Meditation provides a wide range of benefits to you. It’s no surprise meditation can help with stress, and along those lines it also has positive effects on blood pressure and mental health. For example, meditation
You wave your ice cream cone in front of your friend’s face when you know she is on a diet…and it falls flat on the ground.
You notice that the tire that needed constant filling with air—and which you ignored—is now flat just as you are heading out the door to attend a special event. You won’t make it there in time, now.
You try to keep up with the flexible person next to you in yoga class, and wake up the next morning with a sore back and neck.
The thought occurred to me today that if energy flows where attention goes then the $10 billion dollar a year self-improvement industry in the U.S. alone is actually contributing to the perpetuating mental and emotional belief that “you are not enough” exactly the way you are. This contradicts every sacred text and teaching that I have ever come across. You exist therefore you are enough. Your essence was born from the frequency of the Source of all life. That is enough to make your existence completely and fully valid.
Sometimes life calls for a breaking down of the old reality in order to facilitate the birthing of the new. This is not always a pleasant realization to have and yet, using the power of mantra, such a time can transform from something potentially painful and full of resistance into a supportive experience of the transcendent new.
OM NAMA SHIVAYA
As turbulence shook and rattled the cabin I chanted the Mahamrityunjaya mantra silently to myself to offer protection, to myself and to the entire plane. I had done the same thing in buses and car rides in India, when the terrain was so uncertain, when the cliffs were only inches away and I had no other way to comfort myself. We had chanted this mantra weekly during my time at the ashram and I had felt its power.
I hear the word “enlightenment” thrown around a lot. It has traction that has launched a very lucrative t-shirt and trinket industry. I recently found myself wondering, “That’s nice, but what does enlightenment actually MEAN?” When I looked up the definition, I saw that several explanations were listed…Some feel it is attaining an awareness of God consciousness. Some feel that it is transcending duality and living in a perpetual state of bliss.
Wealth is more than money. We are all connected to an unlimited source of wealth and abundance just by being divine humans—the trick is we have either blocked it, forgotten it, or both. It is a natural state of being to access the wealth of the universe in all its many forms simply because we are a part of it and we ARE it. On a very real level, the universe is within us as much as we are within the universe.
I spent four months in a yogic immersion course in India. We chanted mantras for an hour every evening and then twice per month we chanted the entire Bhagavad Gita—which took 6 hours to complete. There were well over 100 people chanting together at any given time, and during the final month of the course we had the entire village assembled, chanting together for 8+ hours per day. I’ll tell you: the result of all this chanting was transformative to say the least.
Mantra work has been some of the most powerful work I have done in my lifetime. The effect mantra has on the cells of the body and the DNA is so pronounced that I can literally feel the shifts in my being after I chant. The resonant tones of chanting change the physical body forever. It is inescapable and undeniable: Chanting simply transforms you!
My mother is Christian, but she is a Bhakti yogi, no doubt. Her entire spiritual practice is that of no-minded devotion. She is not about the letter of the law, but rather the heart behind her worship. I admire that about her, and though I do not believe in the same way she does, I can learn a lot from her devotion.