Making Your Mind Your Best Friend

With all the doors of sense perception, like seeing, hearing, tasting, open to the outside world, we become accustomed to a world of sensation and forget about the center. We are greatly attracted to the external, since our senses pull us out all the time. We can easily forget that there is an internal life, too. Internal life is not objective, but fundamentally subjective. The practice of meditation opens up this subjective realm of life.

We can use an analogy to understand. If I leave my car keys in my bedroom, and then forget about where they are, I may search all around the neighborhood; I may spend days and nights searching for those keys, whether out on the sidewalk, in the lawn, or all over the city. But I will never find the keys outside. For I did not lose them outside. I simply forgot that I left them in my bedroom. In my home. Until I come back to my home, and search through my bedroom, I will not find them. When I find them in my bedroom, I may think, “How foolish of me to go around searching and seeking outside when the keys were all the time in my home!” So is the truth of our life. We do not lose our peace and calm outside of us. But we think so. This illusion drives our search in the objective world for that which we always have in the home of our subjective Self.

Meditation is not a technique. It is your realization that you have not lost your happiness outside of you. No amount of searching in the world of money or beauty or name or fame will help you find your lost peace of mind. Just retreat back into the shrine of your Home. It is there, within you. It is in the silence of your mind. It is in the humility of your humbled emotion, which acknowledges the supremacy of Divine Wisdom. It is in your connection of Body Mind with your Spirit within. It is in your connection of the individual self with the Cosmic Self. It is in the journey of an individual to find the Universal. It is in the simple art of opening your heart and mind to the Higher Light that guides the destiny of trillions of galaxies.

Once your sense of separation melts in the light of awareness that is created in Meditation, you will feel the expansion, you will feel the essence of life enveloping everything as the manifestation of the Self within. That is a beautiful state of harmony and peace.

If you are having a hard time observing your breath while meditating, just relax. Watch each part of your body, from the crown of your head to your toes, and allow enough time for each part to relax. As you relax you will gradually feel a sense of silence dawning upon your mind.

All problems that you or anyone in this world have come from the mind; the mind, which has been trained over a period of time to unconsciously support the roots of the ego-self. Every problem you have is rooted in the ego-mind-pseudo self. All the uncomfortable feelings of fear and anxiety, stress, and strains, exist because the mind is ego.

Until the mind can be purged of its impurities or the dross that it collected from the past, and until the mind can find something higher to surrender to, the mind will not become silent. It will continue to be clinging, craving, crying, demanding, fearing all the time, and will take the individual on a roller coaster ride.

Do not worry; the best way to purge, to detoxify, is to understand that anything which bothers you, is NOT the real YOU. It is your ego; it is your mind; it is your mind attached to the past and future; and for sure, that mind is not dwelling in the Moment.

Do not worry. The best way to rise and unfetter yourself is to recognize the Self within you; the Self that transcends all these fleeting thoughts and emotions, these bunches of negativity that keep demanding and demanding to survive.

Ego demands endlessly, for it has a hunger and thirst that is never appeased nor quenched. It is a bottomless pit, you try to fill it, but it never fills. It is never contented. It gives you a feeling of fulfillment for a short while, and immediately demands the next thing. And, then the next. It never stops.

All fears are born out of the fear of the death of the ego. Fear never, never comes from the true Self, which cannot die. Ego never wants to die. It lives through its own defense mechanism of demands and clinging, which is the nature of mind.

While you are focusing in your physical body, gradually you move into the space beyond the physiology and anatomical knowledge that you have gained through your past interactions. You begin to experience vibrations and sensations. That experience is gained only in silence of the mind.

When your thoughts stop taking you backward to the dead past or forward to the uncertain future, when the mind has nothing more to cling to, it ceases its identification and modifications, and there is a sudden stillness. In that stillness, in that now-ness, in that 'moment,' is the death of the ego, and the resurrection of the Spirit, the Soul, the Universal self which is beyond dualism.

You are neither fear nor death; even those you love the most are neither fear nor death. We all are the fearless, deathless One.

The heart of meditation practice is to do only that which you are doing
- to be there, where you are.

We have various interpretations of meditation all over the world and the
practitioners keep adding to the list of the different techniques which
could be adopted for meditation. More than a technique, it is an art. It
is highly individualistic and original. Every practitioner of meditation
is indeed individualistic and original. No one in this world is like
the other. That brings about the uniqueness in the practice too.

There is no single coat that would fit all and sundry. You have to chalk
out your own track and that is done once you start walking. The path is
created not with your expert theoretical knowledge of meditation but
with what earnestness you put into the path as you start your journey.
It is only when one begins to practice meditation that things start to show up so
differently than what is theoretically conceived. You are original without
the second.

One of the time tested simplest path to meditation is to simply follow
your breath. For breath is the bridge between you, the individual and the
Universe. Breath connects you to the Cosmic energy field. It yokes you;
hence it is the simplest path of Yoga, to be united again with the
Universe, to transcend the individual and cross over to the vast
infinite cosmic existence.

When you observe your breath, you are closest to your spirit. Your
Consciousness deepens, your energy rises as you become meditative and
contemplative. Take a deep breath and exhale. Relax and release all that
you are holding on to into the space of letting go. Just smile, See for
yourself, how easy it is to let go your agitation, confusion and
restlessness and reach to the fathomless expansion of Joy and
Celebration Eternal. Baba Shuddhaanandaa