Subject: Re: Taming the Hedgehog - Speculations on Single Minded Concentration

I consider it possible that many people who try and meditate are trying to do something near impossible

I have long maintained that emptying the mind is not desirable .... I used to say: "we are not trying to empty it, what we are trying to do is to still the mind, just to slow it down a bit".

but now even to still it seems unnatural, the upper brain is good at speed and it is trained at and developed for complicated situations (and when everything has its role and own nature, and if following the natural way is the easiest, quickest, free-est, most painless, and most generally the best : THEN) what the upper brain needs, is some moving form of concentration ... anything not too narrowly repetitive, maybe prayer or mantra or circulating feeling through the body, rather than fixing points and areas or any attempt at single minded concentration.

What the upper brain is good at is playing with concepts/abstract ideas: making jokes and inventing things - and obviously - questioning the nature of the world and life and death, the upper brain is unparallelled at this ...

but, ... its the lower brain we need to co-operate with ... if we want to understand how cats doze, hedgehogs hibernate, birds sit in trees all through the long winter nights, ... and maybe find some of that inner peace ...