Meditate Like a Rock Star

Concentration is perfect; the room fills with light; "you rouse the wind and stir the grasses;" breakthrough is at hand!

Many meditate.  Very few develop the skill required for achievement like this. Buddha recommended "perfect concentration," but when we sit down to meditate we have anything but perfection. We drift and dream, fidget and yawn, maybe even doze off. The problem here lies not with us but with traditional methods of meditation. These methods are missing something. They lack something necessary for learning any skill, including the skill of concentration. They lack "feedback." Let me show you how to add feedback to meditation, and how feedback gives you precision guidance to the highest level of practice.

In the feedback meditation method a small disc (like the "Solar Flare" disc pictured below) is placed on the floor. Attention is focused on the bulls-eye. Good attention fixes your gaze, holding your eyes still. Within seconds, this fixed gaze causes slight visual distortions, usually halos of light.  These distortions stem from a natural process of retinal fatigue and are harmless.  The light, or any other visual distortion, serves as feedback. It tells you something you need to know: it tells you you're paying attention.

If you lose attention, however, and your mind wanders, your eyes also wander. With this, instantly the distortion ends. That's how feedback signals you and rights your course. Like a trusty watch dog it alerts you to drifting and dreaming. Use feedback to monitor your concentration and a straight line replaces wandering.  Going straight, you cover ground fast.  Seeing what you are doing, practice skill grows.  

Focusing on feedback you literally attend to your attention.  You can do what was never before possible: you can mind your mind! Holding on to feedback you can sustain attention for as long as you like. You can hold attention the way you would grab a rope for a tow, and where does it take you? Attention takes you straight to awareness.  Full awareness is one and the same as highest enlightenment. With feedback you “see the light” literally and figuratively.

Attention is your target in meditation and feedback means a direct hit. Gaze at the disc and when feedback appears, simply focus on that.  Just sit and watch the show your attention is producing and you'll meditate as never before.  You'll meditate like a rock star!

The focusing disc pictured here is called Solar Flare because feedback from this disc resembles solar flares. Other Focusing Discs, tests of enlightenment, and information about the new book STRAIGHT LINE MEDITATION: HOW TO RESTORE AWARENESS AND WHY YOU NEED TO by Carol E. McMahon, Ph.D. with Master Deac Cataldo can be found at http://www.StraightLineMeditation.com.