What does a meditative state feel like?

Like you are in the “zone” in sports.

It’s actually not helpful to try for a particular feeling. If part of your attention is occupied with evaluating the quality of the meditation (and that includes “good” and “bad” judgments), then your attention is divided, and meditation is about gathering all of your attention to whatever resting point you’ve taken up.

I’ve never used images as the resting place for meditation, so I can’t comment from experience on that (it’s definitely not a Zen thing). What I can tell you, though, is that you’re better off not concerning yourself at all with whether or not it feels “right”. However it feels at any given moment is just fine. No need to change it. If it feels drowsy, fine. If it feels anxious, fine. If it feels brilliant, fine. Adopting this attitude allows you to drop the evaluating impulse, and plow that measure of attention back into the resting point.

It’s hard to accept, but you don’t even need to know what meditation is supposed to feel like, because the meditation naturally takes care of all that without your having to worry about it. Your role in all of this is very simple: Notice when thoughts have hijacked your attention away from the resting point, drop whatever thought you’ve gotten tangled up in and bring the attention back to the resting point. That’s your sole concern. All the rest takes care of itself. If you try to do anything else, you only make it unnecessarily harder.

Sitting up definitely helps. A timer definitely helps. It will allow you to forget about time altogether.

I’ve been using the Calm app. My husband and I have done the Seven Days of Calm program and we’re about to start on the 21 Days of Calm. Each of the initial sessions only takes 10-minutes and he takes you through breathing exercises and what to expect etc. I think it’s a good starting point. There’s another app called Headspace too. There are a few. Give one a try and see if it helps. It’s a very guided process which I think is great as a starting point and to help you to develop a meditation habit.

@RedDeerGuy1 Thanks!

@thorninmud All right. That makes a lot of sense. I’ve been concentrating way too much.

Do I just tell myself, “back to the resting point”, and see what my brain makes of that? I’m having a hard time imagining the resting point as a place devoid of thoughts, but that’s probably due to the fact that I have never really been able to meditate.

Is there a minimum amount of time which it makes sense to meditate for, in your opinion?

@Earthbound_Misfit Thanks. I’ll look into it!

The ultimate goal to meditation is to have a mind absent of all thoughts to where you are not concentrating on anything at all. The hardest thing about meditation is getting comfortable for one and then not letting the distractions in your head distract you or frustrate you while you meditate. I find having a point to gaze at 4–5 feet in front of you like a lighted candle is ideal for keeping your attention on something other than the noise in your skull. Breathing or breath control is a major tool to meditating and can help you initially relax and get into your meditative groove.

Being very deliberate in your approach to meditation will greatly help you get to that place that people who seriously meditate strive for. I have found my best and most profound experiences came when I did yoga first to loosen and calm my body and meditation took me to a whole other level of being and calm I never experienced ever before. A truly wonderful place to be.

I was originally going to say“Nebraska”.

For me, at least, a meditative state is one where my mind is empty – I usually have to force myself (well, not force, but urge) to clear my mind. Usually, for me, it helps to breathe deeply and regularly, which enhances it.

I have meditated most successfully with arms crossed (don’t know why) but also arms down works.

I find myself tuning out sound – it’s still there and I hear it, but I am removed from it. It doesn’t affect me.

@longgone Here’s where your imaging approach might complicate things. Since the image is a mental construct, it’s a form of thought itself. Thoughts naturally lead off into other thoughts. Most beginners use the breath as the resting place, following the ins and outs, seeing how it is moment by moment without controlling it. Because that doesn’t require thought, it’s less likely to spin you out into other thoughts.

It’s not realistic to expect that thoughts won’t show up as you’re sitting there attending to the resting point. They certainly will. What you discover after a while, though, is that if you don’t turn your attention to them when they show up, then they just go away. So you do notice that a thought is buzzing around, but you don’t react to it by either wishing it away or investigating it. You can let it alone, keep your attention at the resting ponit, and the thought will just fade away.

Until you get the hang of this, you’ll find that you do investigate those thoughts as they appear, which pulls you off into thought land. This will happen over and over. No big deal. You just notice that you’re no longer at the resting point and, without a lot of fuss, just go back.

When you get the knack of not investigating thoughts, then the whole thought process gradually quiets down. The important thing is that instead of putting energy into fighting thoughts, put that energy into attending to the resting point. The more attention you invest there, the less thoughts will be a problem.

And here again, don’t concern yourself with checking to see whether your mind is “empty” or not. That’s just another form of thinking. Keep it super simple: attend to the resting point. If the attention slips away, bring it back. That’s it.

I keep using this term “resting point” because most forms of meditation do take up some particular target (like the breath) on which to keep the attention at rest. There are a few forms of meditation that have no fixed point, but those are much more challenging, and unless you’ve already cultivated the ability to keep your attention at rest on a point, it’s easy to fool yourself that you’re meditating when you’re actually just daydreaming.

Thanks, all! I’m going to bed now, but I will try again tomorrow, and report back!

What @thorninmud said, although I will add a few things.

Another way to think of a resting point is something that makes the mind one-pointed. So a mantra or a chant or anything else (the breath)—turning one’s attention to this will make the mind one-pointed. And the goal, so to speak, is to quieten the mind by withdrawing attention from its handiwork, which is the production of thoughts.

One of the best instructions that I received was to “let your mind rest inside your heart.” This would be your spiritual heart, which for practical purposes you can locate on the right side of your chest about two inches from your sternum. It’s where you might point when you say “I.” When you settle in, try turning your attention there and see if the mind doesn’t seem to slide it’s way down. It does for me.

The tiredness is a natural reaction, and it’s your mind’s way of trying to short circuit your meditation. The mind doesn’t want you to learn that you can relegate it to second fiddle. It wants to keep leading you around by the nose. As your practice deepens, the mind can do all sorts of tricks to try and divert your attention. When the feeling comes, ask yourself if you are really tired.

For me, the point of meditating is to realize the Self (what you might loosely label the soul). Here’s a question: to whom do these thoughts appear? You may say “to me,” but who is the me you are referring to? Every thought that appears is arising in front of a sense of “me.” Meditation in this sense is an opportunity to shift your identity from the “person” who is led around by the mind, to the Self, which is neither influenced by or molested by the mind. In fact, the mind will change to what you might call the “natural mind” to serve the Self once one identifies with the Self and abandons the person.

If you’d like to read more about the latter parts of my response, look at the words of Ramana Maharishi, Robert Adams, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Papaji, or Mooji. There’s free stuff online from all of them.

Have you tried guided meditation? Beginners find it helpful, myself included. I’ve been meditating for a while now and I’m still more comfortable with them than trying to relax on my own. Some that were suggested to me, which I’ll now suggest to you, are these. Very simple, very straightforward and nice and relaxing.

EDIT: They also offer a free 6 week course on meditation, which I plan on doing and is probably pretty helpful. Something to consider.

Yes, @thorninmud nails it. The “objective” of meditating is to enter a no mind/thought state, just a being state devoid of mental attention as to what you are feeling/thinking. Aware but minus thinking.
Massage work takes me there, bliss out to the 10th power. :-)

Update:

I had a few unsuccessful sessions, but today, I repeatedly entered a mindset which felt good. It felt like I could stay in my chair for ages, and be content with just sitting. Thoughts would float by at times, but I put them in a box, labeled it, and let it disappear.

Suddenly, the session seemed way too short. I’m looking forward to tomorrow!

Thanks, everyone!