Desire and control are the opponents of a person who wants to grow spiritually

[Navaratna]

How would you define desire ?

"I want. I choose. I seek. I crave. I prefer." anything with an "I" is an ego.

When you give names to energies you witness even if you're speaking to yourself in your head.. That's desire, it's your mental projections. I am not describing permanently shutting off your brain. This has me thinking what is the difference between control and desire

When you pay attention to anything consciously clouding your mind from being completely clear in a state of meditation it's desire. Of course you need to breathe, but I am talking about if you had your ideas floating through your head and they were transcribed like some captions, then in my opinion that's the wrong way to go about clearing your mind for the most part..as ironic as it must sound coming from me in light of this idea. Those captions should be blank in meditation.

I'm describing meditation, this idea is not meant as a manual for everything situation you'll ever encounter.

In my opinion, desire and control are really what blocks a person from making progress in meditation. They interfere with a silent mind, which is the aim of a true meditation.

What is your concept of "progress in meditation," exactly?  Are we talking about feeling wind on your hands or something more creative?....or more passive?
 
  

I think progress is difficult to measure because you're unfolding layers of intelligent infinity. Measuring something that is a limitless domain seems flawed to me.

I'm trying to think of it personally for me, and I can say the feeling I get after a long meditation on a candle flame and tourmaline crystals with my palms facing upward is a feeling of regeneration and solidification. You feel more realized. You are looking in to your innermost being.
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There have been plenty of studies done showing regions of the brain improving in size over months of meditation. Mostly in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. These two areas of the brain are thought of as the centers meant for memory and logic.

There's countless studies but here's an example of brain sizes being modified https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541490/

The large amount of melatonin that meditation generates/regulates is good for your healing process and sleep.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328970/

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This might be off intelligent infinity, but the Akashic record will touch upon this idea. I read something interesting lately.
Jane Roberts who is known for the Seth entity has a mention of Edgar Cayce. The Law of One contains information about Edgar Cayce and the Akashic record. This is food for thought, but it is a good point and I think that it's very fascinating to see Seth and Edgar both queried about in Law of One, and then for Seth to answer a question about Edgar Cayce.

It's almost like if any of these topics have a contradiction in their placement or validity of info, it would show which channeling material may have valid or invalid info . It would mean that any of the channelings that have inconsistent info would be worthy of scrutiny. For example if Law of One Ra said that Edgar Cayce was a prior incarnation of Seth, that would be in contradiction to what Seth said about Edgar Cayce. Meaning one is either a false/fabricated [or solely a persons subconscious] channel, or the entity is giving false information.

This might sound kind of complicated but what I mean is that if we are trusting the information as real and legitimate and not something just made up by any of these people, the information should all be in agreement and it seems to be. But here is an idea which changes the way some people might think of what the Akashic record is. In one of the Seth books Seth says in response to a mention of Edgar Cayce:

I say this out of no misguided egotism, but because the essence of personality is the only meaningful basis behind idea. Any other approach would rob the material of rich dimensions, for I am the proof in my own pudding, you seem. This is not the Cayce material, with information seemingly coming from some vast storehouse of knowledge. In those terms no such storehouse exists.
Knowledge does not exist independently of the one who knows. [b]Someone gave Cayce the material. It did not come out of thin air. It came from an excellent source, a pyramid gestalt personality, with definite characteristics, but the alien nature of the personality was too startling to Cayce, and he could not perceive it. (Pause.) I am giving you the material through a personality that you can understand; one that is mine[/b], one of my favorite selves. (Smile.) In this way the point is made so that it is clear.

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In other words Edgar Cayce was Ra-Ta and was visited by extraterrestrials of some sort that even he couldn't completely realize. This modified him and made him a point to which humans would gravitate toward and it gave him the innate power to energize millions of peoples psychic energy because he had a tremendous soul presence.
The comments about the pyramid are really in line with the Law of One and they predate it.

The Akashic record did not come from nowhere, maybe it was something left on our world or put upon humans by another intelligence we couldn't comprehend completely. Intriguing. From stuff I've read it makes people think it's like an Internet rather than a mind of some sort.