I have a question concerning something Siro mentioned:
“I used to think precisely the same thing that you thought. That if I slowed my breath enough I would be meditating perfectly. Though I learned throughout my progress this was definitely NOT the case. When you slow the breath to such a degree, without being in a state of hightened Samadhi, then all you are doing is slowly causing the body to go to sleep. You will begin to lose awareness and vital mental energy essential for high levels of Samadhi as your breaths begins to slow. When you slow your breath, your thoughts are not going away, they just losing energy and becoming quieter causing them to escape your awareness. But a result of this is also that your concentration and ability to become aware of sensations as they arise and pass will also decrease until you can no longer do them, you would slowly approach the unconscious sleep threshold. You would thus effectively eliminate any possibility you have of meditating. If you continue to reduce your breath, slowing the energy flowing in your body, and you manage to stay conscious, you could likely stop breathing all together and die, but more like you’d just fall asleep as your awareness slowly disappears.”
This…is interesting.
My questions:
[B]Question #1:[/B] do you Siro, or anybody else have interesting techniques to share which promote deep absorption states without totally slowing down/wearing down the body using breath/pranayama as [B]guiding[/B] process?
[B]Question #2:[/B] Have you actually performed tasks when experiencing singlepointed mind? Is it possible concerning scriptures? (Tasks as in ‘I will contemplate about X or Y’).
[U]I would be very happy with any answer, but mostly answers which dont really go too much into pranayama, but more concerning attention, and as specific as possible.
[/U]
[B]Personal Example: slowing down breath[/B]
I have had many interesting experiences by slowing down my breath intentionally (practicing khumbakas and rechackas made this easier).
Anyways, it has also been my experience that many times slowing down breath can make my mind unfocused/sleepy (even when the spinal is straight).
In these cases, breath was [B]guiding[/B] my body.
[B]Personal Example: non-slowing down breath[/B]
I also have had interesting experiences which were in an opposite state, where normal breathing was the starting point, and breath was [B]following[/B] my body, and my attention was [B]guiding[/B] my body using the following push/pull-technique.
It is a technique which was inspired by a passage from Patanjali Yoga Sutras (1.17,1.18 ).
Thruout the practices, nowadays I can reproduce these experiences by limiting my focus (lets call it a push) on 4 things:
[ol]
[li]gross object (breath/hear breath with ears)[/li][li]more subtle object (inward,between eyebrows)[/li][li]my body, myself (not losing focus of external world)[/li][li]trying to feel happy/positive, and try to feel/direct it in aspect 2[/li][/ol]
Also, periodically, I would totally let go all focus on 4 aspects (lets call it a pull)…I introduced this because sometimes a longendured push feels uncomfortable.
This push-pull of attention feels a bit like zooming in/out my attention.
Anyways, usually after a certain time of doing this attention ‘fitness’-exercises I will end with a pull.
After that, usually my mind will just stay in the pull…and its focus will just simply sit where it is.
In that state, my internal dialogue is pretty solid and straightforward.
I can think about objects without experiencing internal involuntary commentary on these objects (which is really handy during my dayjob though).
To me, it feels my mind becomes an empty stage, where an actor (my attention) has been put at a [B]fixed position[/B], which does really simple tasks, one task at a time.
Usually when I go to sleep after an exercise like this, I can sleep in a very interesting way. It can be described as a light but deep sleep:
[B]Light [/B]as in: I can hear the external sounds, so I could wake up easily if anything happens in the room. Since my partner is sleeping besides me, I even had situations where I was surprised that I could reply to answers without having the feeling of waking up, or becoming alert.
[B]Deep [/B]as in: When I wake up, I feel totally refreshed, and my body feels as if I had a deep sleep. Also, it doesnt really feel like waking up, but more like opening my eyes. Also no hypnopompic effects are experienced.
In other words: a pretty nice way to wake up.