I am back on blogger. I tried Facebook Notes for quite a while. The problem with Facebook and the kind of stuff I like to write is that it gets posted on everyone's wall, or whatever they call that common space. There it becomes like unsolicited advice, which is rarely appreciated. I wanted to do a series on Christian meditation which tends to get people whacky. So I thought I would move back to blogger where I can talk to myself and the occassional guy from China, and not bother anybody.
My first two notes with some thoughts about Christian meditation are on my facebook page.
One of the toughest things about silent meditation is staying awake. A power nap is a good and useful thing, but it is not the same as meditation. There is an optimal state of mind during meditation that is different than thinking, resting, or sleeping. These different states are associated with differences in brain activity. With practice you can learn to distinguish between these different states. One of the most basic is how you respond to sounds during meditation. If a noise in the environment causes a startle response in you, you are moving into sleep.
What happens during sleep is a sort of disconnect from the cortex, the outer, higher level parts of our brain where our conscious processing takes place. The startle response comes from the subcortical or more primitive parts of our brain. In a meditative state, you will notice sounds but not be startled by them. Studies of masters of meditation reportedly have demonstrated no startle response to even extremely loud noises like a gun shot.
If you notice a startle response during your meditation practice, you should probably alert yourself in some way. I use to struggle with this, but have learned some techniques to keep me in a meditative state more. I will post some of those ideas later.
Anyone else notice this during meditation?
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