Common Do's And Don'ts In Meditation; Guidelines Or Instructions For Meditation, Kundalini Awakening; Inner Demons, Papa Purusha

Truth: When the mind becomes still, the breath becomes equanimous, or a momentary swabhavika kumbhaka (natural cessation of breath) is achieved, Kundalini awakens. Meditation experiences follow.

The main instruction is to find out why you cannot still your mind during meditation. Every individual has a unique life, unique purpose in this cosmos, and unique reason for the inability to still/silence his/her mind during meditation.

As soon as you want to still the mind, the mind brings up thoughts. Observe and find out what the thoughts are. These thoughts will reveal a lot about your Vasanas and Samskaras. The thoughts will reveal how you have lived, how you are living, and where you will end up if you continued living the way you have lived and the way you are living. You need to find the reasons for such thoughts and fix such thoughts first.

Truth: While meditating, the thoughts that come to your mind will reveal your Vasanas and Samskaras. In other words, your thoughts during meditation are in fact the obstacles or obstructions, which will not allow you to progress. These need to be addressed and silenced first.

Q:  Are there any Do's and Don'ts, instructions, or guidelines for meditation and spirituality?

A:  To live, do you need to know how many bones, muscles, blood cells, nerves, or milliliters of blood you have?  Unless you are in the medical field, you do not need such knowledge to live. To remain silent, which is a natural and effortless state, do you need to know what all you should do? DON'T THINK/BE SILENT instruction is enough, but if you think you need many instructions, then read on.

The following are some of the basic instructions and guidelines:

Common sense and presence of mind are rare commodities these days; you need to cultivate them.

Spirituality is not a hobby that you plan to pursue on your retirement.

Spirituality and meditation are not teaching professions where you make money by teaching some bookish knowledge and course materials.

Spirituality and meditation are the tools for Self-realization, and they cannot solve your worldly problems like relationship issues, legal issues, and definitely cannot make you a miracle man/woman.  Rather, if practiced in a wrong way, meditation can lead to illnesses, diseases, and disorders.

If you have wrong notions about spirituality or meditation, you may get disillusioned when exploited by shrewd gurus/masters in the name of miracles and may give up meditation/spiritual practices altogether. Persons who don't progress in meditation even after spending many years also get disillusioned.

Grace of Gods or Self-realized saints comes in the form of getting rid of your age-old delusions, resolve to realize the Truth, and seeking the Truth within through SILENT meditation.

Practice meditation in a position that is comfortable. You can sit on the floor, chair, elevated platform, or lie down. (Lying down may not suit many. If you get sleep, feel heaviness of the head, eyes going up, pain in the neck/head, etc., then give up this practice immediately.) You should keep your back and neck straight, but not too straight or too stiff or rigid. YOU CAN SIT ON A CHAIR WITH BACK REST OR TAKE THE SUPPORT OF A WALL IF YOU ARE PRACTICING MEDITATION FOR LONGER DURATION. Don't tire yourself.

The food you eat should be nutritious and easily digestible, not too spicy, not too salty, not too oily, and not too sweet.

You can practice meditation with your eyes closed, partly closed, or half-closed. When meditating with partly/half closed eyes, if your attention is always moving from one place to another or from one object to another object in front of you, then you need to either practice closed eye meditation or you should meditate only in pitch darkness.

You should make sure that your vision has a 45-degree angle, which is the natural position and very comfortable. Looking up at the forehead or down at the tip of the nose, moving eyes sideward, or continuously blinking to see some light will give headaches and vision problems in the long run as these activities are unnatural.  If you want to see a light, stare at the sun for 10 seconds and close and press/rub your eyes gently--You will see whatever color/s of light you want to see.  This is an exercise and not meditation.

Before meditation, take a couple of deep breaths to calm your mind. Whenever you have disturbing thoughts, take deep breaths or open your eyes for sometime.  You need to be always relaxed and breathe easy.  Breathe out thoughts and breathe in silence. Just be silent. Silence is the simplest and the easiest method, which gives no side effects and has no dangers involved.  After your meditation, take deep breaths again and then get up from your position.

If you experience any pain symptoms or health issues, then give up such a meditation practice and stop meditating for a month or so.

Do not practice in groups or in public.

Do not be in a hurry.  Meditation happens on its own.

You should have regular and normal sleep.

Avoid sexual activities during your Sadhana.

You should maintain a balance between your worldly life and spiritual life. Do not imagine yourself to be spiritual or above the rest just because you have taken to meditation or have read some material on meditation and spirituality.

Thoughts will come up as soon as you start meditating.  Pay attention to the thoughts and you will realize that you have already thought about them before and they are already in you, so no point in thinking about them again.  Sometimes all the past will flash in the mind very fast like a chain of events, like the cartoon show on TV.  You just watch your thoughts like a movie without getting disturbed or affected.  Watch them as an entertainment program to be forgotten after sometime. DON'T MAKE THIS A HABIT. Re-living and relieving all your past thoughts and experiences is a must, no point in avoiding them.  You should come to terms with your past and the present and just realize their uselessness. The thoughts are just images and not real. For Re-living and Relieving process, click:

http://kundalini-brahmajnani.blogspot.in/2016/05/kundalini-experiences-mediation.html

Problems with observing/watching thoughts/modern-day mindfulness/Vipassana:

The mind plays tricks. It makes you feel that you are observing as well as thinking. In reality, the mind can process only one single thought at a time. If you were to type/write/utter a word “love,” you can type/write/utter only one letter at a given point in time (of course only after thinking about the word). Similarly, if you were to mentally think about the word “love,” then you can think one letter at a time, though you may think it in a fraction of a fraction of a second.

The number of thoughts in your mind will be equal to the number of years you have lived x 365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds x fractions of a second. Will you ever be able to observe these many thoughts in a couple of minutes/hours/days/months/years/decades of meditation?

GIVE UP YOUR OBSERVATION/MINDFULNESS/VIPASSANA MEDIATION and don’t meditate for longer duration if you are not achieving mental silence or cessation of thoughts.

PAPA PURUSHA/INNER DEMONS:

You need to face your inner demons (Papa Purusha, the sinful being) whether you meditate or not. These are the dark and negative energies inside you that encourage sinful, immoral, wrong, negative, self-destructive physical activities or thoughts and pessimism, guilt, remorse, shame, despair, frustration, and other negative emotions making you unhappy or your life a hell.  The inner demons or the Papa Purusha is born when you have bad or worst experiences, failures, helplessness, rejection, deprivation, physical or mental abuse, embarrassments, hurt, etc.

During such bad experiences, the whole body, senses, mind, ego, intelligence, and the consciousness are directed toward the bad experience; hence it leaves a very strong impression on the mind and affects your personality. This Papa Purusha makes you feel that you should be harming/injuring yourself or others and always do bad things, you are good for nothing and worthless, you and others don’t deserve good things, you are a sinner hence should do only sinful activities and destroy yourself or others, you don’t deserve to be meditating, you need to be wandering and indulging in all activities that spoil your spiritual pursuit/growth, you deserve only to be suffering and making others suffer, you are a loser and should become a sadist, etc. They thrive on privacy and secrecy.  They are so powerful that you don’t want to think that they exist, forget about discussing openly.  When you start meditating, you will realize you need to, sooner or later, deal with such negativity, negative vibrations/energies/thoughts/ideations/tendencies, inner demons, Papa Purusha.  Find or devise means to annihilate your inner demons (Papa Purusha).

Bad and difficult childhood, childhood abuses, childhood sexual abuses, domestic violence, abusive parents and relatives, etc., are all strong bad memories, which you have to get rid of one way or the other.

The best way to deal with them is to think about them repeatedly when not meditating, discussing and sharing with others to make light of their intensity and coming to a rational conclusion that they can be changed/overcome. You should conclude that anybody would have gone through what you have gone through, anybody would have developed your personality if he/she were to be in your shoes, if he/she had a childhood/parents/friends/family/surroundings/environment/life like you had. You should remind that these inner demons are not going to help you but instead make you err and then make you repent and suffer again.

Your deeper feelings/emotions/ fears/anxieties/desires/expectations/prejudices/ imaginations/secrets/childhood abuses…. all thoughts (including divinity/God, etc) which you have thought over and over again, which have greatly affected your life, or which have made up your personality can also be made light of or unimportant by discussing or sharing with others. You can use social media/internet forums to discuss all your undiscussable and unsharable past memories (you can create a fake ID or go anonymous). You will find many people who have gone through such a bad past or you will find some suggestions, etc., to get rid of your past memories.

You should control your ego, egoism, and egotism. Everyone is a human being; only circumstances and society have created the difference based on wealth, sex, education, color of skin, height, weight, age, physical and mental characteristics, caste, religion, community, nationality, etc. Of course you should have Vyavahara Jnaana (knowledge of rightly dealing with different people in different circumstances/situations).

You need to spend sometime in solitude, not thinking of worldly affairs. Take a break for 2 days in a fortnight or a month and spend those days in solitude, all alone, faraway from the maddening crowd. During solitude, do not indulge in any physical and mental activity in solitude, unless required. Practice mental silence.  Remind yourself that when you will die, you will die alone; others will move on without you; and ask yourself "where will I move to?"

Practice meditation/spirituality with patience, love and care.  It is your Sadhana that is much more important than the Siddhi (Attainment) as there is already a Siddha (Attained entity) in you.  You just have to give up the desire for Siddhi and find the Siddha in you. Do not make this period of your Sadhana a waste of time and energy due to wrong notions, wrong practices, wrong path, or wrong company.  Do not make Sadhana a waste by indulging in sense-gratifying activities that you had always been doing.  At the same time, you will need to maintain a balance in your worldly life as well as your spiritual life.

Do not make your spiritual sadhana a veritable hell by practicing harmful teachings or following fake gurus whose sole objective is to ruin you physically, mentally, financially, and spiritually for selfish motives. Any practice that causes physical or mental trauma needs to be shunned as poison ASAP.

Too much spiritual discussion, argument, analysis, and book reading is a big waste.  Did you really have any meditation experience with all these?  Spirituality, Self-realization and meditation have become literary courses to study some theoretical concepts which practically are not true and consequently cannot be experienced at all.  These all have been sensationalized over the ages.  One needs to know their real meaning only by "seeking within." Meditation has become a physical and a mental activity. Silence is Supreme--practice it, live it.

Meditation is the opposite of physical and mental exertion. Cessation of thoughts is meditation. Meditation is like putting a baby to sleep: You put your mind to sleep and observe it sleep. FIRST PUT IT TO SLEEP/SILENCE, NOT THAT YOU KEEP OBSERVING/THINKING. Practice Vipareeta Bhavana, going the opposite direction of what the mind wants. If the mind wants to enjoy some physical or mental activity, say "NO" and practice silence.

Truthfulness and purification of thoughts, speech, and action or righteous living is essential to succeed in meditation.  Virtues like compassion, mercy, generosity, forbearance, righteous conduct and behavior, freedom from greed and jealousy, humility, peace of mind, gratitude, etc., need to be cultivated.

You may not experience anything apart from your imagination if you are not living a righteous life and do not see Oneness in All.  If you are seeing a lot of difference between people, objects, and places and hate some and crave for others, then you are far from spirituality. "Whatever is in you is in the entire cosmos." "Seek within."  Anybody can succeed in meditative absorption if he/she is truthful to oneself and others.

Before you do any other Naadi Shuddi (purification of nerves) through Pranayama which is futile, first do these two shuddhis, namely Vasana Shuddhi or Vasana Kshaya (reducing the desires of sex, wealth, name/fame, Kaama-Kaanchana-Keerti) and Samskara Shuddi.

It is ultimately the guru within that guides you, who knows every bit about you and all your thoughts and karma. Without respecting and seeking guidance from your Inner Guru, if you are worshiping or following a fake guru, you will never have any spiritual awakening/experience in your entire life.

Practice silence. Silence or Shunya has no karmic reaction.

WARNING: If any of the above instructions, e.g., lying down, meditating with partly open eyes, 45-degree gaze, etc., gives you any side effects in the form of pain, pressure, heaviness, and other unnatural sensations, STOP SUCH A PRACTICE IMMEDIATELY.

IT MAY NOT SUIT YOUR BODY AND MIND. DEVISE YOUR OWN MEDITATION TECHNIQUE WHICH HELPS YOU ACHIEVE CESSATION OF THOUGHTS!

BE A LIGHT UNTO YOURSELF! ENLIGHTEN YOURSELF WITH YOUR OWN EFFORTS AND WITH YOUR OWN MEDITATION TECHNIQUE (not activity/concentration based) THAT HELPS YOU ACHIEVE SILENCE!

Find out which technique/what suits your body and temperament and what makes you silent during meditation; move forward from there.

Method of finding a fake guru:
A fake guru will teach the same meditation technique (activity based) for all and sundry, without knowing that different types of meditation techniques were designed for different types of people. Different types suit different people. ALL MEDITATION TECHNIQUES WERE CREATED WITH THE OBJECTIVE OF ACHIEVING SILENCE.

Physical and mental fitness/suitability for a meditation technique vary from person to person. People will suffer physically and mentally trying to adjust their bodies and minds according to the requirements of a meditation technique which is not suitable to them.

Some meditation techniques just do not suit some people. This is the reason why most of the meditators or spiritual aspirants keep changing meditation courses, techniques, books, gurus, ideas, etc., and waste their money, time, energy and ultimately end up with ZERO meditation experience. Some people want quick results, so every 3 months, they change their gurus/meditation techniques/spiritual ideas, etc. "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Without getting any result, such people get disillusioned with meditation and spirituality and repent the rest of their lives for having been in the pursuit of spiritual stuff. However, people who benefit monetarily from meditation and spirituality would happily continue because it's profitable profession/trade for them.

There is nothing called the Best Meditation Technique or an Universal Meditation Technique. Meditation is not some physical or mental activity which you have to learn, like learning kriya, pranayama, asana, vipassana, mindfulness, tratak, contemplation, etc. Meditation is about being Silent to know if there exists anything in you apart from the body-mind complex. Meditation is about unlearning. When you experience that indeed there exists something else in you, then unlearning of all the knowledge you have gained in your life begins.

[Note: Since present-day generation will lose more than what they benefit from activity-based modern-day meditation techniques, I WOULD SAY SILENCE IS THE BEST FORM OF MEDITATION because it gives no side effects and A GURU/TEACHING/LEARNING IS NOT REQUIRED.]

Meditation should never harm you physically and mentally, even if practiced intensely, for a longer duration of time during one session and for a prolonged period of time. All good meditation techniques should lead to or end in Silence (however brief the silence may be) as it is the first stage in the meditation process. As soon as you reach the stage of silence, only 3 things happen as discussed in the following meditation process:
http://kundalini-brahmajnani.blogspot.com/2016/05/dhyana-or-meditation-techniques-silence.html

Click the link below to know the myths about Kundalini:
http://kundalini-brahmajnani.blogspot.in/2016/06/kundalini-as-it-is-myths-about.html

To Know about fake and real gurus, fake and real disciples and followers, and to know how you can become a fake or a real guru, click:

http://kundalini-brahmajnani.blogspot.in/2016/09/gurus-grace-religious-and-spiritual.html

For Questions and Answers on Meditation and Spirituality, click:
http://kundalini-brahmajnani.blogspot.in/2016/09/questions-and-answers-part-i-kriya-yoga.html

WARNING: It's okay if you don’t meet a Brahmajnani (Self-realized seer) or realize yourself in this life, but never ever meet or follow a BHRAMjnaani (fake guru who will make you delusional).  If you do, then you will suffer your entire life.

http://kundalini-brahmajnani.blogspot.in/2016/05/bhram-jnana-bhramjnani-brahmajnana.html

                                               

SHUBHAMASTU – Let Good Happen to You!