# Ecstatic Meditation



## InterestinglyInteresting (May 7, 2010)

Warning: This is not intended to replace medication or psychotherapy. May precipitate serious hypomania. 

There is a new type of medication that comes in the form of electricity..it's in your brain! This will teach you how to achieve a state of ecstasy. In order to do this you need several conditions to be present.

*A sincere desire to be able to feel great for no reason at all

*The ability to remain alert and concentrate (This may require the use of a mild psychostimulant like coffee or something more pharmaceutical if prescribed to you)

(Optional) *Prior reading about how meditation causes long-lasting changes in the brain

Sit down and close your eyes. First you need to trigger a vague-happy feeling. One can do this by thinking about how meditation changes the brain. And then thinking about how you have the ability to change your potential to switch into a good mood. The acceptance of the validity of this should trigger a vague-feeling of optimism (it is going to vary in intensity based upon how much you accept this belief, which i will provide evidence below so you can realize this to be true). 

Now that you have a vague or not so vague feeling of optimism, fixate your attention on that feeling. That feeling is going to fade anywhere from 1-15 seconds. 

This is where concentration comes in. I'm assuming you don't have dementia. Remember that feeling you just felt a second or two ago that slipped. Remember why you felt it and remember how it felt better than feeling nothing. Fixate your attention on that feeling again. This time the feeling may be weaker. The weaker optimistic feeling is good because it motivates you to sustain your attention on it. In fact it may feel so weak that it may feel fake. Real or fake, keep your attention on it and put a fake smile on your face.

You're going to start having thoughts like, "this isn't working". stay fixated on that feeling. the act of staying fixated on that feeling should make you proud because you can persist and feel tougher than those thoughts.

At this point you're going to start feeling a build up of happiness and/or excitement. It's going to be a relief and will likely make you smile bigger and probably laugh a little. You may start getting the feeling of excitement before christmas morning. 

Now what you do is enjoy and fixate. It is going to waver down but focus on it again. Do this for about 30 minutes. Keep doing it everyday and your brain is going to gradually start kindling towards that feeling. 

This works because of the strong connection between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. Also if you experience a feeling of discouragment that proves that your thoughts are influencing your mood.


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## thundercats (Mar 12, 2012)

InterestinglyInteresting said:


> First you need to trigger a vague-happy feeling.


That's already a problem.


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## InterestinglyInteresting (May 7, 2010)

thundercats said:


> That's already a problem.


fixation on that thought first of all, is going to block this from working. it's all about neuroplasticity and kindling. if you can think any thought that gives even the smallest feeling of optimism focus on that feeling. just do this is intervals everyday.

you practice throwing a ball in a hoop everyday and your brain changes to eventually allow it to happen.

This practice is the same, but it is internal.


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## thundercats (Mar 12, 2012)

And what exactly is supposed to happen when you do this every day?
This reminds me of the NLP stuff where you're told to create positive emotions I also couldn't do that. I mean if it was that simple and you could just relive positive emotions as often as you want then you could just sit there in your room and be happy all the time. All you needed to be happy for all eternity would be 1 happy emotion which you could experience again and again. I'm not buying this.


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## InterestinglyInteresting (May 7, 2010)

thundercats said:


> And what exactly is supposed to happen when you do this every day?
> This reminds me of the NLP stuff where you're told to create positive emotions I also couldn't do that. I mean if it was that simple and you could just relive positive emotions as often as you want then you could just sit there in your room and be happy all the time. All you needed to be happy for all eternity would be 1 happy emotion which you could experience again and again. I'm not buying this.


well actually people do this with compassion, and it does alter their brain
http://www.news.wisc.edu/14944

then there is mindfulness meditation which alters the brain
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...integrative-body-mind-training_n_1594803.html

your brain isn't seperated and if you start tinkering with one part, you will cause other parts to become affected. and i never said you could sit in bliss eternally all day. and also it actually is relatively common to be "afflicted" with happiness- it's called hypomania.


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## thundercats (Mar 12, 2012)

What's mindfulness? You mean you sit there and then focus on your little toe? That's actually scary. I don't want to focus on my body. Who knows what might happen then.


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## InterestinglyInteresting (May 7, 2010)

thundercats said:


> What's mindfulness? You mean you sit there and then focus on your little toe? That's actually scary. I don't want to focus on my body. Who knows what might happen then.


no you're thinking of single pointedness meditation. that tends to light up the prefrontal cortex, which deactivates the amygdala. mindfulness is when you observe your thoughts without getting attached to a thought.

i suppose if the meditation i am describing in the first post is to be categorized, it would be single pointedness meditation accept the object you focus on would not be a mantra or physical body part, but good feelings.

if anyone felt any sort of optimism after reading this, that should be further proof that your thoughts can control your mood.


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## thundercats (Mar 12, 2012)

InterestinglyInteresting said:


> mindfulness is when you observe your thoughts without getting attached to a thought.


But what if you can't do that? What if you think about scary things and can't not get attached to them?


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## Keith (Aug 30, 2008)

Just a few questions. What is the advantage of this over traditional metta meditation? To me compassion is easier to drum up than a positive emotion, perhaps that's not the case for everyone though. It seems to me that its teaching to cling to the positive and reinforcing the good/bad dualism which meditation teaches to transcend. However in its favor is meditations power of emotion regulation, so i can see how it could be useful, has anyone researched this style yet?


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## InterestinglyInteresting (May 7, 2010)

Keith said:


> Just a few questions. What is the advantage of this over traditional metta meditation? To me compassion is easier to drum up than a positive emotion, perhaps that's not the case for everyone though. It seems to me that its teaching to cling to the positive and reinforcing the good/bad dualism which meditation teaches to transcend. However in its favor is meditations power of emotion regulation, so i can see how it could be useful, has anyone researched this style yet?


each person has their own variety of what they prefer to do. it's natural to want to feel good. what gets us in trouble is trying to seek it on the outside or thinking it is outside of us. it is only as difficult to cultivate happiness as you think it is. i'm sorry, i don't believe in transcending good/bad duality because that would require me to be in an apathetic state and is easily achieved by taking a heavy dose of mood stabilizers. buddhism stole meditation from hinduism...and the buddha failed to realize anyway that life isn't suffering (it would be ignorance of how happy you can be). a lot of times when meditation transcends good/bad dualism, it actually doesn't because it is a blissful feeling.

as far as positive emotion goes you only need one little twinkle, so thin it may be fake. but just like straining to lift a weight. with practice it will happen. in this meditation, you ignore thoughts that says "this isn't working" and single pointedly focus on joy. i just did a session of this meditation and it ended up with me being in excited laughter.


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## Keith (Aug 30, 2008)

InterestinglyInteresting said:


> each person has their own variety of what they prefer to do. it's natural to want to feel good. what gets us in trouble is trying to seek it on the outside or thinking it is outside of us. it is only as difficult to cultivate happiness as you think it is. i'm sorry, i don't believe in transcending good/bad duality because that would require me to be in an apathetic state and is easily achieved by taking a heavy dose of mood stabilizers. buddhism stole meditation from hinduism...and the buddha failed to realize anyway that life isn't suffering (it would be ignorance of how happy you can be). a lot of times when meditation transcends good/bad dualism, it actually doesn't because it is a blissful feeling.
> 
> as far as positive emotion goes you only need one little twinkle, so thin it may be fake. but just like straining to lift a weight. with practice it will happen. in this meditation, you ignore thoughts that says "this isn't working" and single pointedly focus on joy. i just did a session of this meditation and it ended up with me being in excited laughter.


Ah i see, so is it partly intention your cultivating, if you cannot actually feel the positive emotion? Yes I'm aware of where meditation came from. We'll have to disagree on philosophy though. Good luck on your meditating, may you be happy and free from suffering.


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## riptide991 (Feb 1, 2012)

Mindfulness is an interesting concept. I think that it has some merit to controlling stress. Stress of course can excarbate conditions such as depression/anxiety. However, removing stress is unlikely to fix the condition but maybe lessen the progress. After all people who have genetic problems can't handle stress as well as those who are genetically fine. This is because they can maintain hippocampal neurogenesis even during stress, while the others will switch to hippocampal apoptosis. At least that's one of the running theories which was studied with knockout mice. So maybe if those with this abnormality were never exposed to stress they would still be fine. But you can't get rid of all stress. Meditation does give you a window that is stress free and even a small window without stress is better than no window at all.


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