Gear88 said:
On Void meditation, what you are essentially doing is, letting all thoughts and distractions pass by your attention, until the mind is entirely quiet, null, void. You focus on the moment, it is a focus or pure focus, not on a thing or a thought, but on the moment itself where everything is still.
When you have a very active mind, you will see all kinds of images/thoughts/ideas and memories swirling in your mind as you sit down and close your eyes. The mind is constantly active, random thoughts over things from weeks ago, or years ago pop up, imagination runs wild, ideas whirl around in your head like a heavy tide rushing up against the shore. It is a whirlpool of thoughts and images.
To achieve void, what you do is you let all these thoughts, memories, ideas, your inner voice, everything, you let it pass by your mind. Instead of letting it whirl around, or letting your mind get immersed in those thoughts and memories, you watch them pass by, one by one, until everything passes.
Like a man in a lighthouse watching the passing of the tide. As everything quiets down, and all the thoughts have settled down, the mind becomes quiet, your inner sight becomes empty, like a true expansive void of nothing, and your mind enters a state of tranquility where there is true control. Everything vanishes, your inner voice, even your memories, they are all put aside, away from your focus, so that you can focus on the nothing.
To make a comparison to a computer, it is quite like de-fragmenting your mind.
When you are in that state of void, time passes very quickly. Usually I do a short session before meditation, of around 5 minutes, especially before rituals, in order to empty my mind so that i can focus fully on the ritual at hand and there will be no inner distractions during the ritual I am doing.
I'll set a soft alarm at 5 minutes, and sit down to void my mind. Just close your eyes, and like a watcher in a lighthouse, you watch the sea of thoughts quiet down until all is empty. When it is empty, you stay within the emptiness until the timer goes off, and you are ready to meditate.
The first time I did void, it took me 45 minutes to quiet down my mind. 45 minutes before all the fragmented thoughts had passed by my focus, and finally there was tranquility.
Now, you do not need to do this in one go, but you can do 2 minutes each day, letting as many thoughts pass by and settle down as you manage within those two minutes, until eventually your mind will become void after a certain amount of time. The more you do this, the easier it becomes. It is best to build this up one step at a time, instead of trying it all at once.
This then becomes a skill where you can quiet your mind at any time, in any place, at any moment, to get rid of stress, excessive emotions, mental distractions, etc, anything which detracts from your focus.
Your mind itself will become more quiet as well. You won't be wasting so much energy on random unnecessary thoughts, and instead can focus on meaningful thoughts.
As someone with a formerly extremely overly active mind, I can say this costs an excessive amount of energy, to where you will be tired or exhausted even without doing anything, because you are constantly thinking, your brain is always busy with a myriad of things, which is a constant drain. When you master void, suddenly you can do so much more, as all that energy that was being wasted is now available to you, almost like you are unlocking the true capacity of your brain.
To make the analogy with a computer, imagine your system is infected with bloatware, and it runs like crap. Deleting this nonsense, suddenly your system runs like a Nasa computer and functions how it should.
Mastering Void meditation is kind of like debloating your mind, so your mind can function properly. You will perform better under any scenario, especially in stressful scenario's, since your mind will be under your control, and you can calmly assess things, react quicker, be more flexible, etc.