>> Meditation seems to me as something I should try, but my first look
into
>> the subject revealed mostly mystic-type communing with mystic-type
stuff,
>> which I'm not concerned with. I just want to think more clearly and
with
>> greater focus.
>I think much of what is called meditation is just a fancy form of
>sitting around relaxing and thinking, either concentrated on a single
>task or trying to let the various mental subprocesses calm down. I
>think that can be learned without much teaching, but it requires
>plenty of training anyway.
I would separate meditation from relaxation although they share the same
basis. In fact, meditation seems to be relaxation combined with a high
level of awareness. Contrary to relaxation (which often occurs while
sitted on an armchair, laying on a bed eyes closed, or even on the floor
as in the yogic savasana posture), meditation includes some tension
which have to be maintained during the whole session : the back
straight, eyes open, hands or whole body in strange and hard to maintain
postures, etc. Martial art can even be seen as medtation occuring in the
stressing environment of fight! The results are, IMHO, very different.
relaxation often finishes by sleep, meditation helps me to stay awake.
As for "thinking more clearly", I'm not sure that meditation or
relaxation can have a real effect on the value of rational thinking
(except the fact that a relaxed body will probably concentrate more
easily), but don't forget that people who created meditation methods
were mystics and not specially interested in this field. this does not
means there is nothing to do ! if meditation is "created" by changing
the parameters of relaxation, we can perhaps change meditation by adding
some new elements created especially in the purpose of increasing
intelligence. for instance, combine meditation with Ars memoria, or
doing martial arts movements to navigate in an abstract virtual
interface representing some mathematical or scientifical truthes, in
little like the tai-chi experiment at
this page : http://dbecker.www.media.mit.edu/~dbecker/
Bye
Remi