Seriously, for a while, the more I read the more dogmatic I would be about meditation.
I would avoid Eckhart Tolle at all costs, he is imprecise with language and his forced separation of "observer mind" from "ego mind" clashes greatly with my materialistic point of view. He has some nice ideas, but frankly this forced separation is extremely misleading.
I could write a whole blog post on the problems I have with it, but it boils down to one fact: our mind, ego, thoughts and feelings are inseparable from each other. There is one consciousness, and my goal in meditation is to focus my consciousness on my consciousness. To watch the machine at work, so to speak. It doesn't involve shifting to a higher form of consciousness, it just involves becoming conscious of your own thoughts, feelings, and senses, and realizing that these are all components in the machinery of your mind.
Once you establish this, once you can focus on the sensation of sensing, the automatic nature of thought, or the inevitability of feelings, you become enlightened without really trying to. You realize that judgement is unnecessary, that the machinery is working exactly as it should be, and the "trouble spots" in the machine are not problems with the mechanism itself, but instead are an overreaction by the conscious mind to a perceived threat.
By observing the machinery without judging, you help eliminate harmful negative feedback loops that only worsen problems. The common phrase in neurobiology is that "neurons that fire together, wire together". Instead of focusing on a particular negative sensation or thought, and the pain it causes you, you can simply observe the negative sensation or thought as it is: the machine doing exactly what it evolved to do. In non-meditative thought, we see pain, recognize it as a harm to us, and the feedback loop grows as all the neurons associating this negative impulse with pain begin to fire.
The goal in meditation is to simply observe. Not to follow the path of problem solving. There is no problem. Your mind is working exactly as it evolved to. Simply watch it work, do not judge it, and you will find that the big problems you think you have are essentially trivial.
Seriously, for a while, the more I read the more dogmatic I would be about meditation.
I would avoid Eckhart Tolle at all costs, he is imprecise with language and his forced separation of "observer mind" from "ego mind" clashes greatly with my materialistic point of view. He has some nice ideas, but frankly this forced separation is extremely misleading.
I could write a whole blog post on the problems I have with it, but it boils down to one fact: our mind, ego, thoughts and feelings are inseparable from each other. There is one consciousness, and my goal in meditation is to focus my consciousness on my consciousness. To watch the machine at work, so to speak. It doesn't involve shifting to a higher form of consciousness, it just involves becoming conscious of your own thoughts, feelings, and senses, and realizing that these are all components in the machinery of your mind.
Once you establish this, once you can focus on the sensation of sensing, the automatic nature of thought, or the inevitability of feelings, you become enlightened without really trying to. You realize that judgement is unnecessary, that the machinery is working exactly as it should be, and the "trouble spots" in the machine are not problems with the mechanism itself, but instead are an overreaction by the conscious mind to a perceived threat.
By observing the machinery without judging, you help eliminate harmful negative feedback loops that only worsen problems. The common phrase in neurobiology is that "neurons that fire together, wire together". Instead of focusing on a particular negative sensation or thought, and the pain it causes you, you can simply observe the negative sensation or thought as it is: the machine doing exactly what it evolved to do. In non-meditative thought, we see pain, recognize it as a harm to us, and the feedback loop grows as all the neurons associating this negative impulse with pain begin to fire.
The goal in meditation is to simply observe. Not to follow the path of problem solving. There is no problem. Your mind is working exactly as it evolved to. Simply watch it work, do not judge it, and you will find that the big problems you think you have are essentially trivial.
All that said, I would highly recommend Deepak Chopra's Seven Laws of Spiritual Success. http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Spiritual-Laws-Success-Fulfillme...