Meditating In Circles? Try Straight Line Meditation

Research confirms it. No self-help tool holds more potential benefit for mind, body and spirit. Meditation promises “great liberation,” “great knowledge,” “great tranquility.” Great promise however, is rarely fulfilled.

The shortfall lies with meditation methods that fail to control mind’s wandering. With traditional methods, even with the best intentions you drift and dream when you’d hoped for attention. Going in circles you don’t get far. This age-old problem now has a solution: a feedback method stops the wandering. Here’s how it works.

The Feedback Method - A Straight Line To Your Goal

Think of meditation as a mountain climb. Your goal is the summit. The fastest route to your goal is a straight line. With guidance from feedback, the fastest route is yours. Feedback prevents mind’s wandering.

How Feedback Prevents Mind’s Wandering

“Feedback” is the knowledge of results necessary for skill learning. In practicing darts for instance, seeing your target (feedback) lets you correct your aim.

Meditation is like shooting darts blindfolded. Your target is attention, but you can’t see your target. All-important attention slips away unseen: you lose it without knowing you are losing it. (You find out later when you wake from a daydream.)

The feedback method solves the problem by letting you monitor attention. Add feedback -- see what you are doing, and the butterfly mind takes a bee line. Here’s how it’s done.

How To Add Feedback to Meditation

Adding feedback to meditation is effortless because it’s already there! Sensations of light often reported in meditation are feedback signals. Feedback has been right before our eyes all along.

If you meditate with open eyes you may have seen it. Many have, but no one recognized its usefulness. We missed the fact that the light is feedback signaling attention. It tells us we’re on target because it’s caused by attention itself.

Attention causes sensations of light by holding the eyes still. When you attend to a focus point, a stabilized retinal image uses up photo pigment causing distortion in the form of light. Seeing the light confirms attention. Lose attention and the light disappears. The light is feedback – proof of attention, a means of self-guidance, a fix for the wandering mind.

‘Seeing The Light’: The New How To Meditate

Focusing discs specially designed to facilitate feedback are available at the Straight Line Meditation website. To make a simple disc at home, draw a two inch circle on a sheet of paper. Add a pea sized bull’s eye. Place the disc on the floor a few feet ahead of you and focus with a gentle gaze on the bull’s eye. Soon a halo of light will appear, signaling attention.

When light appears, attend to it. If your mind wanders, your eyes too will wander and the light will vanish. That’s your signal to re-focus on the bull’s eye. Simply zero in and hold on to feedback. You’ll “see the light” in more ways than one. You’ll go straight to your goal.

Straight Line Meditation

“Just sit,” says Buddhist tradition, “eventually, maybe after many lifetimes, you will come upon the truth.” The slow progress expected here assumes lifetimes of wandering the mountainside, missing the summit. Slow progress goes with traditional methods. A straight line by contrast, covers ground fast. With feedback, the summit lies straight ahead.

Think of meditation as a mountain climb. Your goal is the summit. The fastest route to your goal is a straight line, but meditation wanders. Introduced here is a feedback method that solves the problem: meditation that takes you straight to your goal.

As a National Science Foundation Trainee, Carol E. McMahon earned a Doctorate in the psychology of human learning at Penn State University. She is author of the user-friendly manual: STRAIGHT LINE MEDITATION: HOW TO RESTORE AWARENESS AND WHY YOU NEED TO (with Master Deac Cataldo). Carol invites you to experience meditation’s true power at: http://www.StraightLineMeditation.com. More at http://www.TheBestWayToMeditate.com.

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