Thoughts on Anchor Meditation

A while back  wrote on different ways to meditate, but due to space I couldn't write all I wanted, so here's a little more in depth look at what I call Anchor Meditation.

Fig. 1: My topic

As I mentioned before, Anchor Meditation is a basic meditation. If you ever find difficulty with other forms of meditation you may just need to work on Anchoring your self.

The main goal of Anchoring is to train and sharpen your focus. All it requires is to pick one repetitive thing focus on that. I already wrote on how to do this meditation, so today I'll focus on the effects of it.

Anxiety sucks. Being anxious is worse that just being stressed. It's stressing about being stressed. What happens when we experience anxiety is this; first we encounter the thing that causes stress and our bodies react by increasing the heart rate, breathing faster, tensing muscles, and so on. The problem of anxiety occurs when our brains don't make the connection that the external stressor is the cause of the physical response. The subconscious mind notices that the body is freaking out and, not knowing what it's suppose to be freaking out about, sends the message to the conscious mind telling it to find something to freak out about. So your brain looks for something to freak out about and find it, but it knows that that's not the thing that the body was originally freaking out about and so it starts freaking out about being wrong. The body sees the mind freaking out an it doesn't know why so it goes back to freaking out some more with the high heart rate, faster breathing, tense muscles, etc. Basically this devolves into an Abbot and Costello routine.

"Only instead of baseball, its a mortgage, which is considerably less hilarious."

Basic Anchor Meditation allows you to focus on and deliberately slow your breathing. This lowers your heart rate and allows muscles to relax. The physical reaction signals to the mind that it's okay to relax a little. The mind stops looking for things to stress out about and begins to look for things to enjoy and ways to relax.

As you force yourself to relax a remarkable thing starts to happen; your brain learns to relax. It actually begins to rewrite itself to be better at relaxing than stressing. When the brain engages in an activity over and over again, such as stressing about things or relaxing, it assumes that it will have to do this again in the future so the brain, hoping to be lazy in the future, tries to make it easier to perform that action. Each time the action is performed the brain finds a new short cut until eventually you find yourself doing the action without even thinking about it. You may have noticed this phenomenon each time you drive home from work. You step out of the office and next thing you know you're at home, wondering how many red lights you ran. Doesn't that make your brain just the coolest of all organs?

Fig 2: The Fonzie of internal organs.

Constant meditation takes advantage of this unique trait of the brain. Each time we react to stress in a calm manner we increase our ability to remain calm in stressful situations. But there is a down side to meditation.

It only works if you do it.

Seems obvious right? If you stop trying to relax and anchor yourself your brain will think it's not important to relax and will start duping all that stuff. The brain is a muscle and like any muscle it will atrophy if you let it.

So, here's an exercise that I hope ya'll will do with me. Each day for just a minute do an anchor meditation. Focus on your breathing or maybe a piece of classical music. Just pick something to be fully aware of for one whole minute. After you do that, come back here and share your experiences in the comments. Leave any tips you have for others (Like avoid doing this when you're way sleepy).

Namaste, y'all,
Michael

The post most likely incite an angry mob.

Remember how I said that I would sometimes use this blog to rant? This is one of those times.

So, apparently the Founder of "Ordain Women" is on church probation and has a disciplinary hearing scheduled which could result in a number of way including disfellowship or excommunication. The article mentions another guy who I've never heard of so I won't talk about him. Rather I'll stick with talking about Ordain Women. 

At the risk of sounding like a  behind-the-times misogynist he-man woman-hater and offending all three people who read this blog, can I just say that I agree with the Church's decision here?

"Men's trousers? On women? BALDERDASH!" source

Before you get all 'angry mob' on me let me explain my reasoning. If nothing else it'll give you time to sharpen you pitchforks, okay?

First off, I do not disagree with the motivations behind the OW movement. They see among Church members an unacceptable level of sexism that needs to be removed as soon as possible. On this point I agree. The Church is no place for the judging of other's capabilities based on gender. To do so is to deny the basic core of humankind's divine potential. That being said, I strongly disagree with how OW plans to fix this problem, that is, by ordaining women (No way! Is THAT how they got their name?). Plenty of digital ink has been spilled debating weather or not ordaining women would be an effective solution to the a fore mentioned sexism, so although that is one reason I disagree with OW I won't be getting into all that today. Instead I want to focus on what the priesthood is and why women shouldn't have it. (Wow, that sounded so sexist, please don't pitchfork me yet.)

So, what is the Priesthood? Standard primary answer: the authority to preform sacred ordinances in God's name. Yes, but who receives these ordinances? Loosely speaking they are meant for the believers, or those who have faith. Every priesthood office I can conceive of is intended to bless those who believe. 

"But wait!" cries my most argumentative reader (you know who you are), "What about the missionaries who are charged with taking the Gospel among the non-believers, and the Prophet who is to speak to the whole world? Those are both priesthood offices intended to bless the non-believers."

Not really. Missionaries generally don't waist time on people who have no faith to begin with, rather, they look for those who believe, even if it's the smallest mustard seed of belief and build on that. As for the Prophet, he can prophesy until he's blue in the face but if nobody believes what he's saying then he might as well keep quiet. In some cases the Prophet has even been told to keep quiet because there is so much unbelief. (Morm. 1:16-17, 19)

So, that is how I view the priesthood, as God mobilizing his followers to help one another. But that is at odds with a key element of who God is. God loves ALL his children and wants to bless all of them, regardless of weather they believe in him or not. So why would a loving God tell his followers to only look after each other and let the rest of humanity rot and suffer in unbelief?

This is where the Relief Society comes in. Whereas the Priesthood works on structuring the Church in order to distribute blessings and knowledge and covenants to the believers, the Relief Society, I believe, is intended to go out into the word and actively bless the lives of those outside the Church. 

Isn't that something? God, when looking at all the evil in the world, seeing Satan building armies of hate and fear and intolerance, seeing poisons to the soul like pornography and self-loathing thunder through families and rip them to shreds, seeing all this sorrow and misery His answer is one word; WOMEN. Lest you be confused, the Relief Society is NOT an arts and crafts club. It is an army. 

I mean that in a very real sense. The RS claims approximately 6,000,000 members world wide. To put that number into perspective, if the RS was listed as a military organization it would be the second largest in the world, right between the United States (at 2,291,910) and China (at 7,054,000). Imagine what could be accomplished in the world if that many women moved as one, like God intended them to. If those six million each in their own communities and countries and in their own way declared war on just one of the evils in the world today. Let's imagine that army six million strong chose to decry the dehumanizing and poisonous pornography industry. Say they start writing letters to the leaders of their countries, pleading with them to address the issue. World leader would take notice. Say they write blogs about their own experiences with families torn apart by pornography. The average person would be educated. Say they sought to unite the many other groups world wide that battle the objectifying of women. The army would be fortified. Perhaps they would not succeeded in dismantling that loathsome institution entirely, but those brave women would surely make the very gates of Hell quake with fear.

And Ordain Women is encouraging deserters.


We are at war and OW wants to abandon the front line. There is a word for that; Treason. 

That is something I cannot stand for.

That is why I believe the leader and instigator of the Ordain Women movement needs to be stopped. 
She is demanding that women should focus on only a small percentage of God's children and let the greater part suffer. That's akin to going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and getting upset that there's no spaghetti, or going to a five star restaurant and demanding a can of beans.

"Filet mignon? More like filet mi-YAWN, amiright?" 

Once again, I know that the motivations of the OW movement are not really all that bad. Yes, there are problems with how members of the church view women, but I think a more effective solution to that problem would be to encourage our women to fulfill their potential and bless the world. There are so many ways to do that.

Often I feel that members fall into the trap of viewing motherhood as the female equivalent of the priesthood. There are a number of reasons why this is not a healthy way of thinking. For starters, not all worthy women are mothers. Some simply haven't gotten married yet, for others physical problems prevent them. Still other women would, in all honesty, make terrible mothers. But all in all, motherhood is only one part of what makes women so powerful.

I don't mean to say that motherhood and giving birth are in anyways a lesser part. I mean, seriously, a woman crafts a tiny fully functioning human without using her hands, lets that tiny human live inside of her like some horror movie parasite until after nine months of wild hormonal shifts and bizarre cravings the tiny human bursts out of her abdomen in a screaming fit of bodily fluids, and she takes that screaming poop factory and raises it to be a decent full sized human? That's pretty hard core.

"I became a mother because my fight club wasn't metal enough."

What I'm saying is that there are so many different ways that the women of the Church can fulfill the role God has for them. Two examples: Lindsey Sterling and Al Fox.

Lindsey Sterling: aka 'the Hip-hop violinist'. She is a talented musician and performer who became a quarter-finalist in season five of America's Got Talent. Unlike other female 'performers' her age Miss Sterling presents a bold and ennobling role model for young girls to follow. Her music can and has uplifted so many and her example is just so inspiring. Just listen to this interview. Isn't that the sort of woman we need more of?

Al Fox: (Now Al Carraway) This woman, also known as 'The Tattooed Mormon' is, among many other things, a blogger. She has followers both in and out of the Church. With a very honest and fun style she tells them about her personal journeys in life and shares the lessons she's learned.She blesses other simply by sharing her real experiences of trying to live a Christ-like life.

These are just two of the hundreds upon thousands of examples of bold sisters blessing the world I could have used. If all six million Relief Society sisters worked to bless the world in these sorts of ways, What sort of new world would be born?

I'm sorry about the rant, but I think I needed to get this off my chest, if only t have one less thing to be shenpa'd about.

You may now resume your angry mob formation, I'll be waiting for you at the old wind mill. The one that's not up to fire code. You know the one.

Namaste, Y'all,
Micheal


P.S. Agree? Disagree? Completely neutral? Leave a comment! Have any other great examples of Mormon women blessing the world? Leave a comment! Want to stop lugging about a giant rock of space ice? Leave a comet! Want to separate parts of a sentence such as clauses and lists of three or more things? Leave a comma! Want to tell me to stop fishing for comments? Leave a comment!