Additional Meditation Guidelines

1)    Try to meditate at the same time to develop a grove in your mind.

2)    Have an internal dialogue with yourself of the benefits of meditation.

3)    Have a still and comfortable posture.

4)    Develop a pattern of serene breath.

5)    Develop determination, establish will power before doing something, and determine that you will and that you can do whatever you set your mind to do.

6)    Learn to let go of any distracting thoughts that come into your mind. Do not brood over any particular thought no matter how wonderful or disturbing it is.

7)    Inspect your thoughts, determine which ones are worthwhile to cultivate. Helpful thoughts inspire, harmful ones are these that suggest I cannot do it, that is negative ones,

8)    Practice witnessing with non attachment. When we are not identifying with the world, we become seers.

9)    Enter the meditation practice with a loving attitude

Mantra meditation

Meditating on Om or AUM which represents the waking, dreaming and dreamless state, as well as the gross, subtle and causal realities, which merge into the forth, the silence which is the Absolute Reality

Sanskrit – So ham, I am that, or ‘I am that I am’.

This mantra is practical and potent

It is a universal mantra, because it relates to the breath of everyone

We breath in so and exhale with ham

Practicing correct breathing

a)     Breathe from the diaphragm

Diaphragmatic breathing is one of the most important
foundation practices for meditation. We need to consciously practice it. Nobody can do it for us. Other meditation breathing practices may be learned early, but the main emphasis should be on diaphragmatic breathing, which leads to pure awareness, though of a much higher order.

b)    Do spine or Sushumna breathing – inhale from the bottom to the top, exhale from the top to the base of the spine

c)     Do alternate nostril breathing, and then meditate from the spiritual heart or the space between the eyebrows, the seat of going beyond the mind.

d)    The Bindu is at the back of the head (moon side). It is not mentioned in most of the yoga teachings, except in Tantra Yoga. In the Vedanta teachings, the importance is attached to the healing and rejuvenating effects of the Bindu. It is said to be located at the opposite the Ajna Chakra (third eye). From a physical perspective it is the pineal gland.

e)     Bindu meditation is a stage of the highest Yoga Meditation in which all experiences collapse into a point from which all experiences arose in the first place.

Awareness of the nature of Bindu helps us in seeing how all of the various yoga practices are complementary, leading in the direction of the Bindu.

The Bindu is the convergence point of Meditation, Contemplation, Prayer, and Mantra, and is part of the mystical, esoteric aspect of many, if not most religions and meditative traditions.

The experience of Bindu is an actual, internally experienced reality, which is the convergence point of the highest principles and practices of Yoga, Vedanta, and Tantra.

Seeking to experience and then transcend the Bindu serves as an organizing principle and focal point for all of those spiritual or yogic practices that are intended to lead one to direct experience with the Divine.

Finally, seeking to know in direct experience that which is beyond all of these words, names, and forms, where each of these "systems" converge into one pre-existing whole, which is called Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence, Consciousness, Bliss.

The direct experience is attained when consciousness moves up the sushumna channel (central channel of the subtle spine), leading to the Sahasrara or crown chakra.

Along the journey of receding, all experiences collapse, so to speak, into a point from which all experiences arose in the first place. That point is called Bindu, which means Point or Dot, and is sometimes likened to a Pearl, and is often related to the principle of a Seed.

 The Bindu is near the end of the subtlest aspect of mind itself, after which one travels beyond or transcends the mind and its contents. It is near the end of time, space, and causation, and is the doorway to the Absolute. To understand this principle is extremely useful, if not essential to Advanced Meditation.