AAAAAAARGH!Follow

Totally possible to meditate in any physical position whatsoever. Noone ever has to know.

Since my chronic illness kicked in badly my body reacts super nastily to blood being taken, because I'm already in "shock" 24/7 with lowered blood volume, and nurses have an utter ***** of a time getting any vein, let alone a good one. I'm also nervous of surgery that involves general anaesthesia, and being extra knocked out by surgery and recovering badly afterward because of my background illness hasn't improved that situation.

So going in for any medical procedure, I use a couple of different "visualization" type meditations that take a lot of attention. The first is a chakra visualization. I'm weak on visualizing warm coloured colours, so it takes a lot of effort for me to do a warm scarlet red, a good orange, and sunny gold yellow. Also getting the colours to swirl in the right directions clockwise or anticlockwise for each chakra point takes a lot of attention.

Secondly if needed I throw in an energy raising visualization for good measure. Deep scarlet column of light coming up from the center of the Earth, white light pouring down from above. Picturing the wide reaches of the entire galaxy out to the entire physical universe, and how much energy is locked up in it. Therefore, given how small little ol' me is in comparison, if each part of the universe donated me a minuscule fraction of a fraction of energy, none of it would miss it, while it would make a big difference to me. So I pop myself at the bottom center of an imaginary parabola and visualise energy from the universe poured into me like wine into a glass.

Just doing that for the half hour on a trolly while the nurses have been wheeling me around and prepping me for an operation has gotten me in such an outwardly comatose state that the nurses have have finally paused chatting with each other and commented that I was the quietest most still patient they'd ever seen. Not that I cracked an eyelid or replied to them. Staying with my visualisation was keeping me calm.

The visualizations are half the time enough for my blood tests, but sadly not enough in the end for the other half, depending on how much more vicious shock my body decides it can go into. If my legs go numb and cold, my teeth start to chatter, and I get cold and shaky and nauseous in my belly, it's time to go for the Big Gun Emergency visualisation.

That's the most fucking fabulously beautiful man I can imagine that I'm devouring the face of in the most passionate french kiss I can throw myself into.

Yeah I'm a girl. Not intercourse. Not oral. The sexual and romantic bliss of a kiss.

I guess I don't recommend sexual fantasies for you before lunch since you've already ruled out a ****. Good thinking on the suit.

Edited, Feb 25th 2009 7:39am by Aripyanfar

I'm disappointed. I thought the topic would be about zombies.

Best of luck.

Look at it this way, if you ***** it up, you'll never have to see him again,

NO ROLEPLAYING

Ok, I'm off, thanks for the tips, I'll try my best to enter a transcendental meditative dream-like state.

With zombies.

The French government was (along with Britain and the US) an utter prick in the Middle East directly after WW1. They utterly betrayed Middle Easterners fighting on their side. The Middle Easterners thought the Allies were on thier side helping liberating them from the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and in return they fought the Germans and their allies with great bravery and loss. Their help cut off the German supply lines between Europe and Africa/Asia through to the Pacific. It was a job the British and French couldn't do themselves because they couldn't get enough forces into the Middle East to begin with.

There were signed documents of alliance between the Non-Turkish Middle Easterners and Britain and France agreeing that the Non-Turks of all other ethnicities would inherit back the entire Arabian Peninsula from the Turks, and that the British and French would stay out.

But at the end of the war instead of leaving the Middle Easterners to their own devices, the French and British moved in their own forces en masse, and carved up the Arabian peninsula into new British and French Colonies. (The borders of which utterly disregarded the actual tribal, ethnic, cultural and language realities on the ground, of course) The actual borders, and the very Country of Iraq date from 1919 as a new Colony of France.

I believe the geographically strategic value of the Middle East became extremely apparent during the world war, and once the Allies won the war with such a large army still intact, the temptation to possess the Middle East just overwhelmed their moral sense.

So the Arabians, Palestinians etc fought off oppressive Turkish overlords partly for the Europeans and got oppressive European ones in exchange. It's not surprising there's some residual bad feeling.

Edited, Feb 25th 2009 8:06am by Aripyanfar

They should have probably have gotten over that by now. It's not like everyone blames Germany for trying to kill us all anymore. Personally, I'm over the Moors trying to invade Europe, too. I'm also over that bit where Egypt (breaking the law) and then America stabbed Britain in the back (Suez Canal). I'm also over Napoleon, that bit where the vikings raided Britain and the dinosaurs opressing our distant cousins. If I met a dromaeosaur, I'd shake it by the claw with no hard feelings. Frankly, I think these Islamic extremists could learn something from my shining example of forgiveness.

Slightly more seriously, I'd imagine that Britain was feeling less inclined to play the nice guy after doing so in the inter war period proved to be a monumental failure in WWII. Less seriously again, the French were hardly an ally for most of the war (because they got invaded, hur hur), so it's not fair to include them.

I missed it =(

Ah, my bad. I'm not sure how I made that mistake, considering I knew the British Empire was biggest by 1922 and what territories they added after WWI. Sloppy thinking, I guess. Shame, because that kind of tarnishes the whole post, and I was really fond of the part with the dromaeosaur.

So meditation is just using your imagination? Because I do that all the time. Imagining waves lapping at a beach has gotten me through some very excitable patches.

Edited, Feb 25th 2009 9:17am by AshOnMyTomatoes

Yes and no, but mostly no.

Zen HERE.

He probably surrendered.

No? It was.