thepeoplesashram

Posts Tagged ‘mantra’

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SIMPLE, NOT EASY

In Uncategorized on January 19, 2012 at 7:12 pm

The path to an extraordinary quality of life is simple.  Two words: Let Go.

Let go, let go and let go some more.

Of physical tension, emotional stress–well, just everything.

You are driving to work.  Try this little assessment exercise.  Tune in acutely to what happens to the temple of your body/mind while you drive.  You try to maneuver to the right lane.  The car behind you speeds up.  Tension in the body–feel it, be aware of it.  Tension in the mind.  The mind and body are NOT separate.  What occurs to one, also happens to the other.

You see the driver ahead of you talking on a cell phone.  Tension in the mind/body.  Traffic bunches up, you may be late for work if things don’t clear up.  Stress in the body/mind. 

You had a disagreement yesterday with the co-worker who sits across from you.  Tension in the body/mind.

Your son didn’t receive a single grade better than a C on his grade report.  Tension in the body/mind.  You look at the sky.  It might snow.  Your tires are not in great shape.  Tension in the body/mind.

Our days and nights are filled with hundreds of “microtensions.”

It is not just the big things that cause us to suffer.  It is all those little stresses that accumulate throughout the days, weeks, months and years. 

We learn to “numb” ourselves to the existence of constant physical and emotional tension.  We literally divorce our awareness from parts of our bodies where stress causes muscles to clinch.  We avoid thinking about so many things.  We live in denial.  There is so much pain!

So, Let go!

Yeah.  A simple dictum to understand but not so easy to accomplish.

Do you want to evolve as a person? As a human being?  Don’t wait for ineffable truths.  Don’t look for secret formulas.  Don’t rely on another human being–guru, teacher or otherwise.

Practice–that is the secret.  Not what you know or believe.

Surrender physical tension by initiating breathing exercises.  Before you get up in the morning.  When you lie in bed at night.  Lay flat on your back with your arms at your sides and practice long, deep breathing.

Practice breathing every chance you get.  Challenge yourself to extend your breath capacity over time.  Cultivating breath control will help you to begin to get in touch with the temple of your body/mind.  With greater awareness of the sensations of your body, of the content of your mind, comes the increased capacity to let go.  First you face, then you release.

Surrender mental and emotional tensions by performing simple chants.  Make up your own prayer.  Something simple.  Find a mantra you like, Om Namah Shivaye.  Om Tara tuttare…etc.  Here’s one that I made up for myself years ago: The One is the breath, the breath is the blood, the blood is the bone, the bone is the flesh, the flesh is the many, the many is the One.

A simpler mantra.  Yim-yeem-yame-yam-yahm-yum-yohm-yoom.  Eight syllables that have the power to displace negative thoughts, repetitious thoughts, persistent dialoguing, constant scripting, etc, etc.

You know as well as I do that 90% of the thoughts in your head, the images, the reinforcements, ad infinitum, are unnecessary.  Simple as that.  We don’t need ’em.  Evolve, my friends. Displace and replace.  Displace all that wasteful content.  Replace with your mantra.  In time, you will discover that the mantra will be replaced by silent stillness.  Quiet will reign where once a tempest roared.

And meditate.  Don’t wait for instruction.  Just set your alarm, get comfortable–but not too comfortable.  Put in some earplugs and learn who you are from the inside.  The sounds, the sensations.  Troublesome at first, perhaps, but in time, these sounds and sensations will become the gateway whereby the temple of the body/mind moves from stress to stillness, from tension to tranquility.

There is no sound in the universe more sacred and powerful than the inner OM that you will discover when your mind and body become quiet.  You thought that all that OM stuff was just some Hindu or Buddhist mythology?  You didn’t realize that there truly is an OM and when your body/mind are sufficiently still and silent, that you will hear that OM?  You saw the bumper stickers and thought, “another hippie yoga idiot.”

OM is real.  When you hear OM, you will never forget it.  When you focus your attention on OM you will descend into a quality of blissful stillness that, quite frankly, you are at this moment incapable of imagining.

For the path of Trika, there is a pyramid of evolution: the Sound, the Light and the Sensation.

The sound is OM.  The light is the recognition of the One Light that illumines all things everywhere–from the thoughts inside your head to the grass and trees and buildings.  The Sensation is Kundalini.  When you awaken to the sensations of your body/mind you awaken to the sensation of the universe and to that One Sensation that is the originating vibration of all things everywhere.

Meditate on the Sound, the Light and the Sensation.  Let go of everything that stands between your perception of Sound, Light and Sensation. 

You will arrive at that great lake of universal awareness–that lake of consciousness where no separation exists between the One and the many.  One consciousness: one will, one knowledge, one action.  There is no transcendence, nor immanence.  No witnesser or witnessed.  There is the constant experience of the dynamic identity of the one with the many.

Practice, discipline, arrives at the experience of truth.

Truth will never be one stop shopping.  There won’t ever be an absolute undeniable “truth” that all persons will perceive equally and alike.  There’s only the truth of experience.  And when you let go of thoughts, beliefs, opinions, prejudices–when you surrender all the tension in the temple of the body/mind–when nothing that you see, hear or feel separates you from the living experience that only One Identity exists, you will be free to enjoy and perform on the stage of life free of strife.  No pain, no suffering.  Period.

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Meditation by Immersion

In Uncategorized on October 26, 2011 at 7:13 pm

Meditation is the most powerful means that exists for human transformation.  There are many recipes for effective meditation.  Some come with religious doctrines.  Others do not.  What almost all meditative prescriptions share is the commitment to train, exercise or otherwise effect attention.  More often than not, this begins with learning to sit still.  It begins with learning how to be alone with yourself–your thoughts, sensations, concerns, tensions.  And, eventually, the absence of all of these.

For meditation practice to be fully effective, it should be accomplished twice a day-morning and evening.  It can begin with 15 minute sessions, but be allowed to evolve into longer periods over time.  If you meditate for 15 minutes a day, you’ll get 15 minutes worth of benefit–not nothing–but only a scant introduction to the power and scope of meditative transformation.

When you find yourself desiring longer sessions–an hour, two hours and more–you will confront and overcome deeply imbedded fears and concerns about who you are, about the life you have lived and will live, and about time itself.  You will only overcome the fear of time, mortality and the non-existence of a ‘personal self’ when you look them in the face and recognize them for what they truly are.

These are not simply ‘existential’ concerns.  Our fears, failures, beliefs and expectations are integrated into our muscles, our joints, and into the patterns of thought and behavior that animate the courses of our daily lives.  Only through concerted meditative confrontation, recognition and release can we truly begin to experience lives without stress and suffering.  Lives that begin to abound with effortless joy and relaxation.

If you long for an extraordinary life, if you desire the quality of spiritual, physical and emotional freedom that is the rarest of all experiences, immerse yourself into the healing waters of meditation.

How do you accomplish this?  Integrate three vital, powerful activities into the conduct of your daily life: chant, breathe and meditate.  Commit yourself absolutely to these three activities.  If you do, you will, I promise you, experience profound transformation in just a few years.

Yes, years.  You can’t expect to run a marathon without committed and disciplined training.  You cannot hope to achieve anything great and rare without dedication.

Faith will help you.  For me, my friends, there is a God.  This Goddess is who we each and every one of us already is.  The God/Goddess that we all already are will assist us in our efforts.  We need only practice effectively and faithfully and pray.  Not necessarily on our knees.  (Though there’s nothing wrong with this.)  But in our meditations, during our work days, in the middle of the night when we awaken from sleep.

Our purpose is straightforward.  Disrupt accustomed patterns of thought, of physical stress and tension.

To accomplish the first, we begin to make of our lives an on-going chant.  Here is one that I recommend that you use to begin:

limb–leem–lame–lamb–lawm–luhm–lohm–loom.

This is a chant to awaken and vitalize the root chakra.  It is derived from the muladhara seed syllable, lawng  or lawm.

Begin to chant always and everywhere, without exception.  It’ll take time and effort.  It won’t happen–won’t begin to become easier–for several months.  But trust me, it will get easier, and it will effect a powerful transformation on the ingrained patterns of thought and behavior that you assume are the substance of who you are.

Second, you must begin to breathe deeply.  Whenever and wherever you are, be aware of your breath, take hold of your breath and breathe in slowly and deeply, breathe out slowly and deeply.  Learn to be aware of your breath at all times.

Chant and breathe together.  At the grocery store line, in the bathroom at work.  Before you go to sleep at night and in the minutes before you arise to prepare for the day.

Meditate twice a day.  Set your clock.  Get into a comfortable seated position.  Preferably, on a meditation cushion and pad.  But in a chair, if need be.  Commit yourself not to rise before the alarm sounds.  Make this an indelible habit

Breathe and chant.  Begin with this activity.  Breathe long and deep, use your chant to measure the time.  When your mind wanders, take note, let go of any concern about it, and resume your chant.

Do these three things, pray and in several months you will begin to recognize tremendous changes taking place.

Like an athlete training for excellence in her event, you will first break down familiar habits and patterns.  This may be painful and stressful at times.  Work through it.  Remind yourself that profound transformation is simply a matter of follow through.  Do the work and you will transform.  The Goddess will hear your prayers and give you strength when you need it most.  When you are meditating for an hour for the first time and your body is restless and your mind simply won’t conform to the chant without constant effort, then pray.  Ask that Grace that loves us all for help to go on.  Then go on.

The time will come when your meditative muscles will have been sufficiently broken down and you will feel new strength and power.  Only, it won’t be so much “strong and powerful,” but more like peaceful and fulfilling.  Meditation and spiritual practice will begin to become its own reward.  Like the runner who has grown into his stride and can run easily five miles, ten miles, twenty.  When you sit for your meditation, peace and relaxation will come more quickly, with less effort.  You will begin to explore the real substance of who and what you are.

You will know when your efforts are taking effect when you begin to awaken in the middle of the night chanting.  When you realize that you were chanting in the dream you were just having.

You’ll know transformation is underway when you awaken in the morning, lying on your back, arms at your sides, and realize that you have just experienced the deepest sleep of your life.  You’ve awakened in a body that has so imbibed the habit of releasing tension, that even your sleep time has become immersed in the activity of meditative transformation.

To find abiding joy and relaxation, you must use your entire day to prepare for meditation.  You must meditate to prepare for your days and nights.

Your purpose is to bring all time–waking, sleeping and dreaming–into a single precious Moment.  Yes, you can experience all of your life as ONE SINGLE moment.  That Moment will be still, it will never change.  It will be quiet, it will exist without being broken by a single wave of thought or physical action.  It will be quietly, profoundly joyful.  AND, it will include everything that is happening all around you all the time.

Your life will become a performance of enlightenment.  Enlightenment is what happens NOW.  When you ARE now, you are an actor liberated to perform on the stage of life.