I meditate every day, and have done so for many years. Sometimes I sit, sometimes I walk. It’s a mantra meditation, so I am uttering words quietly.
Meditation always makes me feel better.
My best meditations are in the morning and that’s because the day has not yet kicked in, and my mind is still fairly quiet. Then I get into the rhythm of the chanting and hold my attention to the sound of Krishna’s name.
It can take up to a half hour of chanting before I feel my mind, my being, slip into a different energy. It’s like the poet Rumi says ‘ out beyond ideas of rightdoing or wrongdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there’.
It’s a liminal space experience. Hard to describe but worth the effort to get there. For me it’s like being in a wide open area – but it’s safe. There is a feeling of freedom. There is also a sense of separation from my body. All is quiet and I listen. Life and mind and body slip away.
With the Krishna mantra meditation I also experience emotion. The Hare Krishna mantra means – “O Lord, or energy of the Lord, please engage me in your service”. I am reciting His name with affection, asking for a relationship, longing to serve, to actively develop my love for the all-attractive One.
Early morning mantras bring a stillness to my life. At that moment I am sincere. I want to know who I am, where I am from. Meditation brings me to these places of eager enquiry.
Sometimes my meditation is light and distracted, other times rich and sweet, and sometimes serious and urgent. Much depends on the state of my mind. The mantra doesn’t control the mind as much as it frees the mind. We have to control the mind to start to do the meditation in the first place .
The Hare Krishna mantra frees the mind from the bodily concept life, which is the source of all misery. This concept is deeply ingrained in us. If we can control the mind and focus on the mantra, the mantra will then loosen these bodily conceptions and create some cracks in our illusion so that the light will begin to shine through. It’s a beautiful thing.
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