Exclusive and inclusive Meditation (Differences)

[Mysteries of the Gods]

In this post, I wish to talk about two meditation techniques that I tried from which you can reap different benefits (at least according to my personal experience). This is general nomenclature; I'm sure you have tried both of them without necessarily thinking about those terms. The difference between the two is what the practitioner focuses on during the session, in short.

WARNING: ALWAYS PUT YOUR PROTECTION ON WHEN DOING MEDITATION, ESPECIALLY WITH TRANCE STATES, YOU ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO ATTACKS. IT HAPPENED TO ME ONCE, AND I LEARNED THE LESSON.

Exclusive mediation
Exclusive meditation is (how I would define it) the meditation in which the practitioner forces his/her awareness on one particular object, thought or Energy and keeps the attention focused on this single thing throughout the session.
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The Flame meditation is a type of Exclusive Meditation (you force yourself to focus your attention on the candle flame, and you keep it that way). Void meditation is most likely an Exclusive Meditation as well, if I want to apply this definition.

Benefits:

• An increase in your attention span, which is good if you have trouble focusing on tasks and you tend to daydream a lot.​
• Being able to focus on here and now (this is more specific to Void Meditation, but also in general...if you learn how to focus on the present, you have less tendency to catastrophize about the future or being stuck on the past).​
• Consequently, better sense of inner peace (as stated in ToZ site for the Void Meditation).​
• General increased control of your mind (as it is written in the ToZ site for the Void Meditation).​
• Increased effectiveness of all other meditative practices and all Magick (if you can keep consistent focus on something, your work will be more effective, for example being able to keep your awareness on a chakra for empowerment and so on, but also any kind of spell with specific targets: keeping your focus is vital, it's like keeping your connection to the target and not having the same cut short by your mind wandering about).​

Inclusive mediation
Inclusive Meditation is (how I would define it) the meditation in which the practitioner remains aware of anything and everything happening in his/her headspace, you don't block out thoughts or focus your attention on one thing only, the catchphrase here is: whatever happens, let it happen, observe everything.
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Benefits:

• Ability to distinguish "you" from the thoughts that come into your head (this is profound, and it must be experienced to truly understand). What I will say here is: if you tend to identify with your thoughts and tend to react to triggering situations, this can be life-changing (if you are consistent with the practice).​
• Becoming able to detach yourself from stressful situations/thought/feelings and keep control in difficult situations (this is more of a consequence of the first point).​
• Overall increased Self-Knowledge (with this Meditation, especially if you get in trance, you can start seeing contents from your subconscious, and the more you go deep the more you will see the layers in yourself. It may be helpful to write what you see down and try to identify the meaning, this is not easy, and there are so many wacky interpretation hypotheses for dreams and such). It might be helpful to have the Guidance of a God or Goddess associated with the Unconscious realm and its exploration (I was guided by Lady Hekate in that time, I'm eternally grateful for Her, that was life-changing).​
• Increased acceptance of the thoughts and feelings you experience (this is healing for people (like myself) who have a strong inner critic, you tend to hate yourself for how you experience thoughts and feelings. This kind of technique makes you look at yourself with no judgment, you just experience your thoughts and feelings without labelling or forcefully blocking them out because I disliked them. Self-acceptance is the anteroom of healthy Self-love. If you had family situations in which you were constantly judged for any little thing (I'm not talking about constructive criticism, I'm talking about parents who constantly talk you down, mock you for your overall personality or even interests, claims that what you think and feel is bad without explaining why ecc...), this can be therapeutic: you learn to give yourself the acceptance your family was supposed to give you and be there for yourself, sitting with feelings and thoughts without hating on them before proceeding with a plan to advance yourself).​
• This Meditation is also a method of Divination/Astral communication for me. I have been able to communicate with the Gods during those Meditations, and I simply observe what They show me. I also communicated with deceased loved ones with this. I probably also Astrally Travelled, but not sure if I would classify the experiences with those terms. ​
• Overall, I noticed an increased sensitivity of all my Astral senses since consistently practicing this (not sure why it happened or how, but I noticed a stark improvement, probably because I would use those senses more for having those experiences).​

I hope this is helpful. Hail Zefs and all the Gods and Goddesses!