Meditation is not a Contest...
http://www.fraterdeus.com/cda/
This is my comment on the NYTimes Blog entry here:
Can Meditation Curb Heart Attacks? - Well Blog - NYTimes.com http://bit.ly/91ZNm6
Meditation is not a contest. TM is perfectly fine, but claims that it is "better" than other paths practiced with equivalent intention and deliberation are spurious.
Any calming of the chattering monkey-mind is better than no calming of the chattering monkey-mind. Are some practices more or less effective per unit of effort? No doubt, but effort is effort and results are results even so.
Allow the 'right-brain' symbolic mind, with its non-linear broad-field awareness, a quiet moment, and it's like a wave of calm floods into the brain.
The sequential, word-based 'left-brain' knows how to tighten the ratchet of logic, important for certain kinds of problem solving. But without relief, tightens also the ratchet of worry and anxiety,The right-brain has the key to relax the ratchet.
Both are necessary for human self-awareness, but the 'modern' materialistic, fearful, survivalist world view forces the calm voice into the background. (It's not only modern, but part of our very humanness, in fact)
Meditation, ritual. dance, love, food, traditional uses of herbal and fungal "healers", all have a place in the human aspiration to calm self-awareness. Worry is like friction, good for making progress in a tight situation, but also damaging and wasteful of our energy and attention.
Meditation is simply a way to quiet that racket so that our already present balm can flow forward....
Quantum Magick and Love Quarks http://fraterdeus.com
