Self-preservation is the first law of nature Meditation is an individual journey.
What is Meditation? Meditation is a way of life.
Meditation means thought, word and deed should be one. God created us to listen to our inner voice, to know our true self and realize the unlimited potential that exists in each one of us.
Listening to inner voice helps us in distinguishing between things that give us real happiness vs. actions and activities that give temporary satisfaction. For example, realizing about our own self or any deed that might change people’s life at large gives you happiness. But an anti-social person can also feel happy for working on a good cause according to him. When his actions are effecting a large group of people and giving them immense suffering, it can be easily understood that he is not in the right frame of mind.
- Listening to inner voice helps us understand our true nature, and lead a happy and blissful life. We can take the responsibility for our life and stop blaming people and situations for the problems we face. This gives the power to stand up for ourselves than depending on others for support which in turn can make us weak.
- I am my own self and would have to accept situations, relationship as they are without any kind of expectations. This brings the power back to us, giving us enormous strength and high self-esteem irrespective of our achievements that society calls as successful.
- Listening to inner voice can only be achieved through persistent practice.It is important to convince the mind to sit for meditation daily and make it a priority in life.
- The small amount of time invested in the personal growth is the best gift you can give to yourself.This is more worth than any amount of material pursuits you may achieve outside.This does not mean that you should stop all the materialistic pursuits and become a monk. But you should be equally happy inside and out by being aware. This awareness helps in leading a happier and stress free life.
How to start listening to inner voice?
Here is the key
- To begin with,give yourself 20 minutes a dayin the morning or evening (preferably same time, same place, but that should not be a hindrance).
- To make this practice a part of your routine, we recommend at least 40 daysstraight to begin with.
- If you cannot sit for 20 minutes at a stretch, then start with 5 minutes and add a minute a day.
- Initially, until we realize the benefit, we may doubt the process, especially since we all feel constrained of the time.But this is the right investment to reap rich dividends.
Before sitting in meditation it is helpful to create an atmosphere where the mind quickly understands it needs to focus. Just as warming up exercises prepare the body for intense workout, taking few steps initially might help the beginners.
How to prepare body for meditation
- Your body should not be exhausted. So it’s not a good idea to practice right after exercise.
- Your mind should be awake. So it’s not good to do it when you are sleepy or tired.
- Your belly should not be full. Give it 30~40 minutes after light meals, and 2~3 hours after heavy meals.
- Put your phone on airplane mode or sleep mode, during your practice, so you are not interrupted.
- If you are meditating at home, wear clothes that are comfortable and loose. Remove accessories.
HOW TO SIT
WHAT TO DO
CONTEMPLATION OF THOUGHTS
- Sit in a comfortable position either on the floor with a mat underneath the legs in Sukhasana (sitting on the floor with crossed legs) or on a chair.
- Settle in a clean place.
- Lit any aroma candle to induce the feeling of calmness.
- Practicing neck moments from left to right and from right to left gently will help in reducing any tension around the neck region.
- Practice the breathing exercises like Anuloma andviloma (inhalation form left nostril and exhalation from right nostril) for few minutes.
- Take few normal breaths. This tends to prepare our mind to sitting inmeditation and observing the thoughts will become easier.
- Spine needs to be kept straight.
WHAT TO DO
- Initially, focus on breath.
- Observe the breath at the nostrils. Observation of the breath at the nostrils controls the thoughts.
- Initially, the first 5 to 10 minutes we tend to have lot of thoughts and nothing seems in control.
It might look like you are getting worse and more confused. That’s how it works.
- In case you cannot focus, you can start with backward counting. Count numbers from 99 to 0, then 1099 to 1001 etc.,If you lose track in counting, come back to 99. This is not meditation, but to get you used to sit for meditation.
CONTEMPLATION OF THOUGHTS
- Once you are comfortable and ready to sit for 20 minutes, observe the thoughts coming in while sitting for meditation.
- The mind is not ready to sit and would like to wander at free will.It will rebel like an untamed or untrained animal.Slowly but surely it starts to listen to us after a brief period.
- As we observe our mind, initially the thoughts are random,but they will settle down and only few thoughts will repeat. We can slowly distinguish them as positive,negative and neutral thoughts.
- Maintaining a journal for 40 days helps in understanding the mind, and its patterns, belief systems, insecurities and fears.
What Is Mind?
Since the child is born, the knowledge imposed by the family, the environment and the society is engraved as mind. As we practice meditation and categorize the thoughts, we can observe our deeper thought patterns. We believe that it’s either coming from the belief systems of the mind or carry over from past life samskars (as part of the soul journey).
The only way to break these thought patterns, is to be aware of them and understand their impact. By understanding these patterns we can make our life better. Slowly, but surely we can reduce the intensity of these patterns.
As an example, if we are travelling in a car and come across accident prone area often, as we become aware, we’ll avoid the route next time and try to find alternatives.
Awareness is what helps in dealing with situations and understanding the patterns.
What is Awareness?
- We all at some point of time heard that we should live in awareness.
- What is Awareness? Why should we be aware? How can we develop awareness?
- Antharvani helps in developing awareness and leading a responsible and happy life.
- Antharvani helps in understanding our thoughts and our inner nature and about ourselves.
There is light and there is darkness.
Being in light means being in awareness, we are aware of the choices we make and take responsibility for our actions. We do not blame other people or circumstances for our happiness or misery. We tend to stop resisting with the situations and stop blaming destiny or God for our unhappiness.
We develop an understanding towards our inner nature, genuinely develop empathy towards other people. We send positive thoughts to people around us and as a result receive positivity from them.
In contrast in being unaware or in darkness, we tend to hurt people and do not even remember what might have been said, in the process receive negative energy and suffering. We then blame our destiny and higher power for being impartial to us.
We generate lot of emotions in the process of our failure and tend to lose the balance in the mind.
We are aware of cleaning our homes, understand clutter in our homes not only attract bugs, pests but also negative energy. We tend to clean it periodically to allow space for new things.
How about cleaning the mind? Sounds weird? I am sure we ever heard about it before.
Our mind should also be cleansed more than our house. We live with our mind, day and night. Then the question is how to cleanse the mind?
Cleansing the mind can be practiced by meditation or by listening to inner voice or Antharvani.
When mind is in charge, we surrender to its wants.For example: we would want to be healthy and start exercise program, we may exercise for a few days,but does not have the commitment to go all the way through. Similarly, we start having healthy foods, but lose control and go back to unhealthy routine. The mind becomes the master and controls us.
No one is responsible for your good or bad,you can create your destiny with awareness.
Value System
- Value system and upbringing plays an important role in our life.
- Every one of us have a role model and we all have dreams to achieve.
- Knowing our strengths and weaknesses helps in reaching our goals at a much faster rate.
In spite of being talented, many of us fail. The reason can be lack of right attitude or communication skills, good public relationships at work and in life.
We all admire our role models but few of us would want to do the hard work to develop the value system they have. Most of us get carried away by the external attention and admiration our role models get. We try to use the products they use or imitate their hair style or their dressing or like to use the expensive gadgets instead of developing their value system.
If we try to invest constant efforts in right direction,through right means,we all can achieve our goals.
If we have strong value system, we will enjoy the entire journey and will be successful and happy.
If we do not have a strong value system, we may or may not be successful, but will not be happy.
If there is any situation, where the values need to be compromised,we need to ask ourselves and make the choice whether to compromise on values or not?
Society may label a person as successful, but he may not be the most happy and contented.
Developing an attitude of gratitude towards everyone and everything we have,gives us the real contentment.Thinking of our roots and our family always keeps us grounded.
We all learnt the skills to be successful in the outside world. But we are not aware of how to listen to the inner voice for our guidance. Even the most successful people may not be able to listen to their inner voice.
We tend to take up tasks for which we are not ready, as a result face failure and cannot reach targets and end up in suffering.We will become too sensitive towards criticism and difficult to deal with .We take failure and shame to the heart and close ourselves from family and friends.
Meditation helps in taming the mind,understanding the fears, insecurities and helps in overcoming them.Also the weaknesses can be worked and can be converted into strengths.A strong and stable mind helps in understanding our strengths and also the true purpose of life.
When we meditate we know our strength and can put effort in the right direction with the right frame of mind.
Now that we start to become aware of the patterns of the mind, we start understanding our true inner nature. We will realize why things go wrong many times and nothing seems to work and we blame people or destiny for our failures.
Our belief systems and upbringing plays a major role in making our choices.We are not aware of what is the right way of thinking. We are driven by society and consider whatever the society accepts is the right way of living.Many times that may not the right way of living for our individual self.
We have to make a choice to correct, transform and know our self and our true potential.
We might take an example here and see how we can correct and transform the energy.
We feel pain when our kids do not get good grades or do not get into the colleges we might wish to.
Here we Have Two Choices
Kid’s happiness by supporting them and their decisions.
Is our happiness dependent on society,family status, or our own dreams of seeing our children in branded schools and colleges?
When our real intention is to see them happy and confident, we accept the situations or decisions by convincing our logical mind that being happy and confident is the most important thing for us. Every one of us is unique and their destiny is different.This acceptance transforms the energy and our pain comes down naturally and we are in tune with the kids.
Pain is directly linked to attachment. We have to understand and accept we feel miserable because we are attached to the outcome.
Here we have two choices
Continuing the work
Quitting the work
When we are aware that work place and its environment cannot be changed,we need to accept, correct and transform the energy. This transformation helps in increasing our efficiency and we are more ready to accept the challenges.
Fighting or resistance does not give the happiness but it spreads more hatred, more negativity around us. We continue to increase our negative account and feel more helpless.
Listening to inner voice or Antharvani helps in guiding us to a happy life.
With this example, we understand that knowing ourselves gives us immense power to accept, correct and transform the situations.Happiness is not found by blaming the situations but by accepting the reality.
Listening to inner voice or Antharvani helps us in dealing with the situations in a right way.
Everything we are facing today is the result of our past actions. As this understanding deepens, our attitude towards situations and people changes.
Let’s look at how our attitude plays in our day to day activities.Most of us go to work and deal with a tough boss or a colleague and think without them we would be much happy and successful.If we understand what goes out is what comes in,we realize the more hatred and malice we send out,the more we receive.
Read More
ANTHARVANI
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
About Us
Quick Links
Contact Info
- +91 9849350119
- admin@antharvani.com
- Hyderabad, India