INSTRUCTIONS🔗

DURATION: 10 minutes

Sit by yourself for a few minutes as soon as you wake up in the morning. Close your eyes and visualize that all your things belong to Existence. None of it is yours. Existence is so gracious that it has allowed you to have it. Now, you are going to return everything to Existence. One by one, visualize giving away your most precious possessions. You can visualize giving them away to someone, or simply picture yourself without them. Your money, your home, your car, your jewelry - whatever you are holding onto most tightly, give away that first! One by one, see yourself without these things. Give away everything that you always felt you could not live without. As you do this, have the deep understanding inside that Existence will provide for you at every moment. There is no need for you to hold on to anything. Whatever you really need, whenever you need it, will be given to you by Existence. Feel the gratitude flowing in you towards Existence. Experience this deeply, truly. Let this truth overwhelm you. You will find a tremendous release happening inside you. This technique can directly create a shift in your consciousness. You take the leap from the material life to the spiritual life.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Change is the greatest teacher. It teaches you in no uncertain terms that Existence is fluid and changing every minute. If this is understood, then all our emotions, all our fears, become irrelevant. When you understand change, you grow into a detachment that is beautiful and natural.

Try this technique whenever you are outdoors, when you are with Nature, in a park or a garden, anywhere. Nature is the ultimate proof of change!

DURATION: Not applicable

This is an open-eye meditation. You don't need to sit still and close your eyes. In fact, you can stroll around if you wish, keeping your eyes wide open.

Intensely take in the flow of life around you. Everywhere, grass is growing and withering away. Dry leaves are falling from the trees, and fresh young ones are taking their place. New shoots are growing out of the earth. Buds are blooming, flowers fade and fall. The butterflies flitting in the sun may not see tomorrow's sunrise. The clouds in the sky form and dissolve, form and dissolve again. Change is the language that Nature speaks.

Now look at your own body. Your face was not what it was ten years ago, what it will be a few years from now. Like the earth, the texture of your skin changes with the seasons. Even as you watch, your body is changing in a hundred ways. Every moment, your body is dying and rejuvenating itself. Life and death are everywhere, every moment. Everything is part of this great flow of change.

Now close your eyes and sit still for a few moments. Just be with this understanding, allow it to soak into you. Relax deeply into this understanding. Feel the peace of this understanding. Relax into this silence.

Meditate on change in inner world

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

In the earlier technique, you saw that everything around you is changing continuously. Here, you discover the same truth inside yourself. To grasp the truth of change, you don't have to look outside yourself. Just look into your own inner space. See the continuous changes happening inside! When you realize that everything inside and outside is changing continuously, you awaken to the unchanging Truth.

DURATION: 21 minutes

Sit upright with your eyes closed. Look into your inner space. See the continuous flow of random thoughts in your inner space.

You are trying to be silent. For a few moments you are silent... then again there are some thoughts.

Tell yourself that you are going to try to be silent. See the continuous changes happening inside. Enjoy the changes happening inside.

Don't try to meditate, concentrate or anything, Just understand that continuously, things are changing in you. That's all you need to understand.

However much you try, everything is going to change. Trying is also one more change. The whole thing is continuously changing. Understand this, that is enough. The awakening will happen on its own.

Consume change through change

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

The earlier two techniques are a preparation for this one.

In both the earlier techniques, you experientially understood that change is the rule of life, in the outer world as well as in the inner world. This technique helps you mother the same understanding, to carry this understanding continuously with you. Understand the changes that are continuously happening inside and outside, and consume the change through the change!

DURATION: Not applicable

Whatever you do, wherever you go, whatever you face in the internal and external world, carry this understanding: everything changes. Both outside and inside, everything is constantly changing. Understand the change that is happening and consume the change through the change. You are a constantly changing internal 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.

Remember that everything changes. With that, enjoy everything which is changing. 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. By the change, grab and swallow everything which is changing. You will become centered in the peaceful, deep, restful awareness. You will find the ultimate unchanging consciousness.

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. Or, say you decide to move house. 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!

INSTRUCTIONS (continuation)

DURATION: Not applicable

Everything is constantly changing. Realize the internal changing reality and let it grab or swallow the external changing world. Then nothing will touch you. As of now, you are always trying to fix either the internal world or the external world, either 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. Understand, no boats will work! Just jump in and start flowing, start swimming with the current. Start flowing, start swimming.

When you understand that both the internal and external are constantly changing, 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, you are living enlightenment.

Living enlightenment means living authentically. Living enlightenment means mothering authentic experiences, mothering authentic knowledge and authentic action. Understand this one sutra and carry it in your inner space and mother it. You will live enlightenment.

Inside view

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

From time immemorial it has been said, Close your eyes, and see your true nature within. This is exactly the instruction that Shiva gave Devi, in the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra 2, that ancient treasure-house of meditation techniques.

The eyes play a dual role. When they are open, they are the messengers who bring all the news of the world to you. When you close them, they give you the vision of your inner world.

But closing your eyes doesn't mean simply closing your eyelids! When asked to close our eyes, we normally close only our eyelids. Behind our closed eyelids, we continue to see images of the outer world. We switch off the TV outside, and switch on the TV inside! Our eyes are never really closed.

There is one very effective way to still the movements of the eyes. Just imagine that your eyeballs have turned to stone! In their place, you now have two small lumps of smooth round stone!

Visualize it.

The moment you do, you will find that not only are your eye-movements stilled, but your thoughts are stilled too. When your eye movements are stopped, your thoughts slow down tremendously.

DURATION: 21 minutes

Close your eyes and imagine that your eyeballs have turned to stone. Don't do anything else, just try and remain in that state. It's not going to be easy. It is going to take you weeks of practice before you are able to remain in that state for even a few seconds. But it is well worth the effort - because you will be looking within for the first time. You have never seen your body from the inside. Now, try to see every limb from the inside. When you move your arm, you have been aware of it only from the outside - now, become aware of it from the inside. Travel through your body from the inside. Start with one fingertip. Become intensely aware of it. Be aware of nothing but that fingertip! Then slowly move upward, up the arm. Go to each limb. Become aware of each limb. Go totally into each limb. You will experience tremendous sensitivity in each part of your body. When you experience your body from within, you will automatically become aware that you are not the body. You are witnessing the body, then how can you be the body? You become free of the illusion that you are the body. You break your identification with the body. Now you are free to move deeper, into the abyss of your mind. Begin to see your mind from the within. This is not easy. Initially, all you will be seeing is the inside of your head. But that is not your mind. Your mind is separate from your brain. Think of what you normally imagine as your mind. See it from the outside. Now, reverse the process. Enter the mind and try to see it from within. With practice, it will happen. Just like your body, you will see that you are separate from your mind. You are the witness. If you are not your body, you are not your mind - then who are you? You are the one who is witnessing both. That is your true self. You cannot witness your true self, because you are not outside of it. That which you cannot witness is You. Have patience with these techniques, don't expect instant results. Miracles are not going to jump on you on the very first day! Don't get disheartened. When the experience happens, it will be worth the effort. It will create a permanent change in you. Be prepared!

You are emptiness!

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

We are always afraid of emptiness. We are afraid to become empty. That is why we constantly try to fill ourselves with possessions, with relationships, with identities. Do you know, you are actually an emptiness! You are just a pure, silent emptiness. Whatever you think of as you is just flowing through this emptiness. You cannot be touched or stained by anything that flows through you. When you experience yourself as pure emptiness, you will no longer identify with that which is simply flowing through you.

INSTRUCTIONS

DURATION: 21 minutes

Sit down in a relaxed manner. Do not put your weight on the spinal cord. You can support yourself with your hands. Feel yourself as flowing... relaxed. Now, visualize energy leaving your body through all your twelve indriyas - your eyes, nose, tongue, ears and other sense organs. You are becoming completely empty. Visualize that you have now become empty. Feel that you have become empty. Whatever you think as you, is moving out of you.

It has left you.

Whatever you thought of as you is already gone. You are completely empty. When you feel you are completely empty, stop visualizing. Be a witness. Witness your thoughts and the gap between your thoughts. Do not create any thought or destroy any thought. Just witness the thoughts flowing in you, flowing in the emptiness.