Meditation What is it?
Ok, I'm here... I can't sleep...
I'm not clear minded enough to give this answer as much as it deserves but this is my personal experience:
The word Meditation itself can be used by people verbally to describe more then one practice/experience. So if one is to debate what meditation is there is no point in trying to make the word mean only one thing. But there is something that can be clearly defined here.
There are different forms of meditation.
Simple mindfulness or sitting Zazen is essentially to sit still and keep the awareness/consciousness on the breath and the sensations of the breath, the air coming in and out. But there are different forms of these breath-focused meditations. Some are regimented, zen, is usually timed breathing intervals if done in a formal setting, as I experienced in classic strict dojo. Zazen is my favorite style. When I have done this at home I do not time the breath length. Also the air may be breathed in a special way that makes a certain noise, some people sit and stare at a blank wall (this is not a style I practice). The point of focusing on the breath is probably more then one but mainly it is to prevent one's mind/thoughts from controlling us/ taking over the experience. Putting our awareness on the breath keeps us in touch with the physical corporeal body. The thinking mind tends to take us (consciousness) out of the body. We can direct our awareness to different parts of our own body, or into thoughts, or out of our body and into other peoples bodies.
The idea is that consciousness is not the mind.
The mind makes the word-thoughts, many are repetitive and pointless.
Pure Consciousness is awareness, witness, with no thoughts.
This can get very philosophical and beyond my experience or knowledge base, you have to talk to a monk or go to India to figure it out.
One really must practice it to understand the advanced levels because it gets really "out-there" so to speak, one could call it esoteric at a point.
There is moving meditation, yoga can become this at a high level, walking meditation.
Another form of meditation that comes out of the Buddist tradition that I'm familiar with is similar to the above mindfulness meditation because it does not involve a lot of thinking but it has a directed goal. So it is not just focusing on the breath, it may involve working with the organ of the heart/ heart space and expanding or taking in other peoples suffering and giving out compassion. Or having compassion for oneself. This meditation feels a lot different to me then the previous style I described. The results are different.
There is only the thinking required to direct the action, not a lot of extraneous thought, and it is more of a feel and experience thing not so much an analytical thing.
Along these lines there are meditations for anger and emotions but especially anger seems a popular thing to meditate for. I have not done anger meditation.
There are probably many more types of meditation that I do not know.
I do believe that some meditation can be relevant to healing, generally I think working with meditation is a slow process, there may be times when people get going faster. I think there are trends in meditation experience, common experiences but all people don't go from A-Z, they might go from A to F to Z and then to O. I mean it may not be a uniform process for everyone. It is individual to a degree and progress and levels are not always sequential. We are dealing with the mind-body-heart-spirt-soul. It's not a robot number line.
I do have some personal experiences I might share about meditation some time and how I think it may be useful in healing. I can't think right now though, no sleep. It may be the long, wrong way around healing trauma though. Maybe attaching to a therapist or someone IS the best solution.
Buddist meditation has a lot of selflessness in it/non-selfishness. My personal oppinion is that selflessness is not what children of Narcissists need. I think children of narcissists need to be selfish. Selfish can be a good thing sometimes.
I know that I need to be selfish.
Meditation is so simple that it is hard.
Meditation is done mostly to clear the mind, focus, bring one's energy under one's own control for combat. Additionally to control another person's energy. Or to develop oneself spiritually.
The thinking mind is limited, we are not our thinking mind, we can function in the world without thinking.
I know nothing of contemplation spiritual traditions. There are so many traditions!
