strategy
Meditating
Synonyms:
Practising intense awareness Description:
Many systems of meditation are available. Some stress the centering of the mind beyond observed reality, others (perhaps more accurately referred to as reflecting) stress the considering of truths that have great importance in ordering and living life in a profound and peaceful manner. Context:
Most religious traditions use meditation with greater or less emphasis, especially those members who dedicate their lives to religious pursuits. Contemporary self-improvement groups stress its importance. Implementation:
Common technques involve silently repeating a mantra or fixing your gaze on an object. There are also active meditations, the dervish dancing of certain Sufis being perhaps the most vigorous. Claim:
1. Meditation enables the practitioner to come closer to his own being, to spiritual freedom or to unity with God.2. Meditation can break the cycle of emotional responses associated with illheath or injury -- fear, worry, stress, anger -- which can interfere with recovery. It helps patients relax long enough to let the body begin to repair itself.
3. Regular meditation shapens self-awarenss and bolsters self-control in well people. In depressed people it reduces negative thoughts. It helps manage stress-related disorders, anxiety and phobias.
4. Above all else, the Church exhorts us to the practice of meditation, which raises the mind to the contemplation of heavenly things, which influences the heart with love of God and guides it on the straight path to Him. This meditation on sacred things offers the best means of preparation before and of thanksgiving after the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Meditation also disposes the soul to savor and to comprehend the beauties of the liturgy, and leads us to the contemplation of the eternal verities, and of the marvelous examples and teachings of the Gospel. (Papal Writings, Menti Nostrae, 23 September 1960).
5. Meditation is to find out if there is a field which is not already contaminated by the known (Krishnamurti).
Counter Claim:
1. Meditation promotes inwardness, tranquillity and detachment from the status quo, thus providing support for it.2. Meditation leads to mysticism, which disconnects the mundane from the profound, thereby rendering most of human existence meaningless.
Narrower:
Using transcendental meditation Facilitates:
Healing illnessHealing illnessSupporting spirituallyPreventing hypertensionDeveloping holiness in priestly life Problems:
Essential hypertensionOrganizations:
International Meditation Society Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation School Osho Spiritual Health Organization Meditation Group of United Nations Staff Members, Geneva BLI International Meditation Center Buddha-Gaya International Buddhist Meditation Centre, Bangkok World Community for Christian Meditation Dhammakaya International Meditation Centre International Health Care Worker Safety Center References:
Matos, Leo: Experiencing Separate Realities With and Without Drugs: meditation as an eventual alternative to drug useTrungpa, C: Meditation in ActionShapiro, Deane H: Meditation: self-regulation strategy and altered state of consciousnessMartinus: MeditationPapal Writings: Menti Nostrae Type Classification:
D: Detailed strategies