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Table of Contents
Mastering Meditation Highlights
✔️ The Mind as the Center of Meditation
✔️ Chanting as the Most Powerful Meditation Method
✔️ Avoiding External Negative Influences
✔️ Role of Diet & Lifestyle in Mental Stability
✔️ The Power of Guru & Spiritual Discipline
✔️ How the Body Anchors the Mind During Meditation
✔️ Purging Negative Memories for Mental Clarity
The Mind: The Core of Meditation and Inner Transformation
The Mind is at the heart of any meditation process. Now, the topic of meditation is massive. It encompasses the entire gamut of the universe. There is a saying, “Once you fix the inner, the outer gets automatically fixed.”
Meditation is the tool by which you can fix the inner world, the mind world. Once this is done, you need not try to fix the world of so-called chaos outside. The outer chaos will automatically disappear if you set right the inner disturbances with the tool of meditation.
Chanting: The Key to Deep Meditation and Mental Clarity
One such powerful methodology of meditation is the chanting of the holy names of Bhagawan. When one is not able to chant the names of the Lord, we shall not be able to meditate correctly. This is so because chanting the names of Bhagawan is the easiest form of meditation and one of the easiest ways to get hold of our inner world. If the mind remains disturbed as one meditates, it is a matter to be investigated.
Why does the mind remain disturbed? There could be several reasons for such a lack of calm. One of the major reasons is to be exposed to negative environments or influences. More than 80 percent of the meditators remain disturbed as they go about their meditation or spiritual practices.
Meditation or allied spiritual practices can be successfully carried out only if one adheres to premeditation restrictions. If one is continuously exposed to material that promotes violence or indulgence in sensual pleasure, the mind becomes attached to these passionate mental experiences and shall throw up disturbing thoughts every time.
Purifying the Mind: Essential Disciplines for Meditation
Consuming non-vegetarian food and investing in the secondary market of stocks and shares are major contributors to an agitated mind. When one sits down to chant or meditate other reasons could be, disturbed relationships or fights and also attachment to compulsive argumentation with people.
Another reason could be that of exerting the body with unnecessary exercise or tiring oneself unconsciously by body or mind. In all such cases, one may become disinterested in chanting and meditation. How to regain the mind’s composure? To tackle such instabilities of the mind one should make meditation and spiritual practice as one’s highest priorities.
One should avoid anything that will agitate the mind. For the sake of entertaining the mind, it would be foolish to expose it to unpleasant or passionate feelings. It will be necessary to avoid over-exposing the mind to pleasurable feelings since this is also a great deterrent in its readiness to take up meditation or spiritual practices.
One has to be resolute in training the mind to take up sadhana and temper the mind through rigorous discipline. Taking up a strict, well-controlled sadhana regime under an authentic, disinterested Guru can be a very powerful means to get hold of the mind’s idiosyncrasies.
The Path to Inner Peace: Discipline in Meditation and Daily Life
Meditation and chanting should be considered the single most important practice of one’s life if one is interested in leading a calm and peaceful life.
These restrictions, if adhered to as one meditates, can catapult one to heightened states of consciousness, as one builds the practice over a protracted period. If one is serious with one’s meditation practices following the mentioned preparatory steps, one must avoid too much company with people. One should meet people only if it is necessary on a transactional basis with no emotions attached.
The practitioner should also avoid watching too many movies or films.One should listen to talks by elevated sages who speak based on Vedic scriptures. One should always avoid personal development lectures that promote the achievement of worldly success, wealth, prosperity, fame, and worldly gain.
These lectures promote the flow of dopamine that creates a feeling of immediate success, without even having taken any action. What follows is a state of a dip in mood because dopamine flushes through the system and causes the mood dip, shortly after. Thus, such positive motivation lectures heard over and over again can cause a high level of agitation because of draining dopamine levels.
One may even be pushed into the mode of passion but without proper direction or roadmap. By this, one shall ultimately lose one’s peace born out of frustration.
Hari Nama Meditation: The Key to Focus and Self-Worth
The innocent folks, influenced by such useless talks, fill the pockets with the speakers but themselves are robbed of money and peace. By all means, one should refrain from the rat race of competition. One should, instead, nurture self-worth and protect one’s mind through Hari nama meditation. One should also avoid too much association with the opposite sex. A sadhaka should not get involved with gossip or backbiting.
Even while one is performing any activity, one should take one’s attention consciously to one’s breathing. Thus, entering into the present moment is a powerful practice. The most important of all suggestions is about work. One should never focus attention on the result of work or actions. This is easier said than done.
One has to equip oneself with the principles of Bhakti Yoga and Sharanagati to Guru and Bhagawan so that one can employ the philosophy of Karma Yoga to the fullest. One should be naturally inspired to work and enjoy the journey. With these areas being taken care of, one shall automatically become inspired to chant and meditate without any concentration lapse.
7/8 Questions from Sanatana Dharma
The scores generated in this Quiz may or may not be absolute. There may be right or wrong answers to each Question. A percentage towards 100 indicates that you are more aligned to the overall subject matter.
Understanding the Mind: A Scientific Approach to Awakening
Now we shall explore the strange workings of the mind so that we can fix the problem of the mind with a scientific approach. Humans are usually haunted by too many thoughts. It chatters endlessly. Recognizing that the mind is chattering, is one of the earliest signs of awakening.
If one is immersed or identified with the mind, the recognition that one is loaded with too many thoughts shall never occur. It is important that, to speed up the awakening process, one should shift one’s attention from the mind to the body.
For example, by shifting the attention to the hand, one can feel the flow of energy in the hand. One can ask oneself if one can feel the hand without touching it, and to one’s surprise one shall be able to feel a tingling sensation.
Attention towards the body is a Powerful Practice in Meditation As one practices this method of shifting attention gradually, one should shift attention to every part of the body. This practice is an enormous step that one can take.
Doing this practice shall immediately slow down the unnecessary thinking process. Shifting attention to the body as a practice serves as an anchor to conserve the energy for the awakening process.
At this time, the mind requires a physical anchor to hang on. The human body is a wonderful anchor to experience the state of being present or aware. When we actively choose to be aware of the body, what seems like a dreadful thought in a few moments can turn into a pleasant experience.
Purging Negative Memories: The Power of Mantra Chanting
It is also important that one works towards purging bad memories from the mind. One cannot physically erase the memories, but one can recognize the negative memories or thoughts arising in one’s mind. For example, a dreadful event that occurred a few years back can leave a bitter experience. We should become aware that the incident happened many years ago and not now. Memories are not a physical reality.
They are sporadic responses to some past-day events that occur in the mind, digging through thought patterns. Only if one identifies with them, do they seem real enough to overpower the individual. As one learns to focus one’s attention on one’s body, the negative thought patterns shall harmonize into calming ones. One must learn to focus attention.
As I revealed earlier, if one takes up mantra chanting under a bona fide spiritual master, there is an upsurge of energy that dissolves or cuts through the veil of bad memory. It then gains the power to weed out unpleasant memory experiences completely from the mind. The more one becomes adept in mantra chanting, the more one shall be relieved from the torture of the mind.
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