Meditation Class Dilemma

[Apech]

But true.

 

I was serious ... you are right.

[Aetherous]

Oh my bad _/\_

[Seph]

I wouldn't put my head at the navel level of old people; really bad qi. Sit in a chair just like everyone else during that meditation class. When at home, do the seiza.

The more I think about this (unless the group "spreads out" or changes its sitting arrangements), the more I'm tending to agree with you. (The 'bad qi' angle is new though. I'm interested. Would you care to expand on that a little please?)

[Apech]

The more I think about this (unless the group "spreads out" or changes its sitting arrangements), the more I'm tending to agree with you. (The 'bad qi' angle is new though. I'm interested. Would you care to expand on that a little please?)

 

I think turtle shell is right about this. All the way through this conversation I was feeling kind of uncomfortable about the seiza idea but I couldn't work out why. It seems right to say you should be able to take your stool tot he meeting and so on ... but for some reason it didn't feel right. When Turtle shell posted I realised that he had identified clearly what to me was just a feeling ... obviously its your call and you could try both and see what happens of course ... but I tend to think you should follow his advice.

[mYTHmAKER]

I think turtle shell is right about this. All the way through this conversation I was feeling kind of uncomfortable about the seiza idea but I couldn't work out why. It seems right to say you should be able to take your stool tot he meeting and so on ... but for some reason it didn't feel right. When Turtle shell posted I realised that he had identified clearly what to me was just a feeling ... obviously its your call and you could try both and see what happens of course ... but I tend to think you should follow his advice.

Yes he is right - when i posted there was no info re seating arrangements.

But why focus on the navel energy of "old people" being bad energy.

There are people of all ages with bad energy / good energy.

I wouldn't want to sit at any ones navel level.

Age discrimination is bad energy LOL

[thelerner]

I find myself agreeing with everyone. Curious since there are opposing views. If you'll be with the group long term, try it both ways. Like most of life, experimentation is the only way to really know.

[Seph]

I think turtle shell is right about this. All the way through this conversation I was feeling kind of uncomfortable about the seiza idea but I couldn't work out why. It seems right to say you should be able to take your stool to the meeting and so on ... but for some reason it didn't feel right. When Turtle shell posted I realised that he had identified clearly what to me was just a feeling ... obviously its your call and you could try both and see what happens of course ... but I tend to think you should follow his advice.

I think turtle shell is bang on this one. (Not only that, but he gives an actual reason why).

I think I will follow his advice.

I'm pressed for time right now, but I'd like to comment further.

(And hopefully turtle shell can expand on his comment re. 'bad qi'.)

[Aetherous]

It's just my experience that bad qi comes out of the navel. I experienced it once in a dream, visibly like a fog pouring out during practices and filling the entire room...and in waking life I feel that it happens as well, but not visibly (at least to me). It's like a detoxing of the body and mind.

For a more reliable source of this information (it's hard to trust the experience of someone who is just a fellow bum)...Mantak Chia teaches Chi Nei Tsang. In that method, you open the "wind gates" to release stagnant qi, by massaging gently around the navel. At a higher level of it, the practitioner puts their elbow on the wind gates, and the sick qi travels from the elbow up the forearm, and shoots out through the fingertips. So that's also saying sick qi leaves through the navel.

About age. Imagine going to a nursing home, and putting your head near the navel of someone there. It's just kind of a disgusting feeling, I think, for anyone (especially if you've been to a nursing home before, yuck)...that feeling you have is reliable! Nothing against old people...everyone ages. Their bodies just aren't working optimally like a young person's. Over 50 isn't elderly by far, but I think most people that age will admit their bodies don't work as well as they used to...unless they're really masterful in their self healing.

Trust how things feel to you.

[Seph]

Attended last night, with no seiza bench. But more importantly, no conflict.

It was very good.

 

Thanks to all.

[ion]

Seems to me that trusting your self often means going with your programmed imprint/ the aquired not self.

 

I don't think the dream about the navel is about people and stomachs in general. No body part or section of the body is "bad" with "bad" chi.

 

The belly is where you breath from, where you were fed in your mother from, and the location of your enteric nervous system/abdominal brain where intuitive matters are computed, and even where dreams come from.

 

There is nothing disgusting about the stomach as a rule, it is almost like its own being.

[Aetherous]

In a fetus, nourishment enters the navel from the mother, but waste products also leave through there...

[ion]

And what is so disgusting about that? Have you seen these waist products? They are very unoffensive, and so are the waist products of an infant who breast feeds. There is also nothing disgusting about the butt of an infant from where the "waist product" exits just as there is nothing disgusting about an old persons butt where the waist product exits.

 

What is a waste product? Its a label for a lack of understanding of what to do with something.

 

Bad hygiene is the result of personal issues, good or bad; being disgusted is living among the named and also the result of lack of cultivation.

 

How many people who contemplate their own dreams in honesty and mindfulness, find them in earnest to be about the issues of others?

Edited September 19, 2013 by ion

[Aetherous]

There's nothing disgusting about an old person's butt and the waste products that leave there? Okay, if that's your opinion! lol

[Flolfolil]

...

Edited March 6, 2015 by Flolfolil

[Apech]

i don't see why meditating in a group is necessary other than the high feeling of excitement one gets when being around other "like minded" people. some consider this feeling progress in meditation, while others consider it a distraction

 

 

That's interesting .. there was a time when I regularly meditated in a group situation and I remember a certain 'lift' in energy or insight ... but now I think I would find it an interference as I do it solo (that's meditation just to be clear ).

 

All this talk of waste out of people's waists is interesting also - given the pun - LOL.

[Seph]

i don't see why meditating in a group is necessary other than the high feeling of excitement one gets when being around other "like minded" people. some consider this feeling progress in meditation, while others consider it a distraction

As I said in the original post, I don't see the purpose (or benefit) of group meditations.

(I do see the purpose and/or benefit of teaching a group to meditate).

Group meditations strike me as cultish and counter-productive.

...but on the same note, I'm willing to accept the maybe I just don't get it.

[thelerner]

Depends who you meditate with. There are times you can ride the groups energy, particularly when there's someone higher level there. It can kind of lift you a little higher.

[ion]

There's nothing disgusting about an old person's butt and the waste products that leave there? Okay, if that's your opinion! lol

It is not an opinion, it is its nature/it just is. It is an opinion that it is disgusting., a cultivated sense of good/bad, like dislike, gross/apealing; it is dualistic thinking, the aspect of ego mind that makes a label and discrimination when an object or phenomenon befalls one or more of the senses. A consciousness/ mental complex attatched and associated w/ egos preferences which are generally gathered from the cultural pool of what is acceptable.

 

Ask a dog what it thinks when indiscrimanently it gulps down a pile of feces from any variety of animal, from an old dogs butt to a new humans butt.

 

The poop, and the butt have no charecteristic like we ascribe to describe its nature in dualistic/relative terms. Those terms are only relative to the ego.

 

 

To those involved in cultivation, holding on to opinions like that is not only misleading to your mind on its path, but alo, it is fostering the illusion of duality, when the point of cultivation is to loosen its binds.

 

On another note. Meditation with others can be very lifting, especially if you are aware of the fact that we are all "psychic" beings to some degree or another; our minds are open to others.

 

If you are practicing meditation with others who are not as adept as yourself, so long as they practice Te (sincerity in this case) when sitting, then it should have no negative effect at all. If they are more adept at meditation, and your mind is open, their comfort, silence, and clarity should difuse with your own.

 

Mind is an open apparatus we are all apart of, and have a share in it. We are all of the same energic fabric, divided by ego/delf/atman whatever which is unreal although it has the power to distort things.

 

I think of humanities mind like a lake. although we each feel like we are separate, in reality thought(s) wich are fish in the lake, swim from mind to mind as though it is one lake. Ego is a net, the fish get caught in it (we hold/entertain thought process's /patterns), but without the net the fish swim freely.

 

If you realize your unity to everyone, however you do that personaly is not of any difference, and then sit with a group, you have preidentified that you are one with your group. If one person has trouble someone else can smooth it out, if one person settles in with ease, then it will be easier for others to settle in with ease.

 

When you sit in solitude or in a group and feel comfort, stillness and peace, it is not your comfort stillnesss or peace you are feeling.

 

If you have ever felt that profound sense of comfort that does not radiate inward from your bodies relaxation, but radiates from deeper within and outward beyond the general sense of physacal relaxation, the comfort of non being (not relishing in or dwelling on as in "I am experiencing/feeling physical relaxation" but letting your mind sink deeper) the relaxation of physical comfort, there it is sensed that this is the state of reality not the body, and likewise so is mind.

Edited September 25, 2013 by ion

[thelerner]

It is not an opinion, it is its nature/it just is. It is an opinion that it is disgusting., a cultivated sense of good/bad, like dislike, gross/apealing; it is dualistic thinking, the aspect of ego mind that makes a label and discrimination when an object or phenomenon befalls one or more of the senses. A consciousness/ mental complex attatched and associated w/ egos preferences which are generally gathered from the cultural pool of what is acceptable.

 

Ask a dog what it thinks when indiscrimanently it gulps down a pile of feces from any variety of animal, from an old dogs butt to a new humans butt.

 

The poop, and the butt have no charecteristic like we ascribe to describe its nature in dualistic/relative terms. Those terms are only relative to the ego.

 

 

To those involved in cultivation, holding on to opinions like that is not only misleading to your mind on its path, but alo, it is fostering the illusion of duality, when the point of cultivation is to loosen its binds.

I am not that advanced.

Don't know if I want to be either .

[ion]

Ego finds comfort in holding opinions, the thought of not being offended is offensive to it. Like aan animal at the zoo that has learned to find comfort in its engagment and feeding regiment.

 

Our identity is based on the opinions we hold and nothing more. So, you can sit in meditation for however long, yet when you get up, drop the minfullness act and carry on fortifying your cultural imprint and miss the point entirely.

 

Opinions are attatchments, and by way of tao and the simplest expression of karma, if you are happy holding this one (attatchment) then you will find it impossable to let go of that one.

[Dr_D]

I have recently joined a local meditation 'group' or session(s).

It's held/taught by a E-RYT (Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher). (Yes, yes, I know. Not all meditation(s) are the same. It's just that outside of specific religious based local meditation practices, there's little else available here. And I figure practicing within some sort of group of peers with some sort of instructor is better than functioning totally on one's own. Which is what I've been doing for over the past year+ ).

 

Here's my issue.

I normally practice meditation in the early mornings for about 25-30 minute every sitting.

I normally use a seiza bench. (Sitting cross-legged, tailor-style, Burmese, half-lotus, full-lotus, or regular sitting on a chair, I usually and eventually slouch or my legs fall asleep or I fall asleep). None of these happen with the seiza bench. It simply works best for me.

 

Now, I'm not a big fan of group meditation, and I believe there's a difference between group meditation and teaching a group to meditation (on their own).

 

The instructor has said I can bring my seiza bench (I have a portable one) if I prefer.

This group practices sitting on chairs. Everyone within this group (it's about 14 people) are easily 50+ of age, with meditation experience ranging from having never done it before and up.

 

I really don't want to attract (or distract) attention from this group. (Not to mention using the seiza bench would probably not be good of some of these people's knees. I don't want my personal practice to necessarily set an example).

I'm not opposed to simply sitting in a chair, although it's not optimal for me.

 

What should I do?

 

Why did you join the group in the first time?

 

What is so importat about this situation?

 

What is the insecurity about?

 

How can you show up as your most loving self?

 

I will star here.