You have now learned all aspects of Effortless Mind meditation. By this point you very likely have already experienced some of the benefits of meditation — greater relaxation, clarity of mind, and a growing sense of inner peace and well-being, to name just a few. Hopefully, you are ready to establish a daily practice. Before you set out on your own across the vast, uncharted regions of inner space, however, let’s go over a number of practical points you may be wondering about: how long to meditate, when to meditate, where to meditate, how to get the most from your meditation, and other frequently asked questions.
Now that you’ve learned the chakra meditation with mantra and light, mantra meditation in the heart center, the meditation for health and longevity, and manifesting Amrit, you may feel like this is a lot to do. But keep in mind that you are just learning. You will quickly become more comfortable with the techniques, and as you do you’ll gain more fluidity. Your attention will flow from one step of the practice to the next automatically, in considerably less time than it probably takes you now. For instance, in the chakra meditation, you may find that the mantra will fade into silence in a few repetitions, and the silence and light may be simultaneous. In that case, one minute on each chakra is plenty. As you become more proficient, you’ll simply go through the steps and, ideally, you’ll probably find your entire meditation lasts about twenty to twenty-five minutes, including three to five minutes or so to come out of meditation slowly. That’s an optimal length of time for most people. However, if your schedule simply doesn’t allow you to take that much time, you can spend a little less time on each portion of the meditation and complete your meditation in as little as fifteen minutes. If you don’t have even that much time, you can skip some portion of the meditation and focus on just your favorite, in which case you may need only ten minutes to meditate. Even meditating five minutes is better than no meditation at all. In other words, decide up front how much time you can give yourself to meditate. If you have to shorten or even cut out some portion of the meditation, do so, and then lavishly enjoy your meditation for the allotted time. Don’t worry about getting everything in.
Even if you have plenty of time, I wouldn’t recommend meditating longer than thirty minutes to begin with. This meditation is highly effective, and too much of a good thing, even meditation, can be unbalancing. We’ll talk more about that in the next chapter, on purification.
Just to give you a very rough idea, here are approximate amounts of time you might spend on each step of meditation — though please don’t take these too literally. I wouldn’t want you to feel bound to a tight schedule in your meditation; rather, relax your sense of time and let your own inner experience determine the amount of time you spend on each part.
• Opening intention for the peace and happiness of all beings: fifteen to thirty seconds
• Chakra meditation with mantra and light: about one minute for each chakra, so about seven minutes
• Manifesting Amrit: one minute or so
• Mantra meditation in the heart center: three to eight minutes
• Body scan, including feeling the light throughout the body: one and a half to three minutes
• Manifesting Amrit: one minute or so
• Lying in the corpse pose to come out of meditation slowly: three to five minutes
If you add these times up, they amount to about seventeen to twenty-five minutes, including the time spent on coming out of meditation.
While we’re on the topic of how long to meditate, a word on patience. If you’re as busy as most people I know, the temptation may easily arise in meditation to do what you do in the rest of your day: act efficiently and hurry to get it done so you can move on to the next thing. I fully appreciate the desire to be efficient, but when it comes to meditation, efficiency depends largely on patience. That is, in order to get the most out of your time spent sitting, approach meditation with relaxed, patient mindfulness. This means resisting the temptation to hurry through the steps of meditation.
Meditation is a rare chance to step out of the hustle and bustle of your daily life. It is a chance to be in the moment and relish every nuance of inner experience. So enjoy this opportunity; take your time. (It is your time.) In the chakra meditation, for instance, give each chakra its full due, as if it’s the only thing in the world for you to be doing. There is nothing else in this moment. Savor the experience. In this way you will go much deeper. Your experience will be richer and juicier. If you find yourself hurrying, simply slow down and focus on enjoying each moment of your meditation without expectation or anticipation. If you need to come out of meditation before finishing all the steps, that’s okay. At least you’ve made the most of the time you did spend meditating.
There are just a few basic principles to consider when deciding when to meditate. After that, do what best fits into your daily routine. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Meditation helps you to connect with your higher Self and with deeper, more creative levels of consciousness. It calms you and sets you up to be more creative, more efficient, and better attuned with your higher Self in your activities, so that your actions bring the greatest benefit to yourself and others. For these reasons, it’s a good idea to meditate right at the start of your day, so that everything you do afterwards benefits from your meditation. Try not to wait until you’re well into your day to meditate. It will be harder to interrupt whatever you’re doing to sit quietly, because most of us are just too action-oriented to feel comfortable taking such a break from a busy day. If you wait for some appropriate break in the midst of your day, not only will your earlier activities not benefit from your meditation, but also you’ll be much more likely to skip meditation. So the first rule of thumb is to meditate first and then enjoy your day even more.
There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but most people feel fresher and more fully awake after their morning routine of brushing their teeth, bathing, and so on. Perhaps this is why for many centuries the tradition has existed in India to perform spiritual practices only after bathing in the morning. It’s a wonderful feeling to be really fresh and then to close your eyes and dive deep within. You’ve cleansed your body; now you can cleanse your mind and spirit as well with the “mental bath” of meditation.
An exception to this might be if you wake up unusually early, say a couple of hours or more before you actually need to get up. Perhaps it is 3 or 4 AM, and you can’t get back to sleep or don’t feel the need to, or you simply have an urge to meditate. (Yes, it happens.) Then it’s wonderful to just sit up in bed and meditate.
In the early-morning hours, or during the night, the world is still and silent. It’s a perfect time to meditate for as long as you like, for an hour or even more if you don’t fall back to sleep. Likely, though, you will eventually become sleepy; when you do, simply lie down and you will enjoy a deep, rejuvenating sleep, often with vivid dreams. The sleep that comes after an early-morning or nighttime meditation is especially healing and rejuvenating.
When I was living in a cave high in the Himalayas at the source of the Ganges River, I noticed that many of the holy men in that area seemed busy during the day — eating, doing laundry, collecting firewood, or just chatting among themselves while they sipped tea. I was spending every minute of my day meditating, and I began to wonder: weren’t they also there to do spiritual practices? I finally asked and found that many of them meditated through much of each night. As one holy man told me, “That’s the perfect time because the world is so still and silent; there are no thought forms in the atmosphere, so meditation is the most peaceful.” It is also said that Saint Francis and other Christian mystics regularly meditated during the night.
You probably don’t want to spend your nights in meditation, but if you do happen to wake up during the night or in the quiet hours of the early morning, rather than lie awake, why not use this time well? You’ll be in good company. Otherwise, if you’re a sound sleeper, a perfect time to meditate is right after bathing.
Meditation brings your entire mind and body into a state of deep rest, of stillness, of simply being. Your metabolic rate is lowered, whereas the process of digestion raises your metabolic rate. As a result, digestion and meditation conflict to some extent. To get the most out of your meditation, and to have the best digestion, it is better to meditate before a meal — before breakfast, for instance — rather than after. If you are so hungry that you can’t sit still, perhaps have a light snack or a glass of water or juice before meditating to hold you over. If you have a full meal, ideally wait for a couple of hours before meditating. But if you are ever faced with the choice of meditating on a full stomach or not meditating at all, I’d meditate on a full stomach.
Making meditation a regular part of your daily routine will help immensely in establishing the habit of meditation. I advise making meditation as much a part of your morning routine as brushing your teeth. You don’t wake up and wonder whether to brush your teeth, and you probably don’t fret over whether you should brush them upon waking or perhaps wait until your lunch break at work. It’s not even a question; you just brush your teeth. Ideally, meditation will become like this for you: a given, a part of your daily routine that sets you up to make the most of your day. Once your practice is established as a given, getting the benefits of meditation is also a given.
The morning meditation sets you up to get the most out of your day. You will likely find, though, that by the end of your workday some of the freshness, well-being, and clarity you felt after your morning meditation has faded. By the time you’re done working, you may even feel like just going home and zoning out in front of the TV. Well, there’s another option: take a second dive into the deep rest and relaxation of bliss consciousness.
You don’t have to zone out in the evening. You can feel fresh, rested, and energized, capable of giving of yourself, whether to your family or to a creative project. Or you can simply more fully enjoy a relaxing evening. When I learned to meditate, I was taught to meditate twice a day, and that is what I have always done. If you are able to make this a part of your routine, the ideal time for your second meditation is sometime before dinner.
Even if you find that your evening meditation can’t be as long as your morning meditation, better a shorter meditation in the evening than no meditation at all. If the needs of your family make it impossible to meditate once you step in the door, consider the possibility of a short meditation during a coffee break, or at the end of your workday, while still in your office. If your office isn’t private, you could stop at a park on the way home and meditate on the grass under a tree. (It worked out well for the Buddha.) If the weather doesn’t allow for that, you can sit in your car and meditate. I’ve done it many times. Or better yet, see if your family is interested in meditating with you at home. The point is, if gaining the benefits of meditation is important to you, you can find a way. And if you decide that once a day is simply more practical for you, that too is fine.
Whatever meditation schedule you decide on, commit to it. Do it without fail. If such a commitment at first seems overwhelming, commit to sticking to your schedule without fail for just one month. After that month, well, commit for another month. After that, yes, another month. In other words, establishing the routine of daily meditation may at first require some discipline, but soon you will find that meditation is such an important, pleasant, and rewarding part of your day that it won’t be a matter of commitment. You will look forward to those precious minutes of inner peace and bliss. They will become an indispensable part of your daily routine.
People looking on from the outside may think you have great self-discipline to meditate regularly, but you will know better: Does it take great discipline to eat a heaping bowl of your favorite ice cream twice a day? That’s what meditation will become for you — you will savor it and won’t want to miss it. It won’t require discipline at all.
Where you meditate is really not so important. I’ve meditated in my bedroom and in my office; in planes, buses, and cars; in restaurants and the library; and in isolated caves — just about any place I’ve found myself when it was time to meditate. It works wherever you are. It’s ideal, of course, to meditate where you won’t be disturbed, where you feel safe and secure turning your whole attention within, but if such a place is unavailable, you can meditate just about anywhere.
More often than not, you’ll probably meditate at home. In that case, it’s a good idea to have a spot dedicated to your meditation. If you can’t have a dedicated meditation room, even a corner of your bedroom is fine. All you really need is a chair or cushion and, ideally, a place to lie down after meditating to come out slowly. I do suggest making your meditation place a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing spot that feels inviting to you, so that you’ll look forward to sitting there. Even though your eyes are closed during meditation, it’s uplifting to open your eyes to an appealing space as you finish.
Meditating in the same spot every day also has its benefits. As I mentioned earlier, meditation creates a vibratory influence in the atmosphere. This influence will build in a spot where you always meditate, and you will be able to feel it. Each time you sit there, the vibrations of that spot will draw you effortlessly into meditation, as well as have a soothing and healing effect on you. After a stressful day at work, that may be just what you need.
This is one reason caves have traditionally been considered ideal meditation spots (even though, as I discovered, they tend to be mighty cold). A cave becomes a cocoon of silence. You are protected from external influences while, day by day, the energy of your meditation builds. I’m not suggesting you dig a cave in your backyard (please don’t), but you can make a corner of your bedroom your cave and build your own sacred vibrations there.
One final point about where to meditate: I’m often asked whether it’s a good idea to meditate in nature. If you meditate in nature when you are first learning to meditate, the beauty and sounds around you may tend to draw your attention outward. For that reason, when you’re first learning, you may find that you’ll have deeper meditations if you meditate indoors. However, once you are familiar with diving within, meditating in nature can be an exquisite experience, and I highly recommend it. You will find that it develops a deep and satisfying sense of unity between you and your environment. As you transcend to finer, more expansive states within yourself, you will feel your oneness with all that surrounds you. It is like a glimpse of enlightenment. And opening your eyes to the beauty of nature is simply exquisite after diving deep within. I do recommend that you avoid meditating in direct sun, which is draining, though meditating in view of sunrise and sunset is wonderful.
So play it by ear. When the occasion arises to meditate in nature, by all means try it out. If you enjoy it, do it as often as you are moved to. At other times, enjoy meditating indoors at your own sacred meditation spot.
Years ago when I was traveling with Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma) and she addressed an audience, a student of meditation asked her, “I have been meditating for many years, yet I am not having any spiritual experience. I try and try, but nothing happens. What can I do?” Amma’s answer revealed a secret of meditation: “Spiritual experience depends upon childlike innocence and faith.”
Christ said that the kingdom of heaven is within you, and to enter the kingdom, you must be as innocent as a child. But what exactly does that mean? Well, watch children at play. One thing you may notice is that they spontaneously follow the charm of their experience. When they are having fun, they revel in it. If they become bored, they move on to more promising play. This is the essence of innocence — following our own intrinsic nature to seek more happiness. As we saw in chapter 1, this is also the key to successful meditation. Savor each moment of meditation; enjoy it with the quiet enthusiasm of a child at play. If you find yourself having thoughts, gently come back to the practice, which will take you toward inner bliss.
This raises another interesting point about childlike innocence: a child at play naturally expresses enthusiasm; he or she is not passive. You can go through the steps of meditation passively, without much care, or you can be fully alert, savoring every moment as if you were relishing your favorite dessert. Both approaches can be effortless, but there will be a world of difference in the results.
I call this quiet enthusiasm creative receptivity. Traditionally, people meditated in pursuit of the Divine, the Infinite, or liberation from suffering. They were highly motivated, vitally interested in the interior experience that meditation could provide (think of Saint Teresa of Avila or Rumi; you will not detect passivity in their writings). They meditated with childlike innocence and with an abundance of quiet enthusiasm, creative receptivity, or, you may simply say, love.
Creative receptivity is the attitude that you are ready to receive a gift, ready for something significant to happen. It’s approaching meditation as if you’re sitting on the edge of your chair, ready for the best. Perhaps you’re ready at long last to feel relief from a constant, nagging anxiety or depression. Perhaps you’re ready to embrace a more conscious, healthy lifestyle, to restore your cardiovascular health, or to enhance your artistic creativity or your sense of well-being. It may mean you’re ready to dive deep into the bliss of your cosmic Self, or to explore what Saint Teresa of Avila called your interior mansion. You don’t have to do anything to be creatively receptive. You need only not turn off and tune out.
Creative receptivity is one side of the innocence of a child at play. Another side is that a child innocently at play doesn’t strain; the child’s enjoyment is spontaneous. Many people I have talked to mistakenly think meditation is a matter of discipline — as if it’s intrinsically a rather unpleasant task. Not so! Remember, meditation works only because it brings us to greater and greater happiness and eventually lands us in unrestricted joy, in bliss consciousness. As such, meditation is the essence of play.
So let yourself enjoy the play of your meditation. Enjoy every nuance. Be childlike and innocent in your inner, quiet play of meditation. Let it be spontaneous. Yes, there is structure to your meditation, but if you’re having a delectable experience, let it lead you where it may; then come back to the steps of your meditation. Those steps are there only to be transcended. They are there to land you in unrestricted joy. And if you have a wonderful experience, be willing to let that go, too. Don’t hold on to it. There are always bigger things yet to come. Spontaneity also means opening to all possibilities. In sum, meditation is the flow of grace that fulfills the heart and mind. You can’t script grace. You can only receive and enjoy it, gratefully, with the innocence of a child.
If you have taken other meditation classes, you may have heard a good deal of emphasis placed on something that is supposed to have a lot to do with meditation: concentration. To be honest, I don’t like applying that word to meditation; it implies trying and effort, which is inimical to deep meditation because effort only agitates the mind.
Now that you’ve learned Effortless Mind meditation, you’re ready to understand, based on your own experience, the actual role of concentration in meditation. It’s not something you do; it’s a state of absorption that occurs effortlessly when you have transcended to a subtle state. As you gain more clarity, you will discover that when you are in a very subtle state, steeped in blissful pure awareness, your attention naturally has laserlike power and focus. However, to arrive at such a subtle state, you must meditate with sublime ease; otherwise you will not transcend. Simply put: do not try to concentrate during meditation. Doing so will only agitate your mind to a more superficial level of experience. If you experience a state of concentration in meditation, it will happen easily. Concentration is not something you do, but is a state of experience to be achieved without effort.
In chapter 2 we briefly discussed posture and hand positioning during meditation. As I mentioned there, sitting erect but comfortably is the main consideration for optimizing your experience in meditation. However, adopting advanced postures, such as the lotus position, does have an effect energetically. For instance, when I first learned to sit in the lotus position for a length of time, I was amazed to find that assuming the position alone, without even meditating, seemed to awaken universal energy and consciousness.
Likewise, hand positioning can have a noticeably enhancing energetic effect. But while it may take months to gradually develop the ability to hold the lotus posture, there are traditional hand mudras that are easily learned and quite comfortable. Since students learning to meditate often express curiosity about hand placement, I’ll describe a few classic hand mudras here. If one seems easy to you, and you feel a benefit in using it, by all means do use it.
First, what is a mudra? It is a gesture (often but not necessarily related to the hands) promoting a specific flow of prana; it also relates to a particular attitude, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Meditators frequently report that adopting a hand mudra deepens their experience and seems to connect them with cosmic energies. A few hand mudras you may use during meditation:
• BHAIRAVA MUDRA. Place your hands in your lap, palms up, right over left. Bhairava is a particularly fearsome aspect of Shiva, who is not only pure consciousness but also the divine force of destruction. Why does such a peaceful-looking hand placement have such a fierce appellation? Because Shiva is transcendental consciousness, ever at peace, and his work of dissolution in its highest form consists of drawing the universe back into its source — that universal consciousness prior to creation where there is only perfect peace.
• CHIN MUDRA. First, join the tip of your index finger with the tip of your thumb while keeping your middle, ring, and little fingers comfortably extended (they needn’t be perfectly straight) and slightly apart. Alternately, instead of joining the tip of the index finger and thumb, you can either place the first joint of the index finger under the first joint of the thumb, or place the tip of the index finger at the root of the thumb. This may make it easier for you to hold the position for the entire meditation.
Chin refers to consciousness, so this mudra is the gesture of pure consciousness. The index finger represents your individual consciousness and the thumb represents universal consciousness; their union suggests that individual consciousness is united with universal consciousness. The three extended fingers represent the three gunas, or essential constituents of nature. The fingers are extended — that is, nature is out of the picture; you have transcended the world.
To complete the mudra, place your hands on your knees, with your palms up, toward the unbounded sky, representative of your unbounded consciousness. Placing the hands on the knees is also significant. It activates prana to flow through a nadi that runs from the knees up the inside of the thighs to the perineum, the site of the root chakra. This in turn helps to activate and open the root chakra.
Remember my description of my first experience of the chakras while I slept? I was surprised at the time that the experience distinctly began with a rush of energy from my inner thighs into my root chakra. This didn’t make any sense to me, even when I later learned about the chakras, which start in the perineum and go up from there. What was the reason for the distinct sensation of energy in my inner thighs that immediately prefaced my experience of the chakras? Only many years later did I learn of this particular nadi, which is called gupta nadi, or the hidden nadi. Energy flowing through this nadi, which runs up the inner thighs into the root chakra, is well known by yogis as a stimulus for the opening of the root chakra and for sending energy up the nadis in and around the spine to open the other chakras. The mystery was solved.
• JNANA MUDRA. This gesture is exactly like the chin mudra, only your hands are placed palms down on your knees. Jnana means “knowledge.” Knowledge is very closely related to consciousness, but knowledge ordinarily entails a subject and an object. In the chin mudra, the hands face upward, representing complete transcendence. In the jnana mudra, the hands face downward, indicating some relationship of pure consciousness with the world, but the finger placement also indicates complete transcendence. What can be the significance, then? When pure consciousness relates to the world, the result is revelation. The highest revelation is absolute knowledge — that is, the recognition that all is one’s own Self. This is the highest level of knowledge, where the duality between knower and known dissolves into a grand unity. This is the meaning of the jnana mudra.
There you have it. Each mudra is said to stimulate the emotional, mental, and spiritual state that it represents. If it is comfortable for you to adopt one of these mudras during meditation, try it for a few meditations and see what you notice.
Although meditation is independent of any particular lifestyle or diet, I would be remiss if I did not point out that what you put into your body will make a difference in the quality of your meditation and how quickly you advance in your inner experience. Smoking, for instance, in addition to its effects on physical health, makes the prana crude, blocks the nadis, and dulls the mind. The use of alcoholic drinks and recreational drugs similarly dulls the mind and senses, creating biochemical imbalances as well as clogging the nadis. These are not moral judgments, but rather conclusions based on the direct experience of many. If you wish to confirm this for yourself, simply abstain from these substances for a few months while meditating regularly (which develops your subtle perception), and then try them again. You will see for yourself their effects. In fact, this is how the qualities of various foods and substances have been discerned by yogis throughout the centuries: through direct experience.
As this suggests, diet is a consideration when it comes to meditation. I am not a nutritional expert and do not make dietary recommendations, but I have noticed a few things about the effects of food on meditation, and many of these observations are in line with the observations of yogis over the centuries. I’ll mention just a few basics, many of which may be obvious to you already:
• A diet high in fresh (preferably organic) fruits and vegetables is especially conducive to clarity of mind at the subtle levels.
• Foods that are heavy and harder to digest, like red meat, tend to have a dulling effect on meditation and block the nadis.
• Overeating is dulling.
• Avoid foods that you are sensitive or allergic to; consistently eating such foods will put your body out of balance. (There are tests that can reveal hidden food allergies that might be affecting your energy level, mood, health, and skin without your even knowing. For more information, see the Resources section.)
• Appropriate Ayurvedic herbs (Ayurveda is the ancient traditional medicine of India) of a pure quality can help balance and strengthen your body and result in deeper, clearer meditations.
• Avoid cooking with a microwave, and also avoid overcooking. The method of food preparation affects the vibrational quality of your food. Using a microwave oven to cook, as well as overcooking by other means, depletes the prana in your food.
• Avoid foods that have been genetically modified and dairy products from cows treated with hormones.
In the discussion of the chin mudra, I mentioned the three gunas. This is a concept of the Samkhya system of Indian philosophy and provides a deeper understanding of the effects of foods and other substances. Essentially, all of nature is comprised of the three gunas — rajas, tamas, and sattva — each of which has particular attributes. Rajas is the impulse toward action and movement; tamas is a retarding force; sattva is the force of balance and harmony. The interaction of these three accounts for all change, growth, and evolution in nature. The influence of these three is also present, in varying degrees, in everything in existence, including everything we eat:
• Foods dominated by the quality of rajas, the principle of activity, are stimulating. Such foods include hot spices and stimulants like coffee and caffeinated tea. Generally, such foods are not ideal for meditation because they increase restlessness in the mind.
• Foods dominated by the quality of tamas, the principle of inertia and negation, increase dullness and lethargy. Such foods include alcoholic drinks, red meat, eggs, mushrooms, fried foods, and food that is no longer fresh. Again, such foods are less than ideal for meditation due to their dulling effect.
• Foods dominated by the quality of sattva, the principle of balance, harmony, and purity, increase clarity, contentment, and well-being. Such foods include most fresh vegetables (not the nightshades or spicy or pungent vegetables, such as hot peppers and onions), legumes, mild spices, properly prepared nuts (for instance, soaked and blanched almonds), and many herbs. As you might expect, a diet high in these foods is ideal to promote clarity in your meditation.
This, admittedly, offers just a glimpse of the application of the concept of the three gunas to meditation. You will benefit from meditation no matter what your diet or lifestyle, but as in anything, we can also learn much from those who came before us.
Following these dietary principles not only will accelerate your progress through meditation but also can profoundly improve your health. About a year ago, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, a disorder in which the immune system attacks your thyroid. This is a serious condition, and in Western medicine there is no cure for it; it is treated by thyroid hormone replacement, usually for life (while the thyroid dies).
How I got this was a mystery to me, since I thought I was eating and living well, getting adequate exercise, and so on. I may never know the complete answer, which probably involves a number of factors, like genetics and environmental toxins as well as diet. The good news: not only did I not have to go on thyroid replacement hormones, but also my most recent tests show that my autoimmunity has been reversed; there is no sign of Hashimoto’s in my system. My thyroid is fine.
How did this happen? Through a combination of Ayurvedic assessment and functional-medicine testing, I found out which foods were causing my immune system to react to my thyroid. I followed the diet that was right for me (this is individual, determined by various constitutional factors), which consisted of organic fruits and vegetables, plant proteins, and natural supplements prescribed for me.
This may seem to have little to do with meditation, but your health is important, and it can profoundly affect your ability to meditate. Anytime your body is inflamed and reactive, so is your mind. In fact, this is precisely why Ayurveda, the ancient traditional medicine of India, developed as a sister science to Yoga — to keep your body healthy and balanced in order to support your personal growth.
If you are interested in learning more about dietary considerations and Ayurveda, see the Resources section.