How to get the BEST out of meditation

Modern life is still hectic despite tremendously economic development over the past century.  And some people would say because of such rapid development!  No matter what differing opinions, one thing in common is we have to do something about it, for the benefit of bettering our internal feeling, which has been labeled with different names, like spirituality, psychology, mind, personality.  An area which is privy to us despite that fact that it can sometimes be measured with a proxy index to some extent, like depression levels and happiness levels. 

There are different activities that can divert our mind from life's problems, one being sports activities for the more active ones, and one being sedentary activities like listening to music or meditation,  for the less active ones.  Both are helpful.   Meditation however has the added advantage of helping us to get more permanent change in our personality, and therefore allow us to have better healing effect afterwards. 

The question is: How to get this more permanent change out of mediation?

Taoist practice puts emphasis on two areas: Spirituality (or morality 性) and Physical body (or life 命), called dual cultivation (性命雙修).  Taoist meditation puts training of one's mind on the same level as training one's body.   It is interesting to note that classic texts on Neidan (Taoist meditation) put all emphasis on physical techniques on chi-generation and related experiential milestones for a practitioner to check his progress at different levels with little mentioning on the cultivation of one's spirituality.  They are more like chi-manual than spiritual texts, and for this reason, has been condemned by some Buddhist masters.

The reason for such lopsided exposition is, for the classic texts, spirituality or morality is a separate discipline which is rational or perceptual in nature, that involve our cognitive mind, the ego in the terminology of modern psychology.  It is presumed that such studies has be taken (or enlightenment achieved for the talented) or one has been converted rationally.

For the modern man who is not concerned about profound personality changes but is perhaps, for example, only interested in reducing his stress level (which all intends and purposes being a big thing for him), he can still take advantage of how to get the BEST out of his meditation, using Taoist meditation wisdom whose originally purpose is for profound spiritual or personality changes. In brief, he has to learn the technique of using his meditation to permanently reduce his stress level, resulting in an improved personality to his own liking, and probably to the liking of his spouse, other relations and friends too!

The technique side I shall leave it for a future post, so much for now, stay tuned.

Meditation for personality change