I know you have to sit up on a chair or in the lotus position so you have the natural curvature of you back without any slouching.
It's simple, just watch your breath. Above your upper lip, when you inhale and exhale you can feel the sensation of your breath. Focus on that sensation. Thoughts will come, and when they come do not judge them saying "I suck at this, I keep having thoughts" - just notice each thought and bring your awareness back to the breath. You may do this sitting cross-legged, in a chair, or in bed (but know that you may fall asleep). Traditionally one meditates sitting cross legged with a straight back to avoid falling asleep. Just pay attention to the breath. Don't alter it in any way, breathing faster or slower, let it settle on its own naturally. You can meditate high or sober, it doesn't really matter.
Is the purpose just to concentrate on your own breathing the whole time or to then think of something else
Just observe the breath. The purpose is to observe your thoughts, how spontaneous they are and how untamed the mind is. By observing our thoughts we can quiet them down, and cultivate an inner stillness.
The "purpose", if you can say there is one, is to not think at all, but you can't just do that by forcing yourself not to think, so the focusing on the breath part is just slowing the thoughts down slowly over a period of time.
Meditation opens your mind in a way that unmentionables can only mimic. How deep it goes depends on how willing you are to completely give in to yourself and see past "what Is you". The absolute deepest I've gone was comparable to a full on experience of the 3 letter unmentionable that does not have an s. I could expand very deeply on the fact in the end. You are teaching yourself. Yet. You might not know what all "you" entails. The rabbit hole turns into a wormhole very quickly.
Would you like a few stories of some of my more intense meditation sessions (only drug involved being weed). They truly get quite interesting. I cave been full on taken to hyperspace through meditation. And it's life changing.
The ultimate purpose of meditation is to know yourself. To know that the "you" doesn't exist. After observing your thoughts for some time, you see that you are not your thoughts. You realize unity, oneness, or nonduality. You see that you are not experiencing life, you are life experiencing itself, therefore you are not separate from your environment, but you ARE your environment. Total oneness. This is not a philosophy, or a concept - it is an experience you can see for yourself.
Now I want to start off saying I'm very open in terms of the human psychedelic so meditating very deeply is quite easy for me. That being said its a challenge getting as far as I will talk about. Things will get WEIRD and possibly quite scary. But if you struggle through and overcome. You will be rewarded greatly. Learning concepts of things that could not possible be realistic but are shown to you. You will realize that you are nothing. But you are nothing because you are everything. Once you see that in its truest form you will be openin yourself to things that could change your perception of reality. I mean that as you will see parts of yourself you need to alter to better yourself in amazing ways. One of these is the ego. If you can overcome your ego. A new person will emerge.
^^ thats really true.. its a process of getting small glimpses that compound upon each other that end with a huge AHA! at the end
The purpose of meditation is to be in a state of no thought. It allows you to learn how to turn off your mind, be in the here and now. Many people live life on auto pilot and literally are unaware at how unconscious they are day to day. Especially in western society people have very backwards thinking when it comes to the mind. Thinking distracts you from knowing, is the cause for all suffering, being enslaved to the ego mind. Mediation allows you to break free of the ego mind and simply be. Experiencing life non subjectively, from a brand new perspective, seeing things as they truly are, and reacting moment to moment rather then through your programmed predisposition thoughts. The only other way to view life in this state of mind is through you know what, but can't say in on this forum. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and the magic fun people lol etc. Meditation takes a lot of practice, it is just like any other craft which requires a great deal amount of practice to excel at. Many buddhists and monks meditate 6-10 hours a day, and usually are considered a master after 10,000 hours of meditation. They can experience deep out of body experiences at will. Everyone can benefit greatly from meditation though and don't have to devote your life to it. Many people misunderstand it, like a poster on here asked "do you just sit there and think about things?" it's a huge misconception. The entire point is to not to think, just breath, and allow. The more you practice the deeper you will go, the easier it will become. There's meditation music that is very helpful for beginners that Id definitely recommend. Peace
So how long do you think we would need to do this to see a benefit from it? About a month or two? A year? A week?
If you feel exhausted and all wired , then do a 10 minute session. Feels like waking out of bed afterwards.
This winter I didn't miss a day of meditation for 5 months straight and each meditation was 30 min a day. The first month or so I just got used to the rhythm of my breath and relaxing my body to it's fullest potential. I remember 2 of the most compounding experiences through this meditation practice quite vividly, and I can say that I will never forget these 2 visuals for the rest of my life. They were simply something my mind could never come up with in my wildest dreams or in real day to day life. Since they brought me to tears through the meditation, and transformed my life. I haven't meditated for a couple months now, but I do plan on starting again sometime this year hopefully. One thing I noticed during those 5 months is if you start meditating, you have to do it everyday to get the full potential out of it. If you take a 1-2day break between meditations you WILL notice. Oh, and I didn't learn to meditate by myself. I had help through this guy 'Swamiji' of Yoga in the daily life I listened to this 'open the window to your heart' along with his other lessons 30 times or more each.