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brother neil
USA
752 Posts |
 Posted - Sep 20 2008 : 4:57:36 PM
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Gumpi, I wanted to try again at your original posting of this without ragging on you, I will only answer the things I feel I have some personal understading of, I feel bad your post got off topic brother.
'm interested in the role grace plays in Yoga. I'm talking about grace of God. No matter how much i meditate or do pranayama practices i do not experience bliss, inner sounds or inner lights. At most all i get is a slight feeling of relaxation. So how does someone get God's grace? Why should i keep up at this game if the biggest ingredient (God's grace) is not there?
Forgive yourself and that is grace, you are of God so this would be part of God’s grace
A question: how do you offer devotion to God and have no expectations at the same time?
Offer devotion to yourself, to relaxing, lettting go of tension, letting go of beating yourself up, letting go of negative self talk, feelings of unworthiness. Devotion to self is devotion go God imo
In spinal breathing, it seems awkward or wishy washy tracing the spinal nerve - it feels like i am seeing it in my mind along with feeling it as if i am looking through my left eye - and the eyes always go downwards when i get near the bottom of the spine AND the bottom is not the perineum, it is much higher up.
Maybe you have blocks there and that is why you cannot go down to the toot
When i breathe in it takes about 2 seconds. This doesn't seem long enough to trace the spinal nerve. How does the breathing depth increase?
breathing depth may increase by opening up your blocks, I can trace the never in two seconds if I need to, let go of the thought that you are not able to trace the nerve. As your blocks clean out you may be able to trace the nerve easier, breath slower, chedk your sitting posture or go to a class and have someone check it, it could be blocking you as well.
Do brainwave entrainment technologies actually work?
How do yogis slow their hearts? Please give detailed explanation.
By mastering the breath, slowing it down, the mind being calmer, etc... Personally I have slowed mine down into the low 40's, considering I have always been one of a high heart rate for me that is vey slow. I did it with long deep breathing and watched it on a heart beat meter,
I have heard of many people with bodies that are in bad shape have spiritual experiences. I even met a guy who was a strong alcoholic who started meditating and was able to give up the booze and had spiritual experiences even while drinking. I must be doing something wrong, because even though i enjoy a little drink i have been meditating for a long time and haven't experienced ANYTHING.
Part of that depends on your level of belief, how much anger do you feel, how much can you let go, are you Demanding that god shows him/her/itself, how much can you let go, how much can you let go
James Randi did a study on Transcendental Meditation and concluded that it is virtually indistinguishable from taking a nap. He said subjects exposed to soothing music got the same benefits as long term meditators. The level of relaxation was virtually the same in both types. Why meditate then?
Personally I don’t care too much for computer readouts and there are too many variable involved that I would want the answers to before I even considered his findings of any value. How humble were the meditators, how open to change where they, Huw much did htey work on themselves outside of meditation how did they eat, etc....
I found a post by some guy on a web forum for OBEs wherein he said he had been trying for 40 years to induce an OBE without success. And he was someone who helped Monroe write his books! Someeiimes what we seek eludes us, sounds as if he may have been too attached?
In conclusion, it seems to me that there is nothing more involved with meditation experiences than the placebo effect or God's grace or the different make-ups of people's brains. If you BELIEVE meditation works, it tends to work. If you test it with the ordinary sense of experimentation and scepticism at the start and consequently experience nothing of report, it was because you didn't believe it would work and therefore there is no placebo effect. The mind is powerful so if you do not believe something will work then it may well not, also depends on how open someone is for change, etc...
Regarding seeing the spiritual eye: the only people in the world that report this experience are some people on this forum and the Yogananda forums. I have spoken to 100's of people who are otherwise spiritual and they know nothing of the spiritual eye. Even people who have Near-Death Experiences do not describe the spiritual eye but an altogether different phenomena.
Regarding inner sounds such as OM: i see no reason why this is simply not physiological phenomena such as tinnitus. Hearing "bell" sounds is a slightly different manifestation of tinnitus.
Regarding reduced metabolism from yoga practices - in pretty much most of the studies done on meditation in the lab, the rate of metabolism in meditation when subjects report being in the meditative state is the same rate of metabolism as people in sleep. Breathing slows and sometimes pauses up to 20 seconds at a time, which makes 2 breaths per minute consumed. There is a slight lowering of heart rate but nothing considerably significant. In my own experience of meditation my breath will slow and pause, sometimes for 20 seconds at a time, but there is no perceptible change in heart rate. So how can it be that some people, on this forum included, can say that a yogic breathless state can last for several minutes at a time or even for hours? Why do some people say meditation has lowered their resting pulse considerably? Might there not be other factors involved here, such as regular strenuous exercise and change of diet? My resting heart rate has dropped 10 per minute from three years ago, I am eating better, I exercise better, I do breathign practices, meditate, etc... Science recognizes the unknown variable but yet wants to examine many things. A friend fo mine who is a quantam physicist says that in his studies objects reacted differently whant they were being observed with a camer and when they were not being observed. Too many variable, imo too many people trying to quantify God and I don’t believe it will happen. We exist, that is fact to me, the lab experiments are not very factual to me. Of course diet, exercise, etc.. also has effects on people
And what about the claims for meditation made by Paramahansa Yogananda? With his hong sau technique he says that the breath stops which makes the heart calm which switches the senses off (pratyahara) which equals samadhi or the thoughtless state. If you fast and eat no meat but just fruits and vegetable, the venous blood is reduced which calms the heart and switches the senses off. Then, when you do Kriya yoga pranayama (spinal breathing), the practice of continuously oxygenating the blood burns out all the carbon in the blood in time and the heart is totally calmed, rendering a breathless state. What is the truth in all this?
Regarding spinal breathing and the breathless state - when you are performing the breathing prescribed you are doing it with force and deliberately. So how then would a spontaneous breathless state occur by itself through this practice? Please give the detailed explanation. Sometimes you just slip into another state, how, why, etc.. I don’t really know but I have experienced it. That is about as detailed as I can get
What exactly is kundalini? The explanations i have come across on this website are not satisfactory enough. Sometimes it is sexual fluid, sometimes it is cerebrospinal fluid, sometimes it is astral body. But more importantly the people on this website that claim to have kundalini experiences do not seem to me to be more highly evolved than an average person. There is no increase in IQ, physical power, generation of creative ideas, monetary success, overcoming of sex, control over bad habits, better morality and so on. How do these people even know if what they are experiencing is kundalini or not?
And lastly, i am struck by the apparent absence of scepticism on this forum. While we are asked by yoga teachers to approach yoga with slight scepticism and to test out the methods first without needing faith or beleif and then finding the promised results there seems to be a conspicuous abundance of absence of people posting on this forum raising issues such as the ones i have above. Why? If the said experiences are not there (and they certainly aren't for me and i imagine not for others also) where are the people coming and complaining? Where are the questions? Do people find this website, see the words "spinal breathing" and not even begin to think it might be a bit hokum? After all, the spine doesn't breathe does it? Where are the people that use these methods and not experiencing much? Am i to believe that everyone who finds this website simply has a lack of scepticism? That they don't even question some of the things here? Why doesn't anybody question the existence of prana for a start? Prana is something that hasn't been measured or detected by science, yet science has uncovered mostly every other type of energy there is, down to the smallest of biological mechanisms. Why not much skepticism here? It seems to me yogani is very wise and has made descriptions of wise practise that gets close to the roots in simple terms. Many of the people on this forum seem to be at a different level as well. Call it the law of attraction if you wish, like minded people attracting like minded people. I would say the general response here resonates/vibrates at a different frequency then other sites I have visited, not saying Good or bad
There are apparently eminent yogis who claim to be able to go into samadhi who don't seem to know that kirlian photography doesn't prove the existence of prana. Yet they write about it and state it does. But this is not the opinion of real science. Am i to conclude that samadhi really doesn't convey much, especially if the yogis that enter it come back and tell us pseudoscience is science? What happened to omniscience? When science undersstands the unknown variable, then I woud call it real. To me real science is that we are alive, that is real, existence exists, that is real, science has not a clue to how we came to be, maybe it understand what happened after the big bang but id does not understand how the big bang was possible. God existed before the big bang, how is that possilbe I don’t know but if nothing existed then how did something come to be. Science cannot explain the “something” that made it all possible.
Where is the proof that people levitate? People sometimes post messages on here saying that they hop. If you really do hop, and you aren't deliberately bouncing on a foam mat, please show us the evidence. Why aren't you world famous? Why aren't you on the news? All you need to do is post a video on Youtube with witnesses. You could come and meet me if you don't want "fame" and demonstrate it to me. I would pay a lot of money to actually see this.
How about other claims? Like hair moving by itself. Like people spontaneously moving around and adopting various different physical positions, which they claim are beyond their control. Where is the evidence? Where is the evidence that looking at a picture of a yogi is "shaktipat"? Point me to a shaktipat photo on the internet and let's see if it works for me. I am not a bad person; i want some sort of proof of it. I have seen various saints and yogis photos and films but where is the shaktipat? I need some evidence and i don't understand how there can be no people coming to this website questioning all these things.
I look at it this way, how can people levitate, dude, we exist, is there anything crazier then that? Seriously, because we see life and don’t always see it as the miracle it is we think of it in lesser terms. You are alive, men and woman create babies, what is crazier then that, levitation? Why people on the website don’t question this, again, I htink the people here vibrate on a different frequency and have experienced a lot in life quantam science is now recognizing the possibility of levitation so maybe that may help some to believe it, for me it does not change much about my opinion.
Just my thoughts on your thoughts. I can appreciate your frustration I have been there, life can be crazy.
with love
I am love, I am peace, I am joy, I breathe free, I am thankful to the teachers and I am of the one, the same one as you
I am your brother neil:) |
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NagoyaSea
424 Posts |
Posted - Sep 20 2008 : 8:04:54 PM
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Neil, this was a good post, well worth reading. I must admit, I was confused by the post's subject line and was hoping it wasn't going to be negative. But it wasn't at all and I appreciated the thoughts within. Thanks for sharing them.
light, life and love,
Kathy |
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machart
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - Sep 20 2008 : 8:43:12 PM
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Tube...I like what you said about grace coming from within!
THAT is profound and intuitively satisfying.
Two monkey thumbs up to the tubemeister!! |
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newpov
USA
183 Posts |
Posted - Sep 20 2008 : 9:05:06 PM
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| Love you Neil, Gumpi |
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brother neil
USA
752 Posts |
Posted - Sep 20 2008 : 9:07:28 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by NagoyaSea
Neil, this was a good post, well worth reading. I must admit, I was confused by the post's subject line and was hoping it wasn't going to be negative. But it wasn't at all and I appreciated the thoughts within. Thanks for sharing them.
light, life and love,
Kathy
the subject line was my playful side
I am love, I am joy
I am neil
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Michael Beloved
USA
11 Posts |
Posted - Sep 21 2008 : 08:40:42 AM
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If possible try to stop the mind or the emotions from defining what God's grace should be. It may be that God's grace is present and is working but it is not being recognised, because of the tendency to hold an expectation of what it should be. If the mind defines it, then God's grace even if present may not be recognised by the mind.
Once you get freed from the expectations, your practice will produce results, because the energy which is reserved with those expectations, will then add to your impetus for practice.That increase in intensity will produce advancement.
In yoga practice much of it comes as a result of a certain persistence, but if an interest in the result is maintained during practice, that itself undermines divine grace and blocks the manifestation of higher states. |
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Anthem
1608 Posts |
Posted - Sep 21 2008 : 11:50:20 AM
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quote:
James Randi did a study on Transcendental Meditation and concluded that it is virtually indistinguishable from taking a nap. He said subjects exposed to soothing music got the same benefits as long term meditators. The level of relaxation was virtually the same in both types. Why meditate then?
Here are some reputable studies conducted at Harvard University that show otherwise:
http://www.newpearl.org/node/17
This one is a pdf:
http://www.med.harvard.edu/publicat...3_Fall06.pdf |
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NagoyaSea
424 Posts |
Posted - Sep 21 2008 : 12:54:45 PM
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Michael said:
quote:
It may be that God's grace is present and is working but it is not being recognised, because of the tendency to hold an expectation of what it should be. If the mind defines it, then God's grace even if present may not be recognised by the mind.
Thank you Michael for the insightful post. Beautifully said.
light and love,
Kathy |
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Suryakant
USA
259 Posts |
Posted - Sep 21 2008 : 11:57:25 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Michael Beloved
If possible try to stop the mind or the emotions from defining what God's grace should be. It may be that God's grace is present and is working but it is not being recognised, because of the tendency to hold an expectation of what it should be. If the mind defines it, then God's grace even if present may not be recognised by the mind.
Once you get freed from the expectations, your practice will produce results, because the energy which is reserved with those expectations, will then add to your impetus for practice.That increase in intensity will produce advancement.
In yoga practice much of it comes as a result of a certain persistence, but if an interest in the result is maintained during practice, that itself undermines divine grace and blocks the manifestation of higher states.
Fall in the flowers of love at God's feet ... sweetness of truth ... sweetness of love ... and bewilderingly blissful grace ... |
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gumpi
United Kingdom
546 Posts |
Posted - Sep 22 2008 : 06:09:38 AM
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Humpty gumpty sat on a wall, fell off and split his egg open and out oozed all the crap into other people's hair! lol
I have a lot of work and growing up to do.
I know that the secret is to have no expectations. I am working on it. |
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brother neil
USA
752 Posts |
Posted - Sep 22 2008 : 5:23:22 PM
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Gumpi, we all have work to do brother, our choice is to do this work with a smile or a frown, I am shifting to the smile
Much love to you brother
Nice post micheal
I am love, I am joy, I am thankful to the teachers, I am of the same one as you
I am neil
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humpty gumpty
