Getting Started With My Spirit-Soul-Mind-Whatever-It-Really-Is (seeking assistance)

Hello! I have long been interested in spirituality and its related topics. I was raised agnostic/atheist, and dabbled with mainstream/meditative Wicca for about two months in high school. Looking back, it seems rather silly, but there was something ephemerally solid in the meditation and such like. I'm of the opinion, without much evidence myself, that most of these various spiritual practices are ways to get in touch with What-We-Are. As such, I'm also interested in Gnosticism, Illuminism, and the positive parts of popular Freemasonry and Occultism and so forth. But I haven't really looked at it carefully for agesandages.

Currently, I "identify" as an Atheistic Discordian -- I believe in a goddess who doesn't exist by her own admission. I'm also a soon-to-be-graduating college student studying Philosophy and English Literature. Anyway, I am interested in pursuing the more spiritual (or psychological? or mental? or soulbased? or...?) side of my existence; meditation and all that jazz. But the problem is, if you couldn't guess from my use of the phrase "and all that jazz," I don't really know where to start.

So! The query I would like to put forth to you, my fellow human beings (and claimants to otherwise): can any of you recommend a good place to begin? Books I could grab (preferably for fairly cheap?) at the local "metaphysical" bookstore? Websites which could guide me through some beginning meditations or something?

Maybe this could come in handy to other "Seekers" as well! (There's a seeker born every minute, they say )

Here -- watch this video of John Chang

www.youtube.com...

Then you can take classes with a similar qigong master or do it by self-education through springforestqigong.com...

reply to post by Solasis

Websites which could guide me through some beginning meditations or something?

You could start local...

Reading (especially online) isn't even close to the same thing as Doing...

It provides interesting background and history, of course, and there are many good books, but if you are serious about exploring this you should consider attending local classes... find one that jives with you and what you are looking for... In the beginning, a teacher/mentor is a very important piece of the puzzle

reply to post by LadySkadi


Oh, yes, of course I'm not just limiting myself to reading! I would love to take classes and find a teacher and so forth, but my social (and monetary...) energies as well as my time are so divided for the next couple of months that it's simply not plausible in the world we live in! I'm looking to get started, easing myself in a bit so that I'm a bit more prepared, i suppose, in May and June when I can really start; I'm sort of looking for what "variety" I would be interested in, as well as simple stuff to do now while I am in the midst of other junk

reply to post by happygolucky


Hehe, thank you; I'm not very good at searching for such specifically vague things like this. If it's a proper vague entity or a proper specific entity, no problem. I was just concerned that just searching for "meditations" would lead me to those threads where people talk about the images they've seen in the depth of it. And while those are quite interesting, they're of no help to me right now...!

reply to post by drew hempel


Fascinating video Ill look at that website and see if it's good for me Thank you very much!

reply to post by Solasis


Well, as stated above try locally. This thread is pretty good in itself for meditation and other things, a GREAT BEGINNERS SOURCE:

**Astralpedia Master Thread **(parts 1,2,3,3.5,4 + more)

[edit on Mar 7th 2010 by TheMythLives]

reply to post by Solasis


You really can't beat the basics.
Sit in a chair or on the floor without crossing your legs to get distracted from your legs going NUMB.. umm.. try putting a cushion under your ass and cross your legs but then pull one out in front of the other, you'll see, and they wont be touching as to kill the circulation, this is the Burmese position. I've been meditating 4 years pretty hardcore and its something simple like this that i JUST learned.

Also stretching before hand.. note your breathing, if you stretch it will open both your nostrils as opposed to meditating while your left nostril (yin, rest etc) is more dominant.. It will just make things more comfortable but has other effects i wont get into, trying to keep this short.

Sit in the dark, get that melatonin /seratonin flowin' for some cool visuals if thats what your going for, 3rd eye work.

otherwise.. just do this... inhale through the nose.. count..1..2..3..4..exhale..1..2..3.4.. and repeat.. focusing on the numbers and breath adds a good focal point to center the mind. Once you get the breathing relaxed you can focus on a mental object, it could just be a while circle... but the idea is every time you have a passing thought, just go back to that circle... so like "blank mind"..."i wonder if" "WHITE CIRCLE!"...maybe later i will.."white circle!"...

i remember the first long meditation i had, it took me 45 minutes to clear my mind reasonably. And i was like wow!.. and i opened my crown by doing this, went into a deeper state mind, felt my body go numb, feel myself come alive with new found awareness and the end result was me feeling fantastic, why havent i ever done this.. and what felt like a flaming hole in the top of my head.

You can go far with that dude.

Work on centering the mind, clearing it, just getting relaxed enough to slip into a trance.

kill all desire, tell yourself they can wait and you have more important things to do, desires lead to distracting thoughts.. damn, even if you got an itch on your leg, tell yourself its just an itch, you won't DIE.. so ignore it.. keep focused, in no time you'll be in a new found state, especially if focusing on the head.. which i wouldnt fully recommend unless you want a headache, or the lower centers are flowing.. you'll get a feel for that too.. the mental qualities but physical signs like stiffness in the back.. one day you'll feel it all want to push upwards and you'll know its pretty safe whatever you focus on, no headaches, because everything is flowing well.

So like.. do that first thing, then maybe work on chakras..

if you wanna get the jump start I wish I had at this point... start feeling your body dude... let your hand go limp, feel it tingling.. relax more and more... the more you relax, the more you feel these sensations in your body... and try and follow the sensations all over your body. The more you do this, the more you devlope them, and develope your nervous system, allowing you many benefits of this. So you know, feel the fingers, then work your way up the forearms, and legs etc.. feel your body internally.

Put your attention a couple inches below your belly button, this is your big Yang Chi powerplant, its good to get a jump start on that. This will give you all your vitality for life man, get used to feel that area and more then likely the first time you may feel a spark / tingling and then a bubbling a little lower. If you don't feel anything don't be alarmed, it usually means its more developed and it doesnt need that rapid jump start like other people, OR.. your feeling the wrong area. Its been 4 years and i think it took me 3 years just to pinpoint exactly where my chakras were, some were easy, some not so easy.

hope any of that helps.

I'm trying to put together some vids to help with stuff like this, when they are done i'll post them on ATS.. In all my desire for independence, I really wished I had a teacher for this stuff. I mean for spiritual things you have to realize you have to teach yourself, you have to "SELF-realize" your own way.. others can only guide you.. but damn, if there aren't some good tips i'm only finding out NOW.

peace

Hello,

This will be my first post and my first posts on forums tend to become replies. You state you wish to get started on your mind or soul or whatever. I can tell you right now that someone who has helped me a great deal and someone who shares a lot of knowledge on this matter can be found on youtube on the channel "30pp0".
I will tell you a bit of backstory because thats what i'd like to do anyway. I myself am a 23 year old guy from the netherlands and i used to smoke marihuana and a lot and as a result i got waaay paranoid and i think that a year later i came across the term conspiracy theorist . Did i do my research? Yes, did it have negative effects? Yes and i will get into that. I read a lot of David icke and Fritz springmeier and some other things like zeitgeist and kymatica got absorbed by me and a lot more but its not really relevant to you or me. Mostly it was my own psyche that haunted me and with marihuana if youre vulnerable to it, it can really mess you up for a long time. I'd say it will mess you up anyway but some people react to it more strongly like myself. So i quit i think around a half year ago and things are going much better. When i first heard this man talk, and i started listening to him in an incorrect order. I started with an audio recording he does(theyre all audio recordings btw, with some videos in there for references or to make a point) called knowledge. Me being very suggestible i kind of absorbed a lot of the things he said and mind you i was already pretty hosed up in the head, so i made i think a reasonable decision because of fear, delusions and paranoia and i admitted myself to a mental health center. I was very conflicted towards medication, i wanted to help myself but i knew that its junk (and it really is). I took of my own free will mind you zyprexa (its an antipsychotic and its effect takes some time) so after 2 weeks i was feeling a bit better but still very paranoid from time to time. In that time i learned a lot about my own psyche. Mind you there are far better ways to learn about yourself out there. One author i kind of like is Jiddu Krishnamurti who has a lot of things to say about knowing thyself (my mother bought me the book while i was admitted there), some of it i think is been tampered with but im not sure and i dont really care. Just take some pointers here and there is what i would say. I quit the medication quite a long time ago aswell and i can safely say that its a lot better to have contact with your feelings again. One thing i do know though is that i shouldve started listening to Jonathans uploads from the beginning which is "the healing begins now" It is very interesting to say the least and a lot of the things he says will hit home if you pay attention and dont memorize but try to understand him or fully understand him. When i left that piece of peep mental institute i was at first anxious to start listening to him again. But a lot of what he said made perfect sense and i am experiencing a lot of that right now. Formulate your own life, you can't change what happens to you but you can change what you choose to give and how you perceive what happens to you. The reason i don't tell much about what he says is that i could go into detail but it would take me far more words than it would take him at least right now. Good luck and safe travels

You may encounter people who recommend that you "drop some acid, man" or to eat some dubious mushrooms. These activities are not the answer. They can however give you glimpses of the powerful states that you can achieve through meditation.

Hello!!

Originally posted by Solasis
I'm of the opinion, without much evidence myself, that most of these various spiritual practices are ways to get in touch with What-We-Are. As such, I'm also interested in Gnosticism, Illuminism, and the positive parts of popular Freemasonry and Occultism and so forth.

That's awesome.

They ARE all ways to get in touch with the same thing, from different directions and in different cultural clothing so to speak. I have the evidence because I have personally studied a number of different esoteric paths, from Gnostic Christianity to Hinduism to Buddhism to Taoism to "pagan" traditions like Wicca and Druidism and others.

Imagine a large spherical net that is cut into pieces. Each of these traditions is like a piece of that net, all trying (impossibly) to reach to the center of the sphere somehow. This part of the net from China overlaps this other part of the net from India, which overlaps European traditions, etc., but if you learn them all, they form the most beautiful and instructive collaborative teachings all pointing and surrounding the center of this sphere.

Anyway, I am interested in pursuing the more spiritual (or psychological? or mental? or soulbased? or...?)

Or all of them?

side of my existence; meditation and all that jazz. But the problem is, if you couldn't guess from my use of the phrase "and all that jazz," I don't really know where to start.

What's great is that there is nowhere in particular you have to start, or even "should" start.

It's whatever you feel like.

I personally recommend the Tao te Ching, which is linked in my signature. Why? Because in short paragraph-long "chapters," the author somehow managed to leave profound insights. The chapters are extremely short but they are also extremely dense, and whereas it might take you a few seconds to read each one, you could sit and explore the ramifications of each one for minutes, or even hours or even years. And each of them goes right to the very heart of a number of "esoteric" illusory issues and conundrums we experience as humans.

And more than that I recommend you should slowly begin exploring ALL traditions you can get your hands on!, at least that resonate with you. But you will (hopefully) find, the more you learn about other cultures and traditions and the more you become familiar with those, your horizons will constantly expand and you will learn how to resonate with more and more different energies that are co-existing in this universe with you.

I'm glad to see people looking to experience meditation and all it can provide! Several youtube videos (as crazy as that sounds) can help you get started. I personally was a worry wart who could not slow my mind down. I even was diagnosed with OCD as a young child but recovered with meds and some therapy. I still worried a lot and until recently suffered from insomnia, but I stumbled upon meditation and it has done wonders.

I personally found meditation through self-hypnosis. I came across a hypnosis video (I'm a psychology major and interested in how the mind works, yadda yadda) and was just screwing around with it when midway through the video the guy said "and now you will realize it is too difficult to lift your legs" or something like that and I realized I honestly could not lift my legs. It made me excited and I lost my trance state and snapped out of it, but from that point on I studied self-hypnosis and practiced some techniques.

That led me to meditation. Meditation has the same trance-like state, but it is more about mind clearing and visualization than it is auto-suggestions sent to your subconscious to make an actual change. Meditation does produce change on it's own though. I have a lot of energy as I type this here. It is amazing what it can do. I feel better and worry less. I can focus much easier and my mood is calmer. I still have a lot of learning to do myself as well, so I am just scratching the surface (and already seeing results!).

My advice would be to find what method feels best for you, and to PRACTICE. Imagine, if you will, someone who wants to start jogging and become a marathon runner. Just starting from scratch usually means lots of hard work over a long period of time to get to where you eventually want to be. The runner becomes more familiar with running and runs longer and faster as they continue to practice. Meditation can be similar. I will say, you should notice effects even from the beginning if you can calm your mind and "let go." Once you let go, it as all easy from there. Just be patient and stick with it. Good luck!

[edit on 7-3-2010 by Subconsciously Correct]