Any advise for silencing the Mind?

Question

I can obtain a relative silence when working and when improvising... but in stillness it seems near an impossiblity.

Become an eclectic witch? I'm a Mage! I am seeking advice for meditation techniques... I don't have much trouble with image fixation for spells...

Hey Lupa, if you come back... thanks. I am personally a huge fan of Carrolls and I am glad you shared it... others could prosper from it...

I have been working alot of 16hr shifts and getting 4hrs of sleep every 32hrs and I've not had much time to breath... so this is my excuse.

Answer 1

Don't feel bad; I've been practicing magic quite successfully for the past ten years, but I still have issues with entirely quieting my mind for any great length of time. OTOH, what's most important to me is being able to find what works for me, rather than forcing myself into someone else's standards. I may not be able to sit with a perfectly quiet mind for more than a few seconds, but I can hit an altered state of consciousness through dance, the casting of a circle, or merely taking a walk with intent.

The thing that I and other magicians I know have found is as far as practical purposes go, achieving stillness of mind only trains you to be able to quiet your mind enough to be able to focus on the matter at hand. In order to be able to either work magic, or recharge yourself, or any other thing that involves an altered state of consciousness, you first have to be able to get yourself out of your everday state of consciousness. That's what stilling the mind is for. But in my experience beyond that it really doesn't do much. Even mantras give you something to focus on (there's a lot to be learned from vocal resonance and the energy inherent to it). So once you're able to achieve a few moments of pure stillness, you can then take the light trance you've achieved and go further with it.

A good example of this concept is Liber MMM by Peter J. Carroll, the creator of Chaos magic. You can find an online version of this at http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/libermmm.pdf though I highly recommend picking up his book "Liber Null and Psychonaut" as it has a lot of other wonderful material in it. The nice thing about MMM is that it lays out the details on inhibitory (quiet) meditation in a manner that's very easy to work with. You work with each step in the process individually until you've gotten the hang of it, and then move on to the next. As you can see, perfect stillness is only one step on the path that prepares you for object, sound and image concentration.

Another form of quiet meditation that I've just started working with is the Taoist water meditations that B.K. Frantzis writes about. There's no online content from his books, but they are easily obtainable via Amazon. I recommend starting with the first one on the water meditation, "Relaxing Into Your Breathing". (Make sure you search for it by title; if you search by author, the first edition of that particular title that comes up is an older one that's more expensive; the current edition runs around $13 or so.) Anyway, this particular method of meditation involves a lot of energy work, dissolving energetic and psychological blockages. As the title of the book suggests, though, it is quite relaxing and makes a good daily practice for destressing. My husband has been using it for well over a year and swears by it. My initial impressions are that it is going to be just as effective for me, too.

However, this is just my experience, and you can take it as you will.

Answer 2

the trick of meditation is that you have to just do it continuously to reach results but you can not expect results. If you expect it will never come so you have to continuously practise and do it regularly each time reaching deeper relaxation. There are techniques that can help you but there are so many and not all work for everyone. I would suggest a terrific book called 'peace of mind' by dr. ian gawler. He explains it very simply without any religious/spiritual goal other than all relaxation of the body and mind being beneficial to everyone no matter how long or often. I found it made a lot of sense and perhaps you can find something on him on the net, maybe some of his techniques. practise practise and more practise.

Answer 3

Develop the WIll.

It takes as much effort to think of nothing as it takes to think of something.

To help calm the "Monkey mind", try excercises designed to hone the Will.

() Place a large, brightly-colored, conspicuous object in the center of the room. Spend a long period of time there, reading or watching tv or whatever. Whatever you do, no matter what, do NOT so much as GLANCE at that object.

() Watch the second hand of a clock for one full minute. Take a 5 minute break. Repeat five times in a row. Take five again. Watch the minute hand revolve completely. Take five. Repeat with the hour hand. Do not let your eyes wander away from the clock's hands.

()Reach out and touch a spot at about eye-level on the wall. Turn around, walk across the room, and touch a spot more or less straight across from the first spot you touched. Repeat until you get bored, then repeat again.

Answer 4

Put a bullet in it. Just kidding, I know what you mean. Cabalists contend that COMPLETE stillness is only possible to the average person for 10 seconds or so. With a lot of practice I was able to achieve total non-thought for about 30 minutes. It's very difficult, but mantras and visualization techniques over periods of years can train you to do this, as they work on first CONTROLLING thought, once you've mastered that, you may choose to NULLIFY it for a period of time.

Answer 5

Ah, it takes a bit of practice. It seems you have a hard time with meditating. If so, you might become an awesome eclectic witch.

Answer 6

Easy, have a seat in a quiet room, close your eyes, relax your muscles and just repeat a positive word 500 times. The word could be any, but I would suggest to select an adjective that describes your ideal YOU.
Examples: "honest", "honesty", "happy", "joy" etc

Answer 7

Dunno. Never been into that type of meditation where you try to silence the mind. My understanding is that people who are really good at it can silence their mind for only a few seconds.

I would ask why do you want to silence your mind? Is it not better to focus the mind?

What do you mean you're a mage? What's a mage?

Answer 8

Meditation and chanting of Mantras indeed has helped me to find a higher degree of inner peace by calming the mind it's up to you in reality . no effort no results....try repeating NAM MYO HO REN KYO over and over till your frequency vibtrates your nose if possible and eventually you should find results... there are other chants to be acquired as well.
peace out

Answer 9

Hmm. It depends on ho you mean that. I can shuffle a tarot deck, and after a while I cannot think, but I'm stuck with shuffling cards, instead of anything fully constructive [unless I want to make friends with a Tarot deck...].

Of course, that might not be stillness, it could be absence.

Answer 10

Meditation.
Quiet place...all alone.
Close your eyes...focus on what you see or don't see....now stop that.
Listen to what you can hear or can't hear....now stop that.
Let the random thoughts that pop up come....and let them go.

Shhh......

Not working???

Try again.

Eventually you will find out that breathing and nothing else exists. It can become almost surreal at certain times....let that go too.

It's worth it.....even for 10 seconds of pure silence....it's all worth it.

Good question!