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Friday the 29th of March 2024 02:59:25 PM

July 29, 2007

Stumble It!A Return to Meditation

Filed under: Pnilosophy — Eric Ptak @ 7:24 pm

Lately, I’ve been meditating quite often. Why? Because it seems like a fun thing to do.

Seriously, though, I’ve been feeling a bit listless lately, what with the pressures of work, the pressures of keeping up this website, working on the family website, trying to make time for everyone in the world that wants me to make time for them, shopping, cooking, trying to increase my skills base, making time to watch Dr. Who and Stargate, trying to go to the gym, keeping track of what’s going on in the world politically, writing speeches for Toastmasters, and even doing such mundane things as getting a haircut has all been adding stress to my life.

Then you add onto all that the fact that my right upper rear molar has been acting up. I had a root canal done on it about 15 years ago, and it seems that the crown is slipping. It’ll tilt at a very, very slight angle, and put pressure on the post that holds it. That will in turn put pressure on what’s left of the tooth root, causing incredible amounts of pain. Not just a dull ache like a bone bruise, or even the sharp pain of a toothache, but a searing, excruciating, throbbing with every beat of the heart, face swelling, jaw tightening, hallucinatory pain that requires up to eight Advil to mask enough to be functional. It’s the kind of pain that makes you sympathize with Chuck Noland when he puts the ice skate in his mouth and pounds on it with a rock to remove his diseased tooth. With enough alcohol, the pain will go away, but then, there’s the hangover factor to deal with, and I don’t like that idea. So I’ve been doing lots of Advil until I can’t take it anymore, then drinking lots of beer and chomping on a pen or something relatively hard to force the cap back into place. It’s not fun, but once it pops back in, the sense of relief is wonderful, except the residual pain sticks around for a few days.

And the worst part is, there’s only one dentist in the area which my DMO from work approves of, and he’s a serious pain in the ass to get to, if you can even get an appointment. Eleven point three miles from my house, and I have to take a day off to see him for an hour. One frigging dentist that I can go to – and our health care system is supposed to be one of the best in the world? Then why the fuck doesn’t the money I have coming out of my paycheck allow me to go to whatever dentist I want to go to? What, is there something wrong with that? Christ all-frigging mighty! But I digress.

I listen to the show “To the Best of Our Knowledge” on the local NPR station from 3-5 on Sunday afternoons. Lately, during the second hour,they’ve been having the series “From Electrons to Enlightenment“, a look at science and religion. It’s a five part series that is quite good in looking at the differences, similarities, and conflicts between the two realms of thought: one explaining the hows of the universe and the other explaining the whys of the universe.

It’s quite unfortunate that many people think that the two are in direct combat with each other, but they are not. Science gives us the tools to discover the facts of the universe: what it is, where it comes from, how it works, etc. Religion, and specifically spirituality, gives meaning to our existence, gives the tools to discover who we personally are, how we relate to each other and the universe around us, and deals with matters of the soul, if it indeed exists. They are two distinct fields of study, and unfortunately, many people feel that belief in one precludes belief in the other, and there is a natural conflict between the two. there shouldn’t be, but there is.

It probably stems back to primitive times, when man was first trying to explore and define the world and the universe around him. At that level of thought, science and religion are very closely intertwined and could be described as being the same thing. Cavemen, having little mental capacity and tools to do serious scientific analysis, would see a shooting star or a comet in the night sky and ascribe it to the work of gods. The seasons, weather, amount of food available, wars against other peoples, were all controlled in some way by gods. But as mankind grew and learned, we discovered that certain things that happened were caused not by spiritual entities but by physical forces, chemical reactions, weather patterns, psychological factors, and the like.

So the two ways of describing the universe diverged, and branched away from each other. And conservative thinkers, trying to retain a semblance of the way things used to be, try to maintain a superiority of religious thinking over scientific thinking. Occasionally, science would take its rightful place in the description of the universe, but religious types would quash it as quickly as they could, because they fear losing power over the masses.

And I digress again. So I’m listening to the third part of the series, entitled “The Brain and Belief”, described as such:

One of the Dalai Lama’s favorite places in America is a neurobiology lab at the University of Wisconsin. Researchers there are putting Buddhist monks inside brain scanners, looking for scientific proof that meditation works. In other labs across the country, radiologists are watching nuns pray and gene hunters are decoding the genetics of faith. In this hour we’ll look at the emerging biology of belief.

I was listening to this segment about Buddhist monks and how meditation affects their brains, and realized that it’s been a long time since I’ve done any meditation. I used to be quite into it years ago, but fell out of practice in the mid-nineties, unfortunately for me. It happened right around the time I decided to go back to school, and wound up going to RIT. It was then that I got involved in Atheism, and sort of let the more spiritual aspects of who I am subside.I wonder where I would be now, had I kept it up. I’d probably be much better off in a lot of ways, and in all likelihood not got involved with people and things I shouldn’t have – like my ex: I would have been friends, but we wouldn’t have become lovers, I don’t think.

Meditation takes discipline, but it also helps develop discipline. It reduces stress and stress-related disorders like heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and lowers levels of cortisol, lactate-two chemicals, free radicals and DHEA. It decreases anxiety, depression, irritability and moodiness. It increases self-actualization, happiness, emotional stability, focus, creativity, the ability to learn, memory, feelings of vitality and rejuvenation. Overall, as a study, and as a practice, it’s a very good thing to do.

I’ve just been doing a simple breath meditation to get back into practice. I sit on a pillow cross-legged with my back straight in a semi-dark room. There is a single candle lit in front of me. I have no music playing, no news radio on, and no books on disk playing. I close my eyes, and clear my head of all thought, listening only to whatever sounds I happen to hear: the ceiling fan overhead, the cat playing and running around the living room, children, dogs, birds and vehicles outdoors, airplanes overhead, the wind as it blows by or rain as it strikes the ground, house and windows. After a few moments, I focus on my breathing, first the breaths coming in and going out. Next, it’s the beginning and ending of the individual breaths, and then the gaps in between the breaths. Then I focus on the pathway as the air comes in through my nose, across my sinuses, and down my windpipe to fill my lungs, and then the exhalation as it travels back up my windpipe and exits through my mouth. This is reminiscent of the breathing exercises I did when taking karate: in through the nose, out through the mouth. In with the good, out with the bad. I then extrapolate that to my whole body, drawing energy up through my feet, up my legs, through my abdomen and into my arms and to the top of my head, and allowing used energy to follow a reverse path out of my body. When I feel sufficiently rejuvenated, I bring myself out of the meditation. The whole process takes about 20 minutes or so.

There’s a few things that I’ve noticed while I meditate. After a while, I get a sensation that crawls along my scalp, or perhaps across the surface of my brain. It’s almost like pins and needles, but it isn’t. It’s very hard to describe: it’s almost like a numbness. It’s extremely easy to get distracted by stray thoughts, plans on what I want to do, people, work, food, etc. It’s amazing what you think about when you are trying not to think about anything, but instead are focusing on a simple biological activity. However, when I am done I feel very relaxed yet energized, and I feel good. It’s a beautiful thing.

I wonder why I gave it up. Time? Women? I don’t know. I wish that I hadn’t. I wonder why more people don’t practice it. There would probably be a lot less stress, a lot less drugs being prescribed for various mental and physical illnesses. Many people would probably find it quite boring, and not be able to last more than five minutes. They can’t imagine staying still and thinking about nothing for more than two minutes without falling asleep, but that’s their loss. Twenty minutes a day for peace of mind? I”d figure out a way to do it, and I am, and I feel better than I have in a long time.

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