Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Spring Forest Qigong Is meditating with a frustrated attitude better than not meditating at all?

Thankyou for your time.

Why are you meditating to begin with? I assume that part of your intention is to transcend your negative emotions. So trying to meditate while you are feeling a state of frustration can be a good and useful exercise.

If you find it too difficult though, I would just wait until you feel better.

I am meditating to gain awareness, and take back control of my mental influences.

It sounds like you are doing it for the right reason.

My answer is yes.

It's not as good a meditation as if you were calm, happy and focussed.

All of the level one meditations are for your personal healing. They work on different aspects. You should use them all. I think the self-concentration will be gentler for you and help to build confidence. If you have difficulties about what to think about during the none guidance, I will say keep coming back to positive and happy images, scenes or thoughts. Perhaps a place and time when you are not bothered by your current concerns are completely emersed in the loving, caring, supporting, boundless energy of the universe.

Remember to keep heading in the positive direction. You don't have to be there all the time, just gently correcting you course with kindness towards yourself. Don't judge your performance, the universe sees no failings in you and who are you to second guess the universe.

You are perfection.
Iam2

P.S. The universe didn't judge me for my mistakes... it just pointed out to me that I needed more focus... and to correct.

P.P.S. I would also add that you should be considering the other elements of SFQ and not just the meditations. Rest, nutrition, exercise, mental attitude. It is amazing how they are all part of a whole and how a the correct balance is needed to progress with the others.

You mental awareness and control, can be worked on outside of SFQ meditations. In fact, at this time it may be better to work on it at a conscious level. Always supporting it with balance and flow.

At times I've given up meditations and other things and taking the time just for extra sleep. It has help incredibly in regaining the health I needed to pursue my advancement in other areas.

At other times, just talking a regular lunch time walk has worked wonders for my mental attitude.

Using NLP like positive visualizations have also helped often both mentally and physically.

My observation is there is no single magic key. The magic is in keeping all elements in motion and balance. The magic is in the juggling, not the balls.

[This message has been edited by Iam2 (edited December 14, 2004).]

I posted my reply on your previous entry. I don't know if you've seen it?
Love & Light
Faune

Master Lin said not to practice SFQ if you're upset, that would include the sitting meditation, I would think. But does that mean other forms of meditation? I would think meditation would help calm one down and be peaceful...Any other comments? I'm only repeating what Master Lin says in the book..

It really goes for all forms of meditation.

What you go into the meditation with you get more of. Since you're going into an alpha theta trance, at which levels of mind we are very powerful at speeding up mind body healing or damage because this mindfulness magnifies the natural process and the intention. The calm mind produces more of the healing "chemical" during calming meditation.

We know that our waking state stresses and frustrations harms our bodies and it is most unwise to take this into meditation with us where we speed up the process of producing the damage causing 'chemicals' within our bodies.

What we focus on in alpha/theta tends to manifest in our lives quickly. It isn't just entering the levels of mind that changes us it's what we bring into these levels mentally that have an impact too. That's why it's easiest to see results by going into the emptiness. If we as beginners see the emptiness simply as being a non judgemental mind where there is nothing right and nothing wrong about how we are doing doing the active or sitting meditation then our system by default has to move back into it's correct balance.

The calm that you bring into the practice at the beginning tips the scale back into favour of balance faster because with meditation we are withdrawing for a time from the world that creates the blocks by way of our thinking.

If you bring frustration into your meditation you are tipping the scales further away from the balance that you are seeking both physically and mentally.

Really if you are angry or frustrated prior to meditation, go for a jog, beat the stuffing out of a pillow, allow the body to burn up the excess adrenalin. Once one has vented the frustration they usually experience an exhausted calm that makes healing meditation more resourceful. It's one of the reasons why therapy beating up pillows is employed. It works in calming people down enough and puts them in a light trance afterwards that positive affirmations made by the therapist have a better impact.

Meditatinn with a frustrated attitude is just going to get you more of the same... a frustrated attitude.

Nacho I've read many of your post with interest and wonder if you could allow yourself to be less critical of your experiences? You seem to be judging many of your experiences as bad when it's only thinking so that makes it so and it throws you into a loop of getting more of the same. We need to bring more of the emptiness with us into our outer world and one of the things that the emptiness is, is non-judgemental accepting of what is.

Alex

Thanks Mayflower and Alexk.

I knew about what Master Lin said, but I thought of it as more as advice for the beginner. So that they got the best feedback from the experience.

However, Alexk says you will get more of the bad you go in with. I'm sure that it's correct.

I couldn't see how you could go very far with meditation if you were frustrated or angry, but hey that's my limited experience. When I've been in the wrong place I've had two experiences. The first is that going into meditation just calms everything and the bad emotions just leave. The second is that I get nowhere in my meditation. I'm stuck at the the door.

My advice was that it's better to try and become calm and peaceful, rather than just give into your state. The idea of always trying to correct your course.

I've not seen Alex post anything but good information, so it would be best to heed her advice.

You are perfection.
Iam2

Season's Greetings Nacho,

In regards to deep meditation, when this conversation comes up in Master Lin's classes, he says to not do it when depressed or very upset. Instead, he suggests to find a friend to talk with, don’t close yourself in, and you can also take a walk.

Alex and Iam2's later suggestions runs along these lines.

Much Love, Shawn