What's wrong with mantra meditation?

[Memeito]

I'm talking about methods like transcendental meditation/deep meditation/NSR meditation/etc. - where you repeat a certain mantra or word, over and over in a relaxed, effortless way. Personally I started to meditate after I searched online for methods to diminish stress and anxiety. Meditation was claimed to be very good at this, but I was turned off by a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo associated with it.

After searching left and right, I settled down to NSR(natural stress relief) meditation - a meditation who made no dubious claims and was promoted strictly as a way to release stress and decrease anxiety. After practicing it for a while, not only I experienced a decrease in anxiety, but also some other pretty amazing results that I didn't believe were possible -  better intuition, incredible synchronicities, the ability to predict certain things before they happened, etc...

After a while however these things stopped, and besides the anxiety relief, the "magic" seems to be gone now, what is the cause of this, I feel there's no progress anymore, some people here are also critical of this type of meditation, what is a better alternative?

[Maddie]

8 minutes ago, Memeito said:

I'm talking about methods like transcendental meditation/deep meditation/NSR meditation/etc. - where you repeat a certain mantra or word, over and over in a relaxed, effortless way. Personally I started to meditate after I searched online for methods to diminish stress and anxiety. Meditation was claimed to be very good at this, but I was turned off by a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo associated with it.

After searching left and right, I settled down to NSR(natural stress relief) meditation - a meditation who made no dubious claims and was promoted strictly as a way to release stress and decrease anxiety. After practicing it for a while, not only I experienced a decrease in anxiety, but also some other pretty amazing results that I didn't believe were possible -  better intuition, incredible synchronicities, the ability to predict certain things before they happened, etc...

After a while however these things stopped, and besides the anxiety relief, the "magic" seems to be gone now, what is the cause of this, I feel there's no progress anymore, some people here are also critical of this type of meditation, what is a better alternative?

 

I have had similar experiences where for a while one mantra in particular seems to be doing magic for me and then after a while it stops. I have actually contemplated this quite a bit and after some experimentation, trial and error and pondering I have a proto-type theory.

 

Each mantra has slightly different effects energetically. Each person has their own unique energy pattern as well. That being the case its pretty much impossible to predict how any one individual is going to react to any one mantra, regardless of how the mantra is advertised.

 

What I think I have observed is that if one begins to do a particular mantra at first it is going to react to the individuals energy pattern in a unique way. Maybe it begins to dissolve blockages, raise vibrations, move energy where it was not moving, react with karma ect..

 

After a while once the mantra has had time to interact with the individual's energy and karma and previous blockages are no longer there or at least greatly reduced for example this initial interaction that was experienced when the blockage was there is no longer going to occur as there is no longer the blockage there for it to interact with.

 

At this point it can be beneficial to find a new mantra that will work on a different aspect of our energy, or to stick with the old one until enough repetitions are done that it can go to a new level of interaction with deeper blockages.

[RiverSnake]

You said you were pursuing this more for stress relief. You got this results. Sounds like a success to me......but now your having second thoughts and want to pursue occult phenomena? Is that a correct understanding? 

Edited December 16, 2020 by RiverSnake

[EFreethought]

I tend to regard matras as another object of meditation. I have a hard time just observing my breath without controlling it, so somewhere I got the idea to use a mantra.

 

If it brings me wealth or health or helps me find a spiritual woman, that's great. I am skeptical about the idea that certain mantras connect you with particular gods or bodhisattvas or what have you.

 

I do think that mantras with certain vowel sounds (like the "ah" in "mantra" for example) do seem to work better for me. I find I can focus more.

[Maddie]

54 minutes ago, EFreethought said:

 I am skeptical about the idea that certain mantras connect you with particular gods or bodhisattvas or what have you.

 

 

I can't comment on that as I've never done mantras for that purpose.

[Memeito]

6 hours ago, RiverSnake said:

You said you were pursuing this more for stress relief. You got this results. Sounds like a success to me......but now your having second thoughts and want to pursue occult phenomena? Is that a correct understanding? 

Yes, that's right, there was a period when some pretty amazing things happened - like an old, obscure song will suddenly pop in my mind, and if I turned on the radio, the same song was playing, or a certain person, fact or event would come in my mind and then the same thing would appear on TV, on a website, on a billboard, etc...These seem to be more than mere coincidences because they often involved really rare or unusual things, and it got to the point when pretty much every day such a thing would happen, I even stopped paying attention to theses events and just accepted them as a normal part of life, but then they slowly stopped appearing and eventually disappeared.

I also "played" a little with a pendulum, after reading that dowsing is one of the easiest psychic abilities to cultivate, and I've got some pretty surprising results from the first time, receiving answers to various questions with an accuracy better than random chance, but then this too disappeared and now my pendulum just moves erratically.

How can I get the "magic" back?

 

 

[C T]

Mantras are sublime sounds. Deities, bodhisattvas and buddhas are sublime beings. 

The vibrational connection is glaringly obvious, yet there are those who, for reasons known only to them, 

choose to work with one and reject the other. For this reason, stable progress will be obscured. 

[Mithras]

Somewhat unrelated opinion below:

Spoiler

We tend to not realize this but we create what we see. The perceived and the perceiver are not independent, contrary to materialism.

 

What you mentioned about a lot of the coincidences is like this. You can play with it by doing something like spending 5 minutes a day thinking about owls. You’ll then gradually see more owls in your day to day life, more than you usually ever see, just because you thought of them. What happened for you is that you probably noticed the coincidences and put some thought towards the idea of coincidences. Hence you started having more and more in your life. You can imagine the same for people who keep thinking about their lucky occurrences, if they’re really lucky.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Mithras

[silent thunder]

Sound, vibration, frequency, resonance... all manipulate 'physical form'.

 

Cymatics was a fascinating inroad for me to see on a very simple level how sound and its varying frequencies influence the shapes of physical matter.  I imagine this is exponentially more influential when dealing with sacred mantra sounds coursing through the human form (which is mostly a viscous liquid, in nature).

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by silent thunder

[RiverSnake]

6 hours ago, Memeito said:

Yes, that's right, there was a period when some pretty amazing things happened - like an old, obscure song will suddenly pop in my mind, and if I turned on the radio, the same song was playing, or a certain person, fact or event would come in my mind and then the same thing would appear on TV, on a website, on a billboard, etc...These seem to be more than mere coincidences because they often involved really rare or unusual things, and it got to the point when pretty much every day such a thing would happen, I even stopped paying attention to theses events and just accepted them as a normal part of life, but then they slowly stopped appearing and eventually disappeared.

I also "played" a little with a pendulum, after reading that dowsing is one of the easiest psychic abilities to cultivate, and I've got some pretty surprising results from the first time, receiving answers to various questions with an accuracy better than random chance, but then this too disappeared and now my pendulum just moves erratically.

How can I get the "magic" back?

 

 

 

Silent Thunder's video explains it quite practically. Vibrations affect physically reality. Obviously the mantra you were using was hitting parts of your system that triggered initial releases of subtle sensitivity. Most practices have a similar effect in that in the beginning you get very noticeable effects and then things level out as your system adjusts.....it takes continual effort to deepen your sensitivity. Different mantras have different effects, if you share what the mantra  is we may be able to analyze it's effects and origin.

 

Personally i would recommend you stay away from these things if it's only a light curiosity. Spiritual processes are a powerful and revelatory thing. Once you open that bag of chips its difficult to close.  

[Memeito]

33 minutes ago, RiverSnake said:

 Different mantras have different effects, if you share what the mantra  is we may be able to analyze it's effects and origin.

Well, you're supposed to keep it secret and say its name only during meditation(most likely to serve as a psychological anchor and get you faster in the meditative state).

Let's say the mantra is associated with the root chakra and provides grounding and balance.

[doc benway]

17 hours ago, Memeito said:

I'm talking about methods like transcendental meditation/deep meditation/NSR meditation/etc. - where you repeat a certain mantra or word, over and over in a relaxed, effortless way. Personally I started to meditate after I searched online for methods to diminish stress and anxiety. Meditation was claimed to be very good at this, but I was turned off by a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo associated with it.

After searching left and right, I settled down to NSR(natural stress relief) meditation - a meditation who made no dubious claims and was promoted strictly as a way to release stress and decrease anxiety. After practicing it for a while, not only I experienced a decrease in anxiety, but also some other pretty amazing results that I didn't believe were possible -  better intuition, incredible synchronicities, the ability to predict certain things before they happened, etc...

After a while however these things stopped, and besides the anxiety relief, the "magic" seems to be gone now, what is the cause of this, I feel there's no progress anymore, some people here are also critical of this type of meditation, what is a better alternative?

 

The problem is not in the method, it is in the intention and expectations.

The purpose of mantra and meditation is not relaxation, stress relief, intuition, prediction, and so forth.

Those are side-effects and while they are very positive side-effects, there are negative side-effects also, which have been written about extensively here and elsewhere.

Those negative side-effects are probably, in the long run, more beneficial than the superficial early benefits.

They are evidence of the practices bumping up against the dysfunctional and delusory aspects of ourself that meditation is designed to disrupt and break down.

In the West, there is a tendency to appropriate meditation methods for a variety of purposes, mostly psychological support and selfish powers. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it does not often lead to deriving the deeper effects of mantra and meditation. Rather it short-cuts the very purpose of the practice which is why you feel like you've hit a dead end.

The deeper changes and more powerful effects are associated with fundamental changes in our relationship to ourself and our connection to our external and internal experience.

If you're truly interested in the deeper benefits and broader changes, I suggest you dig into the spiritual source of these practices and connect with credible teachers who can guide you through the ups and downs. The techniques are very precise. Taking these practices out of context and playing with them without guidance can yield some superficial benefits as you describe but it's unlikely to go beyond that. 

Just my $.02 FWIW.

 

 

 

[doc benway]

 

11 hours ago, EFreethought said:

I am skeptical about the idea that certain mantras connect you with particular gods or bodhisattvas or what have you.

 

Gods and bodhisattvas, or what have you, are simply representations of enlightened qualities that can arise when the distortions of our day to day mind get out of the way and allow us to connect to a deeper and more pure level of awareness in and of ourselves. They are not something outside or foreign, well they certainly may feel foreign, but when we connect with them it is very much a feeling of coming home, of something we've known and understood all along. Mantra is intended to help us cut through the distortions and access those deeper qualities. 

[Creation]

I've never practiced TM, and I know people who got a lot of benefit out of it

BUT

TM activates the default mode network, the same part of the brain that is active in daydreaming. Other styles of meditation say this is counterproductive, a tempting trap which can feel deep and spiritual but is actually a dead end. 

 

For instance, Dzogchen has a concept called the alaya - a blankness that is the repository of ignorance/unconsciousness, which must be broken through for actual spiritual awakening to occur. Gary Weber is a neuroscientist who has spoken about the relationship between the default mode network and nondual awakening, if you're curious about the science angle. 

[dwai]

In Hindu traditions, not every sound can be a mantra. A mantra literally means that which takes you beyond the mind (mananam trayate iti mantraha). In order to derive benefit from a mantra, typically one has to do what is called a "purascharana". The purascharana rule is as follows -- the number of repetitions of the mantra needs to be a the number of syllables of the mantra times 100,000. So a mantra with six syllables, would need to be chanted 600,000 times for its effect to be visible. Sometimes, we have previous life affinity to specific mantras, and they might bear fruit with lesser number of repititions. The idea however is to approach the mantra as a practice, with diligence, sincerity and trust. Usually the mantra is given to us by a teacher who has "mastered" it, so we are thereby qualified to practice it.

But these are the traditional rules, not many follow them anymore. In such practitioners, the mileage will vary.