Event: What is meditation good for?

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

On this session, we will learn a bit more about how to meditate and the importance, as a beginner, to find a place and adequate environment for regular practice, as well as how to pay attention to your senses. A few different techniques will be explained to deal with sleepiness or over-excitement, losing one's attention, being surrounded by distractions, etc.

As always, these sessions will be a mix of instructions and practice.

I'm unfortunately very sorry for being unable to do the event today, so I had to move it to Tuesday, 17th. We're also allowed to use a different place than usual (yes, we're using the Neufreistadter Kirche!) Let's see how it works out

[Rosie Gray]

Oh that's so nice to hear that you are using the Kirche, Gwyn. If you weren't having your event right in the middle of the night for me, I would surely join you. I've been thinking about taking up some form of meditation recently, so I could use the advice. I hope you enjoy the space, anyway.

Cheers,
Rosie

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Well, for some reason, nobody attended the last event at the Kirche. Maybe they were scared of that this was some kind of new religious sect trying to proselytise and gather new followers to buy the sect leader a new Ferrari hehe...

So today I'll hold the next session at my plot in Neufreistadt again. Let's see if it fares better. It's later on today, at 3 PM SLT.

https://secondlife.com/my/community/eve ... id=5203078

and direct teleport link: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/N ... %20session

I know I should be doing this at different times and hours, but it has been increasingly hard for me to find a regular slot for that My life lacks routine — every day is different — and this makes things so much harder to hold regular events...

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Oh that's so nice to hear that you are using the Kirche, Gwyn. If you weren't having your event right in the middle of the night for me, I would surely join you. I've been thinking about taking up some form of meditation recently, so I could use the advice. I hope you enjoy the space, anyway.

I love the Kirche!! But I wonder if it was not the reason why it scared people off... oh well. I suppose I can try to do the events on alternate dates or so... something worth thinking about!

As for the time... I forgot where you're located, Rosie, but from your message I guess you're now somewhere in Europe or even more eastwards? I thought you were in Canada? What would be the best time for you?

And as for taking up some form of meditation, I would certainly recommend picking up a qualified teacher, instead of me! The first thing you should always ask from a meditation teacher is what their lineage is, how much experience they have, and who gave them permission to teach. Be weary of anyone who is teaching a method "they developed by themselves" or "read in a book" or even "took a few weekend courses and made a few retreats". Meditation requires a bit more than that. It's like learning to drive a car: it's not incredibly hard, but we expect our driving instructor to have a few years of practice! Ironically, we are very careful to whom we trust our bodies to — qualified medical doctors who have studied for at least 6 years in college, plus many years of internship, and coming from a licensed university — but, strangely enough, when it comes to entrusting our minds to someone else, we're happy to accept pretty much anyone So, be wary about whom you choose. The good news is that there are really quite a lot of good, qualified teachers around — even a few in Second Life!

I'm definitely not qualified to teach anything, but my own teacher thinks otherwise, so that's why I'm doing these simple classes. They're very easy to follow, and while the method is simple, it works — if you apply yourself to the practice and do some homework However, I should warn everyone planning to attend not to expect results in a short time. This is really a very-long-term method, not for people with short attention spans. As I explained once to a friend, who told me that after a few sessions she didn't see any results, I just asked her for how long she has been building up certain tendencies. She was honest enough to admit that it took decades. So obviously any method to revert those tendencies will not work "after a few sessions". On the other hand, there are a few results which might become apparent after a relatively short while, and those ought to be encouraging to proceed with the method and see where it can lead...

[Rosie Gray]

I'll definately take your advice if I look for an RL mediation teacher Gwyn, thanks.

Did you know you can de-rez the christian iconography in the Kirche? There's a place in the attic with a scripted object (thanks to Sudane) where you can de-rez the altar and pulpets, rez some light for staging, or just nothing. That might make it a nicer atmosphere for mediation... less scary for non-christians anyway.

I am in Canada on the west-coast, so this makes my time the same as SL time. Thus, 3:00 am SLT is 3:00 am for me too.

Cheers,
R.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Sudane emailed me about that... but didn't tell me exactly where it was... it was so fun to explore and figure out where it is! So I teleported to the Kirche and start looking for the 'control room'. Now this was a whole experience! I had been to the church before, of course, but I had no idea that the crypt gate actually opens (I never clicked on it!) and that you could descend to the crypt itself. Woo hoo!

And then, well, the only place left was going upstairs. But I had been upstairs quite a few times; I like the view from the tower. What I never noticed — because of awkward camera settings — was that there is a side passage on the first landing. But recently I've tweaked all my viewers to use Penny Patton's more sensible camera settings. Now things look much more "normal" — and sure thing, there is a side passage, and there is an attic — which I had never seen before! — and it was easy to operate the control panel

I loved this! That's the whole fun of Second Life — you can have lots of neat things to explore. Who would imagine I'd have so much fun looking for things in a building that I was "supposed" to know rather well Ha!

Anyway, I'll try to host the event on the Kirche again.

Oh, and the events are held at 2 or 3 PM, not AM!!