The Dharma Force

Meditation

After commenting on a nice lady's blog, I started to think about meditation.

Mind is like a computer. We are the users, but we are also the programmers except, usually we don't know it.

With the modern operating system like Windows XP and such, I can describe exactly what I mean.

We only use a very small portion of our mind. Our arms, legs, eyes, ears are controlled by us. They are like the word processor, the spreadsheet, the internet explorer, etc. They are very complicated, and it usually takes us the entire childhood to control them.

Some of the features, since we have not used for a long time, like a few generations, we do not know how to do anymore. Like wiggling our ears. Go a head, try it. Some of us can do it, some of us can't do it. The other thing will be arch an eyebrow. I tried to teach my daughter when she was very young, and every time she could only raise both of her eyebrows. I can only arch my right eyebrow and some people can do their left eyebrow, or both side individually.

We don't control the more lower level stuff. We don't control our heart rate, we don't control our temperature control, and we certainly do not control our sleep or our dreams. These are like low level programs that only a programmer can touch.

Normally, that will suit us just fine. But what happens when you have a high blood pressure? What happens when you have a depression? What happens if you have insomnia? What happens if you have a bipolar disorder?

Modern medicine cannot fix these. They try to regulate, neutralize, slow down, contain these disease, but that is not the most efficient way to do it.

It is like when your computer has a virus, you just replace the hard drive. It will work, to a degree, but it is not the best way. Besides, we cannot manufacture a heart like we do a hard drive.

But there is still hope for us yet. Meditation is our key. With meditation, it is like suddenly, you have access to your lower level programming. You can control your emotion, you can control your heart rate, and you can control your sleep, and most important of all you can control your weight.

You can still do all that if you believe you can do it, and you can reach a deep level of trance.

There are tons of techniques out there, ranging from the full lotus position sitting to the elastic Yoga exercises. The goal is the same. You have to reach your sub-conscious by bypassing your conscious. It is a trick feeling. Every waking moment is controlled by our conscious, and most of our dreams are actually a manifest of our conscious did not want to let go.

Only through these exercises, basically, your conscious is so tired that it did not want to play anymore, then while your mind is still active, it switched off.

Think of it as an overload of your conscious, then, only then your sub-conscious can take control and regulate itself.

I am just watching the TV program "David Blaine: Drowned Alive". In it, David Blaine will attempt to hold breath longer than world record. I am not interested in stunts like this, but if I am to guess, he will try to keep a trance just like I described above to slow down himself, sort of like a hibernation of bears.

Ancient Indian Gurus had tried stuns like this before. Including dropped into a sea or buried alive for some time. It is a challenge against one's self, to reach a level of self-control, and from that a level of enlightenment.

To understand the world, a good beginning place will be self.