FLEX YOUR SPIRITUAL MUSCLE
CO CEPTS I METAPHYSICAL FIT ESS
A QUICK GUIDE TO TAKE YOU I TO THE DEPTHS OF YOUR MI D A D BEYO D
Dr Kunda Silimkhan, M.D.
FLEX YOUR SPIRITUAL MUSCLE
Concepts in Metaphysical Fitness
Dr Kunda Silimkhan, M.D
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e book:
© Dr Kunda Silimkhan, M.D.
First edition
2010
Poornam Centre for Holistic Wellbeing,
Email:[email protected].
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Preface
Today, the world places a high premium on physical fitness. Just as we have to keep ourselves physically fit to enjoy the world, we need to work out at a deeper metaphysical level to experience the true joy of living. Metaphysical fitness like physical fitness is a continuous and ongoing process and not a one time event. Meditation is one tool to achieve this end. Just as you cannot limit your exercise only for Sundays and then expect to remain fit or practice tennis for a month to win laurels at Wimbledon, you need to meditate regularly. Meditation is an excellent tool to build up your metaphysical strengths. Although not essential for outcomes, a belief in the benefits of meditation helps.
The next question is of course, how do I qualify to write a book like this?
Frankly, I am an ever struggling aspirant on the path with my daily trials and tribulations, yet I have ventured to write this book because I have managed to see myself through two illnesses created by my mind and cured them likewise. Though there is no guarantee my mind won’t create more, I felt it was worthwhile sharing my experiences with those who are facing similar circumstances. Life has afforded me personal challenges to test my spiritual strength and opportunities for inner growth. Moreover, I have had the privilege to participate in the growth process of a few friends. The opportunity of accompanying them as they walked the path has made this endeavour richer with experiences.
At this troubled time, there are many in the world facing challenges. Since I can’t be there for them personally, I hope to reach out to them through this book and lend a glimmer of hope. For those going through turmoil, stranded in darkness, their inner joy shrouded in despair, let this be a little lamp to hold on to, encouraging them to walk on their inner journey till their inner light in all its innate effulgence shines through.
My interactions with people have convinced me that most people will not venture in this area of self growth because they do not have enough
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 4 information. I cannot wait to get enlightened to tell them, so their process of growth is not delayed. What I expect from the readers of this book is that they will immediately start using a couple of meditations which may open avenues for a more formal practice.
Lastly, I would like to place a word of caution. If you are in great emotional distress, while you strengthen yourself at the spiritual level, it would serve your best interest to seek help from a counsellor, someone who can be a guide, mentor or confidant and will help you draw the line when necessary.
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Acknowledgements
I thank my spiritual guides, incarnate and disincarnate for their generous guidance, my mother, siblings and niece for tolerating my eccentricities and being supportive. I offer my gratitude to my friend, Dr Monica for trusting my decision to take the road less taken. My companions in pleasure and pain, Madhu and Mini, thank you for being there. This book followed a literally tumultuous period of my life, Madhu regaled me with his wild stories and weird sense of humour while Mini tried to cheer me with bunches of carnations and fruits ordered from across the country.
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At the feet of all the compassionate enlightened souls who keep coming back to this world to show us the way.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ...... 14
PART 1 MEDITATIONS ...... 16
1. THE QUICKEST WAY ...... 16
2.COUNTING THE BREATHS ...... 21
3. KINAESTHETIC EFFECT ...... 22
4. SOUND EFFECTS ...... 24
5.VIBRATORY EFFECTS ...... 27
6. VISUAL EFFECTS ...... 31
7.MINDLESS MEDITATION ...... 33
8. ZEN MEDITATION ...... 35
9. SUFI MEDITATION ...... 35
10. BHAV SAMADHI: ...... 36
11. DYNAMIC MEDITATIONS (Mindfulness): ...... 36
12. FORGIVENESS MEDITATION ...... 42
13. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE MEDITATION ...... 44
14. GLOBE MEDITATION ...... 45
15.EXPANSION MEDITATION: ...... 46
16. QUANTUM MEDITATION: ...... 46
17. NATURE LOVER’S MEDITATION ...... 48
18. GROUP MEDITATION ...... 49
19. CARDIO ...... 49
20. PRE OPERATIVE MEDITATION: ...... 50
21. DREAM MEDITATION ...... 50
22. RESISTANCE TRAINING ...... 51
23. ENDURANCE TRAINING...... 52
24. YOGNIDRA ...... 53
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25. METAPHYSICAL FIRST AID ...... 56
PART 2 MEDITATION, FINER POINTS ...... 56
WHAT IS MEDITATION? ...... 57
Effects of Meditation: ...... 58
Disturbance during meditation: ...... 61
PART 3: MI D CO CEPTS: ...... 65
Quantity and Quality of Thoughts: ...... 65
The Monkey Mind: ...... 67
Mind….friend or foe? ...... 68
Using the Enneagram ...... 72
PART 4 METAPHYSICAL CO CEPTS ...... 79
Guru ...... 79
Taking Responsibility: ...... 80
Self esteem: ...... 83
Self Actualization: ...... 83
Freedom or Moksha: ...... 84
Enlightenment: ...... 84
Synchronicity: ...... 85
Cause and Effect: ...... 86
SPACE PERSPECTIVE: ...... 90
Where am I? ...... 90
TIME PERSPECTIVE: ...... 90
Being present: ...... 90
Being in the now, present moment awareness: ...... 91
How big is your now? ...... 91
Call a Friend: ...... 92
Goals: ...... 92
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Surrender: ...... 92
Happiness Analysis: ...... 93
Ho’opono’pono: ...... 94
Love/Compassion: ...... 95
Gratitude: ...... 95
PART 5 HIGHER MEDITATIO : ...... 96
Contemplation versus Meditation: ...... 96
Who am I Meditation: ...... 96
Purpose of Life: ...... 98
Value meditation:* ...... 99
Movie Meditation: ...... 100
Coming back to Who am I? ...... 100
Advanced flame meditation: ...... 101
Bindu Tratak: ...... 101
Advanced Image tratak: ...... 101
Omkar/Religious image: ...... 102
Chidakasha: ...... 102
Advance Breath Meditation: ...... 102
Meditation on Environment: ...... 102
Meditation on Death: ...... 102
Life after Death: ...... 103
What is it that survives death? ...... 103
Past life regressions and future progression: ...... 103
Soul Retrieval: ...... 103
Spirit Guides: ...... 104
Mudra: ...... 104
Bandhas: ...... 104
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Chakra Meditation: ...... 104
Anchors: ...... 105
Kundalini: ...... 105
Higher Dimensions and Astral Travel: ...... 106
Hurdles in Higher Meditation: ...... 106
Dark Night of the Soul: ...... 108
Stuck in Ecstasy: ...... 108
PART 6 REAL LIFE STUATIO S ...... 109
Handling Anger: ...... 109
Facing Loss and Loneliness: ...... 109
Feeling of loss of relationship: ...... 109
Loss or lack of a job: ...... 110
Loss of Property: ...... 110
Grief Following Death: ...... 111
Cultural Aspects of Grief: ...... 111
The Grief Process: ...... 111
Support for the grieving: ...... 112
Care of dying and preparing for death: ...... 113
What are the emotions of the dying? ...... 113
Relationship Issues with Children ...... 113
Betrayal, Infidelity: ...... 114
Divorce: ...... 114
Abuse: ...... 115
Emptiness: ...... 115
Why do saints suffer? ...... 115
Existential crisis: ...... 115
Smoking and other addictions like alcohol or overeating: ...... 116
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Special Retreats or Workshops: ...... 117
The fall outs? ...... 117
Pay offs: ...... 118
SUMMARY: ...... 118
REFERENCES: ...... 119
FURTHER READING: ...... 120
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ...... 122
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I TRODUCTIO In this book I am going to use the skills first, concepts later approach. Unless you begin doing, you will not get the joy out of meditation and no amount of theory can replace an ounce of practice. Metaphysical fitness is not so much about what you do but rather how you do it.
I want you to understand that meditation should be free of ambition. If we take up meditation as another endeavour for self growth we land up with expectations, hopes, comparisons and ultimately disappointment. Meditation is more like an adventurous climbing of a high peak. The summit is not the purpose of the climb, experiencing beauty and feeling the subtle joy, is.
Much as you keep your car in road shape, your body in work shape, you have to keep your mind in challenge shape. You need to tone the mind to stay in shape. Metaphysical fitness is not a one day affair; it is a continuous process just like physical fitness. Body building takes time as does building your spiritual strengths.
It is important to practice without any expectation for specific outcomes. Do not pretend you are doing something special or being someone special. The ‘holier than thou’ attitude will keep you glued to your ego and prevent you from soaring high.
While the esoteric, high sounding practices are definitely attractive, for inhabitants of this workaday world, I would say, “Simpler, the better”. There is no sense spending years learning techniques when you know you can barely squeeze 20 minutes of meditation into your busy schedule.
You are not living to meditate but meditating to live better. In case the former is true for you, then you might as well go straightaway to the bibliography. Well, if enlightenment is what you are seeking, then the journey is arduous, the terrain rugged, the destination unknown. But as has been said, ‘Journey of a hundred miles begins with a single step.’ So, just get started immediately.
You have to bear in mind that you cannot do meditation. You only create an environment conducive for meditation to happen. Once the process has
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 14 started, it is progressive albeit with a few ups and downs. You follow the path as it unfolds. We cannot reverse the process just as we cannot put the toothpaste back into the tube again. The seed that has sprouted cannot be the seed again.
In part 1, I have given a number of methods for you to try out meditation practice. There are a few quick ways in which you can lend yourself a quick fix calm. In part 2, we shall take a journey through meditation concepts. In part 3, we will see the functioning of the mind. In part 4, we will look at the metaphysical concepts which will lead to evolutionary growth. In the next section we will venture to learn some higher meditations. And finally, we will see how to apply this knowledge to live our life in a fuller way.
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PART 1 MEDITATIO S
1. THE QUICKEST WAY This will be a practice most of you will be able to sustain. It is easy, short and highly effective. Many of you will progress enough using this practice alone not to need any other technique.
Practice:
Step1
Sit in a comfortable position, keeping your feet flat on the ground. Do not cross your legs or arms. Join your thumb and index finger in the Dhyan mudra and let the palms face down, resting the hand on each thigh. Close your eyes. Start watching your breath. Do not try to change your breathing pattern. Just observe. If you are feeling too spaced out, avoid the mudra or join index and middle finger.
Step 2
Start watching your abdomen moving up and down with your breath. As you breathe in, your abdomen moves up and as breathe out, your abdomen moves down. You will notice that your breathing becomes slower, deeper and less erratic as you start observing it.
Step 3
Visualize that you are breathing in fresh and pure air. Feel the air feeling your lungs and expanding them. Your body and mind feels light.
As you breathe out, throw out all the impure air, breathe out all the tensions from your body and let your body and mind relax completely.
You feel toneless, almost sinking into the chair.
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Now, take a peep at your mind. How does it feel? Are you feeling a sense of peace, calm, a sense of timelessness, spacelessness?
Principle:
You have full voluntary control on your skeletal muscles, hardly any control on the mind which is autonomous, while breath is somewhere in between being under voluntary control yet involuntary. Since you cannot control the mind, it being autonomous, you can use the breath to control your mind. The breath is the link between body and mind.Change the breath to change your mind. The breath is one of the portals to the soul. Breath will always remain with us till the very end and hence this is a meditation which is most useful.
Keys:
You are going to use your breath to control your thoughts
The breath is the gateway to the mind
Slower the breath, slower the thoughts
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Body Mind Connection
Body Mind
Breath
Q:Where should I focus my attention while I am breathing?
When you are doing the breath meditations, which is the best place to focus, nose, chest or abdomen?
Is there a difference in effects?
Ans:
‘Doing is believing’.
Now stop reading and try doing both these the different types and understand for yourself.
Instead of the abdomen, you may focus on your nostril.
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Principle:
When you are focussing on the nostril, you are focussing on a very small area which intensifies your concentration. It is like focussing on a single thought which ultimately leads to thoughtlessness.Except that there is a preverbal communication, ‘breathe in or breathe out.’ As you keep this single thought, you automatically defocus or bring about an expansion.
Whereas, when you are focussing on the abdomen, it is a bigger area. You are trying to focus on the expansion right from the beginning. Both methods are valid and lead to the same result.
The Aerobics: Bellows/Bhāstrikā
One particularly beautiful meditation which I adore draws from the traditional bellows of the blacksmith. It is also a favourite with my workshop participants.
Practice:
Step1
Sit in any comfortable position keeping your back straight and spine erect. Close your eyes.
Breathe in fully and breathe out fully like blowing a bellows –for a total of twenty breaths.
Step 2
At the count of 20, stop and watch your breathing. You will notice that your breathing has stopped. It takes a while for your breathing to resume and when it does, it very slow; deep and rhythmic.
Step 3
Look at your mind. The mind has nearly blanked out. Watch the thoughts.
There will be very few thoughts like ‘Yes, the breathing has returned; It is slow; I feel peaceful.’
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Now, repeat the whole process from step 1 to step 3. This time you will be more alert in watching.
Third time around, when you repeat it, you will be able to observe the thoughts and breath at the same time.
When the breath stops, you will get a feeling of Aha!
Advanced Bellows
You can use this one for releasing your negative emotions or rooting out your deep seated psychological knots. Choose an emotion like anger. As you breathe out, lift your hands above your shoulders opening your palms and imagine letting go off anger. Closing the palms, bring your hands down to your chest as you breathe in. I sometimes visualize holding all my anger in my palm and pushing it off.
You can use rhythm. Start slowly, building up the tempo and then slow down.
Principle:
The fast rate of breathing in the bellows washes off carbon dioxide. This leads to a lower carbon dioxide tension in the blood, a signal interpreted by the brain to retain carbon dioxide in the body. It tells the breathing centre to stop breathing, leading to a pause in respiration. This pause is involuntary and is referred to as kewal kumbhaka in Yoga. The respiration then slowly returns to normal.
Kewala=automatic
Kumbhaka= stoppage of breath
Voluntary holding of breath called sahita kumbhaka, has to be done under a Guru’s guidance.
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2.COU TI G THE BREATHS Practice:
Step 1
Sit down or lie down comfortably. Close your eyes
Watch your breath
Step 2
Start counting each inhalation. You may count
Inhale 1, exhale 1, Inhale 2.. exhale 2 and so on till 10 breaths.
Or inhale 1..exhale 2.., Inhale 3..exhale 4 ..
Or work backwards inhale 10..exhale 10, inhale 9..exhale 9
Step 3
In case your mind should wander, get it back to step 2 and begin all over again from first count. Enjoy the game.
The pitfall of this technique is that you may tend to think of next count instead of focusing on the breath. So, instead of being in the present you tend to go to the future.
Principle:
As we start our meditation, our mind starts to wander from the monotonous act of observing the breath. The mind needs constant activity and variety. So we give the mind the job of counting. At the beginning, keep the counts low, so the mind gets adjusted to staying in the present. You can slowly step up the counts. Go to 27 and back or keep increasing the counts. (27,
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26….1). The idea of coming back to pavilion (first count) is you are giving a message to the mind that if it remains alert, it is rewarded, and if it slips then it is punished.
Another way to get a similar effect is counting your thoughts or counting your steps.
3. KI AESTHETIC EFFECT Traditional practices using the kinaesthetic mode are Tai Chi and Qi Gong which involve feeling of movement and are usually done as group practices. Let us see some more meditations.
Feeling Meditation:
Practice:
Sit comfortably and close your eyes.
Choose an emotion. Let us say an emotional hurt like betrayal.
Feel the emotion completely. How does it feel?
Do not get caught up in thinking. Self deprecating thoughts are bound to occur, justifying, self blaming, rationalizing. Do not allow these to come.
Keep focussing on the emotion.
Where do you feel it? Is it in the region of your heart?
How does it feel, a kind of suffocation or perhaps a stab in the back?
Or you may choose anger. How does it feel, the anger welling up? Where do you feel it?
Notice the breath. Is it fast, shallow, erratic?
Don’t get caught up in thought rationalization. This is the modern man’s dilemma due to excessive left brain activity. For example you may start thinking, ‘It is natural for me to get angry when I face injustice’ or ‘He had no right to hurt me.’
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What is important for you, being right or being peaceful?
Many a times you may feel you have a right to be angry when there has been injustice towards you or someone else. But you are on the path of meditation because you want peace. When such thoughts flood your system you will have to decide what it is that you really want… peace or a sense of righteousness. If your goal is peace, should you be doing an activity which is taking away your peace? Give yourself at least one month to go through the peace process. Once we get a hang of the process, we can integrate the two things, righteousness and peace.
Feeling the life flow in your body:
Sit quietly with eyes closed. Feel your legs. Feel life skirting through the muscle, veins, arteries, bones. Feel the same with your thighs, your hands, arms, chest, back, neck and head.
Feel the pulsing nature of your body. You may focus on the pulse in your temple, your hand. Or you may focus on the heart beat. Feel the rhythm. Feel the whole body vibrating with the life force.
Feel yourself alive. i.e. every cell of your body vibrating with life.
Vipassana:
Vipassana, a technique with roots in Buddhism is offered as a 10 day residential retreat all over the world. Vipassana means seeing things as they are.
It is often called a psychic surgery and rightly so. Anything is possible during these 10 days. Long buried emotional pains tend to surface.
The mode is kinaesthetic. One pays attention to one’s feelings and sensations with detachment knowing well that their true nature is impermanence.
The high point of Vipassana is of course the loving kindness (metta) that is sent out to all on the last day. If you can find the time, you should make it to one of these retreats. I had mine in 2005 and know people who have had eight sittings. There is much to gain.
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4. SOU D EFFECTS Here natural sounds are used as a focus in meditation.
Soham Meditation:
Practice:
Step 1
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Now listen to your breath. If you are an auditory person, you will benefit much from this meditation.
Breathe in. Can you hear a sound?
Breathe out. What does the sound appear like?
Are the two different?
Step 2
Focus on these two sounds. You don’t have to label them. Just know the difference.
Principle:
The two sounds, ham sa or so ham as they are traditionally called are the sounds of the breath.
Hamsa refers to the mythical swan who drank nectar separating it from water.
So ham literally means He is I (Sa: = He, Aham=I , sa: aham becomes soham by the rule of Sanskrit Grammer)
Well, you may not hear the sounds as mentioned here, many people don’t. So believe in what you hear and there is no need to imagine. What is important for you is to listen with full attention and only listen.
Meditation in oise/On oise:
External sounds can disturb you in meditation but you can also use them to aid your meditation. If you are living in the city or a noisy colony as I do, you will hardly get a quiet hour. Try late at night and you have the dogs
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 24 barking. The best option is to use this noise to your advantage. Let the noise get you deeper.
Practice:
Sit quietly with eyes closed. Relax your body and start listening to the sounds. Just hear them objectively, do not label and do not judge them.
If you hear a dog bark say mentally, ‘A dog is barking’.
Say ‘With every bark I find myself relaxing more’ or
‘With every bark I go deeper and deeper.’
Principle:
When we need to relax our body and mind for the first time, it is definitely tedious but once we are relaxed, especially if we have a facilitator with us (or a CD), we can register this relaxed state in our subconscious mind.
The next step is to link this relaxation with an external thing, a mudra or a sound. In this meditation, we are using the noise as an anchor to get us back to the relaxed state.
So we link the two thoughts ‘the dog is barking’ and ‘I am relaxed’. Any time and every time you want to relax, you have to just think of the anchor and the relaxation will follow. For proof of the efficiency of this method, reflect on how our advertising industry uses it to manipulate us into buying products we don’t want.
We are put into a happy state with jingles and a lovely scene and the product is surreptiously flashed across the screen. We equate happiness with the product and unhappiness at not having the product. Can we refrain ourselves from buying?
Chirping Meditation:
This method again uses a natural sound. Once I had an elderly gentleman from UK bring in three young children to my clinic. He was down on holidays and was helping the poor children in his village get a health check.
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We got to talking about health promotion and ultimately zeroed down to meditation. He belonged to a UK based meditation group. He promised to send me their newsletter named ‘Tumble town’ which he promptly did along with a cassette on meditation by Jill Pruce. It had beautifully recorded bird sounds.
I have used it often for meditation and found it beneficial for beginners. We can use the natural chirping sounds in our neighbourhood for the same effects. Others like waterfall can also be used.
Principle:
The natural sounds are characterized by unpredictability, impermanence and uncertainty.
Advanced Sound Meditation:
When a person is meditating for a long time, he is bound to hear different sounds emanating from within his being. The most exotic being the ‘OM’ of the yogis. It is also called the Anāhat nāda.
Mind you, this is not the sound of the word Om as we utter it. The word Om comes closest to what one can describe it but is yet far away from it. It is the sound that is caused without friction, An aahat. It is so elusive and so mesmerizing that once you have heard it you keep thirsting for more. I believe no amount of effort can get you this experience. It comes when it has to come just like the blue star and blue pearl described by Swami Muktananda.
Music:
Music, especially classical music is a very good tool to slip into meditative states. Music induces a coherent wave front which helps you align your whole body (see Doctor’s Theory of Everything).
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5.VIBRATORY EFFECTS
Vibration Meditation:
Practice:
Sit in a comfortable position. Close your eyes.
Chant loudly to induce a vibration in your body. You may choose the sound Om, A u m, Brahmari (female honey bee sound) or any other sound that appeals to you. In fact, try out one for a few days before you switch to another.
Feel the vibrations spreading all through your body.
Be with the vibrations. Do not try to label them. Just feel.
Resonance:
When 2 sound waves (vibrations) of the same frequency overlap, the amplitude of the resultant wave doubles giving the phenomenon of resonance. See picture
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a
b
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a a + b
Brahmari
Turn your tongue upwards to touch your palate. Breathe in through your nose and as you breathe out, make a sound that resembles ‘ng’( ङ) as in king.
Principle:
When you are making this sound, do not try to prolong it beyond your capacity , keeping the pitch constant. If you are practicing with others don’t try to compete. It is the frequency of sound you can generate which is more important and not the duration.
We know from the study of human physiology that each tissue of our body has an intrinsic frequency, (just like the door and the wall) and two tissues joined together have a different frequency compared to their individual frequencies, and the whole body has yet another frequency. The fine art of this meditation is getting the right frequency which resonates* with the frequency of your whole body. The sound should be kept at constant frequency. This leads to Gamma waves in the EEG.
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The sound is generated at the throat but you can feel it spread throughout the whole body and then you have a feeling that your body is like a resonating box. If you have mastered this technique, you have almost learnt the great art of swaryoga.
Aum: is considered a primal sound. You open your mouth and try to make a sound it sounds like an ‘ A’ .As you keep breathing out and at the same time draw your lips together it becomes a ‘U’ and when your lips are in apposition the sound becomes a ‘M’.
Chanting
Chanting is the commonest and most widely used spiritual practice. It is a time tested tool to achieve peace of mind.
Practice:
Sit, stand, lie down or walk. Choose a chant which appeals to you, one which has a spiritual or emotional significance. It is said that a chant given by a Guru has greater benefits because it is installed with a built–in program for success called ‘sankalp’.
Start chanting with every breath. Shorter chants are better for beginners, but almost any chant is beneficial. Keep increasing the timing of the chant. Whenever possible, do it loudly. At other times mumble it or chant mentally. Once the chant becomes part of your being, you may find yourself automatically chanting when in distress or when you get up from a dream. This is like an emergency oxygen supply in an aircraft.
Another technique is to go to an open field, ideally a mountain overlooking a valley. Start chanting softly at first and then chant louder and louder till it reaches the stars.
Principle:
Chanting is a simple repetition of a sound. How does it help? At any point in time, the mind can have but only one thought. It may be a fear thought or a happy thought. When the mind is deliberately fed with a chant, the
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 30 negative thought gets no place since the mind is already occupied. You can also use a mantra or a prayer for chanting.
Some atheist patients of mine would not chant because it interfered with their belief system. I asked them to chant their own name or their mother’s name. It worked so well, that many of them went to study the mind further. Sorry, believers but I find my atheist friends doing meditation better than the believers.
Mantra
Mantras are sounds which were evolved by experiments by the scientists of yore. A sound which can aid you in your meditation is a mantra. There are different sounds as prescribed by different religions. A mantra has special effects on the mind. There are some mantras that calm down the mind. In addition, a mantra will have effects on different aspects of the subtle body. Some mantras may activate a particular chakra and cleanse it, others aid bhav samadhi. All mantras ultimately aid spiritual growth.
Mantras can induce its effects by resonance as we have seen earlier. There are different mantra that act on different chakras a description of which is clearly out of scope of this small book(see my book on chakras)
6. VISUAL EFFECTS We have seen breathing and other modalities; we can now set about using the visual mode.
Trātak :
When the focus used for meditation is a visual image, it is called trātak. It may be a dot, flame, nature, space or a religious icon.
Flame Trātak
Sit in a dark room. Keep a lighted candle at about one two meters distance in front of you, the flame at the level of your eyes. Keep staring at the candle till you can do it no longer. Allow your eyes to water, if they do. Then close your eyes. Try to see the after image of the flame. The colour of the after image will be complementary to that of the flame. Try to hold the
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 31 after image for as long as you can. With practice this time will increase. Once the after image fades, open your eyes and start staring again.
Repeat three times. At the end of session, close your eyes with your cupped palms and relax.
Trātak can also be done on a dot, circle, an image, a spiral, the sun or ocean. Generally one stares for about 2 minutes.
While doing a trātak on the Sun, during the first month, one should not stare for more than 10 seconds. There are many benefits and uses of Sun trātak. Shri Umashankar Sun yogi has taught people to draw nourishment from the Sun.
Other meditations in the visual mode:
Seeing a Flower :
Keep looking at a flower without any thoughts of judgement, not comparing, not defining, just seeing. If you can do it for a long enough time you will feel the oneness of the flower with the whole universe.
Reflection of Mirror or Watch
Sit or recline with your back to the Sun as relaxed as possible. Let the sunlight be reflected by your watch or any mirror on to a book in front of you. Watch the reflection rise and fall with your breath. I was once reading a book and the mirror work on my dress reflected light onto my book.
The reflection of the mirror moved up and down rhythmically giving a feeling of expansion, beyond the body. The degree of expansion and the fluidity of movement was a measure of my depth of relaxation. I forgot the reading and slipped into meditation. You could use such everyday instances to have an opportunity to meditate all the time.
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Tyndall Effect
In my childhood, my grandparents lived in a tiled house which had a glass tile in the centre of the prayer room. I would sit in the prayer room where it was fairly dark, except for a beam of light that came straight to the altar. In the beam, I could see the innumerable particles of dust .I kept following them as they appeared to dance from once corner to another and then get lost. I would then follow another particle trying to trace it till as far as I could till it got lost. Try it if you get a chance.
Everything done without a mind on the goal can aid your meditation .You could imagine that each of the particles were you thoughts .You could hold on to, chase them or just let them come and go. Then close your eyes and watch your mind.
7.MI DLESS MEDITATIO
Whenever we are eating or watching TV, our mind goes elsewhere –we are absent minded. Our mind is always extroverted, it is tuned to the sense organs and sense objects. Converting the extroverted mind to an introverted state is the art of meditation.
Practice
Step 1
Sit in a comfortable position. Close your eyes.
Relax your body first. So that, your body does not claim the attention of your mind during meditation.
Begin with your toes. Get your attention there and release any muscular tension. Slowly move up to your feet, calves, thighs and hips. Feel and release tension in an orderly fashion. Work with your abdomen, spinal
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 33 muscles at the back and chest. Then, relax your fingers, hands, arms and shoulders. Lastly, relax your neck and head.
Mentally, do a quick survey of these areas. If you still feel any tension anywhere, gently send a thought there and give a thought massage to relieve the tension. With your thought, flows your prāna (energy).
Step 2
Look at your mind. Allow the thoughts to come, as they will for sure.
Do not resist any thought. Whatever you resist will persist. If you don’t resist, the thought will arise and the thought will dissolve.
Watch the whole process with disinterest. Be in the witness perspective.
You can fancy yourself a General watching the soldiers in a parade or one watching a beauty pageant doing a quick flick on the ramp.
Do not chase the thoughts. That is, do not follow the contents of thought.
Step 3
If you have managed to get this far, you will notice that the thoughts are still coming but are now slower, much slower than before. I sometimes feel that they are like the models on the ramp who wait and display their attire before turning back.
And then what happens?
Suddenly there is a gap. Catch it!
A gap between the thoughts where there is no thought. Feel the peace in this gap. Try to stay here with no thoughts.
Principle:
What we do in mindless meditation is create a space (a gap) in our awareness from where pure consciousness shines through. This is done by breaking the link between 2 thoughts .We stop chasing the thoughts.
We look into the mind itself beyond emotions and thoughts.
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By the Aquarium
Sit in front of the aquarium. See the bubbles as they rise to the surface. Imagine that each bubble is a thought.
Then go back to the next bubble, watch it rise.
If you find yourself thinking, imagine the next bubble to be your thought. When the bubble reaches the surface of water, release the thought along with the bubble.
8. ZE MEDITATIO Practice:
Sit comfortably. You may close your eyes or keep them open.
Choose a koan of your choice e.g. sound of one hand clapping. Besides the koan, do not think of anything else.
Let all your thoughts focus on the koan till you know you cannot think anymore, and your mind, otherwise restless gives up thinking.
Principle:
The centre of Zen meditation is a koan. A koan is a seemingly innocuous phrase which keeps your mind thinking yet there is no answer. You keep thinking and thinking till your mind is fed up of thinking and accepts that there is something beyond the thinking . It embraces uncertainty. And that is when you feel an opening. A kind of a rent in the cloud allows the light to seep in.
9. SUFI MEDITATIO Another favourite of mine is the Sufi swirl. Going round to the sound of Allah hu is simply ecstatic.
The first time I started swirling on my own, I was rather alarmed. I could not stop it and if I tried to stop, I would slip out of meditation. I imagined
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 35 all sorts of reasons for the same. There was definitely no vertigo. At other times, going round 100s of time I should have swooned but here I was swirling and enjoying myself, though a little embarrassed when I came out.
Then it all became routine. I just had to put on some Sufi music or any of Pandit Jasraj’s chants like Shivāshtakam or my Guru’s Mahishāsurmardini strotram and there I would go, ‘Merry go round’.
And then I found the reason in Walter Lubeck’s book .If you can keep your upper body loose and receptive as you enter a high energy field you will sway clockwise. I have never had an anti clockwise swaying.
I now call it the ‘pendulum effect’. Meanwhile, I have trained myself to stop swaying when I don’t want to.
10. BHAV SAMADHI: The first time I read about Sri Ramkrishna’s ecstatic raptures, I was in awe. I prayed for one glimpse of this state to understand what might be happening. I had read about LSD trips and when my teacher discussed them in the toxicology class, I speculated aloud if I should try it once, much to the consternation of my friends.
But a high without a drug meant a different proposition. It would prove that all happiness was inside and you just had to juggle with the energies or whatever else was needed to get the right orchestration.
11. DY AMIC MEDITATIO S (Mindfulness): You must have heard of the famous Japanese tea drinking ceremony*. The principle is being in the present, fully absorbed in doing what you are doing, living the moment. Simple though it sounds, it is one of the most difficult things to master.
11a. EATI G MEDITATIO S
The Peda* Meditation:
I was once at an international workshop on yoga and one of the teachers shared this beautiful self disclosure.
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This yoga teacher was overweight but flexible and had a sweet tooth which prevented her from losing weight. One day she thought she will experiment with herself and sat with single peda taking a bit at a time putting it in her mouth… feeling the texture, the sweet taste, the saliva coming in, till it dissolved bit by bit.
Then, she would slowly and consciously bring her hand down for the second bit. It took her nearly 30 minutes to finish half a peda and left her more satisfied than the dozen which she would usually eat.
Chikki Meditation
Every afternoon after lunch I would indulge myself in a piece of chikki. My friend often sponsored it because she was amused to see the way I ate it.
Put a piece of chikki in your mouth. Feel it fully, the sweetness, the crunchiness of the nuts, the stickiness. Until the chikki is over, keep your mind on the chikki and nothing else. If you don’t have chikki with you, try an éclair or a lollipop.
Sometimes, you could use a cream biscuit. Remember, eating a cream biscuit as a child? Were you not tempted to open the two halves and lick the cream, especially if mother was not watching?
Do it now. Be a child again. If are lucky to have split it in such a way as to have cream on both halves, you can have a longer meditation.
Melting Moments
This is a classier one. A bakery 30 km from my home made some delicate crispy meringues called melting moments. They were chocolate flavoured shells lined inside with rich dripping chocolate.
There was one special way you could enjoy them. You slipped one into your mouth and waited with your breath held for the moment when the shell would break and splutter the yummy chocolate all over your tongue. That moment was bliss. We travelled 60 km for that one moment of bliss.
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11b. WORK MEDITATIO ( Karmayoga of Gita)
We are used to the high paced life of today and then we have goals and targets and outcomes making our lives ‘highly conditional’. Living a life focussing on the action and not on the outcomes brings in peace. Let us see some applications.
Peeling an Orange
This one, I used at a workshop once and was an instant hit.
Practice:
Give every participant an orange. If you are alone, pick one yourself. With a penknife make a small niche at the stalk end and keep the penknife aside. Start peeling the orange in spiral fashion. Focus on getting the slimmest strip possible. Go concentrically, peeling off the rind till your reach the South Pole. How long a strip do you have?
Should your strip tear off in the middle, go ahead! Pick up another orange. You can have orange juice for breakfast.
Try it whenever you have 3 5 minutes free time and oranges on your shelf.
Later, collect all of them and check which one was your longest strip. You could preserve it as a trophy.
Principle:
As long as you are aware and in the present, your mind on the peeling and nowhere else, your strip will not break. When your mind slips away, the strip is likely to break.
Concentric Circles
If you are short of oranges today, no problem. Get some scratch paper and a pen. Now draw a circle the size of an orange but let the ends not join. Go
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 38 inside the circle without lifting your pen making concentric circles spiralling in. No line should touch another. How many circles are there in your spiral?
When did your spiral break? Were you thinking, lost in a reverie?
I often use the activity of cutting onions or carrots to get me into the meditative state. Try cutting them into exact 2x2 mm squares. It’s fun.
Dish Washing
Choose the tea strainer, may be the one you used for your tea drinking ceremony, the grimier the better.
Get a scrubber and some soap.
Now you need to get the grime out from the crevices.
Scrub, wash and repeat till its glistening. Did you realize how much time that took? Well, that was 10 minutes.
The Knitting Meditation:
Circular knitting with four needles is a very good meditation technique. You lose awareness and you have lost all your day’s effort. This is especially true for me because the only needles I can get in Goa are 8” in size and meant to knit collars and knitting doilies on them is walking a razor’s edge. I try larger doilies on them when I seek to be in the moment.
I am reminded of Sant Kabir’s doha, ‘Binny Binny Binny Chadariya’…
Weeding Meditation:
This one keeps you physically fit too.
I would cast a few seeds of the holy basil on my little patch of land. And when they had just come out, I would go about weeding the patch. Weeding the unwanted herbs and not crashing my basil was a challenge. I had to be aware, every moment. It’s so physically exhausting yet mentally relaxing.
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Crossword Puzzle:
Have you seen a crossword addict? How he can be fully absorbed with a piece of paper? The same can be converted into a meditation with a little awareness. Watch your thoughts as you get a word or when you don’t. Feel the joy, the disappointment and the occasional ‘Eureka”. As long as you are not judging, you are fine.
Balancing Meditation:
Start with centering yourself. Stand in Tadasana (palm tree) with feet together, feel the balance of your weight on both feet.
Shift the weight on toes, come to centre. Then on heels, come to centre.
Then on left side of feet, come to centre and lastly on the right side and come to centre.
Do it without actually moving your body. Feel the weight balancing.
Walk Meditation:
This one is for a lazy day when you have plenty of free time on your hands (oops! sorry, feet)
Practice:
Choose a clean patch of grass, free from shards and pointed objects. Go barefoot.
Walk slowly, feeling the grass beneath.... the sensations on your feet ...the wetness of the dew ...
Notice your feet make the motion of walking.
Your feet being lifted ...the straightening and bending of knee and hip...your heel touching the ground.
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Tune in, to the wind blowing against your face... the sweet smell of flowers.
Generally, be aware...very aware.
Be... in this moment... as though this was your first walk on earth.
Tandem Walk:
You could try tandem walking. Bring the heel of one foot against the toes of the other as though you are rope walking.
Enjoy the practice.
Knee Walking:
This one I used with my heart patients when they were being discharged from the hospital. It is more like a slow and gentle marching.
Lift your foot and place it on the ground as though you are placing it on some delicate object. Repeat with the other foot.
Keep your attention on your knee. See how little force it takes to lift it, how much to bring it down. Be aware.
The Heart Beat Rhythm:
When I was in college I was nicknamed ‘spring in the gait’ by a friend.
‘Diamonds in the soles of her shoes’ got changed to “She’s got springs in the soles of her feet’ or ‘Mera joota hey japani’. or Tic toc.
Courtesy? My jaunty walk.
I was not ready to share the secret of my walk then. I surely would not want more jeering.
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I can never wear flats. I just don’t feel like walking in them. Any sole with a springy feel and I could walk miles.
Now, it so happens that my steps and heart beats are in tandem and every time my heart beats, I bring a foot down. The walk definitely looks a little comic for an adult but I haven’t found any good reason to change it. And I am not too willing to forego the benefits of meditating while walking. This saves my evening hours for reading and some of my morning moments for contemplations. This meditation is based on mindfulness, rhythm and flow.
Make the dynamics a part of your life. Practice for 6 months till they are entrained in your psyche. Then stick to breath watching for all times.
12. FORGIVE ESS MEDITATIO
I came across this meditation the first time in a tiny booklet on stress. I lost the name of the author. So, I cannot acknowledge him. I tried it for some time and one day taught it to an elderly couple who had some issues in the family and used it successfully. This is how it goes.
Practice:
Step 1
Sit comfortably, close your eyes. Look inside.
Think of God. Think of any wrong, you feel you might have done and ask to be forgiven.
Step 2
Breathe in. Think of your mother, if she has hurt you, forgive her, breathe out. If you have hurt her, ask to be forgiven.
Breathe in. Think of your father, if he has hurt you, forgive him. If you have hurt him, ask to be forgiven.
Think of your spouse, repeat step 2.
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Continue so forth bringing children, siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, friends, enemies, colleagues, bosses, teachers, neighbours and so on.
The initial session is lengthy but later on it is very easy.
It goes ...breathe out, I forgive my father, breathe in, I am forgiven, assuming you are forgiven.
Breathe out, I forgive my son, breathe out I am forgiven.
Principle:
Every time we are hurt or we hurt someone, we store part of the hurt in our subconscious mind and even if at a conscious level there appears no conflict, deep down we carry resentments. These deep seated hurts can harm us both emotionally and by the myriad diseases they are capable of causing. It is we who hurt ourselves by keeping that pain inside. Forgiveness is not to downplay a wrong but to rise above the hurts.
One important question is that other people may forgive you but are you ready to forgive yourself? Forgiving oneself is the most difficult prospect. But are you not human, to err? If you believe in the doctrine of rebirth, then there are even more incentives for you try this one. Assume that each person in your life today has crossed your path earlier and there have been transactions and unfinished business. This time around, you want to make amends. As suggested by a spiritual teacher, you ask the higher self of the other person to forgive your lower self.
After your family, start from early childhood and come till now and ask every person you remember to forgive you even if you don’t remember any wrong that was done. If the pain is deep, sit for a full hour or till you are at peace.*This practice is very powerful. I have spent hours releasing all the negative emotions relating to my past. After you have practiced for some time, you will remember the story but not feel the emotion.
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13. U CO DITIO AL LOVE MEDITATIO
This is a practice for anyone who feels a lack of love. How many times have you felt lonely, unwanted and neglected?
Practice:
Sit comfortably. Get yourself into a loving state by thinking of any happy moment. Then visualize love flowing into you from the universe. You may visualize white light or just observe and see whatever colour comes into your mind.
Feel the light flowing into your heart, filling it completely and ready to overflow. Feel the emotion of love. You may burst into tears but that’s perfectly okay.
You are now ready to send out love. Send it first to the Source (read God/Almighty if you prefer) with a lot of gratitude.
Then, to your mother, father, siblings, spouse, children, friends, enemies, colleagues, neighbours, countrymen...other living things,..Mother Earth, Planets, Sun...to the whole universe.
Feel the love flowing through you. Become a conduit of love. During the meditation some people may just burst into tears, others find it difficult to cry.
Principle:
Love is a healing force, perhaps the greatest one known. To paraphrase Dr Dean Ornish, ‘If there was a drug as effective as love all the doctors in the world would be prescribing it’.
But we so often ignore this beautiful medicine available to us over the universal counter for free.
Loving yourself is a gift you can give yourself so that you don’t have to wait for another to make you feel loved. Others may be too busy with themselves. And love that is expressed on asking does not feel like love.
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When I left home for the first time to work in another State, I was separated from my long time friends who were probably as upset as I. When one of my friends visited me in my hostel room some months later, she felt a strong missing element...liveliness.
She had been with me in my previous hostels where there was always fun and frolic. People had a free access to my room, so I always had company. During my next visit home, she gave me a beautiful stuffed monkey, she had crafted herself. She was as big as a toddler and had Velcro stickers on her hands and feet.
“This is me “, she said.
Whenever I returned to my room from one drag day and night shift at ‘The ICU’, I had my sweet friend welcoming me. Soon, my room came abuzz with visitors who liked my monkey more than me.
How many tired feet, weary minds and aching hearts she must have healed is difficult to say and she still lives with me bringing in nostalgic memories. If you don’t have a monkey, you could get yourself one or perhaps a get a teddy.
14. GLOBE MEDITATIO
The Vedas say ‘Vasudaiva kutumbakam’, the whole world is one family. But how will you feel it? Try this one.
Practice:
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes.
Visualize yourself sitting in your seat. Feel yourself breathing. Try to feel your surroundings. Feel that you are breathing with the neighbour or tree or dog or the table. Then imagine breathing with all your neighbours, then all you countrymen, all the trees and animals in your country. Slowly expand yourself to include the neighbouring countries, your continent, then the whole globe. Include the flora and the fauna, the mountains the rivers, the fishes, the ocean and finally the living Earth, Mother Gaia. Be as vivid as possible. Let your imagination go wild. Create the world of your choice.
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Believe that breathing with all the souls together, you can really make a difference.
Principle:
The practice is based on visualization and the belief that a deeper level everything springs from unity, we are part of the Creator. Our thinking has the power to change the world as long as we not ego identified. That is, we do not consider ourselves separate from the rest. If I am the other, the other is me. I think his thoughts and he, mine.
15.EXPA SIO MEDITATIO : Practice:
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes.
Feel the breath. Feel your chest expand as you breathe in. Feel your shoulders going up. Feel the air rising. Get the feel of a floating sensation. Feel yourself expanding.
Now focus on the expansion and forget about the breath. How far can you go? Are you 7 feet tall? Are you as big as this hall?
See if you can break through the hall. Are you as high as the sky? Can you fill the whole globe?
Principle:
This meditation is based on the feeling modality (kinaesthetic).
16. QUA TUM MEDITATIO : Now, this one here is for the hard core scientist.
I stumbled upon it accidently when I was first acquainted with the structure of the atom in class IX (the old model, orbits et al). I was fascinated. After class, as I was taking a stroll in the market place, I could only see atoms everywhere, in the trees, in the buildings, in the vendors and buyers and in my own body, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. I was breathing electrons.
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Next day, I had a volley of questions for my teacher. He told me he had no answers to all the complicated issues raised. I was quite chastened and my classmates conferred on me the unflattering title of M.S.(Mad Scientist).
It was much later when I studied relativity, subatomic physics and Unified field concepts that things appeared clearer but what has all this to do with meditation? I have to admit that this is more of visualization rather than a meditation.
Practice:
Sit in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Observe your breathing.
Imagine atoms of carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen entering your lungs.
Visualize the exchange of atoms, or electron clouds happening in your system.
Visualize your blood enriched with oxygen, going to the cells.
Visualize the cells themselves. Then the cytoplasm, the DNA, the double helix, the elements, the subatomic particles.
If you have a sick organ, imagine the electrons travelling back in time to give you the picture of health you once enjoyed.
Feel and believe that you are completely healthy.
Then return your attention back to your breath. Watch the carbon dioxide, oxygen flowing out.
You are not the same person who took the last breath. You now have a new set of atoms in your body. Feel the connection with the universe.
For more physics, see The Doctor’s Theory of Everything.
Principle:
Think of it. You are made of atoms, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, nitrogen. And these in turn have electrons. And the electrons have a dual nature they are at once a particle or a wave depending on whether you look at it or not (de Broglie). So,matter and energy are interrelated (relativity).
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And we are uncertain about everything at the subatomic level, which actually means greater possibilities. You can turn time around, or change configuration. And you the observer can change the observation. You let your consciousness flow into what you are perceiving. Isn’t that just fantastic?
So, we have clouds of electrons common to all things in the universe, like a universal currency. You are constantly exchanging your part of this cloud. You are no longer a solid object but a constantly changing swirl of electron clouds (You could use any of the subatomic particles for your reference). And the electrons can travel in time forward or backward, in the sense you can reach back to before it started travelling.
This was what I felt when I learnt the atomic structure the first time, I was a mass of orbiting electrons, as also the building in front of me. We are all connected (Unified Field Theory).You could move back in time (Reverse Time Travel), in multiple parallel universes and multidimensional existences depending on your knowledge and ability to conceptualize.
17. ATURE LOVER’S MEDITATIO If you love nature you could use any natural scenery to focus like the ocean, the clouds, the sky, sunrise or bird sounds.
As you watch the waves rising and receding, it gives you the feeling of impermanence. The sounds of the waves dashing against the beach or rocks can also be great aids.
As you watch the sky/ocean, it gives a feeling of expansion.
One beautiful meditation I had was when I stood at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial at Kanyakumari.
There was this expansive stretch of the ocean in front of me, miles and miles of water, no glimpse of the horizon. From the point of view I was looking and gazing, I was here and I was there as far as my eyes could take me. And then suddenly I found that I was everywhere.
Try it once and you are going to enjoy it.
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18. GROUP MEDITATIO Group meditation is much more effective than individual practice provided all the participants are committed. Otherwise a few negative elements can spoil the show. Collective thought depends on individual thought and vice versa. I do it at my workshops.
Try this one.
You can have a leader, someone who has practiced for some time who starts the relaxation process. The next person paces to his mind and relaxes and then the one next to him, spreading like a Mexican wave of relaxation or you could have a guided meditation.
Principle:
The more people we have in a group who are meditating we find it easier to meditate in their presence. There is a natural build up of positive energy.
19. CARDIO
Talking To Your Organs:
I first read about this in Dean Ornish’s book, ‘The Dean Ornish Program for Reversal of Heart Disease’ and it was called ‘Opening the Heart ’and subsequently have seen it being used by many teachers. It is one of the tools I have incorporated into my meditation sessions for sick people, be it controlling their sugars or decreasing heart size in cardiac failure.
With this meditation, I could prevent attacks of supraventricular tachycardia (Read fast heart beat) in a middle aged lady who had frequent episodes in spite of medication. She had severe asthma and was not a fit candidate for any other treatment. Her heart responded but when we tried listening to her lungs we failed and her asthma persisted.
This is best done by a fully trained doctor with access to all the state of the art facilities or could be dangerous in inexperienced hands.
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20. PRE OPERATIVE MEDITATIO : Once, I had a referral in the surgical wards for sugar control in a patient. One of our staff drivers had met with an accident. His sugars were unmanageable for over a week and his fractured arm awaited surgery. They had stepped up the insulin very high. And the surgeon and anaesthetist were concerned.
When I visited him, I fouthe one nd him anxious and breathing fast. I guessed that no amount of talking, diet or insulin would control his sugars. So, we mutually agreed to try something which I had never tried before. We listed the aid of a staff nurse on the ward to supervise. Every hour, he would do a 3 step breath meditation, I have described earlier. And any time he felt anxious, he would return to watching his breath.
And did he surprise me? Surely, 48 hours later we had his sugars so low we had to lower the insulin dose. He was operated promptly with a great recovery and left the hospital with a thank you note and extra workload for me on the surgical floor.
21. DREAM MEDITATIO This is yet another of my chosen ones. I keep a dream journal. And after four years, I have realized what a fertile mind I have possessed. Ektaa Kapoor’s serials or Harry Potters all pale out when this invisible entity called my mind goes on an ego trip.
It is while analysing my dreams that I realized that life is but one big dream and death is the real awakening. It is important to learn lessons from your dream. Observe how you react to circumstances in your dream. The way you react to a dream, the same way you’ll react to the actual experience of death.
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22. RESISTA CE TRAI I G Pain Meditation:
It is best used for emotional pain.
Warning: This pain meditation could be done if the physical problem is minor or you have been examined by a doctor and are under medication but the pain has recurred and another dose of medicine could be risky. Do not use it for chest pain or acute abdominal pain where it could be dangerous. In these cases, when you are on the way to the hospital, use the breath meditation to decrease your adrenaline.
Practice:
Sit in any comfortable position. Lie down if the pain is unbearable. Close your eyes. Now focus on the pain. You will want to distract your mind. But don’t allow that to happen and bring your attention back to your pain. Your pain will increase, allow it to intensify, bear with the pain. See, what happens. If tears come, let them flow. If you start whining, don’t stop yourself .If you start sobbing, let it happen.
Just be a witness.
Principle:
Your pain may be physical like a headache or emotional.
If you resist the pain, it will persist and if you accept it will first increase and then subside. If you wish that pain should go away it intensifies. Don’t hate or fear pain.
Analyse the pain. It is not always the pain we feel now, but when we think of something which happened years ago that is hurtful.
What is the character of pain? What happens when you observe? When and where does it begin and end? What do you do, what do you think, when you are in pain?
Do a SWOT analysis of yourself when you are in pain.
If you are unhappy about what is happening, what happens?
In which state of your mind does your pain feel the worst?
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 51 e.g. If you hate the pain or you accept it?
See what happens when you think ‘I am hurting’ or ‘pain is there.’ What happens when you don’t identify with the pain? This is not an invalidation of pain, mind you. There is no denying of pain. In fact, we acknowledge its immediate presence. Only, we do not identify our whole self with it. If the emotion is unbearable and you are wary, try this meditation after a few months of the breathing meditation. You will be ready.
23. E DURA CE TRAI I G.
Titikshā
Endurance is like body building. Slowly build up your strengths and reserves. It is not self mortification of the body. It teaches you skills to withstand external pressures but is not intended to punish. One should not wallow in self pity nor take pleasure in enduring pain.
When I first joined an industrial unit in 1999 as a staff physician, I was allotted a stuffy, ill ventilated room whereas at my previous position I had a spacious air conditioned room which made the contrast feel even more obvious. Moreover, I had to sit there 5 hours at a stretch with a short break time of 10 minutes, if I was lucky.
Sometimes, the electricity would play truant, go off for half an hour making it a black hole and without fan or emergency lamp. If anyone ever ventured there at this time, their usual reaction was, “How can you sit here? Why don’t you protest?” I was aware that protesting would not make any difference except wasting my energies. So this is how I approached the situation.
I was in Delhi in 1996, when the summer temperatures ran 40 45 ° C . The dry heat was scorching my skin, my brain and my very life. I kept thinking, ‘How lucky I am to be living in Goa’. Now, back in this dingy room, I just had to close my eyes, go to Delhi for a minute or two and then return back to the ambient temperature of the room of 27° C and say, “Ah! So cool!”
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I have walked in the hot sun without head gear and imagined myself in Simla! ...Feeling the snowflakes against my face. When it is very cold, I sometimes refuse to take a blanket, to test how much I can wait till I reach out for the blanket. It is not that I recommend you do such things. But just to highlight that if you are faced with situations like these, it takes hardly a minute to change our feeling state.
24. YOG IDRA
Complete Transcript of Yognidra
I usually end my workshops with a full session of yog nidra.
I have of course modified it to suit the needs of my participants, many of whom have different ailments.
Here, I would like to give a transcript of a yog nidra session lasting for about 15 minutes.
There are beautiful recordings available. Those recordings given by some spiritual teachers are powerful but unfortunately very lengthy and thereby not used. You could record one yourself with the following transcript or if don’t like it in your voice (I personally don’t prefer my own voice) ask a friend with a beautiful voice to record it for you. Pause as suggested by dotted lines
Practice:
Wear loose clothes or at least take off your belt, glasses and watch. The place should be warm. Lie down comfortably on your back, with your body straight, head in line with your body, feet apart. Keep your arms relaxed and away from your body, palms turned towards the ceiling. Close your eyes. Feel the parts touching the floor. Promise yourself, ‘I shall not go to sleep, I shall remain alert.’
Now, start relaxing your body. Start with your soles.
Take your attention to your soles, relax your soles.
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Move up and relax your toes...your ankles... legs..your knees...your thighs...your hips .. and your waist.
The lower part of your body is now completely relaxed.
Then move to the middle part of your body.
Relax your abdomen ...your back...slowly move up your spine...
Relax each muscle attached to your spine...
Relax your diaphragm... Relax your chest muscles...
Relax your fingers...your hands...your arms ...and your shoulders...
(Visualize the organs in your abdomen,.. the intestines ...the liver,... the spleen, ...the kidneys... Relax the muscles of the arteries supplying the organs and feel blood flowing freely through them)
Visualize your heart...It is a bag of muscles... Feel the muscles relaxing and supplying a lot of fresh blood to your heart. ..Visualize your heart vessels... See them smooth and clear...
Feel the emotions in your heart,... anger, ...guilt,... fear, sorrow,... hurt,... betrayal...
Whatever emotion comes, feel it completely... Let it surface ...
Feel it getting transmuted into love energy...
Should tears come, let them flow...
Feel your heart becoming lighter...
Visualize your lungs ...See them expanding and relaxing... breathing in fresh air...
The middle part of your body is now completely relaxed.
Move on to your head region...
Relax the muscles of your neck... The muscles of your jaw...it is here that you hold tension...
Relax the muscles of your cheeks, ...your nose ,...your ears,... your temples and brow.
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Relax the temples, ...release the stored tension.
Relax your scalp...Relax your brain...
Your head region is now completely relaxed.
Take a look at your body. If you find tension anywhere, send a whiff of prana there with your thought and relax that part...
Your whole body is now completely relaxed... Your breathing is slow, deep and rhythmic...
Say to yourself, ‘I shall remain awake, I shall not go to sleep.’
Feel the parts which touch the ground.
Now, feel your body becoming hot,...very hot...
Then, feel it becoming cold...feel the chill...,the biting cold.
Now, try to recollect a time when you were in pain...then, remember a time filled with joy...
Now, feel your body become heavy...very heavy ...so heavy it is sinking into the ground...
Then, feel it becoming lighter... so light that is it is floating in the air...
Gently, lift yourself from your body and go up. Visualize your body from the ceiling as go up to the sky (garden or ocean)...
Feel the vast expanse of the sky, the tranquillity, the peace...
Stay in this peaceful state for some time...
This peaceful state is the ocean from where all creativity springs.
And in this peaceful state, you are going to make a resolve. Let this be a short one, in the positive and in the present tense. Mentally, repeat it three times.
‘I am healthy, I am healthy, I am healthy”...
Now, slowly come down to the ceiling... Look at your body and enter it...
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Move your toes and fingers to get to body awareness... Wait for some time, then roll on to one side and sit down with the help of both your hands without opening your eyes...
End with a prayer of gratitude.
Principle:
Yognidra uses a number of techniques. The first one is deep physical relaxation, followed by mental relaxation. The relaxation is achieved by the facilitator’s soothing voice, attention to part and sending prāna to stressed parts. Secondly, it uses visualization (vikalp). Thirdly, it uses affirmation in the form of a resolve or sankalp. And lastly, it uses an anchor either auditory or visual to readily get to the state the next time around.
Tips: The place should be warm and there should be no disturbance from noise, mosquitoes etc. It is important not to get up suddenly after yognidra because the muscles are totally relaxed and the spine is not adequately supported. You decide which place you want to go beforehand. You can go to a place of your choice in minutes, an instant vacation.
In recent years techniques similar to yognidra called theta healing have been devised in the west.
25. METAPHYSICAL FIRST AID At times we are caught in a crisis. We don’t have the time, inclination or what it takes to try a meditation. We might have not been exposed to it earlier and crisis is not the time to learn. We need to learn the techniques when we are relatively calm, rehearse them and use them whenever the need arises. We can even use visualization like the simulation exercises used by aircraft pilots.
When we are not so well equipped, we still have few options. We can try chanting. It is simple but works. We can help another person to relax by first pacing his fast breath and when a connection is established we start gradually slowing down and we will be surprised to find him breathing slower and a lot calmer.
PART 2 MEDITATIO , FI ER POI TS
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WHAT IS MEDITATIO ?
As we have seen earlier, meditation happens. We just prepare the ground for it. We till the land, sow the seeds, water the earth and when time comes the seed will sprout. We first induce a state of single pointedness. This is called dharana (focus).The aid to this focus (alamban) may be visual, auditory etc. To begin with, there are many thoughts about many objects, then many thoughts about one object, then one thought about one object and lastly no thoughts. At this point the mind defocuses. There is generalized increase in awareness but no single focus. You are everywhere at the same time. This is dhyana or meditation.
.
From many to one and from one to many to all!
This reminds me of the space time cone.
Why meditate at all?
By now, it is clear to the medical world that the mind has a big role to play both in health and ill health. Healing the mind is healing the body. The mind and body are connected. Moreover, every aspect of our life… our relationships, our jobs, parenting, our goals etc. depends on how we feel.
Meditation Prescription:
We are not far away from the day when doctors will prescribe meditation twice every day on empty stomach.
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That reminds me of a patient of mine. His wife, accompanying him one day to my clinic complained that though her husband was a wonderful man, she held one grudge against him that he wouldn’t smile. The cause lay somewhere in his strict upbringing. So I wrote out a prescription for him.
Smile 6 x a day, and signed a smiley.
From the next visit onwards, I had a smiling couple visiting me.
Psychoneuroimmunology:
The mind and body are related through the neuroendocrine system(read brain and hormones). And these finally converge on the immune system(read defence).The right frame of mind is what is needed to encourage your soldiers to fight the unwanted intruders and deter them from harming your own cells. That is the gist of healing, rest all are mere details. We may tackle stress by negative coping behaviours like drinking, smoking and overeating and meditation helps to ward off these.
Effects of Meditation: At a personal level, there is more efficiency, serenity, compassion, zest, enthusiasm. We are healthier. We feel more whole, more integrated and more complete. We are more likely to reach our fullest potential, ‘awakening the giant within’. We are more likely to feel fulfilled and accomplished.
We are no longer selfish. Once we start meditating we move from the world of I, me, mine. We do not have to protect ourselves or pretend since all are one. We may change our world –view. We have a different worldview which is much more expansive. With long term meditation, our goals may change; ends no longer justify the means. Meditation may take us into spontaneous past life regressions or get answers to our problems. The possibilities are many.
In a series of experiments carried out by Italian neurologist Nitamo Montecucco, it was found that in deep meditation, right and left brain shoe identical wave pattern. Still more remarkably, when people meditated together, there was a synchronization of their left and right hemispheres. In one series the eleven out of twelve meditators achieved a 98% synchronization of the EEG waves.
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Best Position for Meditation:
The esoteric meditation position is that of lotus with eyes half closed, eyes balls turned up.
But for starters, just the comfortable straight spine position will do.
I have had some of my best meditation experiences in the non traditional poses and would like to share with you.
Tadagi Mudra (lake):
Lie down on your back on a comfortable bed, knees bent. See that you are warm. Keep both your hands on your abdomen. Close your eyes. Now, observe your breathing, hands separating as you breathe in, coming together as you breathe out. Feel the expansion and contraction. Get lost in the rhythm. Go beyond everything else. Just feel the breath in and out. Feel the whole universe breathing through you.
Legs up (Viparitakarni):
This one I do when I am very exhausted and my legs ache. I lie down on the ground and keep my feet up on the bed.
Arm Chair:
One more version is to lie on the bed with one knee bent and keep the other foot on the bent knee. Rest your hands wherever you wish. I prefer to rest mine on the throat and step wise move my attention from throat, to knee to abdomen which ensures that I don’t fall asleep.Or try lying on your side with your head supported by your bent hand like Lord Narayana.
What about meditation on the toilet seat?
Best place:
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When you have got a hang of the practice and started enjoying it, make a little haven for yourself. Always meditate in the same place and preferably the same time. You can tune in to the timings of fellow meditators. Sit on a woollen seat covered by silk or use a grass seat covered with cloth, if you have strong objections to using wool.
Building the ambience: You may light a lamp, burn incense but these are non essentials. In advanced meditation, sandalwood paste is applied in the region of third eye.
Measure of success in meditation:
The time you can stay in meditation.
The depth you can reach.
But most importantly how you handle real life situations.
How long does your anger last?
How long are you ruminating on the insult?
How deep is your meditation?
The deeper your meditation, more is the peace. Our brain shows different brain waves depending on how deep in meditation we have reached. There are basically four types of brain waves.
Beta waves: aware, alert, waking state, frequency at > 14 Hz.
Alpha waves: the first of the waves to be discovered, have a frequency of 7 13 Hz.
It is a state where you are alert, aware, meditating and calm.
The level is enough to cause relaxation and very useful in visualization.
Theta waves: deep sleep state, 4 6 Hz.
The deeper level is used in healing at cellular or DNA level.
Delta waves: very deep state, coma, brain death, 0 3 Hz
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Gamma waves in long term meditators
Disturbance during meditation: egative states: Doubt, fears, desires, pain, anxieties, anger, sleep, fatigue, ennui.
Positive states: fantasy, ecstasy, bliss, peace.
Once you start practicing, you are apt to face problems and you are likely to stop your practice before you have really got around to feeling the mind. That is why I always tell my class to go slow. Do it for a short duration for the first few months, three to five minutes, a few times in a day.
Why this happens is, as you are used to keep busy, you may never really observe your mind. And suddenly when you stop all activities and start observing it, you notice how restless it is or how negative your thoughts can be. This builds up resistance and as we know, whatever one resists, persists. The best way is to work around the problem. Let a few thoughts come. Be comfortable with them, whatever their quality. You will soon learn to enjoy your practice.
Failure to recapture the state:
When you start meditating and gain some peace, you are happy but after a while we cannot get into the groove. What happens?
Meditation becomes monotonous, mechanical. It is time to change the practice so that you may stay aware or you may stop meditating for a couple of days. Probably that is reason why so many techniques were evolved.
Another difficulty is the constant wandering of the mind. The monkey mind is apt to wander. Then, what do you do? These are few techniques I use with beginners. Gently prod the mind to come back.*When you are meditating you assign the mind the role of a supervisor, who is supposed to keep count or you may opt for a guided meditation recording.
Why people don’t want to meditate
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You may have reasons for not meditating but when you look at them closely they may be just excuses.
Before reading this book you might have read many books. You may even have tried meditating and given up. Let us see why most people shy away from meditating.
ot for me : It is for the spiritual kinds. Does not fit with my macho image.** I am not a spiritual person.
o time : Meditation takes time. I will do it when I have enough time. May be when I retire.
Difficult : It is difficult. I can’t do the lotus and neither have I tried.
Useless or o benefits : If meditation had any benefits, and it has been around a long time, it would have shown results and every one would be doing it. People want things to happen instantly. One thing is for sure. If you meditate for three minutes, you will be stress free at least for three minutes and a few minutes following the meditation. For the spiritual athletes I would like to remind you, meditation is a cross country run not a hundred metres dash and you are not competing with anyone. Everyone who participates gets loads of goodies. So, watch out!
Unrealistic expectation : I want to get enlightened during a one week retreat. Meditators have to enjoy the joys of the road, the goal, whatever it may be is secondary.
Procrastination : A common excuse is I will meditate tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes.
MYTHS ABOUT MEDITATIO :
Myth 1: Meditators do not fall sick, popularized by well meaning people.
Fact: Take the example of Sri Ramkrishna Paramhamsa and Sri Raman Maharshri. Both were great Yogis but both were sick at the end of their
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 62 life. Your spiritual strength does not depend on whether you can ward of illness but how you bear the pain and suffering.
Myth 2: I will have to leave the world .There was one lady who was afraid that meditation would affect her marital life.
Fact: Most meditators are householders and efficient workers.
Myth 3: Meditation is dangerous.
Fact: Anything done wrongly or overdone could be dangerous. This book opens you to the dangers of meditation. There are real dangers and I have seen them in my patients. Only consolation is none of them are as bad as any of the chemicals we are exposed to in our everyday life. For beginners, the rule is shorter the better, simpler the better. I will discuss more about side effects later.
Myth 4: I need to wait for the perfect time, place or ambience.
Fact: You can do it for three minutes or it can be a way of life. I am sure you have judged for yourself by now.
Which is the right age to start meditation?
Unfortunately, we do not have studies to say how early we should vaccinate (if I am allowed to use the word) our children against the ravages of stress. Meditation is preventive against so many physical and mental illnesses that all I can say is earlier, the better. If you just give a thought to the vaccine concept in disease you will know it has been trial and error all the way. Sometimes, I feel it is sheer guess work. There is no way to justify three against five doses of a vaccine and so forth.
Any side effects, like yo –yo dieting?
If we compare meditation practice to fitness, diet and exercise that is. We all know that sooner or later most dieters fall in to the yo yo phenomena. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this thought creeps into your ever
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 63 questioning mind. Whether there is any side effects like that of yo yo dieting. Much as the self help books like to deny, side effects do exist.
When you return from a meditation retreat you are on a high, the energies last for some time and they slowly dwindle and so does your mood. If you don’t practice, you will soon lose the ability to calm yourself. You may try to recapture the same energy levels of the retreat centre and land in disappointment. Or you may fancy yourself a spiritual person, another ego trip. You may find yourself sermonizing rather than meditating. If you already have a mind related illness, you may land in depression, even be suicidal. I have seen retreat related mania and depression in my OPD.
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PART 3: MI D CO CEPTS:
What do I mean by flexing your spiritual muscle?
It is basically having some control on your mind.
What then is the nature of the mind?
Mind is a flow of thoughts. We have fast thoughts, slow thoughts. The thoughts may be positive, negative or neutral. They may be in harmony with each other or in conflict. According to Dr Candace Pert, mind is like internet can be accessed from anywhere (Audio book Your body is your subconscious mind)
Quantity and Quality of Thoughts: Think of very busy highway. Cars speeding by and you are standing and trying to see which cars, of what colour predominate. Or you are the policeman checking only foreign cars. For any meaningful inference, you’ll have to first reasonably slow down the traffic so you can count .Once it is very slow, you can analyse the types of vehicles.
When the mind is racing with thoughts the first thing to do is to decrease the number of thoughts to a manageable level (quantity) like slowing down traffic on a busy highway.
You cannot stop the raffic try as you might. It would have been so much easier if we could. Speed is all you can control.
There are basically three types of thoughts that arise in the mind.
1. Thoughts related to the past, judging and righteous thoughts.
2. Thoughts related to the future, desire and hope thoughts
3. Thoughts related to the present moment.
When we think of the past, there is regret, resentment, guilt, disappointment, occasional nostalgia.
When we think of future, there is anxiety, worry, concern, fear, apprehension, anticipation and hope.
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Once a thought disturbs your focussed concentration, you become restless. Filled with doubt, desire and fear you find it difficult to get back to concentrating.
When you try to distract yourself by brushing away these unwanted thoughts where do they go?
Which thoughts go faster lust, anger?
We will notice that when we try to count our thoughts we tend to get lost in the contents of the thought. I have often wondered why when there are 24 hours in a day and I have chosen just 10 minutes to meditate, should all the unwanted thoughts queue up, as though a new counter has opened up at the booking office.
There are 3 aspect of thought
Content
Context
Concept
According to physicist Prof David Bohm, context changes the significance or meaning of content.
With a change in context, we get a different perspective which is as valid as the original.
Concept is dependent on our belief system. Content and context the first time around give us a concept.
We are not seeing things as they are (content) but defending our concept of things. So, instead of a dialogue we have a conflict.
Thought and Behaviour:
We all know that thought affects behaviour, but we do not appreciate that behaviour affects our thoughts. Every time we act out our thoughts there is a subtle impression left in our subconscious minds (chittavritti) which reinforces subsequent behaviour. ‘Practice makes the man perfect or practice makes the mind ready’. Observe how action affects your thoughts.
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The Monkey Mind: Swami Vivekananda has described this mind very aptly to a monkey (markata mind of the scriptures).The mind is like a monkey who has been given a dose of intoxicants , stung by a scorpion and if that is not enough, its tail has been set on fire.
How do you then still this *restless mind? And that is exactly what you have to do in meditation. Do not feel dejected yet. Now stop reading and do the following exercise.
Practice:
Step1
“Just raise your right hand.”
”Are you able to do it?”
“Keep it raised for 10 seconds.”
“Can you do it?”
Step2
“Now stop thinking for the next 10 seconds. Did you succeed? No? ”
“Stop thinking about monkeys, now ! What happened?”
Step 3
“Stop breathing for 10 seconds. Did you manage?”
“Good!”
Principle:
You could raise your hand and keep it aloft because the hand was controlled by the voluntary nervous system. You could not stop your thoughts because thoughts are a part of the mind which is not under voluntary control . In fact, you must have noticed that the minute you banned the thought of monkeys, your mind was flooded with monkey thoughts.
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And what about your breath?
Fortunately, it is involuntary and let us thank God for that! Imagine having to remember to breathe or like Ondine’s lover stay awake all the time so you can breathe through the night.
But there’s a concession here. You can have some voluntary control on your breath. You could stop your breath for 10 seconds, perhaps longer.
Mind….friend or foe? You have the freedom to think. But you can’t ever control your mind because whenever you resist the mind it defies you. It is wiser to befriend it.
What comes first, the thought or the emotion?
Emotion is energy in motion (root emovere). Emotions are the body’s reaction to thought. The primordial reactions happen so fast that we cannot trace the thoughts as they occur. To save ourselves from danger we had to be quick so we needed to have an image, e.g. ‘Tiger danger flee’ circuit.
Now, it so happens that we don’t need any of these circuits in the modern times but we still retain them and find ourselves reacting first and thinking later. Isn’t it?
‘I was angry but I don’t know why!’
The flight and fight seems to be an automatic response now but it was definitely a learned response at some point in history. You might as well learn the relaxation response now, i.e install a new software in computer terms.
Leave the body’s intelligence to take care of emergencies.The limbic system is well equipped to do the same. But with our neocortex (read latest brain) grown out of proportion, we have mastered abstract thinking. We can now react to a thought as though it is a reality. This ability to conceptualize has put us at a disadvantage.
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Archetypes (shadows):
Carl Jung mentioned the symbolic images which we link –up to in our subconscious mind called the archetypes. The Archetypes we hold form a part of the collective agglomeration of the subconscious or unconscious portions of entire universe, the collective unconscious. These images are responsible for dreams, disturbances in meditation and real life.
Our mind thinks in words and images. The primitive mind thinks in images and these images are so ingrained in our psyche they are called archetypes. We have positive archetypes, the ones we identify ourselves with, which empower us and the negative archetypes from which we shy away.
For a long time, my archetype was that of Arjuna* of Mahabharata fame. So invariably, I found myself fighting injustice. One day, I decided to change it and decided to be Sanjaya, the clairvoyant, the disinterested party who had mastered his senses. Immediately, I found myself pursuing metaphysical studies and gradually the Arjuna in me became non judgemental and ultimately faded away.
Working with Archetypes:
Identify one person whom you identify with most, your role model. What are the things you like about this person which you possess and those you don’t possess already?
Is there anything in the person which you don’t like which may also be part of your personality?
Do you want to change your archetype?
Is there anything in your identification with this person stopping you from making a change which will empower you?
Which tune are you humming?
What are the lyrics?
When I was in school my favourite poem was’ The Vagabond’*and especially the three lines, ‘My bread I dip in the river, that’s the life for a man (girl) like me, that’s the life forever’. And guess what? I have always
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 69 been moving around the country. Sometime later, A Hindi movie number took my fancy, ‘Meri zindagi hei kya, ek kati patang hei’. Well, I imagined that a kati patang was free to move wherever it wanted to go. But when things started going wrong for me, I immediately cut this song from my hard disc. We are often not aware how seemingly innocuous things like songs can mar our success.
How to befriend the mind?
It is said that idle mind is a devil’s workshop.
But can the mind ever be idle?
Mind suffers from an incessant chatter, an inner dialogue or monologue, at times with an accompanying video.
Watch the kind of thoughts that arise in your mind content, positive, negative or neutral. Sometimes your own mind is your worst inner critic. And remember, thought is energy. For every negative thought, press the delete button or say ‘stop’ if you are auditory person or erase it with an eraser if you are a visually oriented person. Suppose a lustful thought comes, ask, where did that thought come from? Was it from suppressed, repressed, read, heard or seen material?
Where do thoughts spring from?
Thoughts arise from the outside sensual stimuli through the 5 sense organs plus the mind which is called the 6 th sense organ. We sit in a sound proof room and close our eyes, yet we will be flooded with thoughts. These are sprouting from the dormant seeds in our mind. Same thing happens in a dream. Though we are impervious to outside stimulation, we are still at the mercy of our fertile mind.
Both negative and positive thoughts arise in the consciousness. If we feed them with attention, they gain momentum. Otherwise, they subside on their own. All negative thoughts are fallen angels so to say. Anger is the counterpart of hope; pride is the reflection of beauty and so on. The subtle thoughts are very fleeting and are more important for advanced practitioners. e.g. A thought like, ‘I am feeling very blissful now’. A
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 70 thought like this can do more harm than a thought ‘I hate you’. In can derail you from the path.
Watching Thoughts:
Tracing definite circuits or paths I call it attending.
Sometimes, it seems like an uncontrolled atomic fission reaction, amplifying negative energy, resulting in deleterious effects if the thoughts are negative. Whenever, there is too much restlessness in the mind, there is an obstruction to the clarity of thinking.
Whenever there is a conflict we use distracting thoughts like fantasy, TV etc. because we dare not face the conflict. This is a part of avoidance behaviour. Again, while watching TV, if you identify yourself with your thoughts, mental attention goes outside. The same attention has to be directed inside in meditation. Be a witness (sakshibhava).
Don’t react to the thoughts. Create a space/ gap between thoughts, however small and catch the awareness. In fact, you are already watching your thoughts. Only be aware.
Writing Down Thoughts:
One way of getting to know your thinking process is to write down your thoughts. Always keep a scratch pad and pencil by your side while meditating. You sometimes strike the best of insights as well as nagging thoughts while practice. Scribble them down and then continue with your practice.
Note down the quantity and quality of thoughts. What kind of thoughts are there? Future thoughts, planning, past memories, nagging doubts, desire thoughts, like and dislike thoughts? What happens when you feel lack of control on your mind?
You feel helpless, frustrated. You may turn aggressive. It is important to let go. Years later, you will realize that all the heartache was simply unnecessary and inconvenient.
How to handle negative emotions?
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How to transmute the negative emotions to positive?
There are different ways you can eliminate negative emotions. When they have been suppressed for long, releasing them is quite an ordeal.
If necessary, enlist help from a counsellor. Do little at a time, as much as you can handle.
Acceptance:
Some things need to be accepted like grief following death, acceptance of the now. Do not think, it shouldn’t have been or it should have been otherwise.
Bhastrika : One of the finest tools to release deep seated emotional knots.
Vipassana:
Keeping a Journal : Writing out thoughts and feelings after meditation or dreams.
Writing a letter and expressing your feelings : If you are very distressed about an issue in a relationship you can write a letter to the other person, later read it aloud and then destroy it.
Emotional Freedom Technique
Movement Therapy
Enneagram
Using the Enneagram
The Enneagram is one of the latest personality systems in use, and emphasizes psychological motivations. Its earliest origins are not completely clear the circular symbol may have originated in ancient Sufi traditions, and was used by the esoteric teacher George Gurdjieff (1866 1949). However, it is most likely that neither the Sufis nor Gurdjieff taught a system of personality types. The modern version of the Enneagram personalities emerged in the 20th century, from Oscar Ichazo who was a student of Gurdjieff, but whose personality system stands apart from Gurdjieff's teachings. In the last few decades, the system has undergone further change, incorporating modern psychological ideas in the writings of
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Naranjo, Helen Palmer, Kathy Hurley/Theodorre Donsson, and Don Riso/Russ Hudson.
Enneagram Personality Types:
Enneagram 9
8 1,
2 7
3 6
5 4
1.Reformer:
Rational, ethical, perfectionist
Quality control
2.Mentor :
Helpful, social, sensitive
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Interpersonal relations
3.Achiever :
Go -getter, workaholic
Inspiring
4. Designer:
Artistic, self absorbed, temperamental
Communication person
5.Investigator
Innovative ,secretive, keen Learner
Non interference
6. Troubleshooter
Loyal,likeable
Partnership
7. Enthusiast
Upbeat, likes change, postpones things
8. Challenger:
Decisive, commanding, cannot share
Dependable in crisis
9. Peace-maker
Accommodating, harmony, dislikes conflict
Non assertive
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Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT:
Gary Craig has been generous enough to keep this technique without a copyright and reminds me of the rishis of yore on either side of globe. He must be surely feeling the ‘I am thou and thou art me’ stuff.
Over the years the EFT has been modified and I have used a few of the modified forms with my clients. And though I give written instruction to aid the memory of my clients, they somehow manage to come with their unique designer version of their own at the next visit. They have understood it their way and they are benefited, so I have no reasons to grumble.
The EFT works because we store memory in each cell of our body. According to Chinese Medicine, The chi arises from the bone. In EFT we tap bony points. We could be releasing stored emotions that way fast and efficiently.
Practice:
Let’s see how to do it. Well, I am sure you will be reading this with rose tinted glasses, or lavender breath or breezy chimes in your ears. Whichever way, I can guarantee you will make it.
Step 1:
Stand in front of a mirror.
Choose an issue which needs self acceptance right now.
May be your weight problem and say “Although I am fat (overweight if that sounds good to you), I still love and accept myself completely.”
As you do so tap lightly 5 7 times at the following points with every repetition.
• Top of the head.
• Forehead between the eyebrows.
• Both temples.
• Beneath the eyes.
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• Beneath the nose.
• Chin.
• Chest at the inner end of both collar bones.
• Ribs below the arm pit.
• End at the karate chop point.
Repeat the whole sequence three times.
Step 2:
As you do so another issue related to your weight will come into your mind.
Let us say, ‘I am lonely’.
Now repeat the tapping as, ‘Although I am lonely I still love and accept myself completely’.
Next, an issue of rejection in childhood may come up. So change to ‘Although I was rejected as a child, I love and except myself completely.’ For more information you could shop for tapes and books on the web.
EFT freedom technique has been effectively used to clear phobias for small animals besides its other benefits.
How to feel Positive Emotions:
What comes first, the fright or the flight is a million dollar question. Smile and you will be happy. Research has shown that we can affect our feeling states by our ‘acting out’.
Dissecting the Emotions:
The primordial emotions we have are
Positive: happiness, joy, exhilaration, ecstasy, with an upward gradient.
egative: basically two anger and sorrow
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If we analyze further, anger may have underlying fear or sorrow , jealousy. Anger is kind of active emotion (rajasic) whereas sorrow is passive (tamasic).
At one end we have the extremely positive emotion of unconditional love (white colour) and extremely negative, suicidal thought (black colour).
In between are the different hues of the colour spectrum, green envy, red anger, purple compassion. Each of these have a frequency but it would be difficult to say which is which. Frequency is different from the speed of thoughts. We are talking about quality. When we actually measure the frequency, the spectrum repeats itself across the frequency chart.
Resonant frequency imaging or RFI gives a coloured picture of our predominant thoughts.
Fear:
Fears play a big role in determining what we do or feel capable of doing. We are plagued by fears of
1.Abandonment
2. Rejection
3. Betrayal, cheating
4. Humiliation
4. Loss money, prestige, ideology, loved one, relationship
5. Jealousy, envy
6. Loneliness.
7. Sickness, old age, death
8. Unknown
9. Losing consciousness
10. Dependency
When we are overwhelmed by strong emotions like anger, fear, the negative thoughts hijack our entire awareness. Fear is justified when it is
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 77 essential to save life or limb. In that case, there is an immediacy of purpose, ingrained into our brain. The limbic system will work on auto pilot. In other cases fear has no purpose.
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PART 4 METAPHYSICAL CO CEPTS
Guru
There is no undermining the need for a Guru in your spiritual life, whatever the western trained authors may like to claim. No one has ever learnt the piano by reading a book or did a bypass surgery from a D I Y!
And I have written this book not to undermine the need of a guru or portray myself as one. It is more like a primer, the ABC book with a few pictures to get you started. So you don’t think that the next retreat you hear about is out to suck your purse or they are out to convert you to their cult.
I want you to feel secure. Secure enough to try out meditation. And know till where you can go alone and where the Guru becomes indispensable. In my life there have been Gurus all the way. They have come in different forms and situations and I can’t but underscore their need.
I liked this one about J. Krishnamurthy *by a spiritual teacher, “If J. K. says you don’t need a guru and you trust him enough to find what you are seeking, he then becomes your guru by default and proves otherwise.”
Most people think of a Guru as an ‘all or none’ phenomenon .There are some people who have blind faith and others who are totally opposed to the idea.
Most helping Gurus are somewhere in between God and man, human yet divine. Trust in the Guru’s teachings is important. It is said, ‘Do as the Guru preaches and not what he does’ because one may not always understand a Guru’s action. What is right for the Guru may not be right for the disciple.
The Guru lends his presence :
For those who have not heard of Sri Raman Maharshi, he was a saint who lived in silence at the foothills of the Arunachala Mountain in Tamilnadu, India. His presence was so powerful that many a seeker would enter deep Samadhi states in his company. Once, while taking blessing from a saint, I touched my forehead on the ground at a distance of a metre from his feet. I
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 79 didn’t realize the passage of time till a person behind me in the queue touched me and brought me to awareness. Such is the power of a practising Guru.
Guru need not be someone extraordinary. As Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev has said the more one progresses on the metaphysical path, he becomes simpler or extra ordinary. The guru need not be a physical presence. In Akkalkot in Maharashtra or Kurukshetra, one can just slip into Samadhi very readily. Though I haven’t had the opportunity to visit yet, I am sure the Himalayas have many such abodes.
Why do some people advice to have a single Guru or a single method?
Spiritual practice had so far been for the journey beyond life. It is like preparing for final examinations. One is aware that if at the time of an examination we struggle with dozens of methods to solve one sum, we are at a loss because the time is limited. At the time of death, we have still lesser time and the stakes are high. Since habits become entrained, having a single method practised long enough is likely to be recollected. Or we may leave our body in a state of confusion .
If someone is doing spiritual practice for relaxation or peace of mind, it may or may not matter whether one follows a single path or more, depending on the makeup of the individual personality.
Taking Responsibility:
If you want peace or any control on your life, you will have to own up responsibility for all that happens in your life. By taking responsibility we do not enter the blame game. We shift our focus from reaction to response.
Reaction versus Response :
When we react, we act not from conscious awareness but from our subconscious mind. We invariably have some remote conditioning related to an earlier event e.g. spurned by a friend or rejection by a parent. On the other hand, a response is a conscious decision to act in a particular way after considering possibilities and alternatives. We need to be in awareness
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 80 to respond. In reaction, we are temporarily blinded or numbed by our emotions. It is a knee jerk phenomenon related to our primitive brain, the limbic system .
A reaction is automatic like a flight or fight phenomenon, whereas a response is a controlled action. A kind of a fine tuned reaction.
How can we respond?
Awareness:
By being aware of who or what is pushing your buttons, what is prodding you to react to the situation. As our awareness expands, we change. We expand to include different people, different ideas. In awareness, even our understanding of a particular concept changes.
Victim to Victor: taking responsibility:
We often get caught up in the role of victim or martyr, giving others the responsibility of our happiness and wait for a saviour or the legendary Prince Charming to come and wake us up from our dream sleep. We little realize that if we want to be happy we will have to shed our victim role. Nobody can love a victim, martyr or saviour. He invokes pity, respect or awe but not love.
Judgement:
When you judge, you are pointing one finger at another and four at yourself. Judgement results because of dichotomous thinking. One thinks in terms of Good evil, right wrong, my perspective/your perspective etc.
This is also called black and white thinking.
What if you had the aerial view or the telescopic or microscopic view? Would that change your judgement?
One of my friends had not called for some time and I assumed that she was upset about the manner in which I had talked to her during our last conversation. I was not in the right frame of mind to call and investigate. A
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 81 few months later, I learnt that she was herself going through troubled times and had little time on her hands and mind to deal with silly issues.
What about politicians, should we stop judging politicians or the bureaucracy?
Yes, because whenever you judge others you invariably judge yourself. You become hypercritical of yourself. There is an added responsibility of always doing the right thing and if you fail you start self deprecating. Nobody has stopped you from contesting an election. So, at a subconscious level you know that you haven’t really taken responsibility.
That brings feelings of guilt, helplessness or anger. And haven’t we elected them in the first place. So that brings self judgement. Not a nice feeling to live with. Taking the vicarious responsibility for things you didn’t do. Self judgement brings about a split within our mind. We stop liking a certain part (not me) about our self. Flexibility is the key to being non judgemental.
Criticism:
Do not criticise, empower. To change, one needs power or positive energy. Criticism is negative energy.
Dualities and Balance :
The ordinary mind is a muddle filled with dualities of likes and dislikes; love and hate; pleasure and pain and so forth.
And what is their significance in human experience?
All human behaviour is motivated by an urge to avoid pain or seek pleasure. I see them as the two sides of the same coin. You cannot get one and leave the other. If you get pleasure from an object (person, experience), sooner or later you are going to get pain from the same because you are likely to be separated from that object.
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The best alternative would be to sit on the edge of the coin, experiencing the pleasure and pain as it comes in life but not identifying with either. Meditation helps you find that balance, that space where you can withdraw yourself when overwhelmed by pain or find yourself at the mercy (grip) of self indulgence.
Self Esteem: Self esteem is a big misnomer. Although it is about how you estimate yourself, this estimate is built on what feedback and feed forward you have received from parents, teachers and peers in childhood and friends and colleagues in adulthood. And needless to say you may walk most of your adult life donning paint, masks or emotional facades. Even in the privacy of your meditation, you may fear facing the real you.
You need to feel in order to heal . As you practice, you will catch yourself fantasizing, rationalising or defending yourself.
Meditation is all about dropping our pretences. It is integration of your real and actual selves. It is about facing yourself as you are (actual you) without the facades, without the paint. It is about self acceptance. Facing yourself, the actual you is the most difficult part. The conflict between actual and real self leads to guilt, frustration, anger and fear to name a few. What we did /are instead of what we should have done or been.
When you realize that you are pretending you should ask yourself this question, “Why am I pretending?” This will lead to self actualization.
Self Actualization:
Your self image may be positive or negative.
Is the image you hold in your mind, the one the one you present to others?
In other words, is there a chasm between your real self and the one you wish you could be. There will be parts of you which you wish could be different and could change with effort. There will be parts of you which cannot be changed, at least not in this life time and need to be accepted.
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The more and more you progress on the path of meditation you can integrate these ‘not me’ parts into your core so that you start feeling more complete, more real, more whole and as a fall out see the wholeness of others and the universe.
Accepting the non acceptable you expand, so much so that you transcend the highest initial image you had created of yourself. You override your own expectations. You didn’t have the looks and couldn’t be a film star but now you are ready to be star in the sky.
Freedom or Moksha:
Moksha is one word in spiritual jargon which is the least understood.
What is moksha?
It is freedom but freedom to do what or from what?
Humans have been endowed with freedom to do, not to do or to do otherwise. Man unlike animals can rise above his instincts. If you are hungry and food is available, you can still choose not to eat because it not your favourite brand of pizza!
Enlightenment:
Many of you reading this may be looking for enlightenment, feeling that it is a grand event that will occur sometime in future with scintillating light and sound effects. And if any of you share my thought processes you may be waiting to be enlightened as I once did, waiting …..to start enjoying the now.
I used to call it, ‘arriving, arriving, not arrived !’
But then I realized that there is nowhere to go or come. It is now here and though I may not be realized in the classic sense of the term, this was a kind of home coming. It is now here, now. And again it is now.
So, you have to be enlightened every moment. Enlightenment is an ongoing activity. And this enlightenment can mean different things to different
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 84 people. It may make one lighter (lighten) or Light up your path, whichever you will. If you are the independent thinking types, not too cagey about what others have said before you, you’ll have your own brand of enlightenment.
If you really look at it in a lighter way it may be lighten up or light up You definitely don’t want it like a lightening shooting up your spine, unless of course if you want to walk in the shoes of Pandit Gopikrishna. There may be benefits, no doubt but it is a sharp razor’s edge. Most people I know want to feel more alive, more in touch with their thoughts and feeling, have more of peace, contentment and loads of love.
So, let it be…. enjoying the ‘Joys of the road’
In the words of the poet –‘The joys of the road, are chiefly these ...... A crimson touch on the hard wood trees.’
For yet others enlightenment may mean waking up from the great dream called the world(* Mandukya Upanishad).
Synchronicity:
Seen from a higher perspective, all things in the world are synchronous, there are no mistakes. By synchronicity I am not suggesting pre destiny. Of course, certain things are predestined like the sex of a naturally conceived child or the resources we are born into, though we have enough free will to act according to our desire.
But we ought to remember that ours is not the only free will that works in this world at this time. There are billions of free wills determining the trajectories of outcomes and moreover the decisions we made years back, bear on what happens in our life now, like global warming. It all seems a kind of chaotic order .
But once you set foot on the path, you can see an order in the apparent disorder. At a personal level, the job interview you got rejected for might have later earned you a PhD degree.
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Accepting change and uncertainty:
Everything in the world is subject to change .Change is the reality of life. We have to grow old and die to be born again. Destruction and resurrection are facts we need to face. Life has to flow like the river, we cannot hold it back . Accepting this truth frees us from clinging and attachment. If the river had to cling to its banks, it would not be a river.
Life has a rhythm of its own, like the rise and ebb of the tide. Tension and relaxation are part of the rhythm, so is expansion and contraction. The whole world has a sine wave pattern, night followed by day, spring followed by winter and after the nadir comes the peak. Therein lies acceptance and hope.
Cause and Effect:
‘As you sow, so shall you reap’ says the Bible. The law of karma says that every action has a reaction. Not only that, every thought has a reaction. For the general public the law of karma often meant that if there is an effect, especially a negative one, then there must be a cause to it , most probably a bad deed in this or a previous lifetime. This was a sort of a moral mathematical equation.
But recent transcripts of past life regressions have changed our understanding. If a person has died of a suicide in a previous lifetime than the chances of suicidal thoughts in this lifetime may be higher. A person with deformed legs in this lifetime may have had an accidental amputation in a previous life. The law or doctrine of karma is not simple and straight forward. However, going into its intricacies may not serve my readers, so I will defer it for now (see Understanding Past Lives).
What determines our next birth?
It is not just our deeds and actions in this life but the very last thoughts at the time of death which determine where our soul will be propelled to. As seen in accounts of some NDEs, the whole lifetime is flashed before one
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 86 leaves the body. It goes without saying that if we have lived a happy and virtuous life, we will have no guilt, remorse or sorrow. But sometimes, we die in grief not due to any fault of ours but because of non acceptance of reality. This sorrow brings us more sorrow in afterlife. Karma is not deterministic or fatalistic; it is an incentive to evolution. We are offered a chance to evolve even up to the last moment, hence the importance of ‘The Phowa’.
This law of karma (doctrine of reincarnation in the older gospels) is really an interesting subject for those who like to stimulate their brain. I had read many of the scriptures but could not very well understand why the part really separated from the whole to begin with. In other words, why the one became many? I met a teacher who had spent three long years with a Vedanta Guru and thought she may have an answer. Her reply put me off. The first thing she said was ‘we should not ask’, which is against the very spirit of Vedanta learning. The next was ‘we should have faith in the scriptures’. I told her the question had appeared in my mind and it would be hypocrisy to deny it.
I went to sleep quiet disheartened and in the trance state got both my answers. The first was in the form of a symbol, ‘the ocean’. The second was that ‘faith’ belongs to the path of devotion and has nothing to do with Vedanta. What I interpreted was that the ocean and the wave always existed. There is no wave without the ocean and the ocean without waves cannot be an ocean. It means that there was never a beginning as far as an individual soul is concerned and therefore it has no end. It is eternal.
The next question is of course more intriguing. Does this mean that the wave is never the original wave when it comes the next time around? Do we take on a part of other peoples’ karma when we are born again? Is it because of this reason that the rishis insisted that we treat this human birth as most precious and dissolve our karmas? Should we always work for collective good?
Studies in past life have yielded funny instances where many people have reported to be the same famous personality. This has been explained by souls borrowing other peoples’ life records and treating them as their own (imprinting). Perhaps it is a fact that we really take a part of others. And
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 87 then there is the ‘walk in’ phenomenon where you can lend your body to another soul as you leave.
Projecting egative Energy:
A young girl once told me that all her classmates with the exception of one girl disliked her. When I probed further I realised that she was in non acceptance of herself. She was projecting so much negative energy through her thoughts which made it impossible for her classmates to like her.
We should understand that every thought is a form of energy and by thinking or entertaining negative thoughts we generate negative energy which spreads to others in the environment. If you learn to love yourself, you create the right vibes to attract loving and lovable company.
Positive thinking or law of attraction, why does it fail?
Recent years have brought a spate of self help literature on positive thinking and the law of attraction. People, in all their earnestness are trying to change their circumstances through their thoughts. If we review the life of great saints and seers, they are filled with suffering, hardships and trials. How do we reconcile to this paradox? Moreover, our most sincere efforts in scripting, drafting or sculpting our dream life often meets with failure and we are left feeling disheartened, dispirited and defeated.
It is true that negative thinking invites trouble both in terms of energy exchange and psychologically but the opposite is not always valid. i.e. positive thoughts may not always bring desired results. There are many variables responsible for our life events, some related to our subconscious wishes, some to our thoughts five years ago, some to other peoples’ thoughts and some to what our soul had planned prior to coming to this Earth. In case things don’t work out for us, we should accept that all things happen for the best, ‘All is well that ends well’. If a person believes in life after death then the end may extend beyond life.
Illness as a teacher:
I have had enough of learning experiences from this great teacher but personally I favour the common cold. When my nose used to be as red as
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Rudolf the red nosed reindeer, my friend would walk into my clinic and ask, in her typical signature style, “How are you?”
And I would invariably reply, “Great” or “fine!”
Till one fine day she was so cheesed off and blurted, “ Your nose is like a red pepper and you have the cheek to say you are fine, that’s denial!” “Sorry, I didn’t get you” I remarked.
“How can you say you are fine when I see you are sick?”
“Oh you are talking of my nose? It’s my stress tap. I let the extra stress drain through it so it doesn’t bother me too much.”
Now, having too high a sensitivity for this world, running nose was a common thing. No wonder it is called common cold. I never thought my nose was me. Moreover, all people who are healthy in all respects are not necessarily happy. At a subconscious level, one may choose to get an illness to learn lessons in life, lessons of forbearance, resilience and forgiveness. We have to see illness in this larger context.
To be or not to be:
In anxiety, if we watch the content of our thoughts we will see a conflict, to do or not to do, go or not to go, be or not to be. These sort of a complex thought process holds a lot of energy .Watch your thoughts and watch what happens when you ignore a thought, what happens when you resist a thought or when you give it attention.
In psychology, there is an axiom that says, ‘whatever you resist, persists’ and the more you resist the more it persists. On the other hand if you start liking the thought, you get caught up in the thought process which may lead to a fantasy. There is either an aversion or attachment to every spontaneously arising thought. Attachment for a thought you like and aversion for the one you don’t. You need to break this chain. Get a space however small between the links of the chain from where you can be conscious, you can be aware of the whole thinking process itself .
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SPACE PERSPECTIVE: Where am I?
I once received a beautiful forward through email. Two children seated on the beach are trying to make a sand castle in shown in a close up view. With every flick we get a larger picture including more and more of the beach, other people, palm trees and sea while the size of the children decreases till we move to the view the whole globe and ultimately, the children appear as tiny specks, if at all and we a get a larger picture of the universe. We then go back in reverse till we come to the children once again.
Our problems can be put in proper perspective if we understand who we are. We are at once as great as the whole universe and as small, as tiny as the smallest speck in the universe, depending from the point from where we view ourselves. It is said that we see the world not as it is but as we are, through our coloured glasses.
TIME PERSPECTIVE: Time is a mental construct, created to explain events. Suppose there was a super being who could visualize the whole life of a single individual, past, present and future? Everything would exist in an eternal now for him. The Overseer sees all as the eternal now.
Being Present:
There was this gentle old lady who seemed to be peaceful at all times. Once a young man approached her and asked , “Grandmother, what is the secret of your peaceful life?”
“I eat, drink, bathe and sleep”.
“But we all do that”
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“Yes, true, but when I bathe, I bathe; when I eat, I eat; when I drink, I drink and when I sleep, I sleep.”
How many of us are capable of doing what we are in the process of doing?
If we really look at our mind it is either in the past filled with remorse, regret, resentment, guilt or the occasional nostalgia. Or racing into the future with aspirations, anticipations, hopes, anxieties, concern and worry? As long as the mind is in the present there can be only one thought ‘I am’ and when we are in the present, there is no time. Time relates to past or future. In the now (present), there is no past or future. Many people like to take to dangerous sports, rock climbing because danger makes you stay in the present .
Being in the now, present moment awareness:
How big is your now?
The word now has somewhat become a cliché word. You may wonder how long a duration should your now last? Current financial year?.. Current academic year? ..This month? Till this project is over?
There is only one now… This very moment . The moment you have uttered it, that now is already the past and the new now comes in. A moment may be less than nanoseconds but now is timeless, eternal. At the very best you could say, a moment is the time your one thought lasts.
This moment is as it should be. The past makes this moment poignant, it cannot be otherwise than it is, right now. We may choose to accept it or resist it. We can accept it and create the next moment as we desire or resist the present and let it persist.
For what is the mind if not a flow of thoughts? And what is time but the gap between thoughts? A mindless state is a timeless state. Mind you, I am not talking of clock time, the one given to all in equal measure by the Creator, 24 hours a day. I am as aware of it as you are as I type this and I do glance at the clock to keep track, so I don’t miss my appointments. It’s the psychological time I am talking about. The time you say which is not enough when you are happy or that time which will linger and you may find hard to kill, when you are lonely.
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Call a Friend:
Have you watched the quiz program, Kaun banega karodpati?* Have you noticed how everyone just lifts themselves from their seats when a friend is called, especially if they know the right answer? And how they sigh if the friend goofs up? For those few seconds we are a friend to the person in the hot seat sharing his anxiety, nervousness, hopes, expectations and dilemma but not his money. The greatest equipment you can have outside of your body in your spiritual gym is a good friend, one with whom you can bare all and who can be trusted.
Goals:
Today’s world is obsessed with growth. Everyone wants to be somebody great, successful, famous, rich and that too instantly. But what are the stakes? There can be no perpetual growth, neither for civilizations, nations, organizations nor for the individual. The steeper and quicker the peak, the faster and precipitous is the fall.
Spiritually, you can only evolve. In evolution, you are not having any external goals. It is a natural process. The minute you think you are evolving you have slipped. From a struggle in doing, you graduate to becoming and ultimately land up just being. ‘Becoming’ is non acceptance of the ‘now’, non acceptance of ‘what is’, whereas ‘being’ is acceptance of ‘now’.
As you expand to include others in yourself, your goals change. No longer do you want to be better or the best, being good is good enough. You see your success in the other’s success because he is nothing but your own reflection.
Surrender: Our limited ego is constantly seeking control of our thoughts and our life. Surrendering to our higher Self is, letting go off this control, ‘Thy will be done’. In any case we do not control anything worthwhile. Since there is no sense of separation from the Source, what happens then no longer matters. It is not a prayer of petition, asking for protection or expecting it. Handing
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over our life to a higher truth is being like a child. You let your father hold your hand. You let life flow and accept whatever comes. All struggles, all seeking and striving come to a grand halt and you choose to do nothing to protect yourself. Total personal control is an illusion.*
What do we fear in surrender? Do we have a fear of what would happen if we let go?
We are so used to being somebody with our labels. Our ego thrives on these labels. The minute we surrender, the ego goes for a beating, a loss of identity, being reduced to being a nobody but therein resides the magic. You have to become a no body to become every body o r no thing to become every thing . Some body denotes separation [some= part of whole = separate].
Surrendering to Divine will /Guru: Where do we draw a line?
How do we decide when we have to do something (action) or not do anything (inaction) since both are harbingers of karmic bondage?
In this age of rank materialism, many a sincere seeker is taken on an ego trip by the guide in the name of surrender. It behoves us to be well informed, so that we protect ourselves from harm. The knocking out of the will side (rational side) of our mind is an essential to step beyond the third dimension but it also makes us susceptible to the power of external suggestion. Before we surrender our will, we could prime our subconscious mind that we will not come to any harm through any external agency.
Happiness Analysis: This one I got from the Taittriya Upanishad, traditionally called the Ananda mimansa, summarised as,
1. Happiness is desire satisfied. 2. The one who desires is the one who is satisfied. 3. The intensity of desire determines the degree of happiness. 4. One object can give someone happiness, to another, pain. 5. Same object can give various degrees of happiness to different people. 6. Same object may give the same man different degrees of happiness at different times and in different circumstances.
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7. Happiness is not in objects. The object is only a reason to create the state of the mind responsible to give the man the required amount of happiness he desires. 8. Desire is a thought which causes a restless state of the mind. 9. Fulfilment of that desire unveils the bliss of the soul (ātmānanda). 10.
Happiness analysis asserts that whatever we choose to project our joy on to, relationships, food ,clothing or sex, it is the inner bliss which is manifested through this projection. i.e. we give power to the object.
There is s no harm in enjoying through your senses because that is what God is doing in this human form but trouble brews as you wait for the perfect time, the perfect partner, the perfect job to give meaning to your life when all the time the happiness is within you. (Mama ki ainuck) *.
Happiness is a choice. True happiness lies in accepting who we are and what we have.* (Joseph R Novello).
You postpone enjoying till you get xyz. Your happiness relates to your expectations. You can make it is easy for yourself. You can choose to be happy.
If I get X I’ll be happy.
If I get XX I’ll be very happy.
If I get XXX I’ll be very, very happy.
You have a choice to determine your ‘X’ i.e. put a value on X.
If you say I will be happy because I am breathing you can be very happy all the time. Don’t laugh at time. Nine years I had asthma and I would say to myself ‘let me breathe and I will be happy!’
Ho’oponopono: Ho’oponopono or Hawaiian for ‘make right’ has been in focus recently. It is based on age old principles of the ancient cultures,viz. taking responsibility, repentance, forgiveness, gratitude, love resulting in transmutation of emotions and change at a physical level. You can change
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 94 your world and your circumstances as well as others by working with your mind.
Practice:
You sit with yourself. You take responsibility for all that is happening in your life at this moment. Send out love, forgiveness, gratitude as we have already discussed. Wait and see changes unfolding in your life.
Love/Compassion:
Our very nature is love. Once we have tuned in to our real self, love should overflow. There is no self sacrifice. Our nature becomes love, so we cannot but love. No longer are we self sacrificing martyrs.
Gratitude:
When we focus our attention on what we have received, we attract more of the same (The law of attraction).We need to learn to appreciate the things we have to get the things we desire.
*Exercise:
Every morning kneel down or sit in a chair. Make yourself comfortable, padding yourself with cushions or towels as necessary. Close your eyes. Then bend down from your hips and thank the Lord (or your version of the Creator) for all the things you have received. Keep this list a pretty long one. As you finish this exercise you will have changed your mental state to a more resourceful one and at the same time you will have burnt considerable flab at the waist.
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PART 5 HIGHER MEDITATIO S
Contemplation versus Meditation:
There are times when you want to meditate but your mind turns riot. Thoughts are flooding from all sides. This is perhaps the time for contemplation.
What is the difference between meditation and contemplation?
In meditation, you try to decrease the thoughts, dis link them. In contemplation, you take a thought and think of as many thoughts that can arise from a single thought. Think and think about the matter till you can think no further. Think right, think left (wrong), think up, down, forward, backwards or in any other dimension. Twist the thought as much as you can. You may write it down so that the thought is out of your system and will not trouble you in meditation. This is one perspective and I am aware there are others. Be comfortable with the one you prefer.
The ‘Who am I’ Meditation:
In 2007, after an emotional dip, I sat down to think and here is what I wrote down in my diary. This is more of a contemplation than a meditation, classic upanishad style. Only I didn’t have the privilege of a rishi teaching me. This is how it went.
“Who am You ?”
“I am Kunda.”
“That’s your name. It could be anything else if you decided to change it.”
“Ok then, I am Silimkhan.”
“Well, that’s a title of your forefathers.”
“I am a woman.”
“That’s your gender, we aren’t filling a form here.”
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“I am a doctor.”
“It’s your profession. But sorry no one’s sick.”
“I am an Indian”
“India can change its name to Bharat or you could immigrate to Nepal.”
“I am a human.”
“Just your species.”
“I am an animal, rational one.”
“I see that.You are in the right kingdom but are you really rational?”
“I am intelligent.”
“It’s a quality of the intellect.”
“I am sensitive.”
“It’s a weakness of your mind.”
“I am an environmentalist.”
“It’s your behaviour.”
“If you were not named ever, if you changed your nationality, you were marooned alone on an island, changed your profession, meet more intelligent people, step down your lifestyle, does is take away the essence of who you are? “
I am stumped! Then the dialogue changed.
“Ok, are you this body? “
“No. ..yes.. well ,no.”
“What happens when you die? Will others call your body Kunda?”
“No. Ok then, perhaps I am the mind.”
“What happens when you are in deep sleep/ under anaesthesia? Are you aware of the mind?”
“No.”
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“What happens when you are very angry? Are you aware what your mind is doing?”
“No.”
“Ok, I agree that I am definitely not the body, neither am I the mind nor am I the behaviour. Then Who am I?”
“Who is asking this question, now?”
I leave you with this question for now.
Purpose of Life:
Purpose is why we are here. It gives meaning and direction to life. Sometimes we spend a major portion of our life on this inner quest. For others the purpose is very clear .They are intuitionally certain about what they want to do in life. Sometimes in the mid life, we come to crossroads and start wondering, ‘Are we on the right track? Is this all to life or is there more? Are we fulfilling what we came to do?’ This may be a painful process especially when your plans have gone awry as they invariably do (The best laid plans of men and mice go awry*).
I have myself struggled around this task of finding a purpose for quite some time. Well, logically our purpose is to grow physically and spiritually and consciously or unconsciously it is always happening. When one has explored all possibilities, one comes to the startling revelation that the only purpose in life is ‘to be’. Whatever your purpose is will come to you as you go about doing the things as they come to you. There is no big work or small work. Every little deed is as important as the big one. Every single screw in the machine is important otherwise it would not have been there in the first place. Realizing this, one starts enjoying every moment of one’s life.
This interesting piece I dug through the web. The honey bee thinks his purpose is to collect nectar but it serves the greater purpose of cross pollination, helping plant life, animal life etc ,etc. and ultimately, sustaining the universe(courtesy: Stephanie Relfe at www.relfe.com)
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Value Meditation:*
Each one of us has a different hierarchy of values which determines how we will respond in a particular situation. You choose any virtue which feels closest to you. Adopt it as a guide on your path. Whatever happens, you will try your level best not to default from following it. There are a number of values you could choose from.
Absolute fearlessness, fortitude, surrender, forgiveness, non judgement, integrity, forbearance, purity /cleanliness, generosity, honesty/truth in thought ,speech ,deed non violence, absence of anger, humility, equanimity of mind, compassion.
You could take up any virtue and see it to its end. Any one of them is capable of leading you to the highest truth. Suppose you choose truth as you highest value. In religious terms, truth becomes your God and you stick with it through difficult times. As you evolve, more and more challenges will be cast your way to test your integrity till you finally
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 99 emerge successful unscathed by the many temptations that entice your away from your value.
If your value is honesty and you cheat, how does your meditation go?
Or if your value is forbearance, how would you bear pain?
Movie Meditation:
Whenever you watch a movie you may feel sad or happy depending whom you identify with. You may feel anger, indignation, remorse or helplessness. You may cry if the movie touches your sore spot. But are you the character you identify with on screen? Neither you nor the actor is the real character. And you have seen the actor in other roles too. Now, imagine you are a judge of the films or another director, how will you then see the movie?
Then, reflect that you are the producer, director, script writer, and you also play all the roles on the screen by some fluke of scientific invention or computerised manipulation? Now, who will you side with, the hero or the villain? But is it not ‘You are that’ actually?
Coming back to Who am I?
You are not your name, addresses, your preferences, your attitudes or your relationships. You are not what these suggest though. You are unique as far as your fingerprint or even your DNA printing allows you to be. These definitions of you separate you from rest of humanity and prove your individuality but they still do not inform you as to who you are. They give details by comparing you to others and tell you what you are not.
To know who you are, you have to know who you are not. Using the mind, you cannot know who you are but you can negate what you are not. What remains is what you are, like the analogy of peeling an onion, or the neti, neti of Vedanta.
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Advanced Flame Meditation:
For an advanced flame meditation, it is better to get a lamp with a wick dipped in ghee (clarified butter) since it has maximum sattwa and least tamas (sattwa light, balance; tamas darkness, negativity).
This is a powerful meditation, one that can give you an out of body experience (OBE).
1. Effortless gazing at the whole candle for 30 60 sec.
2. Focus on flame 60 seconds. Use your will power to keep your eyes open but do not strain eyes.
3. Defocus expansion 60 sec. Gaze at the aura of the flame.
See the aura, the shapes in aura, cover whole room with your gaze, join the vast sky.
Bindu Tratak:
Keep staring at the dot (bindu) for few seconds. Close your eyes and bring the after image in front your eyes. It is in a complementary colour to the actual image.
Keep this after image in your memory till you no longer see the image.
Repeat step one again.
Complementary colours
Red green
Blue orange
Purple –yellow
Advanced Image Tratak:
Tattwa symbols like crescent or triangle are used to go to a particular dimension of the universe. Mr Yeats, one of the founders of Society for
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Psychical Research was known to practice this kind of meditation. The theosophical society and the society for psychic research experimented with these type of symbols. There is no great advantage for the common man.
Omkar/Religious Image:
If you follow a particular religious persuasion, you may use an Omkar or any religious picture to use as a focus.
Chidākāsha:
This is a great meditation technique when you have practised others for some time. Close your eyes and focus on the inner space in front of your eyes, the chidakasha. You may see it as light or dark, it does not matter. Visualize that you are closing your closed eyes. Every time you close your eyes you drift into another level of depth. You may see waves in front of the eyes of varied colours. Just observe .Do not get attached to the waves.
Advance Breath Meditation:
This is one that is used by great yogis and has to be done under guidance. If a person can pace the breathing of another when he is in meditation, he too can reach the same level of depth in meditation. There is an intriguing story about a son of a Master who paced his father’s breath while he was in samadhi and could enter the father’s consciousness.
Meditation on Environment:
When we are doing contemplations on the globe we usually think of plastic menace, violence, deforestation, global warming etc and what impact it will have on us. In advanced stages we will feel the pain of trees as they are cut, the cry of Mother Earth.
Meditation on Death
The Tibetan teachings lay greatest stress on death and life after death. For a comprehensive understanding of the process, it is worthwhile going through some of their texts. May be meditation on death should be reserved
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 102 for the advanced seekers. I went through some of the dying meditations myself under guidance of highly advanced teachers at a retreat. It is worth the effort. There is nothing much to fear unless you have a weak heart. I would not advice you to take it up on your own though.
Life after Death:
Whatever is born shall die and what is not born (eternal) can never die.*BG
What is it that survives death?
Besides the accounts by great spiritual masters, much of our knowledge about life after death has been an extrapolation of OBE (out of body experiences) and NDE (near death experience).
Both are great life changing experiences. Once you know you are not the body, you can never look at life the same way again. You come to realize that the experience of life and death are for the body and mind. According to the Gita, whatever is born has to die. The soul is unborn and hence deathless and changeless.
Past Life Regressions and Future Progression:
This is an ancient practice where the consciousness is regressed to previous lifetimes, a reverse time travel where you can meet the causes of your present life issues. It is safe in experienced hands. Advanced meditators may spontaneously regress and encounter unwholesome experiences which can disturb their peace.
Soul Retrieval:
This is special form of meditation or regression work intrinsic to shamanic traditions, where a part of your soul lost in another dimension is retrieved and added to yourself so that you feel more complete and integrated.
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Spirit Guides:
All of us are blessed with spiritual guides besides our Higher self to whom we can turn to in times of confusion. Clairvoyants can see them in the aura of people and they be even heard. They appear in a physical form which makes you comfortable or as a point of presence or light. I have met with a few meditators who lost their balance when they first encountered these beings. If you are not ready for the challenges better to pray that you may not see them. They can still guide you through your intuitive power.
Mudra:
A mudra is a finger lock. It locks the energy flow and helps to quieten the mind. You touch the tip of your index finger to the tip of your thumb lightly. Your palms can be kept facing up in which case it is called gyan mudra or it may face down in which case it is called dhyan mudra. It is preferable to keep the palm down while beginning the meditation practice. Later on you can try other locks. There are different mudras and each has a different effect in meditation. Other mudras like shambhavi mudra, chinmay mudra, aadimudra are often used. There are equivalent mudras described in Kabbalistic literature. These concepts are very interesting and need a comparative study.
B: touching thumb to middle finger is considered more appropriate for householders.
Bandhas:
Three bandhas or body locks are commonly used to aid meditation and have to be learnt under supervision, the jalandhar, uddhiyaan, mulabandha. Advanced yogis practice the Mahabandha, descriptions of which are clearly outside the scope of this book.
Chakra Meditation:
I am writing about chakra meditation not to tell you about how to do chakra meditation but rather to warn you never to attempt chakra meditation without a trained teacher by your side, who is both capable and willing to take responsibility, if something goes wrong. I have met enough people
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 104 who have messed it up and spent their valuable time and money correcting things that this warning is warranted.
We have seven major chakras in our body and many more minor chakras. These chakras are vortices of energy. Each chakra corresponding to a dimension as mentioned below. The lowest chakra is the earth chakra. The chakras are supposed to be gateways to their corresponding dimension.
You enter a particular chakras and travel astrally to that dimension. The whole of macrocosm (read universe) is supposed to be present in the microcosm(read body).The chakras are connected by three subtle energy channels, the ida, pingala and sushumna.
The physicist imagines a parallel universe at the other side of the black hole. Should you try any of these chakra activation exercise you may find yourself speeding in another world like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or share the company of gnomes, elves, pixies, fairies, demons or angels. Not all are very friendly creatures .
Anchors:
Anchoring is the process of associating an internal response with some external trigger so as to quickly activate the state with the trigger at a future time.
An anchor can be people, a place, sights, sounds or touch that can change our state. It may come naturally or be specifically induced for the purpose.
Kundalini:
The life energy force is supposed to lie dormant at the base of the spine as a snake coiled up. Under the guidance of a siddha Guru, the kundalini shakti is awakened and directed to enter the central path called sushumna. When it erroneously enters the left path (ida) or right path (pingala), it can cause great distress to the practitioner. One of my patients even went through a cholecystectomy for a mistaken gallstone obviously with no relief. An elaborate description of wrongful kundalini awakening has been given by Pandit Gopikrishna.
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Higher Dimensions and Astral Travel:
We are said to be living in the Earth dimension. The Earth is supposed to be three dimensional in space as you studied in geometry and to these three, the physicists have added the conceptual(abstract and imaginary) 4 th dimension of time. But this is not all. Higher physics tells us there may be many more dimensions. The mystics say there are dimensions above and below the Earth. How many? No one is really sure. These dimensions exist not in space nor in time but in the subtlety of experience.
Hurdles in Higher Meditation:
Whenever you start a serious spiritual voyage, pain is the first hurdle on your path. This happens even if you are used to sitting cross legged for long hours while doing routine activities. The pain is the ego’s defence against self annihilation. The ego is aware that as soon as you start looking inside, it will lose its manifold hold on you and is not willing to yield. You have by now handled doubts, laziness and inertia and have been diligently on the path. The best thing is to not resist the pain but be in a witness mode knowing the impermanent nature of the pain as of everything else. If it has to come, it has to go.
Two stories : of clairvoyance, clairaudience, souls and demons. Recently within the span of 6months, I met two people with intriguing and interesting stories. The two were students of two different siddha masters.
‘A’ was an adult in his late forties whose family has been blessed by siddhas.* After his direct initiation by the Master, he received the power of clairvoyance and could see other people’s chakras and probably could pry into the future. This brief episode was followed by euphoria and ecstasy and a feeling of out of touch with reality. Since the person had no direct access to the Guru, there was a period of confusion which precipitated a latent depression requiring medication. He was an emotional person full of faith and this episode did not shake his faith in the Master.
The second person B was a lady in thirties, stoic with a strongly intellectual bent of mind. She went to the workshop for self growth and was initiated via a video of the living Master. During the first retreat itself, she started
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 106 getting a feeling of a dense negative energy and soon this was followed by visions of her long dead relatives who spoke to her about their wishes. She was terrified and had to stop her practice.
There was no way knowing whether the voices were really those of her relatives or some stray souls masquerading as them. She was and is a mentally strong and stable person with no underlying psychiatric illness and the episodes started and ended with her meditation. She was a first time meditator and did not have any specific spiritual goals or expectations of visions.
On both occasions, I was consulted to rule out medical problems and there were none. I could say they were affected by clairvoyance and not blessed with it because I have been a witness to the intense torture such visions can cause the meditator and the turmoil it causes to the family.
At such times, more often than not, the teacher is not available. If I had not read personal accounts of Swami Muktananda, Swami Vivekananda and others, my mind would have been a confused lot. When asked about demons, Swami Vivekananda had commented that they do exist but not to chase them but seek the divine instead.
The reason why people see visions of angels or demons is they have a strong wish for such a revelation. They are not satisfied with the simple gifts that meditation brings. Secondly, the purpose of visions or ecstasy is to sustain the meditator on the path. My Guru once called it ‘the lollipop’. There are many other siddhis* besides these. They serve as good distractions and detractors to derail the serious meditator from his path and one should not get carried away by them. The best way is to look at them with a disinterested attitude and they will handle themselves.
Often we wander into higher realms, the unguided astral travel. This is far more common then appreciated and often mistaken for dreams at night or fantasy while meditating. If you can identify yourself and guide the reverie then probably it is not an astral travel.
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Dark ight of the Soul:
On the path there are ups and downs, times of joy and times of despair, the worst of which is called the dark night of the soul. You can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and you have to walk in hope. Moreover this dark night is a not a one time affair and may keep recurring.
Desire, doubt, fear, pain, sleep, ennui, fantasizing are all obstacles on the path of a meditator.
Stuck in Ecstasy:
When we slip into rapture, ecstasy or unlimited joy we feel thrilled and think ‘This is it’. We may even develop a ‘Holier than thou’ attitude. In the joy of meditation, though we are happy, negative emotional loads are not transmuted and have to be worked out as mentioned earlier. Just like we have stored a template for sorrow we have stored a script for joy. We keep playing the joy script but at times negative emotions if not transmuted, make a comeback by way of feelings or illness. The final obstruction to meditation is ecstasy. Transcend this and you arrive at an inner calmness.
The positive states peace, bliss, ecstasy are all addictive. They can derail us from our path and lead us into blind alleys. And it takes a while to return back and resume the journey. It is the self grasping nature of the mind which has a propensity to cling to pleasure. Recognizing that we are in ecstasy means we are no longer in it. The negative states are easier to control because we don’t want them.
In times of confusion, it pays to have a counsellor at hand, someone trained in both western and eastern philosophies and enough experience in meditation. This ensures that there is no irreparable damage to the psyche and at the same time visions are not mistaken to be hallucinations. The meditator’s experiences should not to be invalidated, as most untrained spiritualists or psychiatrists tend to do.
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PART 6 REAL LIFE STUATIO S
Whatever we learn in our meditation seat has to be translated to real life experiences. It may be small things like doing everything in time, not leaving things for a later date or updating unfinished business.
Handling Anger:
Anger is a natural phenomenon. You should not give a negative label to anger. In doing so, you develop an aversion to anger so that anger will persist or escalate or you land up feeling guilty.
‘I am angry (guilty) that I am angry’. View yourself with compassion. Anger will come and anger will go and in time. Over a period of time, you will find that though it comes it does not stay long enough. The most interesting thing is, the minute you are aware and recognize that you are angry but not striving to drive anger out, it just subsides.
Just like anger, regret, resentment, jealousy, self deprecation : are all negative emotions you could do well to keep away from.
Facing Loss and Loneliness:
We go through various losses in a lifetime. Our loss may relate to a person, loss of relationship, loss of job, loss of money through theft or disinvestment, loss of prestige (shaming).
What does loneliness mean to you? It may mean being unoccupied, being unloved, being without meaning, an emptiness, fear physical, financial insecurity, sadness, anger, feeling of loss. Loneliness is often an easy excuse for feeling depressed or not doing.
Feeling of Loss of Relationship:
If I am allowed to generalize I could say most unhappiness comes from an actual loss of a relationship, a fear of loss, lack of a relationship or a conflict in a relationship. Like the Physicist Prof. Wheeler whose secret doctrine was the world is nothing but electrons, I would venture to say that the universe is nothing but relationships.
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1. Remembering the past sadness, fear, missing moments.
‘It could have been’ a thought related to a desire.
2.Musing about the future – it should be
3. Miss a particular person it which case it is a feeling of loss.
4. Miss not anyone in particular in which case, it is loneliness.
The remedy is different for the two types of losses. If there is feeling of loneliness, you need to connect. Then again, in loneliness, if the more choosy you are, the more likely you are to be alone.
On the other hand, you may be alone but not lonely like Walt Whitman said, ‘Happy I am in my own company.’
Loneliness, it is said, is not being alone but a lack of love for oneself.
Loss or Lack of a Job:
For most people, employment is not just a means for livelihood. It satisfies many of our needs, the need for structure in life, the need for affiliation, the need for recognition, appreciation, the need for self esteem, the need for a coherent meaning to life, to name a few. To be out of a job is to lose all these. It decreases our self worth, self esteem, self confidence and sometimes takes away the very meaning of our life from us.
Loss of Property:
We extend our identity to things we own, the loss of which is felt at a very personal level. Most of the fights in the world have started over a piece of territory, something which you cannot take away when you go. If someone swindles you of your property, you may go through anguish and feelings of vengeance. It is okay if it is stranger but not a neighbour or tenant, and Lord forbid if it is your brother. We will go to any length to set straight accounts. We spend time and money and sleepless nights.
Why? because with these people you have shared a relationship.
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Grief Following Death:
Following a person’s death, the near and dear ones go through a lot of suffering. There are different stages of grief described but grief is experienced by each person in a very personal way.
The stages of grief overlap and you may keep returning to any phase after having apparently moved from it.
1. Denial
2. Anger, Guilt, Intrusion
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
Cultural Aspects of Grief :
There is at least one tribe in the world where death is celebrated. Others may feel guilty if they enjoy life or have a good time after their loved one passes away, so they suffer instead. A belief in life after life and life after death, affects how you feel. If the relatives have a strong belief in life after death, they will see the death differently from people who don’t.
The Grief Process:
What really happens when we lose a loved one? What are the emotions we go through?
The stages of grief are described by Dr Elisabeth Kűbler Ross and others. Initially, there is a denial. Then, grief is an expression of intense emotion, an outcry or anger followed by bargaining and intrusion, sometimes the two alternating and then finally, acceptance. There is no hard and fast rule. Grief process is unique for each person. One person may be in denial another may be angry. And people keep returning to the various stages again and again, especially at times of anniversaries, visit to a special place and so on.
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A typical case being when people tend to vacillate between intrusion and numbing or denial. The seeming emotional flooding may return back weeks or months later when a person has apparently coped well, may be at the time of anniversary or visiting a place of mutual liking. Denial is characterised by either denying the event has happened or denying that there is grief. There is a period of numbness where a person cannot feel any emotions. This a defence to avoid the overwhelming effects of loss.
Others may react angrily at first. The anger may be directed at the person who is gone for having left early, towards a doctor, God or the perpetrator in cases of murder or accident or towards the world in general.
There might be feelings of guilt. Guilt for not taking adequate care, guilt for not being there, not spending enough time with the person, guilt for not really feeling a loss or guilt for enjoying when the person was dying or already dead like if the person wasn’t aware of the death. Sometimes, there is feeling of relief if the person was ailing for long and then a tinge of guilt for feeling that way.
So also if the near one was not an acceptable person or had done an unacceptable deed like left a huge unpaid loan, unfairly distributed the inheritance etc, first there is anger followed by guilt. Then, there is fear of how one will cope without the person, fear of loneliness, fear of one’s own death and also fear of the person’s afterlife.
This is followed by a period of bargaining where the loved one’s bargain with God or higher entities. All this will lead to acceptance.
Support for the Grieving:
The most important support one can offer is, just being there. We cannot understand how another feels but trying to understand is important. Tangible support in terms of doing what is needed to be done practically can also help.
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Care of the Dying and Preparing for Death:
What are the emotions of the dying?
What is he losing?
A dying person loses everything.
What does he want from near and dear ones?
Should he know that he is dying?
Should the doctor tell him?
Dr Elisabeth Kűbler Ross who has done extensive observations in terminally ill patients feels that it is better that the patient knows since he would have guessed it in any case. If the patient is not told he feels alone and left out of the decision making. Death is the most vulnerable period and the person is more ready than any other time, open and receptive to change. It is his right to avail of this golden opportunity for spiritual upliftment.
Points to stress about death as suggested by Eastern philosophical thinking:*
• Living every day as the last day
• Attending to unfinished business.
• Compassion for the dying and caregivers.
• Transferring of consciousness,
effecting the Phowa in Tibet or
going out through the dashamdwar as in tantra.
Relationship Issues with Children
It may come as a surprise to many but parents give a lot of importance to their children’s life partners. I had assumed this to be true in the Indian cultural context but was shocked to learn through autobiographies that even
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 113 western parents are very much attached to these issues. It may seem a trivial issue to many, but in most families it is blown out of proportion. The following story will bear witness to how our long held beliefs especially religious ones can interfere with our own health and happiness and that of our loved ones.
Some years back, I had a patient of mine come with chest pain accompanied by his wife. Both were devout Roman Catholics and regular church goers. His 35 year old daughter, employed and financially independent had decided to marry a ‘believer’. This had upset the family and probably had effects in the social circle as well. The old man’s beliefs were set to interfere with his own health and his daughter’s happiness.
When I asked him whether he believed that Mrs Indira Gandhi, a Hindu had done the right thing by marrying a Muslim, he replied that she had honoured her love. But when it came to respecting his daughter’s choice, he was in conflict. It took him a few visits before he could get himself to accept her decision and now both father in law and son in law are pals.
Betrayal, Infidelity:
All relationships stand on the foundation of trust, be it business, family or marriage. If this trust is betrayed, it leaves an indelible imprint which may take time to heal and often remains unhealed till death and may carry over to future lives. Since it affects you as much or more than the person concerned, you should be the one to take the initiative to heal. You don’t have to go and meet the other person to do it, though it would be wonderful if you could. You can start the healing process on your own.
Divorce:
In addition to the loss of a relationship, there are the added issues of custody of children and the emotional impact of the separation on the children. Children tend to blame themselves for the divorce and go through guilt feelings. In case, the parents stay together because of their children, subconsciously they burden the children with guilt.
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Some parents, who get custody of children, tend to go to great lengths to prove the other person wrong. This increases the emotional impact on the child.
In a painful loss, where and when there have been shared good times, the pain is more.
Abuse:
Abuse can be physical or emotional. If it is physical, it is best is to get away. If it is emotional, create an emotional space.
Emptiness:
When we are going through a period of intense turmoil we may be faced with emptiness. Negative thoughts keep flooding our mind. Life lacks direction.
“I hate myself”, “I am no good”, “Nobody loves me”, “I am a worm”, “I am in a bottomless pit”, “I am over”.
And as someone once said “I want to eat worms.”
Many times faced with these situations, people tend to bury their emotions in work or selfless service. Sacrifice is considered an antidote to emptiness. But in reality they are doing themselves disfavour because they are postponing their pain. You cannot give what you don’t have. It is better to fill your cup with joy and when overflowing let it spill to others. The rule is, self first always. There is no place for martyrdom.
I am not talking of born saints!
Why do Saints Suffer?
According to Dolores Cannon, great souls know when they are about to die. They take other people’s suffering on to their mortal frame by choice.
Existential Crisis:
At times we may face deeper questions.
“Why am I born?”
“Why did God create the world?”
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“Why do good people suffer?”
“Should I give up on life?”
There are no easy answers. Reading through this book and the suggested readings may give you an insight. Sometimes, it is because a part of your soul is lost in another dimension or it may be because of birth trauma or in utero emotional insults which can now be addressed by re birthing techniques.
Lastly, when things go out of hand people contemplate suicide. Whatever the situation outside unless it is unrelenting pain, it is usually the emotional pain that leads to suicide. It is the mind that kills.
From a spiritual point of view, it is better to bear in mind that it is said that suicide is one sin that has no forgiveness even from the Highest. Since we are going back on our pre birth commitment, it is sort of a breach of a contract.
According to author Dolores Cannon, you are allowed to exchange your body rather than destroy it because souls are waiting to be born and human wombs are limited.
Smoking and other addictions like alcohol or overeating:
If you have learnt the art of saying ‘no’, it would serve you well to refuse the first cigarette.
If you do not identify yourself as a smoker but a person who smokes, it is easier to quit because then you do not risk of losing your identity as a smoker.
It is important to understand that smoking is a habit and there is any attempt to classify or moralize it as good/ bad, moral/immoral will be counterproductive. If we do so, the smoker will rebel inside and try to defend its identity, further hampering his attempts at quitting.
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Special Retreats or Workshops:
In today’s fast paced world, spiritual development is offered at retreats some of which are highly condensed in time and content. Let us see what they have in store for you.
The fall outs?
Tamasic, rajasic and sattvic mind states:
Tamasic: Boredom, fatigue, sleep.
Rajasic: agitation, conflict, ecstasy.
Sattvic: Bliss, Calm, equanimity, balance.
Hyperventilation:
Some kriyas involving excessive breathing may lead to CO 2 washout and giddiness. A doctor friend of mine dropped out a retreat because she was not forewarned about the side effects of hyperventilation. She did not apply her medical knowledge and thought it was something to do with the supernatural phenomena. At times, there may a stimulation of temporal lobe of brain giving rise to a hallucinogenic state.
Pain:
At retreats you may be required to sit for long in the same position causing considerable discomfort. Discomfort can itself be used as a cue to aid in meditation, as we have seen. If apprehension is present, the pain increases. The pain is temporary and soon leads to a sense of well being.
Doubt:
Next comes doubt. We doubt our ability, our motivation, the effectiveness of the method and finally the Guru himself. Other effects are boredom and fatigue. Boredom depends on your motivation, interest and on your expectation.
If you persevere in your effort, this is followed by goodies, like peace. Subtle thoughts and abstract thoughts are the most difficult to deal with.
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E.g A thought such as ‘I am doing well in my practice’ can hinder meditation. Catch the thought early and release it. Letting go is a challenge. We tend to cling to our thoughts with our life. They are created by our ego to maintain its identity.
Pay offs:
At a retreat, you have the advantage of exclusive time for your practice away from the grinding chores of mundane routine. You are in the company of like minded meditators. The energies are high since some of the practitioners are advanced plus we have the Guru’s ‘presence’, physical or in spirit. At a retreat, you are in no hurry. Staying in the present all the time, your time expands as your awareness expands. You can use the opportunity to create a state of calm and you can always re treat yourself to this state, i.e. go back to state.
Less sleep: Sleep is affected, there is out of the world dreamlike quality even to wakefulness. In the first two days you may claim extra sleep to catch up on your previous days’ losses but soon four hours of sleep is all you need to be awake, alert and lively.
Less food: is needed in case of prolonged retreats because there is less stress, less activity, deep relaxation, importantly less thinking. Normally, the BMR* takes 65% of our calories, 10% of calories go to digest the food. Slow and conscious eating and drinking ensures that more prāna is absorbed. Additionally, breathing techniques supply prāna.
There is a clearing of inner baggage of negative emotions. You can use the insight you have gained from your anger or hatred for long term gains.
SUMMARY: In the final analysis only few things are important,
Acceptance or surrender, forgiveness, gratitude, unconditional love (joy /bliss).
All these four are mutually are linked to each other. When we accept what we have, we feel blessed and gratitude surges from within us. When we accept another unconditionally as being part of the whole, there is no case for forgiveness because there is no perception of wrong. When we accept everything to be part of ourselves, we can love anyone unconditionally
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 118 same as we love are face, crooked fingers or dirty feet. You may not like something about yourselves but you still love all of yourself.
Forgiving oneself is the most difficult thing to do. Forgiving oneself is accepting oneself, accepting that one is human and bound to err. When you forgive yourself you break the karmic ties which may link you to a recurring life pattern life after life. If you have taken this birth for reparation, retribution, redemption or to fulfil a vow and are not comfortable with how your life is flowing, take stock of it now. It does not have to be this way. Let go of the past and begin anew. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you have made; we all do and restart a new page.
REFERE CES:
Poems, Songs, Stories:
Naa koi umang hei, naa koi tarang hei, meri zindagi hei kyaa, ek kati patang hei. From the film, Kati Patang, 1970
Mera joota hei Japani, from the film Shri 420, sung by Mukesh, music by Shankar Jaikishan
Diamonds on The Souls of Her Shoes Paul Simon
Stevenson Robert Louis, The Vagabond.
Carman Bliss, The Joys of the Road, 1911
Mama ki ainuck: an Indian fable where mama or maternal uncle hunts for his spectacles all over the house while he has lifted it on his head.
Jill Purce, The Healing Voice, a lecture and meditation. 1992, ITA conference, Prague.
Koan: a Zen verbal puzzle.
Phowa: a ceremony for the dying in Tibet, guidance for the departing soul.
Chikki: an Indian sweet meat made of jaggery, nuts cut into squares.
Peda: a sweet made with sugar and milk rolled into soft round balls.
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SWOT analysis: self analysis by studying our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
Neti, neti not this, not this
DIY Do it yourself
FURTHER READI G: Atkinson William, Mind Power, Taraporewala, Mumbai,1991
Anandmurti Gurumaa,The Awakening, Anandvani Prakashan,2000.
Cannon Dolores, Conversations with a Spirit, Jaico, 1993
Chinmayananda Swami, Bhagwad Geeta,CCMT, Mumbai, 2000
Chinmayananda Swami, Kathopanishad ,CCMT, Mumbai, 2001
Chinmayananda Swami, Mandukya Upanishad with Karika, CCMT, Mumbai, 2000
Chinmayananda Swami, Taitriya Upanishad, CCMT, Mumbai
Dada Vaswani, Why bad things happen to good people, Sadhu Vaswani Mission, Gita Publishing House, Pune,2009.
Dr Elisabeth Kűbler Ross, Death and Dying, Routledge, 1969
Hall Judy, A New Look at Past lives, New Age Books, 2001
Kaku Michio and Thompson Jennifer, Beyond Einstein, Oxford University Press, 1997
Lubeck Walter, Aura Healing Handbook, Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi, India 2000
McCoy Edain, A Guide to Astral Projection, New Age books, 2003.
Muktananda Swami, A Play of Consciousness Chitshakti Vilas, Syda Foundation, N.Y. 1978.
Novello Joseph, The Myth of More, Magna publishing, 2002
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Pandit Gopikrishna, Kundalini, the evolutionary energy in man, Boston, Shambala, 1971
Rama Prasad, Patanjali Yog Sutra, Munshidas Manoharlal Publications,1998
Rama Swami ,Living with the Himalayan Masters – A Spiritual autobiography, Himalayan Institute.2000.
Rimponche Sogyal, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Rupa, 1994
Spencer Johnson, Who Stole my Cheese? Putnam Publishers, 1998
Sri Sri Bharati Krsna Swami, Vedic metaphysics, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1999
The Good News Bible, St Paul’s, 1979
Weiss Brian, Through Time into Healing, Piatkus Publishers,1988
Yogananda Paramhansa, Autobiography of a Yogi,1998
Yogasutras of Patajali, Edited by Asoke Chatterjee Sastry, Parimal Publishers , 1990
Vialette F.B. et al, EEG paroxysmal gamma waves during Bhramari Pranayama: A yoga breathing technique” RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Laboratory for Advanced Brain Signal Processing, Japan May 2007 www.science direct.com
Websites: www.shivyog .com www.brahmakumaris.com www.lightagemasters.com www.dadabhagwan.com www.ishafoundation.com www.chinmaya publications.org www.vivekanandakendra *
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 121 www.yogodasatsang.* www.enneagraminstitution.com.
Book –
My little book of understanding and overcoming stress e books by the Author:
How I Healed Myself –My Journey through Asthma
Demystifying the Chakras An Easy Guide to Self Healing
The Mysterious Science of Dowsing
Know My Secret Study Less, Score More
Reflections on the Bhagwad Geeta –Musings of a Scientific Mind
Reversing Diabetes ,The Diabetes Educator’s Training Manual
Understanding Past Lives and the Soul’s journey
Obesity Workbook A step by step manual to help you lose weight holistically
Goodbye Anger
The Doctor’s Theory of Everything an Insight into Self healing
FAQs on Health and Well being with their Honest Answers, Part1
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr Kunda Silimkhan, M.D. trained as a physician, she now conducts stress release workshops at workplaces and schools and guides students before exams to teach them how to learn as well cope with anxiety and panic.
Flex Your Spiritual Muscle Page 122
Author of a book on stress, she also runs a centre for holistic well being which offers various modules in stress release, lifestyle modification and yoga.
The author has conducted the following workshops
Group sessions at workplace /community
Physical Health:
Therapeutic lifestyle change; Medical nutrition therapy
Self healing of Diabetes; Obesity; Cardiac rehabilitation
Stress management; Scientific yoga.
Mental Health:
Anger management; Time management; Grief management
Goal setting; Assertive training; Job satisfaction; Managing change, Appreciative inquiry; Creative visualization for achieving goals; Emotional Freedom Technique; Healing through journaling;
Healing through reading; NLP and health; bio feedback;
Ho’opono’ pono; Inner child healing; Chakra seminars.
Social Health:
Team building, Enneagram; Creative problem solving, Communication skills;
Disaster management Psychosocial aspects and gender sensitivity;
Community participation in nutrition and health;
Special programs for students
RFI TM testing (resonance frequency imaging aura scanning)
Follow up individual counselling after group workshops
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Goa Lifestyle Project a program designed along the lines of North Karelia Project of Finland started in 2003 and running at the micro level.
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