tell you that meditation is a process intended to make you lose your awareness. What you're trying to still is conceptual thought and negative emotions, but you should be cultivating a sharp and crystal-clear awareness throughout that process. It is true that not cultivating awareness while meditating can create dullness. But if this happens to a practitioner, s/he isn't doing it right.

 

Furthermore, in the meditative tradition I'm familiar with, in which people sit in meditation as their full-time occupation for years on end sometimes, there are two basic categories of meditative practices, stillness (shamatha) and insight (vipassana). In the words of a teacher who did many years of retreat, you do shamatha "when there are too many thoughts in the mind," and vipassana (which is conceptual) "when there are not enough thoughts in the mind." Personally, I wish I could develop that latter problem. To be honest, I think the modern western lifestyle makes it darned difficult to achieve genuine meditative stability.

 

At any rate, provided you're practicing properly, I don't really think becoming a "zombie" is too much of a risk.

 

Best of luck to you in your journey.

[Athanor]

I hope no one would tell you that meditation is a process intended to make you lose your awareness.

No one told me that, and I never thought that it would be its goal. On the contrary, I read everywhere that meditation creates a very sharp consciousness. It's just hard to grasp this process - how does it work? How can I gain consciousness in a process where I leave my thoughts? What are the differences between thoughts and consciousness? Is consciousness rising in my brain? Or is it something beyond it, and my brain is just a tool to express it?

 

At any rate, provided you're practicing properly, I don't really think becoming a "zombie" is too much of a risk.

Indeed. But people who meditate are much more than people who've learned how to meditate. So ending up in a false condition is quite possible since there are many people who never actually learned how to meditate. For instance, I didn't. I simply don't know a master. There are people around me who teach meditation but I wouldn't call them a master, I wouldn't rely on their instructions. So I try to learn it myself, according to scriptures, but this is much harder because I don't understand many things. So I started to figure out what is actually going on while I meditate.

[Athanor]

Original post written as if some sort of authority; fallacy is written all over it.

Do you mean I'm wrong? You are free to refute if you can.

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

Meditation is 'Stilling the Mind', not erasing it.. the surface of pond becomes 'still', but the water stays.. The 'still mind' observes/experiences without the prejudice of the 'mind-chatter' telling us the stories of our mentors.. how many 'authentic experiences' do you have? experiences where you have no preconceived notions about that experience.. that is the purpose of Meditation, to have direct authentic experiences.. to bypass the mind's labeling and categorizing, to avoid filing experiences in the mind's 'data storage' system.. a 'stilled mind' allows the experiences to be absorbed by 'who we are', without the distortion of preconceptions..

 

Meditation is intended to see things 'as they are', not as our mentors told us they 'should be'..

 

Be well..

[Athanor]

the surface of pond becomes 'still', but the water stays..

Just as the brain cells stay too even when the mind becomes still. And just as the water molecules are changing and moving even in the still water, so do the synaptic connections change in the still mind.

[Gerard]

Many things will and may happen. But they are all transient, so in the end who cares. Just keep observing them until...well yours is the task to find out.

[center888]

Just as the brain cells stay too even when the mind becomes still. And just as the water molecules are changing and moving even in the still water, so do the synaptic connections change in the still mind.

It seems you are interpreting the chatter in ones head as a workout for the brain.

The talking in the head uses just a smaller part of the brain and it is not necessary to remember or understand something.

Edited February 1, 2010 by center888

[markern]

In meditation you actually have a lot meta "thinking"/awarenss not just the dropping of thinking.

[Tao99]

Edited July 10, 2010 by Tao99

[suninmyeyes]

No one told me that, and I never thought that it would be its goal. On the contrary, I read everywhere that meditation creates a very sharp consciousness. It's just hard to grasp this process - how does it work? How can I gain consciousness in a process where I leave my thoughts? What are the differences between thoughts and consciousness? Is consciousness rising in my brain? Or is it something beyond it, and my brain is just a tool to express it?

 

 

Indeed. But people who meditate are much more than people who've learned how to meditate. So ending up in a false condition is quite possible since there are many people who never actually learned how to meditate. For instance, I didn't. I simply don't know a master. There are people around me who teach meditation but I wouldn't call them a master, I wouldn't rely on their instructions. So I try to learn it myself, according to scriptures, but this is much harder because I don't understand many things. So I started to figure out what is actually going on while I meditate.

hello,

meditation doesent create "sharp counsciouesness",as far as i understand.but may help in calming down the speed and amount of thoughts and their observation and therefore "revealing" of counsciouesness or understanding who i really am to take place.counsciouesness is already here ,its just covered with thoughts in a way,so to speak.we are mistakening our true identity to be those thoughts .

try read some ramana maharishi conversations ,you could gain some good thinking concepts that way.

good luck!

[doc benway]

It is very interesting that in most forums about the side-effects or negative consequences of meditation nobody tells a word about the brain. So here I come to tell you some things.

 

Brain consists of billions of tiny never cells called neurons which create a neural net.

Meditation's effect on the neural network is very intense, in fact, it is just as intense as thoughts' effect. A thought, if regularly repeated (especially if emotionally supported) creates a synaptic path. A thought is actually stored between two nerve cells, which connect to each other with a synaptic gap (actually, many of these gaps hold a thought). These gaps are flexible: if a thought is repeated, the synapse gets stronger; if a thought is not repeated then the gap gets larger and eventually the synapse breaks.

Now, the thinking process relies on these gaps. It says: those thoughts which are stored in a stronger synapse will rise faster and will connect to more things (this is association), while those thoughts which are stored in a loosened synapse, or which doesn't have its own synapse (but it's stored through many synapses' complex system) will rise harder. This is how your memory can quickly give you something what you recently think about, but not so easy something what you don't think about for months. While you study, you know what you've learned. After a few years you forget many things...

 

Meditation is the mental state of non-thinking, which means that the time of meditation, if you are really not thinking, makes virtually every synapse loosen. So the main side effect of meditation is actually the main purpose of it. While you let the synaptic connections which hold your bad habits and evil thoughts to loosen up and break, you also let everything else go the same. Imagine that if you'd reach total non-thinking, through all the levels of the mind right down 'till the source of awareness, and you'd keep this up for at least 3 weeks, then you'd have a great chance that when you get out of it, you'll be a zombie, for what you'd actually do is that you'd erase your thinking patterns (your synaptic connections) out of your brain.

 

Sounds weird, huh?

 

Well, you don't have to worry that your heart and digestion is driven by your brain and what if you erase that connection... Vegetative functions stimulate the synapses while they are in process, so your heart cannot forget to beat

 

It is said that great masters can meditate for weeks and they don't become zombies. So what do they do different? Well, it took some time for me to figure out and I still might be wrong with this, but I think that the difference is deep down in the mind, just before you reach samadhi. As far as I could observe through my own meditations, there are some levels of thinking which you can practically turn off systematically, one after the other, by mere practicing.

• The top is the everyday thinking, the level of inner conversation, where you form the words and sentences you speak.
• Below this is another level of thoughts which consists of more images and less verbal content. This is where you become aware of your mental images.
• Below this level are very subtle memories. They feel more like static ideas, not so much dynamic, but you can still feel that your awareness rises from somewhere below, and it comes through these memories before it actually grasps something.

So you can actually observe the process as your awareness uses association, and creates a connection between your past memories and your everyday life.

 

This mental connection between your past and present is the basis of thinking. You can't think in any other way than this. Even babies are born with lots of synapses (actually, new-born babies have more synapses than adults) to have something to compare their present experiences with. So I think when you get beyond this level then you can either let your awareness vanish, or you can guide it somewhere, preferably to samadhi. Losing your awareness will not lead you to samadhi, it will lead you to becoming a zombie.

 

Now, I couldn't get to this so far but this seems to be logical to me.

 

Just before you freak out and panic because you don't want to become a zombie you should know one more thing. Just as your brain can be wired to learn new things and forget learned things, it can also be re-wired to remember forgotten things. So it doesn't really matter what you forget, or how much you feel that meditation makes you more stupid every day (although you feel great), because if things get too bad, you can undo this whole mess and you can get your old bad habits and evil thoughts back

With all due respect, you are jumping to conclusions based on a modest degree of science and alot of assumptions related to meditation.

I do not agree with your conclusions or concerns.

Meditation is highly unlikely to lead to any memory loss. To my knowledge, no research has shown this to be a concern.

 

As already mentioned, you are implying that our daily mind chatter is activity, almost like an exercise needed to maintain brain funciton.

It is not that. It is a side effect. It is totally passive.

The brain exercise is meditation. It allows us to develop skill in having some degree of control and real time awareness of the process of thought.

All of the questions you ask about the relationship of thought to consciousness is something that is revealed with the practice of meditation.

 

There is no need to fear meditation.

[orb]

It is very interesting that in most forums about the side-effects or negative consequences of meditation nobody tells a word about the brain. So here I come to tell you some things.

 

 

Great topic there sir. Thank you.

This is one of those topics where it would be really nice if people spoke from their own experience rather then relate what they read, or whatever so and so said about the subject.

Although I find you post very interesting I need to ask you one think. From your experience do you really believe that a person can completely stop all the asociations ? And if yes why do you think we would need that. Also please if you could use your own words and descriptions rather then terms like "samadhi" I would really appreciate it.

 

Thanks.

Orb

Edited February 1, 2010 by orb

[Athanor]

With all due respect, you are jumping to conclusions based on a modest degree of science and alot of assumptions related to meditation.

I do not agree with your conclusions or concerns.

Meditation is highly unlikely to lead to any memory loss. To my knowledge, no research has shown this to be a concern.

 

As already mentioned, you are implying that our daily mind chatter is activity, almost like an exercise needed to maintain brain funciton.

It is not that. It is a side effect. It is totally passive.

The brain exercise is meditation. It allows us to develop skill in having some degree of control and real time awareness of the process of thought.

All of the questions you ask about the relationship of thought to consciousness is something that is revealed with the practice of meditation.

 

There is no need to fear meditation.

Mind chatting may be called passive, but still, it is something that holds our brain function in a specific manner: it keeps some ideas and thoughts fresh while it leaves others to be forgotten... This is not "modest degree of science", this is logic based on neural network observation made with PET scanner, fMR, not just once but many times in different researches. It may be just a theory, as everything might be in science, but feel free to come up with other (not "modest") scientific evidences to refute what I've written.

 

So then, why does it happen that people become isolated, associative, and nihilist, when they practice meditation for a long time? Why do some people become like this while others don't? You can say "because they don't meditate properly". OK then, what is the difference between proper and improper meditation's effects on the mind-brain continuum?

[Tactile]

Wasn't there this study in which they examined some monks who were active meditators and found out that they have more gray matter in their brains compared to your average joe? Anyway, the idea you're proposing seems quite counterintuitive to me and founded on kind-of-logical-linear thinking (and thus sounding more convincing to some people) but totally hitting off the mark. Where do you get this theory from anyways?

[Athanor]

Great topic there sir. Thank you.

This is one of those topics where it would be really nice if people spoke from their own experience rather then relate what they read, or whatever so and so said about the subject.

Although I find you post very interesting I need to ask you one think. From your experience do you really believe that a person can completely stop all the asociations ? And if yes why do you think we would need that. Also please if you could use your own words and descriptions rather then terms like "samadhi" I would really appreciate it.

 

Thanks.

Orb

I don't know whether it's possible to stop associative thinking. But I don't even understand how it's possible to think - I mean according to the physics of the brain it should simply follow the stimuli received from the environment, and it should give a specific response according to the current state of the neural net. However, it very much looks like our thoughts can be controlled via something we call free will. It might turn out that our free will, our dilemmas we face before a decision, this little "tennis match" we play inside our heads, this can also be part of the strict process, since it can always end up in only one result. That we only feel that we have free will but we don't actually have a choice, is a possibility. Of course it's also possible that we have free will. But then how does it work? No physical, biological, neurological or any kind of laws can determine it. And thus we can't determine how we think. The source of this very thinking process, which is guided by our will, or our awareness, is unknown. It is the realm of spirituality, which is mostly guessing, hypotheses, and reliance on other people's words.

So I don't know whether it's possible to stop associative thinking. But I think that it doesn't matter - we don't need to. We don't need to stop it because it's not the associative thought that makes up the problem, but the emotion bounded to that thought. The problem is that when you face something with a certain strong emotion, then together with the memory of that something, the very emotion is also stored in your neurons. And every time you think of that thing, you also feel something of that emotion. So even when years have passed since that event, whenever you think of something in association with that event, you trigger the same emotion. However, it is possible to overwrite that emotion with others - this is how psychotherapy works. This proves that it's possible to get rid of the emotions attached to the associative thoughts, or any kinds of thoughts for that matter, and thus get rid of the unwanted habits driven by our undesired emotions. But you don't need to lose associative thinking for this. In fact, your personal associations are part of your personality, I don't think you should lose them, even if you can.

[Athanor]

Wasn't there this study in which they examined some monks who were active meditators and found out that they have more gray matter in their brains compared to your average joe? Anyway, the idea you're proposing seems quite counterintuitive to me and founded on kind-of-logical-linear thinking (and thus sounding more convincing to some people) but totally hitting off the mark. Where do you get this theory from anyways?

Being able to overcome deadly fears, quit bad habits after 60 years, recovering from cancer without medical treatment, Earth revolving around the Sun instead of the Sun around Earth, or Earth being spherical instead of flat, might also be (has been) counterintuitive, or hitting off the mark (whatever that means). Yet, those things also happen. What you think of as counterintuitive depends totally on you, it's a fully subjective matter, so it doesn't really matter in the question of truth and reality.

This theory was made up by me after quite a while of research on the processes of thinking and feeling inside the body. This doesn't mean that it's true, it just means that it is the mostly right I know, and I wanted to share it. I'd read contradictory theories if there are any.

I don't know of the gray matter thing, I didn't read that study.

[Sarnyn]

Do you mean I'm wrong? You are free to refute if you can.

I'll bite.

 

To me the first thing that jumped out, was your description of meditation as a state of "non-thinking." This statement deserves some heavy examination. The first thing that we should examine, is the definition of the word "thought" that you are propagating here. Typically when we describe a thought, we mean some kind of mental image, sometimes visually based, but sometimes more auditory in nature. This is typically what people are describing when they say a "thought." But this is a very limited definition, as we will see in a moment.

 

Here is a picture of a neuron so everybody can get an idea about what we are talking,

 

If we are going to define a thought at the level of the synaptic activity of the mind, what we have to define a thought as, is anything which produces a synaptic fire. You have claimed that meditation is the act of stopping the mind from thinking, but this would not be true given our new more appropriate definition of the word "thought"

 

Meditators might be learning to focus on a physical sensation and thereby block auditory or symbolic visualization in the mind, but the meditator is not a vapid vegetable, rather a person engaged in meditation is very intensely experiencing the sensations in their own bodies, and often times the auditory sensations coming in from the surrounding environment, not to mention that some forms of meditation utilize visualizations or sounds as a focus. Sounds around us, the experience of the various sensations of breath, the sensation of the body and the bodies contact with its external reality are all sensations which produces neural activity, i.e. neural firing, and so for the purposes of the discussion here, must be included in our definition of a "thought"

 

In fact, since the meditator focuses with such intensity and regularity on the doors of the senses, here a kind of neural activity and a kind of neural "thought" or experience, the neural pathways are in fact heavily engaged and the pathways made more accessible and strengthened, so that meditators often experiences heightened senses, and heightened states of physical awareness due to the practice of firing their neurons in this way repeatedly and for sustained periods of time.

 

So your initial statement, that meditation is a state of nonthinking, first of all isn't even literally true, secondly it is irrelevant to your argument because a "thought" as we normally understand it to be, is not the only phenomenon which causes neural fire and neural activity.

 

So, in short, while your understanding of brain mechanics seems well enough, your understanding of what actually happenes in the practice of most forms of meditation seems uniformed, and possibly ill-informed.

 

with metta,

Sarnyn

Edited February 1, 2010 by Sarnyn

[~jK~]

[orb]

I don't know whether it's possible to stop associative thinking. But I don't even understand how it's possible to think - I mean according to the physics of the brain it should simply follow the stimuli received from the environment, and it should give a specific response according to the current state of the neural net. However, it very much looks like our thoughts can be controlled via something we call free will. It might turn out that our free will, our dilemmas we face before a decision, this little "tennis match" we play inside our heads, this can also be part of the strict process, since it can always end up in only one result. That we only feel that we have free will but we don't actually have a choice, is a possibility. Of course it's also possible that we have free will. But then how does it work? No physical, biological, neurological or any kind of laws can determine it. And thus we can't determine how we think. The source of this very thinking process, which is guided by our will, or our awareness, is unknown. It is the realm of spirituality, which is mostly guessing, hypotheses, and reliance on other people's words.

So I don't know whether it's possible to stop associative thinking. But I think that it doesn't matter - we don't need to. We don't need to stop it because it's not the associative thought that makes up the problem, but the emotion bounded to that thought. The problem is that when you face something with a certain strong emotion, then together with the memory of that something, the very emotion is also stored in your neurons. And every time you think of that thing, you also feel something of that emotion. So even when years have passed since that event, whenever you think of something in association with that event, you trigger the same emotion. However, it is possible to overwrite that emotion with others - this is how psychotherapy works. This proves that it's possible to get rid of the emotions attached to the associative thoughts, or any kinds of thoughts for that matter, and thus get rid of the unwanted habits driven by our undesired emotions. But you don't need to lose associative thinking for this. In fact, your personal associations are part of your personality, I don't think you should lose them, even if you can.

 

Very nice explanation sir. Everything that you have described I have verified for myself as well. I was suprised to see that you also have mentioned the interference between the associations and the emotinal side. To me the emotional aspect is like a gas pedal. It can accelerate the thought or slow it down - depending on how much emotional fuel is being provided. And the negative emotion is able to act as a short.

[Athanor]

Typically when we describe a thought, we mean some kind of mental image, sometimes visually based, but sometimes more auditory in nature.

Well... Although I understand why you took all neural firing stimuli under the name of thought, I'd like to contradict you. Although thoughts and other firing processes work the same, they are not the same. The difference is that thoughts have a meaning for us, while others don't. Those which do not form a mental image or inner sound have little to do with our thinking. The control of vegetative functions in the brain is like this. The process by which your brain drives your heartbeat or digestion isn't really much of a thought, is it? So I think it's rather adequate to define thought as the stimuli of neurons which lead to a prolonged way of thinking that can involve awareness and free will, for thoughts also have the characteristic of changeability, but you (usually) can't change your vegetative functions by will. There are the same kinds of neurons (nerve cells) in your brain and in your spinal cord, and they all use the same firing sequence to forward stimuli. Yet, you wouldn't say that you think with your spinal cord, do you?

 

So your initial statement, that meditation is a state of nonthinking, first of all isn't even literally true, secondly it is irrelevant to your argument because a "thought" as we normally understand it to be, is not the only phenomenon which causes neural fire and neural activity.

Although not all the synaptic connections break up and synaptic firing doesn't end since many functions of the brain still work while not forming any conceptual thought, many other synapses which hold thoughts we used to think of literally loosen up while meditating. We can argue about whether focusing on your sensory organs' stimuli is a form of thinking or not. Probably this question could divide the global philosophical community in two. So let's correct and say that meditation is a mental state which is void of conceptual thinking. This also might need to be defined, for memory might be a form of concept. It might be possible that we can only experience things we already know - there is a theory for this. So we might have an associative thought for everything we currently sense. Whether this associative thought is conceptual or not, I don't know. But if we accept these as non-conceptual, then this definition should be adequate.

 

So, in short, while your understanding of brain mechanics seems well enough, your understanding of what actually happenes in the practice of most forms of meditation seems uniformed, and possibly ill-informed.

Thank you, and you're probably right. This happens when one has no possibility to learn from someone who is already on a high level in these things. I learned from books, which aren't really the best source to learn anything in relation to spirituality. Then I needed to wipe out lots of garbage I read, and figure out some things which weren't adequately explained - like what it means "don't think", or "focus on your breath". Focusing can be done in many ways, you can even involve physical tension in it... So figuring out how to do it properly, or how to meditate properly, is not so easy without a teacher. I still didn't reach anything unusual via my meditations, and I use my searching and creating theories to help step forward. So if I'm really wrong in something then I'd like to know that. For this, it's really nice of you that you took the time to respond, I appreciate it.

 

Btw, I know that there are many ways of meditation, even types in which a specific kind of thinking is necessary. I think it's obvious that in this topic I was talking about the kind of meditation which doesn't involve thinking...

[soaring crane]

since you fear meditation so much you must be APPALLED by vodka and stay away from it.

 

 

Vodka maybe, but ohhh, that Unicom... http://www.zwack.hu/

 

Now that's something you can really meditate on