Advice On Intended New Meditation Practice

[DreamBliss]

I am reading a book:

http://www.amazon.com/Demystifying-Out-Body-Experience-Exploration/dp/0738730793

 

In it the author teaches an energy exercises, where you think about an area, like the top of your head, and you direct energy down through your body, out through your feet, and back in and up again. No mental imagery or visualizations. No looking at the areas of the body where this is occurring. No matching your breathing to it.

 

I think I understand it, I feel the energy as warmth and I follow it with my mind, feeling it, as it slowly (and I mean slowly) goes through my body. Some areas are energetically blocked, and I just direct my thoughts to them and feel until I actually can feel the warmth.

 

I have added to this a practice of doing the same thing at the base of my spine, gathering energy there. I have had some very vivid dreams from this, and I may have actually projected, because in one of my dreams I was in a car that flew out over a cliff, so a definite sense of flying. Also longer dream recall.

Well I have been struggling in my meditation practice, and obviously energy is not flowing very well in my physical body, so I thought, OK, let's, metaphorically speaking, kill two birds with one stone!

 

Tomorrow I intend to meditate on the movement of energy in my body, focusing on that as I send it down from the top of my head, out, and up through the soles of my feet. I think this is a really cool idea, but what do you folks think?

 

I appreciate your advice!

- DreamBliss

Edited November 18, 2013 by DreamBliss

[Jetsun]

What do you hope to achieve through practicing it ?

[Seeker of Wisdom]

It's your path, but consider - what are you cultivating for, what do you need to do to achieve that, what practices will help you in those areas? Working on chi is all well and good. What about your mind?

 

Don't underestimate the importance of virtue, samadhi concentration and wisdom. They're the three really key things IMHO.

 

I regularly recommended that people read The Attention Revolution by Alan Wallace. It's a great guide to developing samadhi.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Seeker of Tao

[DreamBliss]

In the book I mentioned the author talks about making the energosoma (I think) more flexible in order to more easily move out-of-body. I would just call it the energy body. In any case I want to exercise my energy body, make it more flexible, make it easier for me to astral project.

 

I also want to have a focus object during meditation that requires intense concentration, which this does. I have tried counting, focusing on breath, eyes half-lidded and eyes closed and mantras. I catch myself making, for lack of a better term, a thought-noise for my breaths when I focus on breaths, counting works OK but is itself a thought, and whatever purpose that is supposed to be accomplished through eyes open is beyond me. If I close my eyes I get lost in imagery more often than not. I have also tried "just sitting" type meditation. Making meditation itself the object of my focus is too subtle I guess for me :/

 

The most focused meditations I have had were sitting outside focusing on the wind. I can sometimes do that inside focusing on raindrops. Sometimes I can focus on the feel of my beating heart, but I am hesitant because I had done this before and had chest pains, although this has not happened recently.

 

So my goal here is to combine meditation with a meditation object that requires a lot of focus, the end goal to consciouslly (and fully) astral project as well as dream.