Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Meddatation In My Sleep
I had something really weird happen to me and I thought I would share it.
First off let me start off this story to let you know that I needed to stay up way past my normal bed time. In fact I was up for about 22 hours straight. Which is very hard for me, but I was able to do it. Anyways, right before I decided that is was time for me to get some sleep I started to think about mediation, and even though I didn't mediate before I fell asleep I could tell that my mind was in a state to prepare for mediation. I then fell asleep. I then dreament that I was in a town and that some entiy was there to harm it. Only by mediation and speaking a chant over and over again that I did learn awhile ago would save the town. The chant is suppose to give a person strength. As far as I remember that is all I really dreamed about while I was asleep. I was asleep for only 2 hours when a telemarker called. After I was off the phone with the telemarketer I was completly awake, and not tired at all.
I know that some people can actually live like this if they train thier bodies to live off that much sleep. Let me tell you that is not me. I usually need a full 8 hours of sleep atleast so I'm not tired when I wake up, and I can be very stupporn about getting that much sleep once I actually fall asleep. Even if woken up.
Now I will admit that there is a possiblity that there is a perfectly logical reason for this, but I do not know it off the top of my head. I do belive that I was medidating while I was sleeping. Very strange.
First off let me start off this story to let you know that I needed to stay up way past my normal bed time. In fact I was up for about 22 hours straight. Which is very hard for me, but I was able to do it. Anyways, right before I decided that is was time for me to get some sleep I started to think about mediation, and even though I didn't mediate before I fell asleep I could tell that my mind was in a state to prepare for mediation. I then fell asleep. I then dreament that I was in a town and that some entiy was there to harm it. Only by mediation and speaking a chant over and over again that I did learn awhile ago would save the town. The chant is suppose to give a person strength. As far as I remember that is all I really dreamed about while I was asleep. I was asleep for only 2 hours when a telemarker called. After I was off the phone with the telemarketer I was completly awake, and not tired at all.
I know that some people can actually live like this if they train thier bodies to live off that much sleep. Let me tell you that is not me. I usually need a full 8 hours of sleep atleast so I'm not tired when I wake up, and I can be very stupporn about getting that much sleep once I actually fall asleep. Even if woken up.
Now I will admit that there is a possiblity that there is a perfectly logical reason for this, but I do not know it off the top of my head. I do belive that I was medidating while I was sleeping. Very strange.
0
Comments
http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/Mindfulness in Plain English
Zen Meditation - The Seat of Enlightenment
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying talks about being aware during non-REM sleep - surely the pinnacle of awareness.
Turn this around.
How often are we aware that the 'dreaming mind', which comes to awareness while our body sleeps, does not simply stop while we are awake? It carries on functioning; it is just that we do not pay it attention. The darkness does not go away when the sun rises, it moves around the world.
When we sleep, we face our shadow and, awake, we are so blinded by the light of consciousness that we imagine there is no shadow!
Is it possible to dream and mediate at teh same time?
Possible to sleep and mediate even if mediate means being awake.
Meditate ..to many distractions in the day, and I have yet learned to meditate, concentration doesnt last that long
pob:D
No it's not possible to be asleep and dreaming and meditate at the same time.
Concentration is something that is developed. Affectionately known as "the monkey mind" is the state our minds are in when we initially begin to meditate. Our thoughts swing from branch to branch sometimes with no seeming connection. Anything but quiet! The longer that we sit and work on it, our concentration grows. It may only happen for a few minutes at a time, and that's great. It's a starting place. None of us were born instant meditators. Remembering to just sit and follow the breath is too easy for some of us. Which is why it is so great. The instructions aren't complicated and you can start right away.
Westerners in general are used to a "go go go" lifestyle. Meditation teaches us to slow our minds down. I, like you, am a beginner to all of this and really working on getting my mind to one pointedness. We want instant gratification and to be able to meditate for a half an hour to an hour. It's really why they call it a practice. After meditating for 5 months have I gotten to a half an hour on most days. I rather meditate for 10 minutes that I am mindful then 30 minutes of my scattered thoughts butting in.
Now, to throw a wrench into the works, is not to have any preconceived ideas about what a particular meditation session should be like. I find that when I put my preconceived notions into it, something else usually happens. So "go with the flow" works best. If 5 minutes is all you can do, that's great. You can build on it later. I did the 5 minute rule. I added 5 minutes every few weeks. It's what worked for me. Mindfulness of Breathing is the easiest of the meditation practices from what I've tried. You constantly practice and get better and better at it.
So get a zafu and a cushion and sit.