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Meditation Chants and Tones

When I first learned about meditating, it was as a three or four year-old, and it was through a chant. I was taught that the chant, or tone, had a deep spiritual meaning; and I felt this whenever I was in a room with people who performed it. Many years later, as I picked up several other chants and were taught what they meant, I also learned about Chaos Magic. It was through a rather unexpected source, as many important lessons in my life often have been. The gist of chaos magic is the same as it's whole motivating rationale: symbols have no inherent power, other than what we invest in them. Symbols include invocations, chants and tones. It was then that I began to reflect on my meditation chants and tones: what if their power rested simply in what I believed them to mean? The Power of Belief There are many stories throughout the world of the power of belief. The whole idea of the placebo is based on this phenomenon. Chaos magic is also based on this idea: it is our belief in thing
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The Feeling of Wanting to Impress Others

As I've developed my meditation practice over the years, my awareness of how my body has reacted to certain things increased. Specifically, I noticed how my body would feel when I had particular thoughts. Where you feel things When people experience emotions, they are having a physical reaction to a particular thought. Fear, anxiety, happiness, passion. These emotions you all feel in your gut. This makes sense on a physiological level: the gut, or stomach, has been described as the body's second brain. However, people aren't often consciously aware of this: you may feel something, but have you consciously thought about where in your body you feel it, and what exactly is the physical feeling itself? The feeling of wanting to impress others There is a lot that I can say about how certain emotions manifest as physical feelings. I plan to in the future. But here I wish to speak about what was, for me, the most profound feeling, since it is one that, in many respects, has domina
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Breathing Meditation

The most simple meditation is the breathing meditation. These days, it is part of what many people refer to as Mindfulness. This word, mindfulness, represents people re-badging meditation in order to remove it from its more esoteric, new age, hippy roots. It's a way to make mediation sound more scientific. I have a very unscientific take on meditation; albeit, a very analytical one. What's the difference? Science requires verification. Science doesn't like anecdotal experience. But, as someone who has been exposed to meditation since he was three years old, I've learned that the anecdotal, personal experience of meditation is what makes it work for those who do it. It's personal, and deeply so. Scientific research is just a nice reminder that meditation works. What science doesn't do is tell us how to make it work for ourselves. How do you make breathing meditation work for you? Breathing mediation has only two steps: Step 1: Breathe in and breathe out, steadil
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