Positive Thinking 33 – Tap the power of meditation

Transcript

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welcome back to our discussion on positive thinking we were discussing about the process of inner empowerment through meditation in our previous talk we discussed about PIEs the four dimensions of our being physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual which are taken care of by respectively prasad, swadhyay, satsang and sadhana one of the most potent ways by which we can take care of our spiritual side is by meditation so Buddha stated that meditation leads to wisdom lack of meditation leads to ignorance so meditation is extremely powerful means for awakening the light within for activating the torch that enables us to see the inner landscape clearly and recognize allies and disempower adversaries in the inner territory we have to make choices which emotions we will strengthen and which emotions we will reject weaken and reject so all this comes to the fore when we practice meditation meditation centers on building up our inner muscles sometimes people think of meditation as sitting in a particular posture may be with yogic posture with legs crossed with back erect and look closed eyes sitting motionless yes that is one kind of meditation but that is actually not the essence of meditation meditation essentially means shifting the mind from the unchanging outer reality to the changing inner reality so meditation’s purpose is to focus our consciousness on that which is unchanging and what is it that is unchanging the outer world is characterized by change the only thing constant in the outer material level of reality is change so if you want to go beyond change if you want to go from negative to positive if you want to go from the change from the changing to the changeless we need to raise our consciousness from the material level to the spiritual level so meditation essentially means shifting our consciousness to a spiritual object of thought if we are in a boat if we are in an ocean then the waves in the ocean are constantly going to make the boat move up and down, up and down up and down, up and down but if we become situated within that ocean in a boat which is anchored then that connection with the much heavier stronger, sturdier object ensures that the boat will be shaken lesser and lesser and lesser similarly when we the world which we live in is always filled with waves there is happiness, there is stress there is honor, there is dishonor there is pleasure, there is pain there is heat, there is cold so when we face such dualities in our life we get tossed up and down up and down, up and down by these dualities and the way to stay steady amidst these dualities is not by expecting that the waves stop never will we find a time in our life when we will no longer be unsteady we will find that outer situation will become steady to expect outer steadiness to expect outer equanimity of situation outer equality steadiness of situation is to keep waiting forever just as the boat to be steady can’t expect the waves to stop the boat needs to be anchored similarly we need to anchor ourselves to a higher reality and when we anchor ourselves to a higher reality we stay calm even amidst a storm the outer externally there may be ups and downs but internally we stay steady and that is precisely what happens through the process of meditation there are various ways in which we can meditate the most potent form of meditation is mantra meditation mantra, the word mantra in Sanskrit means mantra that sound vibration which frees the mind that sound vibration which frees the mind from agitations from anxieties from infatuations this, the negativity that are there in the mind that sound vibration which drives away those negativities that is called as mantra so just as the process of meditation which is meant to focus our mind it becomes easily accessible when it is given some tangible form so if we keep meditation purely at the abstract level and think of it only in terms of negatives is closing our eyes, being motionless sitting in a particular posture then the positive energy that we have to be active to do something that is not channeled very effectively so meditation in terms of doing a thing doesn’t work meditation essentially means doing the positive thing that is connecting using positive sound vibration to spiritual reality now sound has extraordinary power you see that sound might seem just to be ordinary but first time when the airplanes broke the sound barrier and started flying above the speed of sound the airplanes were flying high up in the sky and below in the houses, in the windows of many of the people below shattered the plane was hundreds of meters above in the sky but below the window shattered, how is that? because the sound vibration the vibrations that were emitted by the plane as it moved they were subtle, they were invisible but they were potent now among all our senses we are led most by our eyes now what we see we give a lot of stress on but at a subtle level the sound has a powerful potency when we are asleep we don’t see things but we hear an alarm clock that’s why we have an alarm clock not an alarm sign alarm sign if it comes up it won’t wake us up, we need an alarm clock so similarly what we need is just as when we are in a state of spiritual anger or slumber at that time what awakens are the spiritual sound so we are spiritual beings capable of higher perception and purposeful action but this capacity is currently impeded by our diminished consciousness by our affliction with infatuations and agitations that consume the mind to the extent we go beyond these infatuations through the medium of spiritual sound to that extent we can rise higher in our consciousness and that is precisely what spiritual sound does among the various spiritual sounds the sound of the holy names of God is especially potent God himself manifests through the sound Abhinattam Na Mana Mino the object that is named manifests through the name of that object and so when we call out the names of God say for example when we chant the Hare Krishna mantra Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare at that time when we chant this mantra we actually experience a connection with God and that connection with God uses enormous potency it enables us to become channels for God’s omnipotence to be expressed through all the negativity that is there within us gets cleansed away just as if there is a dirty puddle if there is a dirty lake, dirty pond when rain water comes into it and flows through it all the dirt gets erased like that all the inner negativity that is there within us gets swept away when we expose ourselves to spiritual sound the spiritual sound vibration and the meditation centered in spiritual sound vibration is can be done in two ways the individual meditation if you do through prayerful recitation of the mantra is called as Japa and the group meditation that we do through the process of Kirtan collectively that is called as Kirtan or some Kirtan that Kirtan that is done together that involves music that involves dancing and that is a celebration which is actually a meditation and through both these methods we can experience non-material enrichment and empowerment and researchers have found that then in the University of Florida found that those who meditated regularly they were calmer they had lesser negative traits and they were able to exhibit much more positivity and that way the meditation especially mantra meditation helps bring out the best within us thank you