Meditation - eyes open or closed

[Sabou]

Any opinions? Fruitfulness of each one? 

I remember reading in the Tibetan book of living and dying it is recommended to keep your eyes open. 

[anagogy]

Whatever gives you the best results. Experiment. Play. Have fun. I do both.

[Sabou]

Ya I tend to do both too. More often eyes closed when I am looking to center and rebalance and go within, and eyes open in a more active meditation I guess you could say.

[AnthroHeart]

I do both too. Sometimes I have a walking meditation. My favorite is tuning into the energy of others. Sometimes I tune into ascended masters. I used to have a deck of cards that had ascended masters on it. So I could feel the energy of each.

Anubis feels like dark energy, but I like him. Ra feels very bright and light. I was touched by Ra once when I felt like dying. They showed me the sun. I was in it for a bit. This was eyes closed.

[Matt1]

I was taught to meditate with the eyes half open, one half in this world and the other in the internal. Once you develop enough focus you can have your eyes open looking straight ahead and it will not distract your meditation.

[Unbound]

Both, I try to create circulations. When eyes are open you are exchanging energy, projecting and receiving, with what is around you, when eyes are closed you are circulating the 'light', the energy, inside your head and reflecting it back immediately to your inner eye. I find as I meditate in either way I build a charge with either the outer world, or the inner world and when I switch that charge is transferred to whichever world I wasn't focused on, so inner to outer or outer to inner. By doing this I have found I have been able to gradually gain a greater awareness of both and hold a simultaneous awareness of both the inner and outer worlds at once. It's a pretty ongoing practice though, it's much harder than it seems. Also much easier than it seems aha

[Reaper]

I've found that the way I've arranged the objects on my altar creates a powerful optical illusion in the right lighting. There is a ceramic plate sitting in the center of it, and the way the candles are positioned the light reflects off of this plate in a very interesting way that makes the immediate area seem to flicker in and out of existence. Combined with the incense smoke it becomes otherworldly indeed. I find that staring into the center of the plate in this environment aids in clearing my mind during meditation. I am also fond of staring into a candle's flame while meditating, though I often close my eyes as well because it seems "quieter".

[Spaced]

Yeah, I meditate with eyes closed most of the time but I also sometimes meditate while staring at a candle flame or a crystal. I find there's a different character to these different styles of meditation. Closed eyes is quieter and good for centering myself and seeking silence of the mind, staring at crystals can amplify or modify whatever energy I am working with at the time (depends on the crystal) and the meditating with the candle flame often seems more . . . inspirational I suppose.

[Steppingfeet]

Like others were saying, I think that both modes of meditation yield slightly different experiences and results.

I've heard from meditation teachers that a benefit of learning to meditate with the eyes open is that you will be more able to be in a meditative mindset during the normal day-to-day activities.

Personally I prefer to keep my eyes closed. Anything that helps me to feel internal and feel that I have reduced the amount of stimuli assaulting my senses, is good.

[Plenum]

Any opinions? Fruitfulness of each one? 

I remember reading in the Tibetan book of living and dying it is recommended to keep your eyes open. 

The physical world has a powerful ability to fill the senses, and flood the mind with data to process.  That data then has the ability to trigger thoughts.

Visual inputs, even more than aural ones, come to create in the brain what we conceive of as our 'reality'.

I think one of the aims of meditative practice is to explore and examine the world of consciousness, and while that visual tether is still open, the mind is connected to the outer physical space, and it is that which dictates the flow of thoughts.