Mood signboard🔗

Whenever you are feeling exceptionally low and you feel you are on the verge of an outburst, do this. Visualize that you are carrying a big board hung from your neck, saying, ‘Beware! I am in a very bad mood and I may bite you! I have nothing against you personally, but right now I am angry and just want to throw out my negativity somehow!’ Just carry this imaginary board in front of you. Of course, no one else will know about it, but you will know – and that is enough. Every time you start to blame someone else or some situation for a problem you are facing, you can just picture this big board declaring that it is just your own mood you are expressing! You just wake up to this truth again and again. After that, how can you take your own anger seriously? In the same way, when you are in a high mood, you can carry a board saying that, so that you don’t get carried away and make any irrational decisions. Again and again, when you are confronted with the inner reasons rather than their outer expression, you learn how to remain a witness even in your most emotional moments. Naturally, you become more balanced and your mood swings die down.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Most of the time, we react to any situation straight out of our conditioning. For instance, if someone insults us, we feel it is essential to respond with anger. Our conditioning goes so deep that we don’t even realize that this is a conditioned response, and we have a choice to respond in another way. This is a classic technique to handle such situations with awareness.

Whatever the situation, if you feel an emotion riding high, just wait 24 hours before responding to it. If someone misbehaves with you, don’t react on the spot. Just bring in your awareness immediately, before your mind takes off on the same track. However illogical it may sound at the time, don’t break this rule. Promise yourself that you will have plenty of time to react after 24 hours. You will be surprised, after 24 hours you can hardly keep the anger or violence alive! You won’t feel like reacting to that person or situation at all. The gap of 24 hours gives you the awareness to see the whole thing in proper perspective. As you work with this technique, you won’t need 24 hours to make this shift! The time will keep on reducing, till gradually you will be able to bring up the same awareness even as you are facing the situation.

In any situation where you experience some inner conflict, just ask yourself, Am I being a wall or a door right now?

Chances are, you will find that you are being a wall!

Most of the time, it is not the external situation that is causing the conflict. It is your level of receptivity and openness to the situation.

This technique is not for judging yourself, it is only for becoming more aware of your own state.

As you work with it, you will become more and more conscious of the subtle fluctuations of mood you go through all the time. You become conscious of your mental patterns.

Just being aware can help you make the transition from being a wall to being a door, at least most of the time!

Once you understand this constant flux inside yourself, you will be able to see and understand that it happens in others also.

Then you will know when exactly another person can be approached for a discussion; when he will be open to you and when he won't!

The problem is, we always see others from the outside, never from the inside. Once you see the same pattern playing in others as well, you begin to notice the mood, not the person. You get out of the blame-game.

With this simple awareness, you will find yourself becoming less judgmental and more compassionate in your relationships.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Your eyes are a powerful index of your state of mind. When you are restless, naturally your eyes will be restless too. When you concentrate on something visually, your eyes are fixed upon it. When you arrest the movement of the eyes, naturally your thoughts also cannot move!

Duration: 21 minutes

Choose a blank wall or an empty surface. With a pen, mark a dark spot on this surface that is large enough to be seen from a distance of one or two feet. Seat yourself comfortably, facing this point. Start concentrating on this point without taking your eyes off it. Do not move your body or allow yourself to be distracted by anything. As you fix your eyes on the point, feel your thoughts gradually slowing down. Do not blink, because if you blink, you will give space for the mind to move again. Feel as if you no longer have eyelids. As you concentrate on it, you will notice a strange thing: the point will begin to dissolve! When the point dissolves, suddenly, you find that you are thrown to your center.

If you can create a center outside, anywhere, if you concentrate on it totally, you forget the whole world. Automatically, your consciousness gets thrown back to your inner center.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Do you know, your mind always moves in circles? We always think that the movement of the mind is linear, but in truth it is circular. The mind always moves in a fixed pattern, following a circular track of memories, and associations and expectations. That is why you experience the same mood swings again and again and again. The same thoughts come up, the same desires, fears and anxieties, the same highs and lows – and again and again you get caught in them. Just one time, if you can clearly witness your mental patterns, you can directly see how your mind is playing with you. Just this simple awareness can liberate you from your mind!

Keep a diary and note down your feelings, your emotions, at different times of the day – morning, afternoon, evening, night. Do this for about a month. Then take a look at your diary. Watch the patterns that your mood follows. Understand your mood cycle. The next time you feel a low mood, remind yourself of the pattern in your emotional cycle. Remind yourself that this present mood is just one part of that cycle and enjoy it. It is, that’s all. But it is not forever, it will pass. In the same way, if you are feeling really happy, watch. Watch the emotion, witness yourself through it. Just as you witness the lows, witness the highs also. Don’t get involved in either, as both are passing. When you practice this technique for a few weeks, you will see that no matter what emotion comes up at each moment, you are able to handle it without getting disturbed.

You always complain that the mind wanders during meditation. This is a technique that makes a meditation of your wandering! When your mind wanders, don't try to drag it back, don't suppress the thoughts, don't get angry or feel frustrated. Simply remember that the mind is wandering, and you are not the mind. You struggle with the mind because you think it is you. Simply relax from this idea and witness the wandering. You will see that without your support and energy, the mind cannot wander very far! When you relax from the mind, it slowly falls into the center. When you relax from what you are not, what you are will naturally be revealed.

Duration: 21 minutes

It is the nature of your senses to always flow outwards. You can never use your senses to experience your inner space. But we always pour all our energy into our senses. Wherever our senses lead us, we follow. That is why we never really experience ourselves from the inside. Thought always follows the senses. When you stop the senses, automatically thoughts also slow down and stop. When the mind is still, naturally you fall into your center. 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. 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 a day, always on an empty stomach. When practicing this technique, wear loose clothing; let nothing touch your body.

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

Sit upright with your spine relaxed. Keep your body steady and unmoving. Close your eyes and mouth tight. Lock your tongue firmly. Now close your ears with your hands. Stop all sensations coming in through the eyes, ears, mouth and sense of touch. When your mind can no longer receive fresh information through your sense, naturally it will start replaying whatever is already inside. The thoughts that you already have inside will start bubbling up to the surface 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. I repeat, they will have life only for a maximum of three kshanas. Unless new information goes through your senses and the processing happens, the processing system cannot continue for more than three kshanas. You may be thinking, ‘No, no, I can sit and think 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 minutes and allow the process to happen. 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.

Your inner space is always crowded with the known! Whatever we see, hear, read, listen to, understand – we continuously throw all the information of the outer world into our inner space. Now, make a conscious decision to put all knowing aside. Free your inner space of everything that you know. Make space for that which is beyond all knowing!

Duration: 10 minutes daily

Sit comfortably with your eyes closed. Watch your inner space in a relaxed way, as you would look at a flower. Have a clear, relaxed intention that you will keep your inner space free of all concepts and words, all the teachings put inside your head, all the information you are receiving from outside. You are going to keep everything out. If any thought appears, just watch it with the understanding it does not belong in your inner space. Either the thought came from someone else, or it arose from another thought which entered your inner space earlier. If an emotion arises, understand that it is not you. Allow no word, no teaching, no concepts, no lies, no truths, no purity or impurity to touch you. Let your inner space be empty! When you see that everything which you thought is ‘you’ or ‘yours’ has actually come to you from outside, you stop struggling with your imagined identity. You experience a tremendous freedom from yourself. Freedom from yourself is the ultimate freedom, the ultimate peace. Just remain in that freedom, in that peace. Enjoy the silence, the emptiness that is your true nature.

This meditation is drawn from Zen.

The Zen word Zazen, meaning just sitting, is a tough meditation. The most difficult thing is to just sit, doing nothing. To sit simply is to allow your mind free play. Your mind is going to come up with all kinds of arguments, reasons, excuses against this technique. It will try to convince you that this 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. Because one day the mind is simply going to get fed up of playing with you. One day the mind is going to realize that it can no longer control you with its games. Then the mind drops of its own accord.