Hi beero, don't worry about measuring no-mind, if you have achieved even a brief period of it then you have achieved the aim - I use the benchmark of three seconds, but the exact length of time is mutable. I am extremely impressed, by the way. [thumbup]beero wrote:Hi clockwork ghost, what do you mean by reduce and intensify?
I have still been doing exercises daily but not so often managing to get to the 30 min mark, more often around 20 minutes, sometimes even less. even though I have managed to find time for the exercises daily, I sometimes forget to fill in my diary as well and have to try and think back to how long I managed for which isn't so good, but I think I can remember well enough what I achieved. as for no-mind, I have been experiencing brief periods of no-mind but find it difficult to see how to measure how long because I am trying to achieve this not thinking while lying on my back eyes closed and relaxing doing deep breathing. but I would say I have still only brief achieved periods of no-thought.
So far the focus has been on attaining motionless and maintaining it for as long as possible, and then doing breathing and then maybe a few moments not thinking. The next stage is to attain the degree of motionlessness you gained in half an hour in less time. You might have noticed that it takes a little while to really get motionless, you fidget for a little while, or you scratch your leg, or something happens which causes things to have to more slow down and stop, not simply go from being moving to a dead halt.
What I would like you to do is to set a fifteen minute period for motionlessness tops. If you feel still after even five minutes, and confident that you have arrested all motion, then go from there into breathing. When you are in a good breathing pattern, even if it's just five minutes (but again, fifteen minutes tops) then try for no mind. This is how we attain gnosis, but we have to sometimes go from moving to motionlessness, then control breathing and focus in a short space of time. This is called 'reducing and intensifying' - reduce the time it takes you to fully attain each state, you have proven to yourself that you can do it, you can sit there dead still and breathing in a controlled manner for twenty minutes - that is a serious achievement, and if you continue expanding in that way you will be meditating for two hours in no time, but we need to now take this in the other direction - five minute meditations which achieve the same results internally that a half hour mediation can do.
Does everyone understand?