155. Powerful instant meditations

1. Acceptance

Accept completely the inevitability of the present and future moments. You will experience deep restfulness that you can't even imagine.

Total Duration: 21 minutes

Sit straight in a very relaxed way. Close your eyes and continue sitting in this relaxed way without moving the body. Body movements will create thoughts. So if your body is stable without movement, it can take you to the deeper silence.

Very consciously, with a strong decision, intensely, create an intention that you are accepting yourself just as you are this very moment, in the outer world and the inner world.

Tell yourself, 'I have enough in the outer world - many wonderful possessions. I have enough in the inner world - many positive qualities. I am accepting myself completely. There is no need to develop myself in the outer world or the inner world. If I have ego, it is okay. If I have guilt, it is okay. If I have fear, it is okay. If I have greed, it is okay. Whatever others have told me about myself is also okay. I accept everything, right or wrong. I accept everything.'

Whatever objection your mind raises, 'No, no, no, I don't want to accept this or that,' at least accept totally that you are not able to accept whatever it might be. Accept that also!

Accept the present moment. Accept all the future moments. Whatever your mind imagines as the worst possible thing that can happen in your life, accept even that possibility for yourself. If it happens, you cannot avoid it anyway. It is inevitable. Understand the inevitability and accept it. The moment you can accept yourself completely, there will not be any further thought. The mind will be silent. Enjoy that silence!

2. Just stop!

This is a very powerful technique to strongly bring your awareness to the present moment.

Duration: anytime, anywhere

Just Stop! was used widely by enlightened master George Gurdjieff.

Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. Your cunningness is also one more impulse - one more impulse for your survival. You always think you will survive only if you are cunning and constantly on guard. Now suspend that cunningness. Be innocent and trusting.

Second step, whenever you have an impulse like hunger, anger, thirst or sneezing or any

other urge to act, when it is about to happen or when you are about to act, just stop. Move to the space of 'being' from the space of 'doing'.

3. Meditate on emotional memories

Be free from the suffering of emotional memories

Duration: Not applicable

Whenever you are stuck with some emotional memory, sit with it and meditate on it, consciously going into it. Whether it is fear or love or greed, go fully into it. Slowly, your inner space will be disconnected, purified from that emotional memory. As long as there is any energy or charge attached to that memory, continue to meditate on it. You will soon go beyond the memory and enter your inner space.

When you reclaim your inner space, you will be able to fall in love with the Whole, your heart will melt effortlessly. If you practice this a few times, you will see the Truth.

MEDIDATION TECHNIQUES

4. Change – the unchanging phenomenon

Become aware that the unchanging consciousness is the ultimate reality.

Duration: anytime, anywhere

Understand the change that is happening and consume the change through the change. You will find the ultimate unchanging consciousness.

You are constantly changing eternal energy. Let you consume the constantly changing external world. Let the changing internal world swallow the changing external world. Let the chaos swallow the chaos. Let the chaos be covered by chaos. Let the chaos be filled by chaos. Become centered in the peaceful, deep, restful awareness.

Next, as a hen mothers her chicks, decide: I will mother this understanding of consuming change by change. Visualize constantly your internal changing mind, swallowing, grabbing the external changing world.

Whatever you do, trusting your internal world or your external world is going to involve trusting chaos. For example, you may think, 'I need this beautiful, flowering plant in the corner of my house,' and you set about organizing for that plant to be in the corner of your house. By the time you get the plant in position and start enjoying it, your whole state of mind would have changed. You may decide the plant belongs in a completely different spot! This is a very common experience.

Another example: say you decide to move. By the time you locate and buy the new house, suddenly you realize that you don't want that house after all. Instead, you want to live in an apartment, or in the ashram!

Everything is constantly changing. Realize the internal changing reality and let it grab or swallow the external changing world. Then nothing will touch you.

Now you are trying to fix this or that. It is like trying to travel in two boats. You put one foot in one boat, another foot in another boat. You are trying to balance between these two boats. But this approach will never work. Just jump in and start flowing, start swimming with the current!

When you understand that both the internal and external

are constantly changing, then consume this change through the change, and mother this understanding in your heart. You will see that the unchanging consciousness is the ultimate reality.

When you mother this understanding, you will experience tremendous strength. You will find that sincerity and intensity will be added to your life, to your being. When that sincerity and intensity gets added to you, it means you are living enlightenment!

Living enlightenment means living authentically. Living enlightenment means mothering authentic experiences, mothering authentic knowledge and authentic action.

5. Feel the aliveness inside and outside you

Experience an expanded consciousness

Duration: 21 minutes

Close your eyes. Take a few moments to settle down, being very patient.

You are going to consciously practice awareness. First, start with the chair you are sitting on because it is the nearest object to you. Visualize you are alive inside the chair. Feel you are alive inside the chair you are sitting on in the same way you feel alive inside your own skin. However much you feel alive inside your skin, feel that alive inside the chair. The same life is radiating in the chair that is radiating inside your skin.

Feel the persons sitting around you, and feel alive inside each of them. Take a few moments to visualize with clear intention that you are alive in each and every person. Feel you are alive in everything - the walls, furniture, people, flowers, room, and even the floor.

6. Hollow bamboo

This is a beautiful 'emptiness meditation'. Empty out whatever is inside you, and be ready to receive the energy of the Divine. Become the Divine.

Duration: 21 minutes

Sit still in a calm, silent place. Just become aware of your body. Feel completely at ease with your body.

Now imagine that your body has become a hollow bamboo. Your whole body, your skin, your flesh, your bones, are all part of the bamboo. Inside this space, there is nothing but emptiness, hollowness, and silence.

Let your mind be passive. Don't wait for any experience, just be.

Suddenly you will find energy pouring into you. When you make yourself hollow, when you no longer resist, the divine energy starts flowing into you. You become a flute for the music of the divine. If you are working with a master, become a hollow flute upon which the master can play.

At first you will be a hollow bamboo, then the bamboo itself disappears… and you become the divine! There is no more 'you'.

7. Looking through the mirror at yourself

Continuously energize and revitalize yourself

Duration: 10 minutes

Stand before a full-length mirror and look at yourself. Take a good look at yourself from the outside. You are the subject, and the reflection in the mirror is the object of your attention. You will feel your energy flowing towards the object. You are looking, and your reflection is being looked at.

Now imagine a reversal of roles. Imagine that your reflection is looking at you. This can be frightening at first. You are not used to thinking of your reflection in that way, as someone who can observe you.

Even if the feeling is strange and frightening, keep at it. In just a few moments, you will feel a great change. You will feel the energy flowing from your reflection towards you. You have now closed the circuit. By closing the energy circuit, you have ensured that the energy is not wasted, it is flowing back towards you. You are conserving your own energy for yourself.

Practice this technique for a few days, and you will feel a definite change. You will be more energetic, more centered, more at peace with yourself and with others.

You can practice this throughout the day, not just with the mirror and your reflection. Try it with anything or anyone you focus attention on. When you have passed your energy to something or someone, imagine it is returning the energy to you. You will feel the energy flowing back towards you, rejuvenating you, revitalizing you! You can even try this with the computer you work with all day!

8. Limb relaxation

This is one of the fastest techniques for instant relaxation.

Duration: as little as two minutes – longer if time allows

If a private space is available, practice this technique lying down. Otherwise, just make yourself as comfortable as possible.

Close your eyes. Take a big, deep breath. You are going to be holding your breath, so breathe in as deeply as possible.

Holding the breath inside you, start clenching or tensing your limbs one at a time. Start with your feet and ankles, then move upwards to your calves, your knees, then tense your bottom. As you move upwards, do not loosen the previously clenched part of the body.

Now move up to your waist, then to your stomach. Tense your stomach muscles as tightly as possible. Automatically, your groin muscles will also get tensed.

Next, move upwards to your chest and back. Tense all the vertebrae along your back. Tense your arms and hands, starting from your fingers and moving up to your biceps. Tense your shoulder blades, your neck and throat muscles. Especially hold the tension in your neck muscles.

Move to your face. Your face has more muscles than you are aware of. Tense the muscles in your mouth, nostrils, eyes, eyebrows, forehead and cheeks. Squeeze

your eyelids shut. Clench your teeth. Screw your whole face into a tight ball. Remember not to relax the rest of your body during this time.

Stay in this state of tension for as long as you can. When you can't hold your breath any more, expel it in one big gush, simultaneously relaxing your body utterly.

Stay in this state of physical and mental

relaxation for a minute. This technique relaxes both the body and mind and refreshes you in just two minutes. If time allows, repeat the process three times.

9. I Am

Be thrown back into yourself – and glimpse who you truly are!

Duration: anytime, anywhere

This is a technique to be aware of your self at every moment, in every action. All you have to do is remember yourself, remember I am - when you are eating, drinking, walking, talking. Be aware that I am and discover within your self an ever-living current.

All your entertainment is nothing but trying to forget yourself. Do not try to forget yourself. Trying to forget yourself will only add more and more difficulty to your life.

Whatever you know about yourself or whatever was taught to you about you, try to relax from it. Just remember I am.

Self-remembering is not thinking, it is simply awareness. If you think I am, you have missed the point. That is what we

usually end up doing – repeating the words, I am, I am. The words are not the experience. Don't verbalize. Just feel, I am. You don't have to think about your body, your mind, your status or your position, no thinking is needed.

When you are walking, stop for a moment and be aware that you exist. When you touch something, just feel the sensation. When someone touches you, feel the touch, and feel the one who is being touched – that is you. Your consciousness will become sharper.

Carry this awareness with you everywhere. Be aware that you are experiencing the sun on your face, the wind in your hair. Be aware of the one who is experiencing. Just feel, I am. For a moment, you will be thrown back into yourself. You will catch a glimpse of deep silence, of reality.

10. Just sit

Glimpse the state of no-mind

Duration: 21 minutes

This meditation is drawn from Zen. The Zen word 'zazen' means 'just sitting'. The most difficult thing is to just sit, doing nothing! Your mind will come up with all kinds of arguments, reasons, or excuses for not doing this technique.

It will try to convince you that it is a sheer waste of time. If you persist, the mind will become sleepy, it will daydream, it may even start hallucinating.

The whole purpose of this meditation is to let the mind play all the tricks it wants. One day the mind is simply going to get fed up with playing these tricks on you. The mind will eventually realize that it can no longer control you with its games. Then the mind will simply drop of its own accord.

For this meditation, you can sit anywhere you will not be disturbed. If there is too much movement, it might disturb or distract you. Find a comfortable posture in which you feel you can stay without moving for at least half an hour. Use a mat or cushion if required. When the body is unmoving, the mind also falls still.

Keep your spine straight. Use support if required, but try to do without it. Rest one palm inside the other, with the thumbs touching to form a circle.

Watching nature is a good choice. Even from indoors, you can watch the sky through the window. Or you could sit facing a plain, white wall. Or you could simply face a corner of the room.

Don't focus your attention on anything. Let your eyes be half-open and unfocused, with your attention diffused. Let your gaze rest softly in the distance. This will relax you. Let your breathing be relaxed and natural.

Remain alert and aware. Be receptive without allowing your attention to focus on any particular thing. Be present in the moment, moment to moment.

In the beginning it will be difficult to just sit, doing nothing. But in a few days you

will start enjoying this tremendously. Layer by layer, you can actually begin to feel the mind drop. Finally, one day the moment will come when the mind drops altogether. You will glimpse the state of no-mind.

11. Awareness while eating, drinking…

Increase your awareness

Duration: whenever eating or drinking

Normally we don't chew and eat food, we just gulp it down our throats. We hardly taste the food.

Now whenever you eat, eat with awareness. Taste it completely. Become the taste. When you really feel the sweetness of the food, you can feel it not only in the mouth but also in your entire body.

While drinking water, feel the coolness of the water as it goes down your throat and into your stomach. Close your eyes and drink it slowly, enjoying every sip. Feel the coolness intensely, not only in the mouth but also in the entire body.

13. Say 'yes'

Soften, melt, surrender – to the higher intelligence

Duration: anytime, anywhere

If you notice, almost all the time, you like to say 'no' – it gives a solid feeling to your personality, your ego. Saying 'no' makes you feel you are somebody. Saying 'yes' makes the ego feel inferior, subservient to someone.

Now try to exactly reverse this. Decide for the next twenty-four hours, you will start with saying 'yes' in every situation. Watch how the 'no' just jumps up at the slightest incentive. In any situation, your mind will

feel like saying 'no.' Now watch the 'no' begin to rise, and drop it. Consciously say 'yes.'

You will feel yourself soften and melt, and you will experience a new ease within you. Others will also feel that you are a much softer and more open person.

14. Watch your body and mind and relax

Relax from any tension. Feel love for anything that you do.

Duration: anytime, anywhere

Be aware of your day-to-day actions every minute. Be consciously relaxed whatever you may be doing. Consciously relax from any tension that you hold in any part of the body.

Accept yourself just as you are. Accept and welcome every moment for the gift of life it has brought you.

Whatever you are doing, do it with love and joy. Be total and authentic in whatever you do and feel. The very quality of your 'being' and 'doing' will change.

15. Are you there?

Jump to the present!

Duration: at bedtime or anytime, anywhere

Ask yourself, 'Are you there?'

As soon as you consciously ask yourself this, the thinking will stop. Now, reply to your question, 'yes.' It will directly bring your awareness to the present!

You can try this particularly before going to sleep. Otherwise, anytime and any number of times is okay.

16. Beyond words

Learn to experience, beyond what words can describe. You will experience the real beauty of Existence. Then life becomes eternally joyful.

Duration: anytime, anywhere

Look at things without bringing in any words.

When you are looking at a flower, just look. Do not verbalize out loud or even silently, saying for instance, 'Beautiful rose!' Just see, being fully aware. That is really looking at the rose. Only then you can truly relate with the rose. Only then the rose reveals its reality to you.

Look at the moon in the night sky. Drink in the moon. Just watch, don't think how beautiful it is, or that you know it is the moon or anything of that sort.

Sometimes you can look at your own self in the mirror. Look intensely at yourself in the mirror. Just watch, just witness. You will see how beautiful Existence and its creations really are, and how your words reduce everything to mundane matters.

17. Criticism

Criticize properly!

Duration: anytime, anywhere

When you feel you want to criticize some person, try this.

Before criticizing, discover a positive alternative for whatever criticism you wish to give the person. If you are not able to find a positive alternative, wait. It is useless to give a non-constructive feedback to someone. Get the positive alternative and then present the problem as well as the suggested solution to the person. Then your criticism will be useful and constructive.

18. External and internal wandering

Witness the wandering and relax into the real you

Duration: 21 minutes

Close your eyes. Sit in a very relaxed way.

There is no need to control the mind.

If your mind is going somewhere outside, dwelling on things other than you, it is called external wandering. Just remember you are there and your mind is wandering. The moment you remember you, you will remember your name, or some idea about you, that is internal wandering.

Watch the external and internal wandering. Any idea that comes about you, inside you, is also a wandering, an internal wandering. Witness these wanderings, relax even from them. If you are disturbed by thoughts, come back. Again remember the external wandering and internal wandering. Relax, and just be aware of the external wandering and the internal wandering.

Bringing awareness continuously to that which is not you, but which you are thinking is you, will bring a glimpse of the true you, which is the macrocosm, the whole cosmos.

19. Keep everything out

Put all knowing aside and experience the ultimate freedom

Duration: 10 minutes

Keep everything out of your inner space - whatever you heard, saw or read. Keep everything out, and see what happens to your inner space. If any thought appears, just know that it does not belong in your inner space. Either the thought came from someone else, or it is a byproduct of some other thought or thoughts that came inside your inner space earlier.

All teachings, ideas, concepts that you heard - keep everything in the outer space. Let your inner space be empty. If you try this method for a few moments, you will catch the knack of how to practice this technique.

At least once in a day, try to keep everything out for just ten minutes, you will see the tremendous peace and silence happening inside you.

Have the clear intention that you will keep outside your inner space, all the teachings, concepts and words put inside your head, including this teaching of keeping everything out! Allow no word, no teaching, no concepts, no lies, no truths, no purity or impurity. Let you be in that ultimate freedom, let you be relieved from the stress and the concepts put in your head. Rediscover the silence, the emptiness that is your true nature, which you lost somehow.

20. Handling enemies

Remain unperturbed by so-called enemies

Duration: twenty-four hours

Bring the image of your enemies to mind. The moment you bring their image, you will experience hatred and so many words will come up – words, which you wanted to tell them but didn't have a chance to, or perhaps you were never courageous enough to tell them. Sometimes,

even when you have the chance, you have so many words you want to say, but you forget half of them in the heat of the moment.

So bring the image of your enemy now, and when these words and feelings swell up inside you, just breathe deeply, then settle down, and relax.

Continue to hold the image in your inner space, let the mind shout whatever it wants to shout. After a few minutes you will see, not only the number of words you want to shout comes down, but you will also start looking into your problems with more clarity.

Just holding in silence the image of the person for whom you have so much hatred in your inner space will bring down the enmity, the violence and the vengeance.

Suddenly, you will see there is no longer any violence inside you. Even when you see the person directly, that fear stroke or the fire will not happen. You are relaxed, you are able to handle things calmly. This is a silent catharsis to get over intense hatred or enmity towards any person.

For the rest of the day, whomever you see, whether it is your friend or enemy, try to maintain your body heat as it is. Try to keep the number of thoughts inside you as it is. Relax and do not become agitated, come back to your center. You will see so many new dimensions open in you, and you will be able to carry a deep silence throughout the day, the silence you experienced in the meditation.

21. Beyond bondage and freedom

Just as you see the one sun reflected on the water as many suns, in the same way see the one real Source and be free from all types of bondage.

Duration: 11 minutes

If you keep ten water pots outside in the sun, you will see the reflection of the sun as ten suns in the ten water pots. If you break every pot one by one, the number of suns will come down. Suddenly if you break the last pot, there is no reflection at all, only the sun. There is only one sun, but there are so many reflections in the water. In the same way, there is only one superonsciousness, one Source, having many reflections in all of us!

So many suns are seen in the water. But when you look for the source, you will see only one sun. There are innumerable reflections of that one source. Study any one reflection, and when you look to see from where it is being reflected, you will always find the source.

Each of you is also a reflection. Your body-mind is like a mirror, and the Divine is superconsciousness. That exact spot where the superconsciouness, the Source, touches your body-mind or the mirror, is what we call your individual consciousness. There may be so many individual consciousness, but if you trace the Source, you will reach the same superconsciousness. There are many suns reflected in the water, but the source is one.

The whole universe is the reflection of many body-minds and all the reflections have one Source.

When you understand that the whole universe is a reflection of all the body-minds, your effort or intention or need to do something will simply disappear!

If you understand that all the reflections have the same one Source, you can relax in the peace.

22. Contemplate beyond perception

Experience the bliss of no-mind

Duration: 10 minutes

The moment you perceive anything, the moment you are able to think about it, it becomes past.

For example, in the beginning, when you are told to think of something that is beyond your thoughts, you may think of the entire solar system. But the moment you think about the entire solar system, you have already made that into one more thought! So now, drop that.

Next, try to think beyond. You might think about the galaxy, beyond the solar system. When you are able to think of the galaxy, then drop that thought. Go beyond the galaxy. When you continuously expand your mind to go beyond, you will be in the present moment.

Understand, the moment you are able to grasp something and think about it, you have already made it into the past, into your property. Your mind can flourish there. So think further and further beyond what you can think. Even if you are thinking about what you can't think about, drop that. The mind will always try to grasp everything and keep it in storage, so it can eat slowly and ruminate, just like a bull! So do not bring the things that you have already grasped back into the mind. Continuously drop them.

Whatever you think is the ultimate in your life, drop it, and expand your thinking to something bigger. Then again your mind will automatically grasp something else. But don't allow your mind to hold that idea, drop it also. Continuously your mind will say, 'If I am dropping every moment, then what will happen to me? Where will it end?'

Don't bother about this ending. Your mind is just trying to grasp onto something by asking you this question. Your mind is asking you to prove the result before even starting the practice. Do not allow it. That is where you get cheated. Understand, you constantly keep dropping each boundary, each thought, and expanding, going beyond.

Meditate on the real master, or the real cosmos or the real god. You may think you have grasped the essence of god, but it can never be, because your mind can never grasp the real god! If your mind can grasp god, it means your mind is greater than god. So what you grasped is not god, it is just your idea of god. Drop the idea and try again. Grasp something bigger than that.

Continuously try to grasp the ultimate truth. Understand, when you throw a particular idea from your mind, not only do you throw that idea, you also pick up one part of the bone structure from your mind and throw it out. Every time you pick up some thoughts from your mind and throw them out, not only the thoughts are discarded, but one part of the bone structure of your mind is also thrown away. So after discarding and discarding, finally there will not be any bone structure left! Suddenly you will see your whole mind has been thrown out! You will experience the bliss of no-mind.

23. Withdraw your senses

Experience your inner space

Duration: 5 minutes a day or 1-2 minutes, five times a day

This is an anytime meditation. Initially you may not be able to do this meditation for five minutes at a time. You can reduce the time to one or two minutes, but try to do it five times per day. You can try once in the morning before breakfast, once before lunch, once before dinner, and also twice between meal times.

Wear loose clothing; let nothing touch your body.

Close your eyes and mouth tightly. Now close your ears with your hands. Stop all sensations coming in through the eyes, ears, mouth and sense of touch. Naturally, the thoughts that you already have inside will start coming up, such as what happened yesterday, what

happened the day before, what needs to be done tomorrow. All these thoughts will start running through your mind. Do not bother about them. They will not have life for more than three kshanas, the time gap between one thought and the next. I repeat, they will have life only for a maximum of three kshanas.

Unless new information goes through your senses and the process happens, the processing system cannot continue for more than three kshanas. You may be thinking, 'No, no, I can sit and visualize forever.' No! In that case, you must be allowing input through the senses. You must block the sense organs, it is especially important to lock the tongue. Within three kshanas, three or four thoughts may come. The fifth thought cannot happen.

It is important to allow the breathing to be natural during this process. Just sit for a few moments. Suddenly you will see there is a space where there are no thoughts.

Even if you experience that thoughtless rest for two or three seconds, it will give you so much energy that you will feel you had eight to ten hours of sleep!

It is a very strong and powerful method. Try this practice five times per day. Within five to six days, if not sooner, you will catch the glimpse.

Actually your inner space is not so difficult to contact. It is, after all, your inner space. It is just that we neither had the technique, nor the patience, nor the inspiration to try, that's all. That is why the moment you have the knowledge about the truth, half of the work is done. The remaining half is just relaxing and experiencing it.