Altered States of Consciousness – Meditation vs. Other Ways
What I am going to tell you in this post about the altered states of consciousness is based on my own experiences and learning, through this article, I really want to debunk various myths associated with meditation because often people with less knowledge about it believe that it is just another way to escape the reality.
Before talking about how meditation works, I want to answer a basic question.
What Is Altered States of Consciousness?
Let us consider this particular moment; if you are able to perceive your environment with total awareness then you are fully conscious.
But during our day, we often go through phases where we are not fully awake, it could be when you are daydreaming, obsessed with a particular thought, immersed in your favorite music, etc.
In all the above-mentioned activities we are experiencing a different mind state than the normal fully awake state, so it could be said that your consciousness varied during those times.
Now, those were just a slight variation of mind state which we all experience frequently. The degree to which we perceive things properly using our 5 senses decides the quality of our consciousness. Continue reading
Yoni Mudra Method, Meditation and Benefits
Yoni is a Sanskrit word which means uterus/womb, this mudra got the name Yoni Mudra because it makes the practitioner detached from the worldly issues like a baby in its mother’s womb.
This practice is also known by the names Bhramari pranayama and Shanmukhi mudra. Bhramari means bumble bee and it is so named since during this process, you make a gentle humming sound like a bee.
If you will practice this simple mudra regularly you will be able to protect your energy from other people’s energies and your mind will remain unaffected from the power games and emotional dramas in which others are usually involved. Continue reading
Insight Meditation-How to Do Vipassana Meditation?
This post will inform you about how to do vipassana meditation and what it is in simple words.
The vipassana meditation is probably the most famous meditation practice because it is believed that it was taught by Buddha.
Since it has been existing for more than thousands of years, this practice is the basis of many other Buddhist meditation techniques.
Insight Meditation
This technique is also called as the insight meditation because the aim of this method is to make you see things “as they are”.
By saying “as they are” I am referring to the purest form of any entity that you observe.
Buddha already knew what we are discovering nowadays that all our sense of reality is based on the information received by our mind when it was getting developed.
In other words, our perception of reality is completely dependent on the beliefs, concepts and ideas present in our subconscious mind.
So, what we think as “reality” is created by our minds by filtering the actual information that is received by our senses and that’s why every person’s experience of a same event varies. Continue reading
What Is Meditation and How to Do It – In Simple Terms
In this post, I am going to explain what is meditation and show you a simple method using which you could perform it even if you have never done it before.
Unlike earlier, meditation has become very popular nowadays, especially due to many new studies that are illuminating the benefits of meditation.
With popularity, myths and misconceptions about this process have also increased.
People have formed their own opinions about meditation and these false notions have become a huge barrier in the path of spiritual progress of this generation.
It is quite obvious – How can a person do something if they are unsure about what they are trying to do?
Another thing that makes me sad is that people have so many speculative judgments about meditation, many a times I have been viewed as a weird guy when I talk about it in front of my friends. Well, I don’t really mind that because for me being “weird” is a natural state whereas what we consider “normal” is actually a mask that people wear to fit into the society.
It is easy to form an opinion about this process, but if you are someone who genuinely wants to know about meditation then I do have something so simple and basic to share which might help you.
Meditation
What is the most essential thing to know about meditation is that it is not a “concept” or “belief” which you can understand using your logical mind, instead it is a natural state which can only be experienced.
This might sound so simple but that’s the truth – Meditation is the state of being completely present in the moment.
What being present in the “now” moment means is to get free of the “self-talks” and become attentive to what you are doing right now.
So, a kid playing hide and seek being fully involved in the game is experiencing deeper meditation than a person sitting in lotus posture in Himalayas with their mind saying “yes I am meditating!”.
Purpose of meditation is to maintain the state of “thoughtless awareness”, where you are so intensely focused in the “Now” moment that thoughts ceases to exist there.
It is all about being aware of the present moment and that’s why I promote mindfulness exercises.
A Simple Meditation Technique for Everyone
As I have discussed above, we will just try to become more present in the moment by doing this without aiming for any “special state”.
When it comes to meditation, there is no destination to reach.
The thoughtless awareness state to which I referred earlier is not any future event for which you have to strive, it is something which happens automatically when you are highly alert of your inner happenings.
Your meditation is successful even if you get to stay there for 10-20 seconds during the whole session (don’t keep track of time, I am just using an example).
Please don’t form a conclusion that you have to stop your thoughts, you should never try to do that.
Your job is to be aware of your mind activities as much as possible and your attentiveness will naturally slow down the thought stream.
The Procedure
Before meditating don’t keep your stomach full, but also ensure that you are not hungry or thirsty.
Sitting in crossed legged position (lotus posture) is recommended but, you can prefer a posture that is comfortable to you, just make sure to keep your spine erect.
Now, take a few deep breaths for about 5 minutes or till you feel relaxed. Start observing your thoughts without getting actively involved in it, you will lose your alertness every now and then, but don’t regret about that because it is completely natural even for those who have meditated for years.
Try to maintain your awareness by just watching the thoughts come and go, once you will learn to maintain the heightened awareness with practice, you will fluctuate from “thoughtlessness” to “thoughts” frequently.
As a beginner, in every session it will take time for you to even discern that you are carried away by your thoughts, but your progress will be determined by how quickly you are able to become alert once again.
This doesn’t mean that you have to forcefully do it so that you can master it quickly because it is impossible master it.
There is no end to the spiritual growth unless one gets enlightened, however we can never know if there really is some state such as enlightenment until we get there. We are just doing this to safeguard our “inner peace” from the external influences.
Meditation is about surrendering not fighting, don’t make a mistake of feeling disheartened because you find yourself mesmerized by thoughts. Be happy that you at least know that your mind is highly dominated by thoughts unlike earlier when you were totally unaware of it like most people.
I hope you liked this post, I would be very happy to hear from you so, please leave me your comments in the box below, it will motivate me and help me to improve my blog’s content. If I missed anything important then please do mention it in the comment section.
You can send your emails using the contact page, I will be more than happy to help you with any of your issues.
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Meditation Techniques for Concentration – Sharpen Your Focus
In this post, I am going to discuss with you a few meditation techniques for concentration that will help you to sharpen your focus so that you can carry out your day to day activities without letting your external circumstances to disturb your inner peace.
The definition of a busy life could be different to each one of us depending upon our roles in our family and society.
A working mom is busy managing home, job, kids, husband while striving for inner peace. Whereas a dad is busy in managing his work, finances, health, planning for the future requirements of his family. The roles of people however do change according to their situations.
You don’t actually need to be a female to be a mother nor a male to be a father; you may be even unmarried or a divorcee and still manage everything on your own. Yes of course the life is much easier when you have the company of your life partner but what matters the most is the kid inside us.
Before teenage we all are natural but the programming of a person’s subconscious mind starts from the birth itself. During our childhood our conscious mind is not developed, so our mind absorbs all the information from our environment and society which results as our hardwired beliefs that are responsible for the blueprint of our decision making capabilities and self-confidence.
Our beliefs are responsible for what happens in our inner world, if the kid inside us is happy then that happiness is reflected in our external world.
No matter how we see this but once we begin to play our roles, life requires us to multitask. The one who is good at doing many tasks at a time is not always the happiest person, they may be successful in terms of what they have achieved in the outer world but the more they try to prove themselves to the world and society, the more they make themselves suffer. Alas, there is a very common by-product of multitasking which is “stress”.
So, is there any pill that we can gobble up in the morning and multitask with perfection? No! Because “Perfection” is an imaginary word; it is born out of the illusion of control. ( I have written more on the illusion of control in my post named meditation to clear the mind)
We cannot control our external circumstances because the ego “I” is just a small part of ourselves that lives in the delusion that it is the master of our lives. Our subconscious mind/higher-self/universe handles everything apart from the one task that we are doing in the moment.
There two types of meditation; one is what we do at the end of the day or during times when we are disturbed whereas the other type of meditation is doing every task with our total focus on it. The latter one is also referred as the mindfulness mediation.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a way to bring your attention completely to the present moment. Unlike other meditation methods this can be done anytime and anywhere.
One of the simplest methods to be mindful is when you are amidst of doing something,just pause and take 10 conscious breaths and then continue. Doing this resets your mind and enables you to get aware of the present moment, it also breaks the chain of any kind of unproductive thinking in which your mind was engaged before.Since, mindfulness improves your ability to focus on the present moment by clearing the thoughts of past or future, it helps you to get immersed completely in your current task.
Growth and improvement are possible only when a person trains their mind to be completely active in the task in which he is presently involved; with improved ability to concentrate a person can get better in any of their skills.
Who needs this help??? From a kid to an elderly person, just like medication is a catalyst for the healing of the body, meditation is a catalyst for the healing of the mind and emotions.
We all make mistakes of forgetting things and we blame it on our weak memory. There is no such thing as a weak or strong memory unless you have a clinical brain related problem. When you are fully focused in a task, you hardly make a mistake.
The mind cannot be “controlled” because the mind works in the direction where our actual focus is, the more we try to control our mind the harder it gets.
So what can we do?
We can either apply the mindfulness meditation to all our tasks or we can let our life to be as it is and prefer to meditate on any particular hour of the day when we have spare time to spend for taking care of our own inner peace.
Tratak Meditation Method
Tratak meditation is the most appropriate practice to increase your ability to concentrate. A few types oftratak meditations are inner tratak, tratak on a black dot, candle tratak and mirror tratak etc.All these forms of tratak meditation helps the practitioner to fix his focus on a single point and to keep his mind free of thoughts.
Initially it is very difficult to escape from the heavy traffic of thoughts but, gradually with practice you become very good at avoiding the mind chatter and thus you gain more concentration.
Chanting Mantra Meditation
This is not at all religious, you can chant any mantra (like Hakuna Matata) or even sing a song by focusing on your voice. Always remember that our ultimate aim is to use these techniques for calming our mind.
I am including this meditation here because I find it easy to stop my mind chatter for longer periods when I am meditating on my own voice.
Chanting mantra meditation requires you to choose any mantra or positive affirmation and repeat it while focusing on the sound. This mediation helps you to shift your conscious attention from saying the mantra to hearing it. (The first time I realized what being an inner observer was while doing this meditation, when you do this meditation you can observe that the action of “speaking” is handled by your subconscious mind when you put your conscious attention on hearing your own voice)
Chanting “OM” mantra is most recommended, but you can choose whatever is convenient for you.
At the end of the day, doing a thing with better focus would save us time, reduce our anxiety and provide a sense of accomplishment.
I hope you liked this post, I would be very happy to hear from you so, please leave me your comments in the box below, it will motivate me and help me to improve my blog’s content. If I missed anything important then please do mention it in the comment section.
You can send your emails using the contact page, I will be more than happy to help you with any of your issues.
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How to Deal with Psychic Vampires-Cutting Chords Meditation
In this post I am going to share with you some ideas that will teach you how to deal with psychic vampires.
Such people are also called energy vampires because they feed on your positive energy you can find them everywhere-your house, workplace, parties, gyms, markets, shopping malls and wherever you go.
These type of people can come to you and suck your energy before you could even know, they not only drag you into a negative emotional state but they also affect your aura-unless you know how to consciously clear their affect by meditating or using any other spiritual method.
Who Are These People?
A simple definition of energy vampire would be-People who constantly dwell in extreme negative states and their energy is so contagious that they can affect anyone’s aura within few seconds.
These people are the ones who have a very bad perspective about the world and they are highly driven by their ego. Due to the childhood programming or because of unfair events these people have developed a very bad picture of the world in their mind and they are finding evidences to validate it in every moment.
Unfortunately, these type of people are spiritually underdeveloped and they have totally forgotten their true nature. They have formed a very pitiful self image and they keep on feeding it by getting involved in destructive self talks.
Such people carry a very negative energy around them and they have the ability to pull others into destructive talks which in turn lowers other people’s energy as well. Sometimes such people can affect your energy by just being present around you.
Few Ways to Detect Them
One of the common characteristics of such people is that they love to complain and talk about what is wrong with the world, they are very good at pulling others into such negative talks, they run away from any kind of good discussion or spiritual talks.
These lower energy people often make fun of spiritual people and such wisdom because they unconsciously fear such higher energies.
How to Protect Yourself from Negative Energy People?
Before thinking about safety we must first concentrate on recognizing such people, be aware of your energy and emotional state. Without even talking to them you can identify such lower energy people by keeping a watch on your feelings.
Whether let it be a place filled with lower vibrations or people with deleterious vibes, your feelings will tell you. Just move away from people or places where you feel bad…with NO exceptions, just discard what makes you unhappy!
You have the choice to keep yourself away from such people, even if it is not possible to avoid them you can still choose to be detached from their talks or you can keep your energy unaffected by consciously deciding to not participate with them in such talks. When your energy stays unaffected from theirs then they will automatically start to avoid you.
Cutting Chords Meditation
When I opted for Christie Marie Sheldon’s love or above program I came to know that we all form unconscious energy chords with people whom we come in contact with, these chords affect our energy in accordance with the other person’s emotional state.
This is the reason why energy vampires drains us energy wise, we unconsciously form chords with them which keeps our energy in a lower state.
Christie, in her course offers a meditation which is called as cutting chords meditation using which we can detach ourselves from such energy draining chords.
So, be sure to be in good company always because the quality of people you choose affects you in a much deeper level then what’s visible and make sure to keep a distance from people who don’t hold a good opinion about the world.
You can visit the love or above product page here about which I was talking in the above post, even if you don’t decide to buy that product I recommend you to sign up and download the free energy breakthrough kit.
I hope you liked this post. I would love to hear your views about this so please do leave me a comment in the box below. (Your email id will be safe and hidden, you can even prefer your secondary email id for commenting)
You can also mail me at hari@zerotoinfinitude.com
If this post was helpful to you then please spread the word by sharing it on your online social networks.
You May Also Like to Read:-
3 Ways to Clear Your Energy Blocks –Allow Your Abundance
Filling Your Family with the Vibrations of Love
Difference between Unconditional Love and Attachment
Using Music to Control Thoughts – Effect of Music on Meditation
3 Common Creative Visualization Mistakes That You Must Avoid!
7 Tips for Opening Your Third Eye Chakra-A Portal to Your Spiritual World
Third eye, also called as the sixth chakra of our energy body is considered as the source for intuitive insights.
Sometimes pineal gland of the brain is also said to be the center where the third eye exist, however one cannot be completely sure about this because that particular portion of the human brain has been a debatable subject for a long time.
Some people claim that the pineal gland’s function is only to produce a few essential hormones and some say that it is a portal between a person’s spiritual world and the physical world.
However, we can be certain about one thing that is the pineal gland produces some hormones that regulates a person’s sleep cycle and according to it we can assume that it has some role to play in the serenity and flow of thoughts which definitely has a lot to do with the energy body of a person.
Opening up the third eye refers stimulating the sixth chakra, which actually indicates the state of being highly intuitive and the complete opening of the third eye is the state of enlightenment. Continue reading
Creative Visualization and Meditation Can Change Your Life-Get Rid of Your Past Burdens
In the previous post “allow your abundance“, I have talked about the first method for clearing the energy blocks that stops you from achieving your desired goals. Now we will look at the other two methods for doing this.
With a little modification of regular creative visualization and meditation process you can change your old limiting beliefs and boost up your success rate in all the areas of your life.
Practicing these techniques will enable to become good at performing energy clearing on your own without the need of any light worker or energy healer.
Even if you don’t believe in energy healing, use these methods by looking at it as the tool to do the required inner work of changing your attitude towards the life which will allow you to take the right decisions. Continue reading
“Brahmamuhurtha” the Best Time to Meditate and Visualize-Reaching the Alpha State of Mind
“Brahma Muhurta”, is a Sanskrit term that’s widely used in Yogic literature for denoting the early morning hour before sunrise which is also called the God’s hour or creator’s hour.
This time duration occurs approximately one and a half hours before sunrise, some say that it is the 48-minute time period that happens 48 minutes prior to sunrise and it is considered the best time for meditation, yoga, or visualization.
There is no specific clock time to accurately point out this time duration, it may vary according to your geographical location and also changes with the seasons of the year, the only way to know what is the exact brahma muhurta hour in your region is to calculate it based on when the sun rises wherever you are at any particular season of the year.
The reason why they say that these particular hours of the day are the best time to meditate is because our mind is less active during this time so it becomes easy to go into the deeper states of meditation during these hours.
Yogis would take a bath about two hours before sunrise and sit in the lotus posture during these hours to connect with the divine, pure positive energy as they find it easy to stop the “mind chatter” at this time of the day. Continue reading
6 Tips For Beginners to Lucid Dream Easily
Lucid dreaming is a very interesting art to learn because it can help a person to use his dreams for fun purpose as well as for spiritual growth, some people are very fortunate that they don’t find it very hard to get their first lucid dream whereas many people struggle with it and get discouraged soon after starting.
The major reason behind failure to get the first lucid dream is “trying too hard”, the harder you try the worse it gets!
There are so many methods for controlling your dreams and to dream what you want but beginners should not focus on these deep methods instead they should get a grip on the basics.
We are enlisting 6 simple tips here by following which you can get your first lucid dream easily.