How to empty your mind.

Dear All,

The life-transforming/enhancing effect of your daily practice of sahaja yoga meditation, comes about through regularly achieving a few seconds to a few minutes of 'thoughtless awareness' ; when you can feel the cool breeze above your head. If you find that you can't stop thinking then here's a common reason why and what to do to make progress.

I'll tell you what my experience is and you can take from it whatever you think might help you.

The problem is one of attention. After a busy day, largely spent in front of a screen taking in and processing information of one sort or another; plus moving about, interacting with people, taking in sights, sounds, images; plus the to and fro wash of thoughts, feelings and memory; I know when my attention is overloaded.

The attention  can be like a fishing net. You throw it out there and when you pull it back in and see what you've caught, there's some plastic bottles, somebody's missing left shoe, a child's toy, some stones, a punctured football and......hey! One fish! Which is to say that the things that our attention is weighted down with usually have no relevance.

When you sit down to meditate there's a tendency to go on picking through your fishing net, when what you should be doing is emptying it.

Here's where two things help: doing a footspa with cool salt water and use of a particular meditation photo. The footspa helps clear the void, nabhi and swadisthan energy centres; and use of meditation photo clears the agnya chakra. By soothing these energy centres down, the attention becomes clearer and steadier and can pass through the top of your head as the cool breeze.

The particular meditation photo I use with my footspa is the one below, which I find is particularly effective at clearing the agnya chakra - by steadily watching Shri Mataji's agnya chakra( the red 'bindi') until there's a pulling sensation out of my own agnya and the feeling of vibes at the top of my head become stronger.

As you develop your sensitivity to vibes, what becomes clear is that making use of different meditation photos is like having a selection of tools in your toolbox: you pick the one that does the job. Or you find that a particular photo just makes you feel good(hint: it's the vibes).

For your own journey of experiment and discovery, I've put a selection of meditation photos in my dropbox folder for you, which you can download, print(try Boots online print service) and benefit from: click here.

See you at group meditation tomorrow.

Regards

Fix yourself.

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Dear All,

Below is a reminder of where the energy centres are on your hands, feet and head. And the importance of clearing them for reasons of gaining health & wellness, as well as increasing the effectiveness of your meditation to bring about positive, personal transformation.

​(Click here to download full versions of these)

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What's the issue?	Chakras likely affected	Resolution/ Treatment
Depression	back agnya & left side	To clear left side, left hand towards meditation photo, right hand towards flame position to your right side. To clear back agnya, steadily gaze at agnya point on meditation photo through a candle flame – don't blink, let the eyes water; this can also cure problems of eyesight. Get physical.
Anxiety/Insecurity	centre heart	Left hand towards meditation photo, right hand on centre of chest; close your eyes & feel connection between heart and top of head as 'throb'. Repeat mantra 'Jagadamba!'
Lacking confidence	centre heart & vishuddhi	Same as above plus singing (in the shower :o) )
Money/Job worries	nabhi	Left hand towards meditation photo & right hand over stomach. Feel flow of vibes into nabhi. Use affirmation 'I am satisfied'.
Excessive thinking	right swadisthan	Ice pack placed on liver during meditation. Cut down on coffee.
Relationship with others	right vishuddhi & heart	Include honey in the diet which is good for vishuddhi chakra; also ghee nasal drops at bedtime and use mantra 'Jagadamba!' for heart.
Stress	Agnya & swadisthan	Same as for right swadisthan above plus diluted sandalwood oil gently massaged on centre of forehead before leaving the house.
Lack of Joy	Mooladhara & heart	Regularly sit on the ground in the park to help mooladhara and if you have the opportunity, spend time in the company of children.
Digestive disorders	nabhi	drink vibrated water and do regular footspa treatment.
Blocked creativity	swadisthan	Give vibes to swadisthan by placing right hand on left groin/hip while meditating.
Spiritual growth	sahasrara	Left hand towards meditation photo & right hand massaging top of head and use mantra 'Om Shri Nirmala namaha!'

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​See you at group meditation tomorrow.

Regards

Beyond the Mind

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​Dear All,

​Sometimes we can't see for looking, but luckily your meditation is making your powers of perception much stonger. To prove this to yourself, try this quick experiment.

Look at the photo above for a few minutes and then write down(or just notice) the words/ideas that first come to your mind.​

Now look at the photo again but without thinking - keep your attention at the top of your head(beyond the mind) and notice any change in vibes.

In the first case there's a mental play going on - you could probably make an association between the photo and any word in the english dictionary. In the second case there's no mental play; no projection onto it, and you're 'experiencing' the photo on your nerves as vibes.

The first case is what in Indian philosophy is called 'Maya'(illusion) and is how we're continuously interacting with the world around us. The second case is 'reality' in that it has a real effect on the nerves. This is like the difference between touching the photo of a candle flame - nothing happens - and touching a real candle flame - the finger gets burnt.

By force of mental habit we live all the time in Maya, which is why we worry about things; get caught up in our life's problems and generally feel powerless. From this it's easier to understand how through daily meditation, when you touch the state of thoughtless awareness even for a few seconds at a time, the power of the kundalini to free us from the mental prisons we've created for ourselves gets better and better.

Then whatever you want or need, whatever is beneficial for you, happens, because you're connected(yoga) to the reality which is like a mother - full of benevolence for her child. 

 

This 4 minute clip describes overcoming our mental limitations: click here

 

See you at group meditation tomorrow.

Regards

How to use Art.

​Dear All,

Ancient India had a highly developed (complete) theory of aesthetics and here's how you're experiencing it, to the benefit of your practice of meditation,  every time you listen to your favourite music or enjoy some quiet time in an art gallery or museum.

Firstly, do you enjoy cooking? Or even if you don't particularly, we can all appreciate a TV food or cooking programme. A master chef takes all those dull ingredients and by combining them in a certain way, adding the right amount of different sauces, produces that delicious flavour in the food which is tasted when it touches the tongue.

This analogy of food and taste is the basis of what was regarded in vedic India as successful art, whether painting, music, dance etc: that it produces the state of 'ras-anubhava' ('relishable taste') , which is a kind of suspended state of pleasurable enjoyment - time disappears and you're totally absorbed in the experience.

Getting the state of ras-anubhava may not be very frequent but this is precisely the place your kundalini is trying to get you to when you meditate. Permanently. So whatever art or music you like that produces cool vibes on your hands is taking you in the right direction.

What the kundalini is actually doing is re-wiring the human brain (neuroplasticity) which Shri Mataji describes here. Imagine being 'blissed-out' all the time. Then everything is Art. A common street scene becomes a masterpiece of human movement.

See you at group meditation tomorrow.

Regards

How to improve the energy of your living space + Wellness

​Dear All,

Your first wealth is health. If you or anyone you know is prone to allergies, viral infections and chronic illness of any kind then you may find the short video clip below about sahaja yoga and medicine interesting.

It shows a homeopathic doctor running a health diagnostic on a 'patient', using electro-acupuncture and then recording the results. The diagnostic is then repeated with the patient's attention on a sahaja yoga meditation photo ..and see what happens.

The experimental method adopted by the homeopathic doctor would not pass the test of conventional medicine. But, if you have a framed meditation photo permanently sitting in a quiet corner of your room and have noticed the positivity it gives to the vibes in your house ( possible to correct any vaastu/ feng shui defect in your living space) then you may not be so surprised by the apparent medical 'miracle' in the video clip.

There's a lot about the effects of the photo that cannot be easily explained but the description below of how to best make use of it for your meditation, based on the yoga iconography of the hand pose may help. Experience is more valuable than explanation.

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See you at group meditation tomorrow.

Regards