. . . and wide awake . . .

lobster

From another thread . . .

The concept of deliberately introducing stimuli during a formal sitting practice would not follow any conventional Buddhist practice for reasons already stated on this thread.
Most of the resistance you are finding on this thread is because you are equating it with meditation on a Buddhist website.
What you are currently experiencing is better described as trance meditation and if that is what you wish to explore..just google trance meditation with music.

Are we all in a trance of some sort or another?
http://www.tarabrach.com/articles/inquiring-trance.html

One of the most insidious traps on the meditative path is getting stuck in a good place.

http://here-and-now.org/VSI/Articles/TheoryMed/theoryHow.htm#

Do we have to make a good space to wake from or is samsara 'never a good place'?

. . . and now back to the trance dance of the three jewels?

Zayl

I heard someone say TRANCE DANCE

Citta

Its one thing to recognise that we are entranced Ed.
It quite another to suggest that we can escape that trance by the use of another trance. ( which I know you weren't suggesting.)
Thats a bardo within a bardo.

how

Simply speaking...

When I think of a trance, I think of someone selectively focusing on some sense data to the exclusion of other data to provide a specific effect.
Trances mirror the techniques used by our our ego/identity to produce a very selective representation of reality.

When I think of meditation, I think of someone being the non selective observer of all sense data. This allows everything to simply unfold as it is.

Jeffrey

I don't think listening to music is always a trance. It can also be just breath taking appreciation of beauty like snow outlining the branches of a tree. It can bring out your sense of flowing heart energy, like water, which is like Samboghakaya though a distortion. The type of music is also important. I would think classical would be more meditative than gangsta rap.

That said like in the other thread it is not a substitute of a meditation method that is tried and true through a lineage of teachers. (or perhaps by reading about meditation, but I think a teacher is more an alive teaching)

fivebells

lobster said:

Do we have to make a good space to wake from or is samsara 'never a good place'?

It depends on what you can handle. Having the ability to make a good space to wake from is certainly very useful when you run up against stuff you can't handle otherwise.

lobster

It depends on what you can handle.

Indeed.

This is the value of 'half hearted spirituality'. Preparation? Play Buddhism? Not all of us ready for three days under a tree, meditating our socks off . . . wait a minute the Buddha probably did not have socks . . .