So far, I have been promoting my sound events in Wiesbaden essentially as "sound journeys". By this I mean a letting go, an immersion and relaxation in a world of sound.
Note: this is the translation of my German page. Please excuse my English :-)
But this is not the only way you can use my sound events for yourself. You can also make them a wonderful meditation practice. Probably easiest for practiced meditators, but in principle of course for everyone!
Broadly speaking, I suggest three ways to experience my sound journeys:
Experience of the sound journey as a regenerative trance
Experience as concentration meditation (Shamata)
Experience as insight meditation (Vipassana).
Each sound experience is possible while lying down as well as sitting. For the meditations I rather recommend sitting to avoid digression and falling asleep.
The sound journey experience allows letting go, relaxing, losing oneself in the sound; Shamata sound meditation and Vipassana sound meditation, on the other hand, require high attention.
1. Experience as a sound journey (trance meditation)
Most of you are generally interested in an experience as a trance journey.
(The need to let go completely, to be uplifted and carried, to be free of any focus, any effort, to have nothing for once, is so common and apparently sooo big).
This corresponds to the so-called guided meditation, which, in the classical way, takes the listener verbally into an inner fantasy world with symbolic persons, landscapes, objects or events.
Experiencing the sound journey as a trance
This kind of experience has a hypnotic character. You let go, confide, surrender.
The sound touches your unconscious subtly, gently and sometimes intensely: Memories, body tensions, unresolved issues, withheld emotions, etc. These can then unfold by themselves, so to speak, and come into consciousness. For example, in the form of physical "symptoms", energetic phenomena, imagery, emotions, snippets of thoughts, or the like.
2. Soundjourney as concentration meditation (shamata)
In the concentration meditation you practice to control and sharpen your attention on the basis of a "meditation object". You practice to perceive an object (be it a candle, or your own breath, or other) as precisely as possible without interruption (i.e. not distracted by external or internal events).
This kind of meditation develops a basic skill and calms the continuous stream of thoughts.
At a sound event you can use the sound of the gong as your meditation object to perceive it analytically precise in all dimensions, so to speak. As a practiced meditator, you can focus on the sound in all its overtone-rich complexity instead of your breath.
More on Experiencing as a Concentration Exercise (Shamata)
3. Sound journey as insight meditation (Vipassana)
Insight meditation assumes that you can keep your attention stable. Here, however, the mind itself becomes your meditation object.
It is called "insight meditation" because through direct self-observation you suddenly gain insight into what actually constitutes your mind.
Typical insight meditations are, for example, meditations on the so-called "emptiness" of the mind. This does not mean an absence, but ultimately that everything that happens in the mind is actually a construction of the mind itself. Or in other words, that one cannot discover a for itself existing "self", phenomena or emotions at all. If one looks closely!
Another insight is, for example, an awareness of the mechanism by which your mind spontaneously evaluates everything it encounters: into pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. This fundamental characteristic contributes to the fact that you actually never really come to rest: You don't like something, something is unpleasant, something is missing, something is too much or too little, or you are bored etc.... And when everything is just wonderful, you feel sad that it doesn't last and you try hard to hold on to it. And so on...
This sounds familiar to you, doesn't it?
You can use my sound journeys to get out of the incessant judging by using "listening as a mirror".
"The mirror" is one of the central metaphors in meditation. For you learn to perceive mental events as appearances reflected by your mind. Instead of as usual - as inner or outer objects existing for themselves, with which you identify yourself. As if they were independent of your mind. You can see that they are not.
Meditation and me
I do not have a long practice in the "hard-core" sitting meditation (concentration and insight) that I am talking about here. I have had sporadic experiences in it, but have been practicing this type of meditation regularly for only about 1 year.
Basic practices and concepts have been familiar to me for a good 10 years through my practice of Authentic Movement and my professional work with it in the area of personal development.
Authentic Movement is basically and simply said something like "moving meditation" (or also in groups). More on that here. Much of this I can transfer into formal meditation.
This includes the precise perception of the inner workd, and the absence or the awareness of one's own judgements of what rises internally and "realizes itself" (the perception as a neutral mirror, in meditation e.g. called "mirror-mind"). This also includes practicing the perception of the inner space.
I currently like to be guided and supported in my practice by the app "Waking Up" by Sam Harris with his, I think, great, instructive and complex meditations, lessons and conversations.
By the way, I am also a big fan of the book, " Already Free. Buddishism Meets Psychotherapy. On the Path of Liberation" by Bruce Tift, which I would like to recommend to you. Unfortunately it is not available in German. But it is available as an audio book.
It is not specifically about meditation, but it still fits the topic.
Reading and listening hints
Sam Harris
Waking Up, Meditation App
www.wakingup.com
Bruce Tift
"Already Free"
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Bruce-Tift/dp/1622034112
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbG_vqLk8IwKOMzcr8eO_hj0ILt2_9AZX (the complete book)
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