AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 11:58 amFederica wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 5:29 pm So this morning I've tried the first two steps of the meditation on the higher self. As expected, I have first struggled to achieve restfulness of soul. But I had good motivation, and I felt I was moving back and forth toward restfulness. It's 'only' that I couldn't maintain the state of restfulness. As advised, after a while I moved to the second step, even if the first was not achieved. I thought about the mentioned verse, trying to vividly think and visualize the words, and to create an openness for an encounter, or humble discovery. Again, I couldn't achieve much, but I had a sense of movement, of something happening, of dynamism of the heart, although short-lived. And the most surprising thing, when I closed it, was the time elapsed: more than one hour. That was well beyond my subjective sense of time passed, and by far beyond any previous meditation attempt. I look forward to trying again tomorrow!
Federica,
What you say about the subjective sense of time passed is interesting. For me, it's usually the opposite effect - I feel that I have been meditating for an hour, but it was actually only 15 min. clock-time. It reminds me of something Cleric wrote about how it could depend if we are viewing feeling from the perspective of thinking or thinking from the perspective of feeling. Perhaps I incline towards the former and you towards the latter. What do you think? Has that remained pretty constant for you?
Hm.. I don't know. I don't understand well this feeling-thinking reciprocal relation. My sense is, they come from different origins, then they interact. There is an asymmetry, because thinking works at a higher level of freedom/awareness, and it's through thought-images that feelings are consciously experienced. So a feeling has to be viewed as a thought-form, but the opposite does not seem possible, I believe. How to view thinking from the perspective of feeling?
This morning was my fourth meditation, and yes, I have experienced again a dilation of clock-time in my meditative world, although it was less spectacular than on day 1. For me it looks like a rather good sign of involvement in my inner world, a sign of better flow, where I pack in the meditative now more than I do in standard experience, so the movement from an idea to the next is delated, or expanded, compared to what happens in my standard experience, when I have to quickly switch from thought to thought, unable to find enough richness to inhabit each idea for a long 'time'/grasp the extended idea.
My tentative intuition would be that it depends on how our cognitive process flows in meditation compared to how it flows in normal cognition. You have likely reached a level of general understanding and processing of idea-perceptions outside meditation that has expanded your now to an extent that, compared to your meditations', is larger? Parallel to that, you are probably able to travel fast enough in meditation to feel that a lot has happened?
Well, I guess my idea is pretty confusing as is I should think it through more in depth... but the main point is, I wonder if the perception of time passed does not depend on how we perceive time in general, which is of course impacted by our level of spiritual development.
In my case, as I said earlier, I have so far put almost all my efforts in reading, reflecting, and praying, not in meditation. So I have exercised my everyday thinking muscles to some extent, but not at all my meditative ones. And now I really feel the unbalance and weakness. At the same time, I'm motivated and happy to engage in this new effort, which probably helps me lose myself in the imaginative efforts, and that's where I also lose contact with the time grid.
Anyhow, I believe my step 1 has now gotten slightly better, I have found 'warm ice' as a good "word of power" for me. It evoques the "still waters", by the ice, but also the intentionality and dynamic potential of warmth. And it’s a wonder that nicely drives imaginative efforts to create and maintain. I am still weak on step 2, but I was ready for that. Hopefully, with persistence, my subjective-objective time relation will be inverted at some point as well.