Meditation Teacher 7

Learn from the Interior Designer

Your home is a reflection of the inner self. We spend time creating environments both beautiful and functional, or messy and frustrate. In meditation we become the interior designer of our mind by entering into the peaceful sublime.

The breathing exercises that prepare one for meditation bring a silence and for many they find that silence at no other time. In the same way we do not leave a TV on 24 hours a day whether anyone is watching or not. We don't want the mind constantly churning out thoughts meaningful or habitual, or just to fill the space. Brining quietness, silence to the mind is cleansing.

Just as we get into stale habits in the house, we can find that our mind occupies itself with old thoughts, often unexamined. For instance we often make our minds up about something, or someone, and that thought is held even though life moves on and change occurs. We hold the judgments and ideas with supporting emotions and our personal relation and identities.

We may have a habit of the mind that when we realize that we are holding old material we feel a need to analyze it to death. We may even avoid dealing with something because of the effort, or spend time imagining dealing with something as a large task. We may wait in order to talk to someone about it. However when one is in a peaceful state of mind one can feel the stale lifeless ideas and old judgments, recognize them and let go. One has a sense of the quality of the feelings, ideas, and judgments. The intuitive discrimination awakens, and new inspiration can come in.

This letting go includes the releasing the need to analyze something as a habit of controlling our own thoughts. We are taught to make judgments about thoughts from an early age. When one has experienced this it becomes possible to simply stand back as the witness and open ideas and movements of the mind to expansiveness and peace. One watches the creative flow of inspiration transform our thoughts and emotions.

If we are not judgmental and dependent on maintaining our old positions it frees this energy for growth. When we are in the present moment our thinking, reasoning and rational is clear and precise we move from emotional reacting, to feeling. We don't identify with the mood of the moment or this or that particular emotion such as anger, but we have calmness as our foundation.

Meditation Teacher 6

Learn from the Dancer

Dance has many components. One can simply surrender to the feeling of the rhythm. The universe has its own flow and rhythm that springs from the oneness of being felt as Ananda. This is often pictured as the Nataraja, Shiva in the form of the cosmic dancer. When the Nataraj stops dancing the universe is destroyed. Just as when the song stops the world of the mind, the flow of the imagination and emotions, sustained by the music transitions. Dance too can also be structured with comprehensive training of the mind, body and emotions. Dance can be a social activity as display, part of the rituals surrounding marriage or as a religious expression. It can be an expression of companionship and intimacy.

When we come to meditation we want to enter into the flow. Not as a compulsion, a duty, a chore, but as joyful entering into the flow. Meditation is a natural expression of joy.

Meditation Teacher 5

Learn from the Conductor

This is about learning to orchestrate, the mind, in order to perceive the inner nada.

Sounds...

This is a typical Kaliji saying that seems simple to the point that it goes in one ear and out the other. To orchestrate the mind to me means to brings things into the flow. The mind, at least the one that I use is filled with voices, images, memories and sense data, not to mention thought and emotions. Getting my self to a point of silence has not been without deliberate practice. Creating a space for practice and as with any musician, working on a variety of skills requires dedication and setting priorities, but not as a grim task or forced servitude. There has to be a joy and passion for the art. Then there is putting the skills into action in order to focus the aspiration, the silence and peacefulness so that one can hear the ever sound from which emerges all.

A conductor not only has many skills, and has to manage many dimensions, the people, the equipment, the resources, the conductor has to have a love and a feel for the music.