Just wondering, I am kinda new to this, but when you are in mediation, I heard that you are not awake yet not sleeping. Can anyone describe this any better? Like for instance, is it like a Lucid Dream, you are not awake, yet u are sorta not sleeping because you are in a different environment of your control?

there is no need to mystify meditation. it is simply when you sit and observe your mind instead of partaking in it's chaos. this is called awareness. then you can see what you need to work on yourself.

Easy enough to check out for yourself. Get yourself comfortable, sit with your back straight, let your thoughts settle and stay there for 20 or 30 minutes. If your thoughts keep coming loudly, then try counting breaths 1 to 10 over and over.

There are a lot of techniques, but sitting still & letting your thoughts settle is the foundation of most of them. Once the mind gets a bit quieter there should be a sense of peace and clarity for little bits between the 'am I doing this right' 'my nose itches' 'this is soo boring' 'shouldn't I be seeing something' ..etc.


Michael

P.S. totally different then Lucid Dreaming IMHO. Its about the seeing the reality of your original mind vs enjoying a nonreality sim you've created.

I would say it a little bit different; you are awake, yet your body and brain behaves as it does in deep sleep. The brain goes into alpha and delta levels, just like it does during sleep. It makes you more awake than before.

I dont think it is like lucid dreaming because then your consciousness is in a totally different state. At least to me it feels nothing like lucid dreaming. But you can sit down and meditate if you go lucid in dreams. It is actually a very nice experience to do that.

imho the easiest way to tone down the extraneous thoughts is to focus on feeling....feeling of breathing, just executing a perfect breath each time...

I was taught there are 2 kinds of meditation and in your cultivation practice you will use both. Imagine a wall covered in dots:

If you concentrate on just one dot to the exclusion of all the other dots then that active meditation. This type includes all types of guided meditations and it is used to raise your energy from your center to specific places like the third eye, top of the head, hands or where ever.

If you instead allow yourself to take in all the dots at once and do your best to not focus on any one dot then that is passive meditation. This includes all types of mindfulness meditaions and is used to draw energy from your surroundings into your center.

I agree. We don't enter a specific mind-set when we go into meditation; that would be a trance. We "simply" sit in the present moment, bringing your focus to the right there and then. No wondering about the future or past, or thinking about other places than the one you are in right there. No need to try to acheive a state of mind, other than the one you have now.

If you are reading this text with full attention, you are in the here and now. This is the example of experience you can use.

The concept of this is easy, but the practice is not so easy, our mind wanders around thinking about scenarios and the future etc. When it does, gently bring it back to the present.

Meditation is a word describing a category in English. According to compact Oxford, "verb 1 focus one’s mind for a time for spiritual purposes or for relaxation. 2 (meditate on/about) think carefully about."

That is a pretty broad category.

Am I meditating while doing Qigong, Zhan Zhuang, some sort of sitting practice? Who cares? Our little word (which I am guessing stemmed from definition 2 in an attempt to describe some practices easterners were doing) for the many varied practices out there is far too general to be useful.
Better to relate to each practice subjectively rather than try to fit things into useless categories. JMO
Cheers,
D