17 Mar The meditation of the bubble
This is another meditation I learnt from Lawrence LeShan’s book “How to meditate”.
Here is how to do the meditation of the bubble in the words of Lawrence LaShan;
“The meditation of the bubble [?] is a structured meditation of the inner way. In meditations of this sort, you observe your own consciousness in a special way (through the structured design of the meditation) while interfering with it as little as possible. You meditate on the stream of your own consciousness.
“Picture yourself sitting quietly and comfortably on the bottom of a clear lake. You know how slowly large bubbles rise through the water. Each thought, feeling, perception, etc., is pictured as a bubble rising into the space you can observe, passing through and out of this space. It takes five to seven or eight seconds to complete this process. When you have a thought or feeling, you simply observe it for this time period until it passes out of your visual space. Then you wait for the next one and observe it for the same amount of time, and so on.”
“You do not explore, follow up or associate to a bubble, just observe it with the background of ?oh, what?s what I?m thinking (or feeling or sensing) now. How interesting.? Then, as it passes out of visual space (as the imaginary bubble rises), you calmly wait for the next bubble. [?] The purpose of the concept of bubbles rising through the water is to help you to do two things. The first is to keep the timing. You learn to simply contemplate each thought or perception for (approximately) a definite time and then to let it go. Secondly, the structure helps you look at each one individually and not constantly feel you must find connections between them.”
This type of meditation is also often described as open monitoring. The idea is to just stay in the moment and observe in a non-judgemental way. Of course your “Self” will try to pull your mind into the past or the future, cling to each thought and not let go and will eagerly judge everything.
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