WHY MEDITATE?
1. Create the habit of sitting with yourself twice a day by practice
2. Switch off phone twice a day
3. Give yourself the opportunity to just BE you and BE WITH you
4. In that time your mind will do what it needs to do
5. It is releasing tension knots in your psyche just like getting a massage to release stress-knots on your body
6. While it releases these knots, the emotion is released
7. The emotional release seeks a reason or a story to relate it to
8. These are the random thoughts you have when you meditate.
9. The release frees up your mind so that you can be more creative and effective the rest of the day.
10. There is no bad meditation, all meditation is good.
11. Listening to music/chanting/affirmations is NOT the same as meditating.
12. There is no effort in meditating.
13. In fact TM describes meditation as effortless.
14. The minute you focus you are doing the opposite of meditating, you are concentrating.
15. Trust that it is freeing up space in your RAM and in your Hard Drive to allow more creative learning and expression.
16. Challenge – practice is religiously for 30 days and watch your life change!
17. Stop seeking advice from people, allow the answers to come up in signs around you.
18. You can look at them as random meaningless coincidences or as meaningful synchronicity.
19. Trust your gut an your intuition
20. Meditate Meditate Meditate!!!
HOW?
Ideally, you should to find a unique way or learn from a teacher. Find a local TM teacher in your city or if you are in Indonesia, my brother Sanjay is an awesome teacher.
As an introduction, find a quiet space to sit in, turn off your phone, or put it on silent and set your alarm for 20 minutes, so you don’t keep opening your eyes to check time. Time can go slowly when you sit with yourself. 🙂
Make sure you are not too full but not hungry either.
Sit anyway you feel comfortable, I like to have my feet sometimes firmly planted on the ground and sometimes, crossed or stretched out straight in front of me,
Sit with your neck and spine straight.
Gently close your eyes
That’s all!
If you don’t have a mantra, then just think of a flame or as a space in between your eyebrows. You can also imagine that you are looking slightly above the horizon with your eyes closed.
Don’t focus or concentrate, just sit and allow whatever comes up to come up. You may drift into sleep and that is ok, you may find yourself having very conscious thoughts and making plans or you may drift, do not control anything, and do not berate yourself about anything, all is good!
Just relax, and sit.
Open your eyes after 20 minutes, resist the urge to check your clock in between. If there are noises, so be it, you can meditate on a crowded bus just as easily as you can on the mountaintop; as long as you are comfortable.
Ensure comfort, a blanket if you think you may get cold.
When the 20 minutes are up, sit still for another 2 – 3 minutes before you get up and on with your day. This is called installation. No sudden movements and no looking at your phone, just allow yourself to relax without the mantra (name).
Get on with your day and repeat in the evening. Not just before you sleep as it is said you may be more effective and creative post meditation. Think of it as nourishment for your mind.
PLUG IN for ANSWERS
Don’t ask for advice, practice meditating instead and open up yourself to the signs, the GPS system of the universe. Plug into source, like how you would stick a sim-card in your cell phone, to get signal. Or connect your computer to the internet or wifi! All the answers you seek, all the direction you require is within you, just like how Google has the answer to almost any questions, trust that you do too or you will be guided from within to find your answers.
This is why I don’t believe in asking for advice from friends or loved ones. Yes ask experts for specific advice, a nutritionist what to eat for a particular diet, a stock analyst on understanding the current market, a doctor on a particular condition, but to ask your friends and family for advice on what direction you should take, where you should go or what you should do is futile.
I prefer to connect with ME and wait for my intuition to answer my questions rather than seeking advice from people who are from different walks of life, in different circumstances, with different priorities and resources, who have no clue what I’m capable of or of what’s most important to me.
ENJOY and please share your experience in the comments. Include your email address if you would like to use my unique Habit Forming Table to help you instil the habit of meditating twice a day and enjoy the blessings that FLOW!
Oprah, Seinfeld, Ellen, Hillary and so so many awesomely positive, hardworking, committed and creative people.
Thank you in advance Malti, for the Habit Forming Table. Spent most of this Sunday afternoon viewing the series of your Youtube videos. Thanks for sharing some great insights.