If you need more guidance get the MBSR/MBCT (I did the latter) book + audio tracks from Jon Kabat-Zinn - it takes all the buddhism out and teaches just meditation and mindfulness (and little bits of yoga).
MiPE was the first book I got, but the guidance of 'sit down, listen and follow this program' really helped me get on my butt.
Edit: I can't find the levitation part in MiPE - but there was _something_
No religion or chi/chakra bullshit. Good mobile app. Free to try the "Take 10" program.
I like it because it's <10 minutes from sign up to sitting and doing the first meditation, instead of having to go off and read a book first.
Seriously, for a while, the more I read the more dogmatic I would be about meditation.
I would avoid Eckhart Tolle at all costs, he is imprecise with language and his forced separation of "observer mind" from "ego mind" clashes greatly with my materialistic point of view. He has some nice ideas, but frankly this forced separation is extremely misleading.
I could write a whole blog post on the problems I have with it, but it boils down to one fact: our mind, ego, thoughts and feelings are inseparable from each other. There is one consciousness, and my goal in meditation is to focus my consciousness on my consciousness. To watch the machine at work, so to speak. It doesn't involve shifting to a higher form of consciousness, it just involves becoming conscious of your own thoughts, feelings, and senses, and realizing that these are all components in the machinery of your mind.
Once you establish this, once you can focus on the sensation of sensing, the automatic nature of thought, or the inevitability of feelings, you become enlightened without really trying to. You realize that judgement is unnecessary, that the machinery is working exactly as it should be, and the "trouble spots" in the machine are not problems with the mechanism itself, but instead are an overreaction by the conscious mind to a perceived threat.
By observing the machinery without judging, you help eliminate harmful negative feedback loops that only worsen problems. The common phrase in neurobiology is that "neurons that fire together, wire together". Instead of focusing on a particular negative sensation or thought, and the pain it causes you, you can simply observe the negative sensation or thought as it is: the machine doing exactly what it evolved to do. In non-meditative thought, we see pain, recognize it as a harm to us, and the feedback loop grows as all the neurons associating this negative impulse with pain begin to fire.
The goal in meditation is to simply observe. Not to follow the path of problem solving. There is no problem. Your mind is working exactly as it evolved to. Simply watch it work, do not judge it, and you will find that the big problems you think you have are essentially trivial.
All that said, I would highly recommend Deepak Chopra's Seven Laws of Spiritual Success. http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Spiritual-Laws-Success-Fulfillme...
| I could write a whole blog post on the problems I have with it, but it boils down to one fact: our mind, ego, thoughts and feelings are inseparable from each other.
Who said they were separate ?
I agree that sometimes Tolle does use terms which may not be real such as "pain body" ( I also did not like it when I first read Power of Now) but I understand that he creates these terms more to help understand something.
| he is imprecise with language
I don't think you can be precise in this particular case. When you speak of something which is actually the subject, and not an object, where there is no subject-object separation, then it is very difficult to be precise.
Let me give you an example from your own post:
| There is one consciousness, and my goal in meditation is to focus my consciousness on my consciousness
Who is this "my" who has a goal in meditation and even more importantly when you say "my consciousness" then whose consciousness is this you speak of. Are you some other entity who has a consciousness ?
Let me clarify that I am _not_ a Tolle follower, I follow self-enquiry, but I have found Tolle's PON to be a great book that I been able to appreciate _after_ having reached some measure of "presence".
The trouble I had was with dissociating my thinking mind, or Tolle's ego, with that of the observer mind; in reality, and materially, they are one and the same. As I remember, he draws a sharp demarcation between the two types of mind, labeling the egoic mind as a sort of curse on humanity.
To me, his egoic mind parses as the rational mind, or the thinking mind. Therefore, his dismissal of this aspect of our consciousness leaves much to be desired in my case.
I mean how am I supposed to read and understand his book, written in English, without the aid of a rational mind?
Perhaps it's because I didn't make it past the first few pages that I didn't understand his message, but I found Chopra much more accessible in this regard.
As to your question here: "Who is this "my" who has a goal in meditation"
The my is me; all of me. Not just the observing me, not just the thinking me, or the feeling me, but the inseparable combination of the three.
The word "thought" here really means something we intuit, by our main mode of non-rational thinking, which typically strives for accuracy based on past experiences. Rational thinking, on the other hand, can take us very far from reality, which is what makes it so dangerous, especially since it can be fueled by motivations like obscuring reality! Awareness is yet a third function.
If you are "observing the machinery" then you are successfully disidentified with it, which is a big part of Power of Now -- to realize the "mind" is not us, meaning we don't control it and we don't have to agree with it or act on it. What we can control (ultimately) is our attention.
Heady stuff. Still working on it for myself.
> The my is me; all of me. Not just the observing me, not just the thinking me, or the feeling me, but the inseparable combination of the three.
Seriously, when _in_ meditation try asking or seeking this "me". Not in words or concepts but actually try to locate it.
This is just my take on Tolle, don't try understanding what he says. Try being and living in "presence" or "being" or the now or mindfulness whatever you call it. It's the same thing. Then the insights come on their own. I rejected Tolle's book as being too simplistic etc around 2004 or so. After independently discovering "presence" or being, i came back to his book (around 2006) and found it to be greatly helpful. Whenever i get stuck in the mind/ego due to relationship issues or struggling with what's happening in life, I find his later chapters to be very helpful in bringing me back to clarity and presence.
However, I understand that each of us will find different things helpful or bogus. I never really cared for Deepak Chopra. In my opinion he is one of those who has read a lot of Indian books and can put things well for western audiences, but he hasn't put in the mileage himself.
I've been in this for a decade and here are some helpful works that are easily available online and free. YMMV. In no particular order, works of Nisargadatta Maharaj (esp I am That), Michael Langford (awareness watching awareness), books on mindfulness (already linked below). A very approachable book has been Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
I follow self-enquiry (Sri Ramana Maharshi) but sadly that is 'lost in translation' and wrongly/poorly explained everywhere. I find Langford's online book to be very motivating although my technique varies from his.
There's also 'Books on Prescription' which should have lists of reasonable books.
Unfortunately, this isn't going to avoid all the bullshit, but will steer you past most of it.
EDIT: (http://www.backontrack.nhs.uk/mindfulness-meditation/)
And also the self help section.
[1] short term treatment, 8 weeks, for people with mild mental health problems.
You still have to learn Buddhist terms, but they cut out the political BS and other crap.
Basically suffering is caused by desire and attachment, remove the desire and attachment and you remove suffering. Replace the suffering with compassion and empathy for all living things and you are on your way to mindfulness and Nirvana.
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa...
S.N. Goenka runs a lot of retreat centers worldwide - but those seem to be a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to quality of instruction and treatment of participants. They partially run on donations and I've read at least one account where people had to listen to talk of 'you would feel so much better if you donate money' (not exactly that but close to it).
There actually isn't that much to learn about meditation - the hardest part is actually staying with it.