Approach to Meditation Practice

[Anonymous]

(Also posted in QA for Bruce, but I’d love an answer from anyone who feels qualified)

Hi there,

I’ve been practicing inner dissolving almost daily for quite a few years now, and I’m confused about how to fit in all the supplementary meditation exercises and practices I’ve learned from your various teaching resources – for example the Taoist Meditation Circle material and the breathing work. I’m also thinking about the component parts of inner dissolving such as scanning for blockages and working just on the ice-water phase.

Would you recommend maintaining a daily “full blown” inner dissolving practice, and having the other exercises as extras as and where I can fit them in, or is it better to drop the inner dissolving periodically and put my full focus on a specific component part or supplementary practice?

I’ve been wanting an answer to this question for a while now and would be delighted to get some clarity on what’s the best approach for me.

Regards,

Robin.

[Anonymous]

Hi Robin,

One of the general principles for practice is “First seperate then combine”. I think it’s easier to try to practice some component independantly, until it is easy and smooth before trying to incorporate it into your main meditation practice.

Breathing is one of the components that I’ve worked to integrate into my meditation practice. When I was first trying to lengthen and relax my breath, there was a lot of tension in it. I noticed that if I tried to incorporate the breath work into my meditation practice, it would actually degrade my ability to dissolve a block. It would actually make meditating harder and it was counter productive.

I kept practicing it on it’s own until it got a lot softer and smoother. Eventually, I again tried to incorporate it into my main practice and I noticed that now it actually helped increase my ability to meditate and dissolve blocks. Now, it was actually a useful component to add to my meditation practice. But it took a lot of work before it was of sufficient quality to be helpful to my main practice.

This general pattern has been true of other components, like alignments. There were times when I would try to hold a physical alignment when I meditated and it would get in the way of meditating. I’d do a lot of work with tai chi or chi gung to open the areas around my hip or midriff. After the tissues opened up and relaxed. I’d go back and notice that now incorporating the alignment was helpful to my main meditation practice.

Hope this helps,
Janak

 

[Anonymous]

Hi, robin. I joined the meditation circle I decided to just do that, following Bruce’s instructions as closely as I could. It really transformed my sitting practice. Now I’m following the intermediate meditation instructions, but a little more loosely, incorporating what feels right into my daily dissolving. I’m just kind of following my intuition about how to do that and it’s working really well for me. Though I’m a member of the tao Te ching group, I found it not quite so easy to incorporate all those techniques in my practice, but some feel natural and easy so I use them. I think having a live teacher would be the best way to get an answer to your question. The next best thing will be when Bruce answers your question.

Good luck with your practice.
Matthew

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your answers.

Matthew, it’s interesting you should mention the Tao Te Ching practices, because that’s one of the places where this comes up for me: I hear a practice I really like, and I wonder, should I do that exclusively this month or keep up my established practice as well, in which case neither will get my full attention.

Janak, I agree that it’s really good to consolidate components before integrating them. However, my question is more about dividing up practice time. Say I have 40mins on a given occasion – do I spend 20 on some component (maybe bringing the light up my central channel as we learned this summer), and 20mins on my established practice, or do I just focus on the component until it’s solid, and then try putting it in to my established practice at a later date.

I’m a great fan of continuity (I play the bagpipes, and love music with drones!), so the idea of keeping the daily inner dissolving practice going really appeals to me, but I’m worried that if I try to do that as well as practicing components, I’ll end up doing neither as well as I could. Do you see my dilemma?

I’m unsure if my “commitment” to daily inner dissolving is healthy and useful, or whether it’s become an unhealthy attachment that keeps me from focusing on important foundational work.

[Anonymous]

Hey Robin,

The way Bruce usually answers the question of how to split your practice time is “To taste”. When asked to elaborate. He said that it’s similiar to someone asking you how much salt to add to your soup. There no hard and fast rule. You taste the soup, if it’s not salty enough, you add some more salt. Rinse and Repeat, until you find the right proportions.

I’d recommend keeping up with a daily inner dissolving practice. I think the regular rythmn of doing some meditating every single day is very helpful. Then play with how much time you want to spend on components. You can trying playing with a 50/50 split, 33/66 split or 66/33 split. Maybe one of those will feel right for you?

Hope this helps,
Janak

[Anonymous]

Thanks Janak,

I like the “to taste” idea.

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