Cultivating Mind

Introspection & Meditation

This Week’s Intentions:

This Week I will...

• Learn about meditation, astral projection, and other mental journeys

• Identify a repertoire of optimal mental journeys

• Contemplate & Meditate on and how and why our bodies crave mental journeys

The Goal: Explore consciousness in general, as well as our own conscious and subconscious

Audio Supplement: 

“Hey everybody, AJ here with this week in Cultivating Purpose. This week's theme is about taking inward journeys, and exploring the creative spirit contained within our consciousness. In my life, taking inward journeys is a landmark activity that helps me better understand my own mind, my place in the world, and the things up which I need to take action in order to Cultivate Purpose in my life.

Taking inward journeys can mean many things. For many years of my life, it meant building a relationship with a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, and exploring my cognitive processes in a professional setting. I think Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a great way to analyze one's thought patterns, and to identify the feeling-thought-behavior connectivity that constructs our personal realities. Through this self-identification and understanding, one can construct healthier feeling-thought-behavior patterns that ultimately lead to a changed life and a changed person. I really cannot stress this enough: professional work with a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist is the most effective method I've encountered for taking meaningful inward journeys that result in healthy changes towards a more optimal, peaceful, and higher functioning consciousness.

Regardless of whether I'm actively working with a Cognitive Therapist, I can use the cognitive approach to analyzing my daily thought patterns. I often employ socratic questioning to better understand my own motivations and thought patterns on a subject. I ask myself "why did I think that first specific thought?" or "where did that first specific thought come from? What motivated my brain to produce that thought?" I try to let the thought patterns 'simmer' in my head, giving my brain sometime to bask in the essence of the thought, then asking myself questions about the thought pattern to potentially uncover a hidden motive or meaning behind my thoughts.

Often when I do this, I discover a particular reason why I think a certain way. Sometimes it's because of a previous life experience: maybe something happened in my family when I was a child, or maybe I acted a certain way 10 years ago that subconsciously informs my present-day thoughts. Sometimes I realize that my thought patterns are a result of my position and circumstances in life. Being white, male, educated, from an Italian-American family, and economically stable absolutely effects my thoughts about things, and I try to be cognizant of how that history informs my thinking. We will talk much more about this in the coming weeks, as we explore our biases, our opposites, and our boundaries.

Another way to take inward journeys has nothing to do with our daily cognitive processing. Rather, another way to take inward journeys is through meditation and astral projection. Through these practices, we can effectively take a relaxing vacation inside our own minds. We can literally explore new places and experience new feelings when we meditate and experience astral projection. This kind of inward journey can also change our cognitive processes, but in much more subtle and profound ways. Inner journeys with meditation and astral projection serves as a biological reset button-- physiological changes come more intensely and rapidly during and after meditation or astral projection, because the mind is able to loosen it's grip on the physical plane while our consciousness takes us somewhere else.

As I mentioned last week in the Purposeful Rest section, I meditate every morning and night to facilitate optimal rest. The body scan meditation from last week is a perfect vehicle for taking an inward journey. The body scan meditation allows the practitioner to give thanks and appreciation to various parts of the body, which actually creates physical changes like better circulation and greater general health. Body scan meditation also provides an emotional release. It is often the one time in my day when I am consciously thinking, but I'm not attaching emotions or my cognitive history to my thinking. It is a completely emotionless activity (at first) and it doesn't involve me thinking about worldly scenarios and other mundane necessities that are required of me throughout the day.

This "emotionless, thoughtless" activity provides the incredible reset button for your whole body. In the absence of normal stimuli, my brain is able to relax and breathe a bit without being bogged down with all those heavy feelings and thoughts. And yes, while I meditate, there are other thoughts and emotions that creep into my mind. Regular stuff about my normal day can't help but barge in on my meditative time. But, as always, I gently let those mental activities leave my brain as easily as they came in, allowing my thoughts to rise and fall as I breathe and continue my body scan meditation. Trust me- after 13 years of daily meditation, I am STILL fighting the encroaching mental activity while I meditate...it's just part of being human. Trust me-- even if you feel your mental activity encroaching on your meditation time, you are STILL doing great things for your body, and you are doing great things to optimize your health, even with the mental distractions.

For many years, body scan meditation was a perfect way for me to reset my emotional/intellectual landscape because the simple act of doing "emotionless, thoughtless" meditation gives my body a chance to breathe and experience another perspective, so I feel refreshed, calmer, and more understanding when I go back to my daily life. However, a couple years ago (when my healthy eating corrected the communication patterns within my body) I started getting much stronger reactions during body scan meditation. I was getting better at simply focusing on my body rather than the encroaching mental activity, which was great.

One day, all of a sudden while doing a body scan meditation I felt incredibly intense, acute pain in my left trapezius area. It came out of nowhere, and the burning pain seemed to grow in intensity when I turned my attention fully towards it. I decided to continue to breathe, and continue my body scan, now focusing on the burning painful area; and just trying to be with it, and understand and empathize with what my body was trying to tell me. Naturally I knew my upper back was (and still is) in bad shape-- I have knots and tightness and chronic discomfort in that area after years of buildup. But I haven't had acute pain in a while; and it is as if my body scan meditation woke up this area of my body. It's like the lines of communications were back open, and so was the circulation of oxygen to that area. After focusing on this pain for a while, it felt like a painful lactic-acid like buildup...but more unholy. Strengthening my mind-body connection in this instance uncovered an area that needs to be addressed, and by giving my body conscious attention I have started the physical process of loosening those muscles and opening the oxygen channels for healing. This is a very real, repeatable, and effective result of body scan meditation-- your body and mind will communicate more fluidly, and a more optimal physical state can be achieved; simply by through mindfulness.  This is an incredibly invigorating and satisfying reason to meditate consistently.

Also, after years of doing body scan meditations, in the increasing absence of emotions and practical thoughts, my brain started firing in all sorts of crazy, seemingly spontaneous directions that are strongly indicative of the cognitive/emotional release and reset I am receiving. Now, sometimes while thinking about all the things my right knee does for my existence, I'll just burst out into tears and start crying, because I feel such an intense amount of love and appreciation for my knee; something I have never felt before. I may also feel guilty and feel bad that I have treated these parts of my body so poorly in the past (particularly with my nutrition). The first time I had this huge emotional outpouring was when I was meditating while receiving acupuncture treatment, and it has happened numerous times since. Once again, this reaction did not happen to me for many years, and to this day only happens sporadically. But it is another exciting and cleansing side effect of my inward journeys.

This week, I am going to take time to do a deep body scan session, and separate time to do a deep astral projection. To start your own astral projection, check out the audio links below. Also look into the recommended links below for more understanding and guidance for meditation, body scanning, and astral projcetion. And as always-- have fun with the action items! I am super excited to go on an astral projection this week, and I hope you are too.

Namaste.

Original Content:

Recommended Reading, Viewing & Listening Links:

Action Items for Introspection:

• Go on an Astral Projection!

• contribute your 'inward journey' experiences to the Cultivating Purpose community page! You can send your content to growyourpurpose@gmail.com and I'll upload it!