08-19-2015, 07:23 AM
Gentlemen,
I don't know why meditation works but it does. The result is a sense of calm and peace for a couple hours. Meditation is simply concentrating on ONE THING, with no intrusive or competing thoughts, to the exclusion of all else for a period of time. Some people can do this while sitting still and they concentrate on their breathing, or a candle flame, or ???. I can't do that, my mind always wanders.
During my years on the airshow circuit I would practice at least 5 days a week using a minimum altitude of 500 feet. It was an amazing form of meditation that kept all other thoughts at bay for an entire 30 minutes and it kept me in a zen state all day. But at the actual air shows when I would be traveling nearly 400 MPH, upside down, and 20 feet above the runway with death a nanosecond away, my level of concentration was so intense that fear was not possible, nothing was possible except for what I saw, felt, and heard while sky dancing through my aerobatic sequence. Even after landing I remained in an altered state for some time before the most amazing sense of calm would settle over me. Nothing outside of flying could go wrong because in that state nothing else existed. Then reality and the outside world would start to creep in again and I looked forward to my next escape.
Dirt biking in difficult and treacherous terrain approaches that same feeling. So does sky diving. Street biking requires great concentration but still my mind wanders. Track riding/driving gets close too. I believe this is what the author Hunter S. Thompson was talking about when he wrote, "Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed, overcomes the fear of death."
Cheers.
Chip
I don't know why meditation works but it does. The result is a sense of calm and peace for a couple hours. Meditation is simply concentrating on ONE THING, with no intrusive or competing thoughts, to the exclusion of all else for a period of time. Some people can do this while sitting still and they concentrate on their breathing, or a candle flame, or ???. I can't do that, my mind always wanders.
During my years on the airshow circuit I would practice at least 5 days a week using a minimum altitude of 500 feet. It was an amazing form of meditation that kept all other thoughts at bay for an entire 30 minutes and it kept me in a zen state all day. But at the actual air shows when I would be traveling nearly 400 MPH, upside down, and 20 feet above the runway with death a nanosecond away, my level of concentration was so intense that fear was not possible, nothing was possible except for what I saw, felt, and heard while sky dancing through my aerobatic sequence. Even after landing I remained in an altered state for some time before the most amazing sense of calm would settle over me. Nothing outside of flying could go wrong because in that state nothing else existed. Then reality and the outside world would start to creep in again and I looked forward to my next escape.
Dirt biking in difficult and treacherous terrain approaches that same feeling. So does sky diving. Street biking requires great concentration but still my mind wanders. Track riding/driving gets close too. I believe this is what the author Hunter S. Thompson was talking about when he wrote, "Faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed, overcomes the fear of death."
Cheers.
Chip
mmmmmmm totally worth it
