Why The Best Meditation Requires Feedback
What do you gain from meditation? Consider what could be
. Imagine a world of peace and ease, yours without changing a thing. Imagine perfect mental balance: a balance of mind never upset by any event under the canopy of heaven. Meditation promises great things: Great Liberation; Great Knowledge; Great tranquility. Great promise however is rarely fulfilled.
Most who meditate gain rest and relaxation, and little more. The shortfall is due to a flaw in traditional methods, a flaw preventing practice skill development. (Indeed, you can practice and get even less effective over time.) Meditations flaw is lack of feedback -- something necessary for learning. Let me explain.
Meditation: Whats Missing?
To a research psychologist with an interest in skill learning, meditation is missing something. Practice (of any skill) leads to improvement only when you can see what you are doing. In basketball for instance, shooting hoops in darkness would only waste time because knowledge of results is necessary for learning. The rule applies equally to skill at meditation.
Shooting Hoops In Darkness? Why Meditation Requires Feedback
In meditation, attention is the skill you need to develop. Benefits increase with increasing power of concentration.
When you sit down to meditate however, attention slips away unseen. Like shooting hoops in darkness, you practice without knowing when youre on target. The problem is, you lose attention without knowing you are losing it. (You find out only later when you wake from a daydream.)
All traditional methods share this flaw. They provide no feedback -- no way to monitor attention, yet amazingly, the necessary feedback is right before our eyes and has been there all along, unrecognized! Heres how to find it.
Finding Feedback Right Before Your Eyes!
Throughout its long history, sensations of light have been noted in meditation. Illumination is described; light is seen at enlightenment. We failed however, to see its cause. We never saw the light as visual feedback the very thing needed to excel at meditation.
Light sensations are produced when focused attention holds the eyes still. Here a fixed image (an image held in the same place on the eyes retinas) uses up photo pigment (like exposing photographic film). Retinal fatigue follows, and with it distortion in the form of light.
This light is feedback signaling attention. It tells you youre on target. If your mind wanders, your eyes wander too and the light disappears, signaling loss of attention. Using light as feedback you can see what you are doing. You gain the same advantage as seeing your target shooting hoops and practice skill improves automatically. The key to success is right before your eyes.
Feedback Meditations How-To
Finding feedback is as easy as gazing at a spot on the floor. Focusing Discs however, are freely available at the Straight Line Meditation website. These specially designed discs facilitate feedback, assuring beginners instant success. Focus on the bulls eye and feedback comes within seconds. Attend to the light and you anchor attention. You can hold attention the way you would grab a rope for a tow. Thus feedback upgrades practice, leading straight to the best meditation.
How Feedback Upgrades Meditation Practice
Feedback upgrades your practice by eliminating three traditional shortfalls. It puts an end to:
* Wasted practice time. (With traditional methods, even with the best intentions, time is spent dreaming and drifting when you'd hoped for attention.)
* Slow, or even no practice skill development. ("After twenty years," warned a Zen Master, "you can finally say you've begun to learn how to sit.")
* Slow, unreliably progress. (Traditional methods yield slow, unreliable benefit. Just sit says Buddhism, Maybe after many lifetimes you will come upon the truth.")
Feedback brings efficiency to meditation, giving you a personal (meditation) trainer with a constantly vigilant eye. It upgrades meditation with fast, sure practice skill development and potentially productive use of every minute of practice time.
Remember, its how well you meditate (not necessarily how long), that determines your benefit. Feedback lets you trade hours spent meditating for minutes on target - proof that the best meditation requires feedback.
by: Carol E. McMahon, Ph.D.
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