Foreword

I frequently used to visit a Ayurvedic store, for my family’s alternative medicine. A man watched me many times, I think, and one day, came to me. He appeared sick asked me what to do as he is unwell? Well, that was obvious, I suggested, “Get medication”, with a good intention though. But he asked, “which medicine sir?”, then I asked, “What is the problem sir?”. Then he explained. I am no doctor to prescribe, so I paid for him at the doctor’s consultation to get him appropriate remedy.

In a different scenario, about 15 years back, I was going through some mental stress.  I was trying to get some advice from intelligent people. One of them said “Do meditation”. For which I thought I should sit in a calm place and close my eyes. And I did. Then I saw, my mind occupied the seat across the table in the mind-space.

Mind: Now what to do, man?

Me: Nothing.. just calm down.

Mind: Ok, I am calm, but you have told Rajesh that you will get him tickets for the train!

Me:  Ok, I remember, I will do it later, but remind me…

Mind: Alright, do you know, you are doing good by sitting for meditation

Me: Yes.. do you think I mastered it?

Mind: Yes you are almost there, you are doing great, just that left thigh is itching… Scratch it, and you will be good.

Me: Yes yes, now its disturbing me… crrk, crrk…done!

Mind: Alright, the air is so pleasant isn’t it? btw, don’t forget Rajesh!

Me: Yeah Rajesh is a good man!

Mind : Good means what? Are you not good? Ratan is bad, you remember what he did last time?

Me: I don’t know, what Good means…yeah, Ratan insulted me…

And it continued, I was frustrated!

Now Meditation

Isn’t that the same experience most of us have, when we sit to “do meditation“?

Get Medication, Do Meditation are pointless superfluous solutions, for an unknown problem

Is Meditation not existing? Well, when I look at the Oxford dictionary it says this, about meditation. “the practice of focusing your mind in silence, especially for religious reasons or in order to make your mind calm”.

And when I looked at Wikipedia,

Isn’t that ridiculous, Cyclic redundancy! Most people don’t have instructor, they go to Google or Wikipedia to read, and destination of learning becomes Youtube, unfortunate in some cases!

The question is, is it even possible? How can you achieve silence before you even focus at it? It is a constant struggle to achieve something impossible. One thing is certain, when you shut your eyes, and sit in clam place, the three(including tongue) sense organs which are constantly feeding information to you, may stop sending signals. Now, nose, skin, mind, your pains, will continue to poke you. The dance of mind begins when you shut down sense organs. If you stop seeing something, mind creates new images for you to see. If you stop hearing external noises, it starts creating its own sounds, voices and music. Tell me if this is incorrect!

There are suggestive relaxation techniques either by self, or by others. Sometimes it can be hypnotism also. The word meditate came from Latin root meditatum, which means, to ponder, contemplate. Ponder and Contemplate? Yes! Hahaha! Now, it is exactly opposite of silence as defined in Oxford! So, the word itself has no relevance, nullifying itself in meanings. So, now what? Can we not meditate? To make our lives easy, Let us take the contemporary meaning of “Meditate”, to become silent, or focus at silence.

You don’t do meditation, but you become meditative, by the way you conduct your life.

Yes, meditation is told as remedy for avoiding friction within yourself, isn’t it? Conversely, if you become friction free within yourself, then you are living a meditative life. That is all! It could be at three levels of our life.

As in modern science, human body has multiple systems of operation, The circulatory system, The respiratory system, the digestive system, The endocrine system, The nervous system etc, by Ayurveda, there are five bodies within us, the one Food body(What the tiger sees in us! 🙂 ) , the Pranic Body or the Energy Body, because of which we move. The Mind or the Intelligence body, and two more, which are not relevant for now.

When each of these three bodies becomes calm in their state, Awareness sets in, and you become meditative fully. They are synchronized. You can sit calm indefinitely, or do intense action without burning out!

Suggestive Methods-a variant

This is also called conditioning of mind temporarily, either by self or others(Ex: Hypnotism). You can do it to yourself, sitting or lying down in a undisturbed place with no strong odors and sounds, even music (pleasant or unpleasant), normal lighting. Sit or lie down in comfortable position not staring at anything, close eyes. Give a strong and powerful suggestion to your mind, “I am trying to become well, and after this session, I will”, firmly, and not casually or with doubt.  Try to make all body parts stiff for a count of five seconds and release. Do it 3-5 times. 

Now, start imagining your stress is heavy in head, Negative thoughts are making head heavy. Now, as you lie down, the thoughts and stress are not able to stay there, and melting down, into a liquid and are passing through your neck, and then shoulders, and then into arms, forearms, and fingers, and evaporating there…. Similarly through your body, thighs, calves, feet and fingers and evaporating… You have to visualize, feel and release

Do it few times, you will be relaxed much better. You have to find your sweet spot there.

This will fail if your mind goes into logical questions, or you are disturbed by something that mind may get a signal from.  (A phone ring, a good or bad smell, a sound, etc)

This is a kind of meditation, focus to cleanse and heal certain areas of mind, and hence also a healing method.

Focus improving method

There is a method called Tratak, in ancient India, to keep a dot on the wall, and stare at it for five to ten minutes, without blinking the eye, which I practiced during my college times for months. Yes it works, your concentration increases. Focus improves.

Most men are just fine by becoming stress free and focusing their minds. They don’t need to arrive at a calm mind.

Therefore, if you got your solution, you can stop reading. Otherwise, delve in for a deeper experience of so called “meditation”.

Calming mind

If you don’t know the nature of the brat, you will never be able to tame or calm it down.

So is with mind! You must understand the perpetual nature of mind, that churns the information gathered by senses endlessly, in the template of your upbringing, genetics, environment, and again the beliefs, likes and dislikes you carried.

Disorganized or totally engulfed

A person who has a queue of unresolved issues on a day, or is disorganized(not having a plan), because of the nature of work he is in, or the habit of disorganization, is constantly haunted by hundreds of thoughts. You cannot calm such a mind. Either tasks have to be zeroed, or have to have a plan. Now imagine problems in life queuing for months and years, which will not let a man sleep, forget about calming mind. So it is very important to

1. Get perspective of Life right

2. Be skillful, do what is needed

3. Be organized

Mal-intention

If I have an intention or emotion to hurt or damage life/someone, damage someone. Suddenly it affects and disturbs not only thought, but emotion and the Energy body(explained below). You cannot calm such mind. So it is very important again to

1. Get perspective of life right

4. Become compassionate (If 1 happens, 4 is consequence)

Then optionally your mind may give a path to look at a different dimension, the silence zone of mind, and it needs practice, weeks, months, years. But yes, it works.

Too materialistic

If I am too much engrossed emotionally with material and people around me, then I am seeking company constantly. Without them, my mind will go crazy. For such people, it is a challenge to sit idle, and bring calmness in mind. They need to practice change perspective of life, and then practice for weeks, months, years to really say they can meditate.

Questioning mind

If I have hundreds of questions, and no answers, I am on a quest to find answers, and these questions are constantly bothering me. Nothing wrong, but to such people also sitting quite to calm the mind will be challenging, nevertheless unwavering practice is the key.

Thinking of meditation without setting perspective of life right is like boarding a helicopter, and dreaming to land on moon

The Food body

First of all, you must realize your hands, legs, body, is just food created from others source of food! Yes or no? They are proteins vitamins, carbs, fats all food arranged to look like You!  If you don’t realize this yet, just get your body tested, if they have something else than amino acids, carbs, sugars, vitamins, minerals and fats.

Have you ever consciously observed yourself. When you eat certain foods, you feel disturbed mentally. And some foods make you feel jovial, exuberant and peaceful? If you have not, you must experiment on yourself. That is why they say

What we eat is what we are and become

The saying is about the nature and quality of food, not the origin of food. However nature and quality of food has direct correlation with origin of food.

To become meditative in body, we must consume such foods, which offer calmness to body. When you eat such food, you can clearly observe, the pokers in the food stop or reduce reaching mind constantly to ignite or trigger new thoughts, that way supporting the journey towards a calm mind. Don’t believe? Try it! Everyday observe yourself, what foods you ate, and how your mind is reacting to things. You have to really cross this barrier to understand the impact of food on mind to take charge of mind

The Energy Body

I always say oxygen alone is not sufficient to make a dead person alive. It needs Prana, an energy that is not known to Science yet. This is entirely occupying our material body. This is in constant communication with outside world . You may not know it. But just to give simple example, when we are sitting in office, what you  exhale, I am inhaling, and what I exhale, you are inhaling. Are we or not? Are we not exchanging air, though it is unhealthy? Similarly the plants, they exhale, we inhale, and we exhale, they inhale, which is healthy though. So transactions are constantly happening at subtler energy levels, called Prana. This has to be in equilibrium. Prana gets disturbed due to Food, Thought, Emotion, Activity. Thought, Emotion, Activity are based on Five senses that we have. Isn’t it?

So fundamentally to bring equilibrium to Prana, right food is very important, and then mastery of mind are. That is why the sages retracted to caves, to reduce the information coming from senses. But it is not always necessary, if on can master the mind. And it is a feat by itself and might consume the entire life, just trying.

The Manomaya(Mind body)

A few days back, I saw a video of a floor levelling machine used by a worker. The machine has a handle to firmly hold to, there are levelling and grinding stones underneath. As the worker moves it on the floor, the machine levels it and grinds the floor, to make it shining. You all know this already and may have seen this. Now this worker got a phone call and he left one hand to pick the call. The machine was merciless, it just grabbed itself out of his second hand, and started moving around by itself. It fell over and made a mess of the floor, how much ever they tried to calm it down.

Mind is similar, it is fantastic empowerment, but a perpetual machine. If you lose control, it makes full length movies by itself, and makes you a character in it. What can be made into a beautiful landscape, can become utterly ugly in life, just because we have no control on mind. All said is good, but how to get control?

Well, the Food and Energy are the foundations. No matter what you do, if you don’t act on foundations, your castle will crumble. So is mind!

Before achieving mind control, you have to get perspective of life right. Once it is right, mind will fall into your lap to control. There is no if-but-then-else.

That is why I always said,

Perspective is possibility in impossible scenarios, it can bring back hope in hopeless situations, life in lifeless situations, happiness in depression, mind in control, where we lost control.

So, how to change perspective? Well, I am trying my best to bring in right perspectives towards life. So, if you seek right perspectives, don’t be selective with what you absorb. There are many great men who threw perspectives of life, but you don’t have time to read volumes! Do you? So its better if it is one aspect at a time!

Some people thank me heart fully online and offline, and their eyes gleam, though I have not given anything valuable to them materially nor I healed their pain,  because their perspective of life changed, and Life appeared more hopeful, promising, mind controllable, and they more able.

Conclusion

If you need immediate solution to stress and strain, use suggestive methods to brain, which can bring down the negative states of mind. It is called conditioning of mind, for some time. In some cases hypnotism can work, and in some, a psychologist and in few cases psychiatrist.

If you are looking for a solution for life, follow things that resonate with life. Because Nature is not fair, to a smarter or stronger man, but only to the one who resonates with it.

In ancient India there are many names that were given to the activity we do by closing eyes, apart from sleep, because the awareness is ON, not OFF! Each of them have certain outcome or consequence, which the person doing is interested in.

Dhyana: Focusing the mind on one thing, unwavering, it could be breath or anything.

Tapas: Not only focusing, but also reciting sounds that match in frequency

Shoonya: Becoming empty minded.

Yoga: A state of reaching and touching the nature of life.

and more…which may sound illogical at this point.