Q&A: Meditation

Very often when I am concentrating on my heart centre during meditation, I find that my breathing is very heavy and distracting.

In your case, you are straining your eyes while you are meditating. Your eyes are tight and stiff, and the pressure falls on your heart centre. This is very harmful to your aspiration. If you can keep your eyes normal and relaxed while you are meditating, this pressure will go away. You can keep your eyes open or closed; only don't make them unnaturally stiff.

Q&A: Meditation

Sometimes during my morning meditation, I fall into a doze - not a sound sleep, but just a doze. Is this a bad thing?

Unfortunately, it is not a good thing. It is not sound sleep, but you are not fully awake either. When you meditate, you have to be absolutely dynamic. Do not allow sleepiness to enter into you. When you sit down to meditate, feel that you are entering into the battlefield where you have to fight against ignorance, imperfection and death.

Unfortunately, many seekers do not get enough inspiration to energise them for morning meditation. Some mornings you get inspiration all at once; other days you do not get any inspiration at all. If the fire is already burning inside, you do not have to do anything. But when there is no fire, what do you do? The best thing is to breathe in deeply a few times before you meditate and make your whole body energetic. This dynamic energy will help you enter into meditation. If possible, take a small quantity of hot juice or hot milk before you begin your meditation also.

Q&A: Meditation

Is there anything I can do to always have a good meditation?

It is through gratitude, the gratitude that is inside the heart, not inside the mind, that you can make your meditation excellent. Just for a fleeting second, remember that once upon a time you were the same as your friends and neighbours. Now look at the difference between you. It is like day and night. They may be rich on the material plane, but on the spiritual plane they are totally bankrupt. When you see the difference, automatically a spring of gratitude will well up inside you.

If you can have a drop of gratitude, inside that gratitude you will find a world of new creation. Once the seed has been sown, it starts germinating and grows into a plant. So when you are not getting a good meditation, the best thing is to think of what you were and what you are going to become. Once upon a time you could not even crawl; now you are running in the spiritual life. Once you see the difference, you are bound to have gratitude to the Supreme, for He is the Doer. It is He who has inspired you and acted in and through you. He has inspired you and He has given you the fruit of your action, so naturally your gratitude will come to the fore and you will be able to have a good meditation.

Q&A: Meditation

I feel a pressure in my forehead when I meditate. What causes this and how can I stop it?

The reason you feel pressure in your forehead is because you are meditating in the wrong place; you are meditating in the mind rather than the heart, You want to play a game, but unfortunately you have gone to the wrong playing field. When you feel pressure in your head or your forehead during meditation, it means that your mind has pulled down light and power beyond its capacity. The door to your consciousness is closed, so you are trying to break through the ceiling and pull God into your room. At that time, poor God is entering into an unprepared, unreceptive and unillumined vessel. Naturally the vessel resists, and then you get a headache.

You may also feel pressure because your mind-vessel is filled with impure thoughts and ideas. By sheer will to you are trying to kill these undivine thoughts, and again the resistance of the mind causes you pain. The pressure can also mean that there is an obstruction such as fear inside you. When the mind-vessel is filled the with impure thoughts and you pull down peace, light and bliss, you unconsciously become frightened. You never expected these things to be so brilliant and divine. Your mind is filled with all kinds of obscure thoughts and impurities, and suddenly divine peace, light and bliss come. At that time they seem like strangers to you, so you resist them. You are driving at top speed and suddenly you feel fear, so you try to stop.

When you feel this kind of pressure, what you should do is immediately focus your attention on your heart. Feel that you do not have a head at all; you have only the heart's soft, sweet feeling of oneness with God, your Inner Pilot. In the heart there is no fear or resistance. No matter how intensely you meditate in the heart, no matter how much peace, light and bliss you draw into the heart, you will never feel tension or pressure. There will only be joy, love and a feeling of oneness.

The safest and best way to meditate is in the heart. But if you want to use the mind, then you have to try to make the mind very calm, quiet, pure and receptive, Always feel that inside the aspiring mind there is vessel that you can enlarge with your sincere aspiration. Try to make the vessel very large so that it can hold more purity and luminosity. But do not try to pull anything. Only let the divine Grace flow in and through you by praying and meditating most soulfully. Then you will not feel pressure or tension in your head.

Q&A: Meditation

I don't think that I am pulling, but still I get a headache when I meditate in the morning.

In your particular case, you are meditating on the wrong thing. You are meditating on divine power, but because your inner vessel is not pure enough, instead of power, an aggressive quality comes into you. This aggression you feel as a headache. So when you meditate in the morning, you should meditate on peace. Inundate your inner and outer being with peace; then you will not get a headache. Peace itself is power; it can solve all your problems.

Q&A: Meditation

How can I tell if I am meditating too much?

If you are meditating too much-that is to say, beyond your capacity-then you will get a kind of tension or pain in the area of the third eye. Also, you may get a haughty attitude. You may feel, "I am so divine and perfect, whereas everyone else is undivine and imperfect." If you are trying to pull down peace, light and bliss from above beyond your capacity, then you may no longer get any joy or satisfaction from your earthly activities. You may come to feel that this earthly existence of yours is useless and meaningless. If you get this kind of disgust or depression which makes you want to withdraw from the world, then you may be trying to meditate beyond your capacity.

Q&A: Meditation

How can I keep myself from falling asleep after about five minutes of meditation?

First of all, before you start meditating please breathe in deeply a few times. With each breath, try to feel that a stream of energy is entering into you. Then try to feel that you are breathing in through different parts of your body: your eyes, your ears, your forehead, your shoulders, the crown of your head and so on. Feel that each of these places is a door, and when you breathe in feel that you are opening this door. At that time, energy enters into you from the Universal Consciousness.

Then try to invoke the power aspect of the Supreme. Do not invoke peace or light; only try to bring forward divine power from within or bring it down from above. This divine power will make you feel that your body is burning with fever, although you are not actually running a temperature, and immediately you will feel energised. You can also imagine a blue-green forest or field, and feel that you are walking through it. Then, no matter how tired you are, you will feel energised. You can also pinch yourself as hard as possible, and try to feel that somebody else is pinching you. While you are pinching yourself, you have to know that it is your conscious self that is pinching your unconscious self. But you have to feel that another person is doing the pinching.

Another technique is to repeat the name of the Supreme as fast as possible. With tremendous concentration see how many times you can repeat "Supreme" with each breath. The power inside the repetition of this name will inundate your whole being and you are bound to feel a new flow of life-energy.

At meditation time always try to feel inside you a dynamic and progressive movement, but not an aggressive one. If there is a dynamic and progressive movement, then you cannot fall asleep. Inside you, feel that a train is speeding towards the destination. Feel that you yourself are an express train with only one destination. The driver of that train is constantly repeating God's name to derive energy, strength, stamina and all divine qualities. An express train stops only at the Final goal, the end of its journey; on the way it does not stop at all. Your goal will be to reach or achieve a profound meditation.

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