ॐ हरिः श्री गणपतये नमः अविघ्नमस्तु
ॐ: लोक: समस्त: सुखिनो भवन्तु:॥
I dedicate this humble work to Lord Narayana. He is everything.
Dear Friends,
Meditation has been recognised by the world as one of the best mental practice to gain a healthy mind. It is now being recommended even by doctors of modern medicine. By the testimonials of various trusted people about the benefits of meditation has created a wide interest in the minds of a common man.
Now people are conscious about the mind-body relation and the importance of mental health in making their life happy. This is the main reason why common people are getting attracted to meditation. Day after day we see many newcomers to meditation and they all want to learn how to meditate.
The sole purpose of my blogging on this huge topic is not teaching but only sharing my experience. If it able to help someone in the path, then i believe only that my work has been blessed by the God.
Meditation practice has a close relation with each individual so that each one who practice meditation has a different story to tell about their experience to others.
As like many of you, i also read many books and online contents about meditation. I have been learning this very topic of meditation for last 20 years. As a part of my efforts to master the meditation, i have tried many meditation techniques. Unfortunately at those times, i had no supporter in this subject. I was completely a lonely traveller. A good deal of my entire practice, i had worked on wrong ideas.
When i turn back now, i realise what i was really missed is, the blessing of the God. It was a blind loop. In that, each wrong idea was smart enough to make me believe that this is your way forward. Each loop was so big and impressive for us until we see that we only reached to the same spot from where we begin. It was nothing but a big circular movement.
Thereafter, i have realised that how important is God's blessing in mastering meditation. We should understand that he is the only inner guide for us.
Before i begin this humble post, let me make it clear about me. I am a very ordinary person and i am very happy with what i have achieved with meditation. I feel proud about myself that i never quit in my series of failures and still continuing the journey with satisfaction.
Meditation is the best skill i learned in my life. My soul effort was to learn it. From all my sincere efforts to learn it, i understood one thing that, learning how to meditate is a separate task for each individual and we cannot find a single system which capable of moulding all the aspirants to a good meditator.
People came to this topic, Meditation because of different reasons. Some may want to experience concentration or full absorption. Some people want to attain peacefulness and bright-fullness of the mind like we had in our childhood days. Some people want to remove stress and mental health problems.
Yes meditation is the solution for all the above problems. It creates a healthy mind and it also gives you an experience of deep concentration.
Meditation Results In Concentration
Patanjali Maharshi says about concentration,
"In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil."
This is our final goal.
We all might have heard about there are 3 things in a meditation.
- The subject of the meditation.
- The process of meditation.
- The meditator - the one who meditates, that's you.
The subject of the meditation, is the most important one for the learner. Choose the right subject. If the chosen subject is the right one then the entire process of meditation will work easier for you.
The process of meditation, it is about how you do the meditation. There are various ways to meditate. Here in this post, i would like to share one method which worked for me. Kindly understand, it may not work for all but still i can share few general findings about this mental process.
Meditation in simple words, holding of the wandering mind and bringing it to a subject. And making it to think only about the subject for few minutes.
It is exactly like a 4-5 year naughty kid who is very restless. He always likes to wander here and there for no reason. It is his nature. But now you have to bring him to study his subject but he is reluctant. The goal of your duty is to bring him to his study subject and make him study for the specific period of time.
Here the 5 year kid is no one else but your mind itself. Initially it is very untamed but later somehow you managed to make him study his lessons right? From this point you should know that the mind also can be tamed somehow. I will explain now.
A father or mother who knows his child very well knows the best tricks to bring him to his studies. So the point is, we need to know the mind.
Without understanding the mind, we cannot control it.
How do we know our own mind? Is it possible?
Yes it is possible to see own mind as a different entity and know what is the nature of it. It is achieved by selfless and truthful witnessing of our natural mental activities.
When we detach ourself from the mind, we able to see it and know it. Our current experience is like watching movie in a theatre. You slowly forgot everything and identified with the hero and started to feel the all the good and bad experiences of the actor. Here mind is the theatre and each scene is a thought. In each scene, there is the hero of the movie to anchor our identity. The sound, visual and comfortable viewing arrangements help us to forget the surrounding and plunge into the scene.
Our life is like a never ending movie. Its continuing forever and each scene is so catchy.
As long as we identify with any thoughts, we are attached to the mind. At this state, we cannot bring out ourself from the mind. When we succeed in bringing ourself outside the mind and just experience the entire things as just something a flow of mere visual thought stream and we are only a viewer of it. Then we know that we are not something which have to do or react or feel. We are just an awareness of ourself. How strange isn't it ?
How can we exist or live as just an awareness? Awareness of what?
The answer from Rishis is, Awareness of our true nature. Currently we cannot experience our nature. We are currently like put our head inside a deep cave where there nothing but walls around and no where to move further.
When we know our true nature, then we know, there is no need to do anything. Just be ourself that's it. Our true nature itself is absolute blissfulness. We completely get satisfied by our self. We will not have any complaints about it. It is the real happiness.
Being someone and acting and reacting was part of a magical story of Maya. She created misery, she created unhappiness, she created all the wrong ideas about ourself. With her tremendous power, she continues this magical movie.
Detaching ourself from the thoughts is the first thing to do from the side of a meditator. It is not that easy task for a beginner because of his/her past tendencies. The right awareness is the only ray of truth falling in our world. Get hold of it. Never lose it. With the light of the right awareness, we able to see everything and put a distance from our thoughts.
It may take years for someone to master the right detached observation but one should keep trying to master this art. The speed of the process depends on how firm is your awareness and how sincerely you have done this observation.
Firmness in the awareness is like, neti neti of vedanta. i.e, the attitude of "not this not this". It is how Sanyasins meditate. They renounces everything and live in this very idea. For them, it is easy to do meditation in this approach. But here we are only taking only few drops of it.
It get firmed while you read upanishad's teachings about Atma or Self. They always in the path of negating the falsehood ideas about the Atma or Self. It says like, i am not the thought, i am not the mind, i am not the intellect, am not the body, i am not prana. It continues like this approach. This approach build firmness in our right awareness.
One should do regular self-introspection on all the activities and responses we did so far. Do it once in a while. It is a great help in learning about ourself. Always be impartial, do not let you move by your likes and dislikes. Show courage to face your own self.
Initially our efforts may not be pure selfless, we may do tricks to ourself because of the high interest to master it as quickly as possible we may falsely claim to ourself that we did the job.
As a result of wrong conclusion, we may arrive at wrong understanding about the mental nature. It will make escaping hole for the mind and all our efforts in the meditation will fail just because of it.
Meditation should be practices regularly. Before we start meditation, give few minutes for silent watching of all our thoughts. Do not judge it as good thought or bad thought. Let it come, stay and go by itself. You just sit like a person watch an uninterested movie. Do not get into it. Always keep an awareness ( a constant remembrance ) that i just viewer or observer to all these mental happenings. Just note each and leave it to itself.
The attitude of uninterest will lose thought's motivation to play its drama before you. It just drop the current drama and pick another more interesting one. It will keep this until it succeed in gaining your interest.
If you pay no interest in these presented thoughts, it starts to lose its energy to play more. It is like how theatre actors lose its energy to act if every audience starts to nap.
Image the above 5 year kid's scenario, he always try to buy the attention right? if you pay attention, then he will get energised to do more things. If the kid is trying to do a bad behaviour to get the attention of the people of the house, then what would we do? we pay no attention right? That's the trick you should do here also. Pay no attention.
Here awareness of ourself as only as a witness is the only holding grip left for us. If you lose it you lose everything.
In the initial practices of observation as a silent witness, you may fail many times. It does not matter how many times you failed, the important thing is, have you learned to meditate.
It calms down our vibrant thoughts. Once mind is calm, you can start meditation with your subject.
Calmness does not mean the mind is entirely stopped. If mind is actually stopped then in this case you won't even feel the existence of the world around you. It is not a simple thing to still the mind. You will understand the power of mind when you try act against it. It is a tremendous power. We live in the world which the mind created for us. Mind supplies all our needs and make us happy to stay here. Mind also tells us that you have no other way to live in this world without me.
But the Yogis say, we can live without mind. There is an existence without mind and body. Existence is not the result or product of mind and body. Existence is independent of anything and it is the ultimate reality.
One should move forward with regular practice of meditation and selfless observation. Each day you will have clear ideas about your own nature. You will develop a sense of impartiality in in judging all our mental and physical activities.
Finally you will see that, during the period of meditation, your whole mental nature you spread through out in your life time come and shrink into these few minutes. Thus you will understand the importance to be pure minded.
Let's Proceed To Meditation
When mind is calm and pure, you should place your meditation subject in the mind. Initially the meditation subject should be very big. A vast subject. It should an interested topic but a good one. It will create a wide meadow for the mind to play around and oscillate. He will be happy and wont like to leave the place of the subject.
Let it be your Chosen Ideal, for this Deity you have spend a huge amount of time as thoughts on that divine form. In this case, we have a huge amount of thoughts resides under our mind. Use it as the best meditation subject.
Knowing our own nature helps us alot in finding out our Chosen Ideal. Our nature has close relation with our Chosen Ideal. He resides in our heart and every devotion to him touches our heart.
A man with deep devotion is the luckiest person because he easily achieve the goal of the meditation. His pure love towards his Ishta Devatha attracts natural stream of thoughts related to the Ishtam. There will be no repulsive thoughts and concentration on the Ishtam comes naturally. Such devotee experience deep meditation and become happy. Physical, Mental and Spiritual growth is natural for them.
Imagine the divine form of the Ishta Devatha mentally. You may experience very difficulty to image and make the divine form stay in our mind initially. It is by the practice only we can achieve the clarity in the visualisation of our Ishta Devatha.
Try to visualise each body parts of the Ishtam with Dhyana sloka. The words have power, it has a close relation with our mental images. When you say, "Chathurbhahu" then in deep inside our mind, it creates a mental image of four hands. If your mind is so clear of thought then you can see it by just repeating the words in a dhyana sloka.
Place the mental image in one the desired part of your body. Let it place inside heart region. It is a splendid place for meditating the Ishta Devatha.
In temple, you may notice that a Deities are placed in lotus of 8 petals. This lotus symbolise the spiritual heart of a living being. God lives in the heart of every living being.
Or you might have seen, divine forms or mantras or other sacred symbols in shad kona yantra like star shape. It also symbolise heart in tantric texts.
Heart region means, inside of everything, that is a very sacred place in our body. Best for a devotee's mediation.
Or it can be in between eye brows or top of the head. It is your choice. But do not change it. The mental current should flow daily to that region, it slowly develops a pathway for your mental current. It is like in the relation of vein and blood. If you change, you will lose the progress. It is like starting from the beginning. So always think twice about choosing your meditation subject, place of meditation.
We should practice regularly. Repetition is the key to building the strength. Each day it will become easier for you. In short time your mind will get concentrated on the subject in the place of meditation.
When we concentrate our mind to our Ishta Devatha, we are stilling the mind and the prana which is the energy of everything in our body also get concentrated. We should surrender everything to the lotus feet of our Ishta Devatha and he will grant concentration to us.
Meditate Ishtam only for meditate Ishtam. This should be our attitude towards meditation. There should be no other motives behind it.
Prana is the primal power. Just for an analogy, Let our body be an electric device and Prana be electric current flowing through it to make it work. Thoughts are the primary consumer of Prana. If mind stops, Prana also stops working but remember, Prana is still there in our body. What we have done is, we just concentrated the Prana and place it under our will power. This is known as controlling the Prana.
Why should we controlled it? To place it at the feet of the God. This is the ultimate wealth we have. Surrender it to him.
When we surrender our Prana to his lotus feet, he will grant us the vision. It is the act of complete surrender. Love to be dissolved in his lotus feet and experience his presence in everything. It is the goal of all spiritual practices.
Complete absorption in mediation or Samadhi are nothing but the very nature of the God. So pray to him for his blessing before all your efforts towards meditation.
" Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth. "
-- Swami Vivekananda
Thank you all for spending some time and energy on this blog spot. I hope you have got anything good from this post.
I believe it is the God alone behind all the activities.
Thank You Dear Reader.
I love you. God bless you.
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