I'm posting here even though it's not about my personal experience. It's more a question I have and am wondering what other forum members here have as potential answers, advice, reflections, thoughts. Anything really, feel free to discuss in any direction.
Whether it's NDErs or mediums, all kinds of people who've had contact with "the other side" or who engage psi in some way, meditation is almost always brought up as the key practice to encourage, stimulate, foster that contact. Mediums (Van Praaghe, etc.) and channels encourage it, people like Tom Campbell or pre-birther Christian Sundberg (it's how he was able to reconnect and access more of those memories).
So my interest right now is in gearing a meditation practice to those ends. Not to foster my psychological well-being, not to become "enlightened", but to access greater realities in whatever form. To access more the greater I (more of who I am) and more of spiritual reality. (And yes I would include a component early on of asking for, visualizing a protective white light to not invite entities or energies that are not for the highest good.)
Do any of you have tips, whether based on your experience or through what you've read or come across, that helps foster that kind of meditation? Are there special techniques you use? Or is it a matter of having a certain intention before starting the meditation?
Van Praaghe and others will often encourage to say to yourself "empty, empty, empty", just be the observing soul without worldly mind content that you really are. But beyond that, again, what intentions, attitudes, techniques would help.
Psychic development should be part of spiritual development. You should be doing it for good ends, for the benefit of others. Whatever your motivations you will attract like minded guides. You will want to have guides who want to help you, not guides who think it's fun to play games or who have selfish motivations.
When I took
classes in spirit communication the instructor was a psychologist who believed alpha brain waves facilitated communication and we would do a relaxing meditation before
starting where we would relax and visualize a cloud (that was the only instruction he gave) which he believed would produce alpha waves and help communication.
In my own reading I found that theta waves improve psychic perception and that deep relaxation and visualization will do this. If you have experienced the hypnogogic state - when you are falling asleep and you reach a state where it is hard to concentrate and you have a lot of vivid imagery that is the hypnogogic state - a lot of theta waves are produced in that state.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/n...bohovvk6v1
So when I want to try to perceive something psychically I will do relaxation exercises including visualizations and get into the hypnogogic state. Then I will ask a question and notice whatever mental activity occurs. Sometimes I hear a voice but mostly there is imagery including symbolic imagery. But sometimes the answer doesn't come until much later - at odd moments I might get a "flash" of perception.
Any type of meditation that quiets the mental chatter and calms the mind will help you notice faint psychic perceptions because it reduces the "noise" that normally would drown out other more weaker types of perceptions.
This is my most up-to-date instructions for relaxing meditation. A side benefit is that after I do this nothing bothers me:
https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2020/08/prep...-with.html
When you are trying to perceive psychically, it is better to ask open ended questions where the answer could be anything. For example trying to perceive the color of a playing card is very hard because you know there are two choices and your thinking about them will interfere with faint perceptions. On the other hand trying to see what is at the written coordinates of a site enclosed in an opaque envelope is actually easier because you should have no preconceived ideas about what is there that would drown out any faint psychic impressions you might pick up.
Thanks for all that. A lot to digest there in those linked pages but I'll definitely be taking a closer look!
I'm curious if Mediochre has anything to add to this question, if it's up his alley.
For me, everything overlaps. A technique for OOBE or past-life recall or contact with deceased all seem to be very similar. But I started with the out-of-body experience approach, years ago. Whatever I learned then seems to blend into say past-life regression.
The similarity is in deep relaxation; the difference is in what one intends, where is the focus and goal.
Contact with deceased was more fortuitous or opportunistic, I did not aim for it but simply allowed it to happen.
The part I most identify as relevant, for me, is letting go of awareness of having a body. That treads a borderline between being so relaxed that one falls asleep, and alternatively being distracted by one's environment in any way.
This echoes a comment by Mediochre on "blank body meditation". I agree with his caveat that it is not particularly an approach suited to every occasion. For example when sitting in a waiting room or travelling on public transport, I may meditate but it is much more about calming the mind, discarding stray thoughts and entering some serenity. But also being alert enough to respond to everyday needs such as getting off the bus at the correct stop or interacting with other people.
(2023-08-02, 07:02 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]For example when sitting in a waiting room or travelling on public transport, I may meditate but it is much more about calming the mind, discarding stray thoughts and entering some serenity. But also being alert enough to respond to everyday needs such as getting off the bus at the correct stop or interacting with other people.
I wanted to add that it is a very physical process for me, we talk about the mind and awareness and thoughts and so on. But when I find my preferred state of being there is a very physical feeling to it as well, somehow it does involve the body.
As a background explanation, years ago I found I had discovered a very powerful form of self-therapy - because I was pretty screwed-up at the time and that led me into feeling emotions in such a physical way that I could only practise it while alone. That's a slightly different though related topic, it was part of a healing process which corresponded slightly indirectly with uncovering past-life memories. It wasn't a regression in the sense of attempting to remember anything, but was only directed towards feeling and fully experiencing whatever emotions came to the surface.
There is a quote, I think from the Gospel of Thomas, which accurately describes this process (though it may have other interpretations).
Quote:"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
(I did not use this text as an inspiration at the time, I was more likely reading laymen's texts on psychiatry.)
(2023-08-02, 12:50 PM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]I wanted to add that it is a very physical process for me, we talk about the mind and awareness and thoughts and so on. But when I find my preferred state of being there is a very physical feeling to it as well, somehow it does involve the body.
I don't know if you saw my thread about the "realization process". That's what I thought about (it including the feeling of the body) when I read your previous post. When I meditate, I aim for a blank or orbserving mind towards the thoughts, disidentifying with them, but being aware of, or inhabiting, a felt sense of the body, or the space inside the body, whether you want to call that energy or consciousness or pure being. But again I don't know if this is the best way for the purpose that's at the heart of the question in this thread. I get the importance of intention though. I'm interested in Jeffery Martin's research, as posted by Mediochre, and seeing what is proposed.
(2023-08-02, 01:08 PM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if you saw my thread about the "realization process". That's what I thought about (it including the feeling of the body) when I read your previous post. When I meditate, I aim for a blank or orbserving mind towards the thoughts, disidentifying with them, but being aware of, or inhabiting, a felt sense of the body, or the space inside the body, whether you want to call that energy or consciousness or pure being. But again I don't know if this is the best way for the purpose that's at the heart of the question in this thread. I get the importance of intention though. I'm interested in Jeffery Martin's research, as posted by Mediochre, and seeing what is proposed.
I think I recall that thread of yours.
As for this:
Quote:But again I don't know if this is the best way for the purpose that's at the heart of the question in this thread.
In this thread I've mentioned at least three different types of meditation, which cover different needs for me. Though the 'losing awareness of my body' type is the one which led to an OOBE - a long time ago. it may be closer to what you are asking.