Episode 6

What is meditation, where did it come from, and why do I need it?

This transcription is an unaudited and unedited product of Googles voice to text tool nd is provided for convenince only

People used to ask Swami kriyananda Swami do I need a guru and kriyananda would say of course you don't need a guru but if you want to find God you need a guru and today I want to talk about meditation and its place in recovery and its place in living a fool meaningful life addicts and people who are co-dependent with addicts asked me do I really need a program do I really need 12 steps and like kriyananda I tell them course you don't need a program or 12 steps but if you want to recover you need a program what are the 12 steps and in episode 5 we talked about at a high level with those 12 steps are and the 11th step we talked about was the prayer and meditation step and sometimes people will say well is there a easier way or a program that doesn't take 12 steps and I tell them well you can recover in one step if you do the 11th step and you do it well you can recover because through prayer and meditation and conscious contact with God his will for your life and the courage that you need in order to carry out his will for your life is revealed to you and from there you can discover whatever other steps are necessary for you to recover so meditation is Paramount to the recovery from addiction co-dependency PTSD trauma suicidal ideation and homelessness the problem with it is that people who suffer from those five afflictions have a very difficult time sitting still and being quiet without for some having their mind run all over the place and they become even more discouraged and others that go in a straight into a PTSD flashback or into a suicide attempt because what they're thinking we're experiencing is horrible so we have to be careful when we enter recovery from these five afflictions and we begin to consider the idea that we should meditate because we don't want to do harm to ourselves so I just put that out of the caution so that if you do at some point here in the near future engage in the 90-day recovery program and begin your meditation practice with a mindfulness practice that you're aware if things go awry that's happened before and it's normal but there are some precautions that you can take in order to avoid putting yourself in danger in one of those is just to have another person nearby who can be a tether to your current perception of reality so that's the preamble to today's talk and I will get into the meat why meditation why do I need to meditate in order to get well in order to feel better and there is a ton of research and a ton of studies done on this topic and in New England 2030 years ago a new therapy called mbsr or mindfulness-based stress reduction was invented and that therapy was specifically to obviously reduce stress but the stress from anxiety and depression associated with just normal living and mindfulness meditation is how I started in 2014 on the meditative path which became a spiritual path which ultimately, dated in the founding of the realization of stainless Souls the Hindu scripture is called the bog of agita and it's a story about a battle that a person named Argentina has to do he has to fight the material world with his spiritual Army and he doesn't want to because although his material attachments prevent him from merging back in with the absolute they haven't always served him badly they've had good times together fortunately he has an advisor named Krishna who just happens to be the absolute and although Argentina has the freedom the free will to choose the material side what are the spiritual side Krishna persuades him into the truth that regardless you have to choose between the two and it's going to be a fight because of the spiritual side of you want you to be spiritual and the material side of you I want you to enjoy all of the gifts of the material and physical universe so Krishna is Argentina's Chariot driver and they drive out to the middle of the battlefield between the material Army in the spiritual Army and most of the rest of the story are the two of them having a conversation about the choice the freedom to choose and how one properly makes the correct choice and ultimately Krishna advises Arjuna the yogi that it's through meditation and through meditation by disconnecting yourself from the material from the physical from your attachments and desires to the material and the physical you can come to no the spiritual come to know the truth about yourself spiritually come to know the truth about God spiritually and the reason that meditation works is because the physical and material world are downplayed the volume is turned down the brightness is turned down and in the Silence of your mind you allow your innermost self to emerge and become more a part of your awareness in the Old Testament Psalm 46 the Samus rights be still and know I am God and those two things go together in order to know God you must be still because God's communication comes in a form or in a way that is not up the physical or material world knowing God does not come through the five senses of sight hearing smell taste and tactile touch knowing god is something that happens deep within and in order to get deep within you have to meditate likewise Jesus tells his disciples that when they pray they should go into the closet shut the door pray in secret and the father who hears in secret will reward you for those of us who study metaphysics know that means meditate focusing on a place within yourself where are the five senses in the interpretation of the five senses in the form of thoughts is not the way you communicate in other words praying secret May mean you don't use words and likewise the answer in the secret doesn't come in words it Wells up from that place that you can touch in meditation So when we roll out the 90-day program of recovery here in the next few days one of the Lynch pins to the program is daily meditation early on in the program it will be mindfulness meditation and will teach you how to do that and it will be for short durations 5 minutes at a time three or four times a day and over the course of 90 days you will learn how to meditate for longer periods longer durations and how to delve deeper into the meditative experience so you're going to learn how to meditate and through meditation I personally believe that you will recover how long that recovery may take varies but if you just think about if you know any people who are regularly practicing meditation they're not drunks they're not manic depressant they aren't overly anxious and that's because meditation changes physically physiologically the central nervous system in the human body it creates new pathways for the chemicals of the central nervous system to flow and it overall improves the health of the Mind Body Soul konstrukt So what are we to do what are we supposed to do there's people who are ordinary who are normal you weren't Afflicted with addiction co-dependency suicidal ideation PTSD or homelessness and they can't quiet the mind what are we supposed to do you're telling me hey if you want to recover you got to meditate there's no two ways around it but then you're telling me when I sit down to meditate I'm either going to have a PTSD flashback I'm going to become so depressed and discouraged I'm going to want to blow my brains out or I'm not going to be able to stop my thoughts from running through my head all the things that I've done that I regret all the things that I need to do on my to do list later that meditation is really an overwhelming challenge for me so what am I supposed to do and the answer to that question is yes it's true there is no way around it you have to learn how to meditate but you don't have to become a sage in the first week of meditation in fact all you really need to do is begin a meditation practice by beginning a meditation practice you take the most important stuff and the second most important step is don't quit in between those two steps everything that you need to happen happens but it's not easy but it's worth it be still and know I am God go into the closet shut the door pray in secret and the father who sees in secret will answer and reward you shortly will be publishing a 5-day mindfulness introduction that will be five short talks on how to begin a mindfulness practice and in that you'll learn the following set still and begin by just watching your thoughts don't be attached to your thoughts don't be attached to your idea of who the thinker of thoughts is just sit still and watch don't judge yourself because you're thinking don't judge the thoughts because they're bad or evil or sinful just sit back and watch the mechanism of your physical being thank separate yourself from the thoughts separate yourself from The Thinker and watch unfortunately too many people begin to practice and they believe that because they can't quiet their mind that they're doing it wrong so many people say to me I'm never going to be able to meditate because my mind just doesn't shut up I can't sit still that's just the way I am and all of those things are patently false you can but it takes practice when you first get up to walk when you were a child you didn't walk on the first try he fell down a lot you kept getting up finally learned how to walk you learn how to talk you learn how to count learn how to write you learn how to read they took a long. Of time likewise with meditation the rewards come with the practice the practice is the goal so don't worry about being able to be still don't worry about being able to be quiet just set aside 5 minutes at a time sit down with the idea that I'm going to sit here and watch what my mind does for 5 minutes I'm not going to judge what it does I'm not going to judge myself I'm not going to critique anything that happens I'm just going to spend 5 minutes watching what it does that's the beginning that's how we start sit down with the idea for five minutes I'm just going to watch what happens you're not trying to go anywhere you're not trying to do anything you're not trying to become a sage you just want to watch what your mind does that's all there is to it so I don't expect any of you to be able to sit down be still and know that I am God it happens from time to time but for the vast majority of us what happens is the Mind goes where the Mind goes too often we want to follow it down the drain of dirty thoughts or we come frustrated because it's not doing what we want it to or we sit there and we let the other side of her mind tell us how stupid it is that were sitting there and all of those objections all of those things that are happening is what was happening to Argentina on that Battlefield the material Army is not going to let you initially at least be still and know God because the Army knows the coupled with God you will overcome everything that it has to offer and you will form an allegiance that is true to who you really are so that are me the material physical Army is going to fight you tooth and now it's going to throw up every conceivable barrier between you and knowing god including a little voice that says see you can't sit still it's not who you are you're not that kind of person this has to be for somebody else again that's patently false it is not true you can choose though God gives you that free will you can choose to go along with the material Army for as long as you want this lifetime and million more but at some point you're going to be compelled to fight and that fights going to happen in meditation and ultimately the victory is going to be one but the spiritual side I implore you to begin the fight now not only will it accelerate you're recovering from the afflictions of addiction co-dependency PTSD suicidal ideation and homelessness but it will free your being from the desires and the attachments of the material universe and with that freedom the new choices that you will have are so abundant so that you will exist in pure Bliss pure joy and pure contentment but again it's going to be hard and for those of you that begin to slip into the chaotic mind and following along with where it's leading you when you're trying to meditate and that mine begins to remind you of how pathetic how horrendous how horrible of a person you are and the God is never going to visit you in meditation no matter how many times you go into it not know how I'm not no matter how many lifetimes you spend with it you're so pathetic you're never going to make it I want you to remember this a part of you is incorruptible invulnerable immortal and stainless stainless soles each and every one of us it's true whether you believe it or not enjoying the battle begin looking at what happened in your mind right now on purpose and you will become free from that which threatened your physical existence and you will find so much to look forward to in this existence in any other existed thank you for listening God bless you all