There are two ways to stretch.<\/p>\n
One way is by feel. You reach or arch or bend or unbend until you find the position that feels right. You know by feel when you’ve unkinked the kinks and decompressed the compression.<\/p>\n
The second way is by following instructions in a book or from a teacher. Sound unlikely? People do this all the time in yoga classes.<\/p>\n
The reason I bring this up is because it applies to meditation. <\/p>\n
With meditation, as with stretching, there are two ways. One way is by feel. The second way is by following instructions in books or from teachers.<\/p>\n
With meditation, only the first way works. In order to meditate you have to notice the meditative state. You can’t create that state. It’s already there. You have to notice it. Books and teachers can’t notice it for you. You have to notice it for yourself.<\/p>\n
Books and teachers can help by giving you pointers about what to notice — that’s what I’m trying to do here — but at the end of the day, it’s you and consciousness. (Horrors! Freddie said something dualistic! Yes, because I’m describing how it seems<\/i> to you because that is your experience<\/i>.) You have to do it for yourself.<\/p>\n
By the way, noticing the meditative state is not a big deal. I just read an article that made it sound like this is a great achievement requiring decades of sadhana. This is ridiculous. Anybody can notice it in a minute. Not everyone will but everyone can. It’s right there all the time for everybody including you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are two ways to stretch. One way is by feel. You reach or arch or bend or unbend until you find the position that feels right. You know by feel when you’ve unkinked the kinks and decompressed the compression. The second way is by following instructions in a book or from a teacher. Sound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YVpx-vB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freddieyam.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}