So, you are all curious and really want to know all of my ‘dirty little secrets’ huh?
I have the worst ‘monkey mind’ out there and I mean, like [I]really[/I] bad, so whenever I hear “my mind just races too fast to meditate”, I have to catch myself from taking it as: “I really want to find the Truth, but I just cannot be arsed doing so”.
There is an amazing ‘precursor’ to meditation I discovered when I was a child and totally bored with nothing else to do. It’s called ‘Trataka’ and it consists of gazing at a fixed object like a candle flame, sitting between two mirrors trying to determine where my reflection ended (the first time I opened my Brow Chakra doing this), gazing into a bowl of water like Nostradamus or the rising/setting sun. The whole idea is to be able to bring your total awareness and fixedness onto an external object before one closed the eyes and just became ‘lost in space’.
With Trataka, you try and unite your whole consciousness though the object you are perceiving (in my case, it was first a candle flame and then my own eyes in a mirror when I became more advanced at it). I never managed to ‘become one with the object’, but it led me to slow down my mind enough to be able to take that next step, which was meditation.
I closed my eyes and at first, I applied the principles of Trataka to that space between the eyebrows and [I]immediately[/I] just felt intense pain and pressure there. This went on for a few days and I would also get strong headaches because of it. Then, I did something both stupid and wonderful.
During such a meditation, I applied a small measure of Tiger Balm to that area (carefully avoiding my eyes) and this did 2 things. It relieved the pain a bit and also gave me a cooling ‘focal point’ for this ‘internal concentration meditation’. After doing it the first time, the Tiger Balm became a ‘ritual’ for me. Whenever my mind would start to wander and the monkey would rattle its cage, I’d bring my total awareness back to that cool, radiating glow.
However, you can mentally put anything in that spot where your ‘internal camera’ is and look at it…a picture of Jesus/crucifix, an ‘emanation of Light’, a statue of Lord Nataraja (my own Ishwara)…whatever your mind associates with ‘God’ or a ‘Higher Purpose’ or ‘deeper meaning’ and it should only be relevent to you.
It’s also highly beneficial if one feels some heartfealt/spiritual attachment [I]to[/I] this internal association, because being able to open your heart [I]fully[/I] to the ‘Cosmic Force’ or that which is ‘beyond understanding through anything else [I]but[/I] Love’ is also really necessary.
Concentrate with all your breath, heartbeats, mind and total awareness, like you are doing something that actually [I]required[/I] you to use most of this anyway, like fixing an intricate watch.
After a few months, your thoughts will slow down and then actually stop and when I say ‘stop’, it will be for all but a millisecond a few years between each millisecond, but that’s enough if you can achieve [I]only[/I] that.
If you can actually manage to stretch that out into a hundredths of a second, then work down from there, that’s all you need do.
Getting into a meditative state is very easy. It’s sustaining it for any length of time that’s the hardest part.
Take care and may God bless you all.
