COME MEDITATE IN CONNECTICUT
The Way to Self-Realisation – the Knowledge of the Spirit
The Two Wolves Inside
An old Cherokee Indian chief was teaching his grandson about life…
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
“One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf will win?”
The old chief replied,”The one you feed.”
How Can We Make Joyful The New Normal?
A Happy New Year to all of You!
Holidays were great but now the Christmas tree is drying out, the wrapping paper is almost all thrown out and life is returning to so-called normal but how can we make ‘joyful’ the new normal? Because, honestly, who would call ‘normal’ joyful?
Somehow it seems we lose this quality of feeling joy the older we become. Instead a majority nowadays suffers from depression. Maybe at that point let us ask ourselves seriously: What hinders us to be joyful?
To find the answer it is worth going deeper into the knowledge about our subtle body and what is happening there. Let us compare our own state with the state of a child and we may soon see clearly why children are capable of being so joyful, and we are not.
Mooladhara represents wisdom, innocence and joy
Surprisingly it is the only energy center that is connected with all the other centers which is quite significant. How – that is best shown on our journey through the subtle centers. Children are the representatives of the Mooladhara. They are innocent about everything. On a deeper level it means that they approach everyone and everything without judging. Let us check if we can see someone or something without judging, that means without thinking. How easy is this for you? For me, honestly, it’s not. I walk around, see a nice decorated Christmas Tree, immediately the commentator somewhere on my shoulder throws out his tags with a “this is beautiful”, or a ”what a lousy tree’, or a ‘this person will catch a cold if he does not dress warmer’ and on and on and on… honestly, try it… look at something without thinking, without putting a tag on it… and let me know what happened!
Svadisthana represents creativity
Each child is an artist and they enjoy being artistic. They do not judge themselves if their work is good or not. They do not create anything in order that someone else approves it or not, they just create for the joy of creating and they enjoy their creation. How many times you are creative in one week and can you be creative without judging yourself, just only enjoying and loving whatever you produce?
Nabhi represents satisfaction
Children are so easy to satisfy. Take them out somewhere without any toys and they will just take whatever they find and make it into something. Children have an immense quality to make the best of every situation in life, to somehow arrange themselves in a way that they will feel satisfied. It is a natural mechanism in them, that might later on be disturbed by all the bombardments of advertisements or others pointing out what they should have, but originally they do not need much. Do we feel satisfied? With ourselves, with what we have, with our life?
Anahat represents our love and compassion
When children love they do not hesitate to show their love. They will throw their little arms around you, kiss you loudly and show their affection in many different ways. They also are not shy to demand love in return and do stamp up with their feet when they feel hurt. How much do we express our love to others? And how openly do we talk with each other when we feel that there is something wrong?
Vishuddhi represents our collective consciousness
Children are very collective. Children love other children. They always will search each others company and enjoy much more to play with others than to play alone. Have you ever seen when one child starts crying how the others join in? The true collective spirit… sometimes to the despair of the mothers. How much do we seek each others company? How much do we enjoy together or share the things we like?
Agnya represents our forgiving powers
Children can easily start fighting, but as easily they can forgive and in the next moment play together again as if nothing has happened. What about our forgiveness power? How many grudges do we have against someone else and how long does it take to give them up?
Sahasrara is the connecting power, the one that integrates all others
Have you ever wondered how children communicate with each other? Often they do not speak very much, or just some words, but somehow they seem to understand each other without any major difficulties. Children generally are much more open so it is easy for them to connect with another person and understand him/her without needing words. How easy it is for us to understand another’s person mood or state although the other might not say one word about it?
After this little journey through ourselves we might get a quite good overview where we have blocked our innate qualities that actually were the key to our joy in childhood. So what we want is to re-open all these centers and allow these qualities to grow and prosper without the dry commentator at the back telling you that it is not worth it, or an impossible task, or whatever other reasonable reasons.
Start listening to the child within! What would you enjoy? Want to see a movie? Why not take your inner child by its hand, go out and have a lot of fun together! Life is too beautiful to let it become a dry and grey day-to-day frustration! Allow yourself this freedom again to just enjoy, draw something just for the fun of it, run around or simply be somewhere admiring something beautiful. Remember how you managed everything as a child, how you made your day a great one!
Now, maybe sometimes it is not so easy as it sounds. Life was giving us many lessons and they are all stored inside, sometimes giving us a feeling of heaviness. But no worry, it is not difficult to get rid of all these inner burdens. It is only important to give yourself every day 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, to meditate. In your meditation you connect to the all-pervading power around you and allow it to take out your problems and heal your physical, emotional and mental body.
So for a new start into the year 2012 we will start with a 10-minutes-meditation specially for our first energy center, the Mooladhara. If you do this meditation regularly you will experience more and more joy without needing any reason to be joyful, and you will feel generally much lighter.
A 10-Minutes-Meditation on the Mooladhara
(for this meditation exercise it is good to sit on the ground, but not necessary)
- Awaken Your Inner Energy
Here is a guided meditation (approx. 20 Min.) to awaken your Inner Energy by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji. If you went through it already skip step 1). This is done only once. When your Inner Energy is activated it will stay so, there is no need to repeat the affirmations (although you can do so if you like).
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- At the beginning and the end of each meditation we do what we call “raising the energy” and give ourselves “a shield of protection”.
Here is a nice animation how to do it: charlie.swf
You can also find a detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand on your head for some seconds, put the hand down again but keep focused on top of your head where your hand was.
- If you can (it is not necessary) try out this physical exercise guided by Shri Mataji in the following short video – it is worth trying because it helps the Mooladhara to open up more:
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Then put both hands on or towards the Mother Earth. Feel the vibrations flowing between your hands and the earth. As the Mooladhara is connected to the element Earth this will help you a lot to clear it and to open it up more and more.
Have some pleasant music if you like. Allow your inner energy as well as the all-pervading power around to work on you – there is no need to do anything, just surrender to it. - After the 10 minutes hold your hand over your head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, sometimes also like a warm breeze, like a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with ”raising the energy” and giving yourself ”a bhandan” (shield of protection).
- Have fun with yourself! Enjoy!
Make joy a normal condition in your life! With this I wish you a very normal joyful week!
Yours, Angi
Where Are We When We Are Not Here?
Christmas Day is coming nearer and the stress level rising higher. Still there are so many things to do, the last gifts to buy, the Christmas Tree to be decorated. In the “Time of Silence” we are not silent at all.
Maybe that is a good time to try out Sahaja Meditation. Why? Because with this meditation you can achieve a state of inner silence within minutes, not only at home, but even on a stress-full working day or in a crowded shopping-mall. You only have to know the trick how to become thoughtless. And you will see that in this state of thoughtless awareness everything starts flowing, from no-where new ideas and inspirations may come up, be it what to buy for whom or a new business plan, it works for everything.
But what is this mysterious “Thoughtless Awareness”? Before answering this question I would like you to do a little test.
Look back on your day and try to remember what you were thinking about. Were your thoughts
- circulating more about something of the past or
- were they jumping into the future, weaving new plans and strategies?
Did you notice that even in our language we associate our thinking with our “where are we”? We can be far away with our thoughts, absent minded, then someone else might ask: “Where are you? Are you listening to me?”
Where our thinking is, there are we. So after this little test, can you say if you were more in the past or in the future?
And here is one more small test: when you are in the present what would you think?
Did you notice it? When your attention is in the present you do not think. You can, if you want, that would mean to move into the past or future again, but if you concentrate on this very moment, the present, you are thoughtless.
This is the very small, but important clue. Be in the present. Be here. Right now. No more rattling of the brain about the past or the future, just to be. Not have to be this or that, because we have learned so, not to plan what to do the next moment, just to be. That is the point where we experience the inner silence, the soothing calmness of just being, and of enjoying to be.
Did you ever ask yourself why children are so capable of learning so fast? They have one simple trick – they do not think. They are in the “Here and Now”, therefore capable of absorbing everything because they are not distracted by inner thought processing.
Now ask yourself again: Where are you, right now? Are you lingering in the past, in a memory? Or far ahead in the future, that has not happened, yet?
Or have you managed already to pull yourself back to the present moment? A state that is not that easy to reach for most of us! But it is worth going for it, because as it is said: The present is a present, therefore it is called the present.
As it is, with Sahaja Meditation it becomes much easier to reach the state of thoughtless awareness, of being in the present, of feeling inner peace. We only need to balance the left and right side of our subtle body. The left side corresponds with our past, the right side with our future. If you are someone who generally thinks a lot about past things it might indicate that your left side is out of balance, if you are someone who plans and organizes a lot, always looking out for something in the future it might indicate that your right side is out of balance.
The following meditation exercise focuses specially on balancing our inner system. Doing this balancing every day, 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, might increase your ability in a very short time to feel a state of inner silence and peace, something that we want to enjoy specially at Christmas Time together with our family.
A 10-Minutes-Meditation-Guide to experience Inner Silence
(sit wherever you like, the most important thing is to feel comfortable)
- Awaken Your Inner Energy
This is done only once and takes about 20 minutes. If you went through it already skip step 1). When your Inner Energy is activated it will stay so, there is no need to repeat the affirmations (although you can do so if you like).
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- At the beginning and the end of each meditation we do what we call “raising the energy” and give ourselves “a shield of protection”.
Here is a nice animation how to do it: charlie.swf
You can also find a detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand on your head for some seconds, put the hand down again but keep focused on top of your head where your hand was.
- Balancing your left side:
Put your right hand down towards the earth, keep the left hand open on your lap. You can ask your Inner Energy:
“Please remove all imbalances of my left side”
Sit like that for several minutes and allow your Inner Energy to clear your left side
Balancing your Right Side:
With your right hand open in your lap, bend your left arm upward, with your left palm facing the back. You can ask your Inner Energy:
“Please remove all imbalances of my right side”
Sit like that for several minutes and allow your Inner Energy to clear your right side 
Then keep both hands on your lap, palms upwards, keep the focus on top of your head.
If you feel like it have some pleasant music.
In this time we allow our inner energy as well as the all-pervading power around to work on us – we do not need to do anything, just surrender to it.- After the 10 minutes hold your hand over your head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, sometimes also like a warm breeze, like a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with ”raising the energy” and giving yourself ”a bhandan” (shield of protection).
I hope this meditation helps you for the coming week and beyond, to be in complete balance, enjoying the present moments and feeling totally peaceful with yourself and everyone else. I wish you and your families
A Wonderful and Merry Christmas!
Yours, Angi
When Curing Becomes A Side-Effect…
Dear All,
Today I would like to share a documentary (30 minutes long) of the early 1990s that dives deep into the effects of Sahaja Meditation on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level.
Here are some of the key topics:
- Carl G. Jung speaking about the anima and animus (the left and right side of our subtle system) and about the imbalance of these two in Western society
- Interviews with three doctors and their experiences with Sahaja Meditation, including scientific research on how Sahaja Meditation reduces high blood pressure
- Shri Mataji giving a detailed explanation where and how most of the diseases start and explaining how the awakening of the inner energy works to cure them by ones own power
I hope you enjoy this documentary and that you will have as many Aha!- and Oh!-effects as I had. One such moment for me was that curing people is only a side effect of Sahaja Meditation, while the essence of it enables us to go beyond and find out who we really are, our true Self.
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So let’s start with our journey to the greatest mystery within – our universal self! 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening is all you need!
The 10-Minutes-Meditation
(sit wherever you like, the most important thing is to feel comfortable)
- Awaken Your Inner Energy
This is done only once and takes about 20 minutes. If you went through it already skip step 1). When your Inner Energy is activated it will stay so, there is no need to repeat the affirmations (although you can do so if you like) - At the beginning and the end of each meditation we do what we call “raising the energy” and give ourselves “a shield of protection”.
Here is a nice animation how to do it: http://sahajayogawa.com/flash/charlie.swf
You can also find a detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand on your head for some seconds, put the hand down again but keep focused on the top of your head where your hand was.
- Sit still for about 10 minutes, hands palm upwards to let the energy flow freely through them, keep the focus on top of your head. If you find your mind wandering repeat step 3) as many times as it helps you to focus.
If you feel like it have some pleasant music.
In this time we allow our inner energy as well as the all-pervading power around to work on us – we do not need to do anything, just surrender to it. - After the 10 minutes hold your hand over your head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, sometimes also like a warm breeze, like a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with “raising the energy” and giving yourself “a bhandan” (shield of protection).
- Enjoy your day!
I wish you many exciting and joyful adventures on the road to Within!
Yours, Angi
Money, Money, Money, Must Be Funny…
Dear All,
Are you, like me, worried about all the turmoil that is going on in the world? Do you also sometimes get the feeling of being stuck in between forces over which you have hardly any control but that can crash on your head any time, like the financial crisis? All in all our near future prospects do not seem to be as rosy as we would wish them to be. And many of us might wonder how we would cope with a crisis if – may fate prevent it – one does come to our own door-steps.
One of the most common worries is about our financial situation and one cannot help agreeing with the ABBA song when they sing: “Money, Money, Money, must be funny, must be sunny, in a rich mans world… all the things I could do if I had a little money…”
But is that really so, is having more money the solution? Does money really make us happy? It is worth looking a bit deeper into it.
Before we do that let me tell you about one very personal experience. I was many times in India and stayed there with different people, in conditions that for the mind of a Westerner would be regarded as quite challenging. Often there was only one room, with a kitchen and bathroom attached and this room served as dining room, leisure place and sleeping room in one. In the evening a carpet was rolled out on the floor and being stacked like sardines we went to sleep, parents, children, cousins, me, all in one small room. And guess what… despite the lack of the usual amenities, the warmth and care from my hosts more than made up for the physical discomforts. In short, it felt like no hardship at all. Of course, even in such poverty there are limits and one might see things that will stick to your mind, heart-breaking, but generally I was deeply amazed about one thing – how could people still look so satisfied despite their material scarcity?
It is said when you go to another country you might experience kind of a culture shock. What shall I say… the culture shock did come, but not in India – it was when I came home! I got a shock about my own culture. There, in the middle of wealth and well-fed people I was sitting in a metro, or walking down a street and staring at grumpy, unfriendly, discontent faces. Isn’t that kind of a curious paradox? Here we are living on a heap of riches (compared to other countries) and being unsatisfied, and there people often have the minimum of a minimum to live on and seem to be more satisfied than we?
I drew the most reasonable conclusion: satisfaction isn’t connected with having money, nor with being rich. But how could that be?
The answer lays inside us… and we have to start by better understanding the set-up of our third energy center. We learned already last week that the whole center is divided into three parts: one part that is lined up on the left channel (emotions), one part that is lined up on the right channel (actions), and one that is lined up on the center channel (our personal evolution).
Here is an overview of what is governed by these three parts:
left: satisfaction, family, household
right: attention, job and material well-being
center: balance, evolution, values
You see, although money-issues are a part of this center (at the right, to be precise), the satisfaction comes from the left part of the center, which is closely connected to family and household – “family” can also be expanded to any close relationship.
Now, if we move our attention too much on the right side of this center being busy on how to make a lot of money, we move out of balance, away from our satisfaction that is actually on the left side of the energy center….
It does work the other way round as well! Too much running after every satisfaction results in a move away from our balance, and we might not be able to keep our jobs, or the money runs through our fingers and we end up in debts that we may never be able to repay. One of the worst examples is the drug abuse that creates a kind of artificial satisfaction, but in reality drains out the energy of the left side of this Nabhi and weakens the whole center more and more.
How do we know if our Nabhi is in balance?
If you have looked already through the sites about Sahaja Meditation and the Subtle Body you might have found hints that our inner energy, once awakened, actually communicates with us. Each finger and parts of our hands are connected to a specific energy center. On the chart above you will see that the third energy center, the Nabhi, is linked to both our middle fingers. If the Nabhi is in balance both these fingers will feel slightly cool, or light. If there is a block you might feel warmth, heaviness or a tingling. The left middle finger corresponds to the left side of the Nabhi, the right middle finger to the right side of the Nabhi. If both fingers feel warm, heavy or tingling it shows a block in the center Nabhi.
How to bring back the Nabhi into balance?
That we can easily do in our meditation where we allow the all-pervading power to flow into us, provide all needed energy to this center and take out all “bad energy”, i.e. blocks. It might however need more than just a one-time-meditation. Often we have over-worked our energy centers so much that they do need a little time to recover and come back to their full capacity but if you keep meditating, every day 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, you will soon feel the change.
So here it is again, our 10-Minutes-Meditation with focus on the Nabhi Center
(sit comfortably wherever you like ):
- If your Inner Energy is already awakened you can skip 1). Otherwise please take the time once for the 20-minutes-meditation by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji, where she leads you through the process of awakening this energy. If this energy is not awakened the rest will not work!
- Start your meditation by “Raising the Inner Energy” and put the shield of protection around you:Here is a helpful animation how to do it: http://sahajayogawa.com/flash/charlie.swf
Or the detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand on top of the head, put a little bit of pressure and focus there, where you feel the pressure.
- Keep focused on top of your head, put both hands on the lap and try to feel your left and right middle fingers – do they feel cool, warm, heavy, tingling, any different from the rest of the hand? If they feel cool it means the center is in balance; warm, heavy or tingling sensations indicate that the center is disturbed in its balance
The left middle finger corresponds to your left Nabhi: If you feel a warm, heavy or tingling sensation on the left middle finger put your right hand on the left side of your navel, left hand palm upwards on the lap, keep the focus on top of your head, stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or longer if you wish so)
The right middle finger corresponds to your right Nabhi: If you feel a warm, heavy or tingling sensation on the right middle finger put your left hand on the right side of your navel, right hand palm upwards on the lap, keep the focus on top of your head, stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or longer if you wish so)
Both middle fingers together correspond to your center Nabhi: If you feel a warm, heavy or tingling sensation on both middle fingers put your right hand on your navel, left hand palm upwards on the lap, keep the focus on top of your head, stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or longer if you wish so) - After 10 minutes see if there is a change in the sensation of the middle fingers
- Then hold your hand over the head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, or warm, maybe a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with ”Raising the Energy” and giving yourself ”a bhandan” (shield of protection).
You might have guessed one thing already yourself: the key to our personal success lays in the Nabhi! If this center is in balance we can be satisfied no matter what. And in such a balanced state it is very easy for us to make the right decisions on our way as well.
And here the secret of the week: the whole construction of this Nabhi center shows us clearly one thing:
We were meant to be happy and satisfied people! We were meant to be capable to enjoy life in all its forms, in all its varieties and in all its facets!
I wish you a wonderful week and that you connect deeply with your satisfaction and joy inside!
Yours, Angi
Keeping Balanced in a Chaotic World
Dear All,
I hope you all have recovered from the after-effects of the snow-storm by now and had – despite the wide-spread power failures – some deep meditative experiences.
In a world that is changing so fast, where one crisis is chasing after the other, where even the most optimistic people might grow some sorrow wrinkles on their foreheads, it is more important than ever that we do not lose our balance. “Easier said than done!” many might think – no worries, it is not as difficult as it might seem. It just takes 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening every day to “meet” with the All-Pervading Power and to connect with it.
How and what you experience in this connection is as different for everyone as humans are different from each other. But to understand more about this Power and how it works it might be worth a deeper look. According to archeology it seems that already the earliest human-beings felt that there is so much more to life than we can possibly understand. Throughout our evolution we tried to describe this “something more” and get in touch with it in hundreds of different ways. By whatever name you call it – it all comes back to the same conclusion: there is a power at work that even modern science is not capable of understanding – let’s call it the very life force, the spark of life in every being, that cannot be seen, that cannot be touched, but for sure we know it is there, because if it is not than there is no life anymore.
Books and books can be written about this life force that balances everything in so subtle ways that mostly we do not even realize it. But ask a scientist how high is the probability that out of nothing the elements came together in such a balanced way that this world could be created the answer would be: take a jar with 40 white balls at the bottom, then 40 red balls on top and shake it. How many times do you have to shake the jar so that the balls will be in the exact same order as they were at the beginning?
In the West we have made tremendous progress in technology but in ancient India people explored more the spiritual aspects of life and thus gained deeper insights on how this life force works and how we are connected to it. It was a knowledge that could not easily be explained – like how would you describe colors to a blind? So this knowledge had to be experienced, and that was the intent of all spiritual people who came into this world: to help us open our eyes so that we can see the colors ourselves…
Sahaja Meditation helps us to easily connect to this All-Pervading Power and start experiencing it. Still – it might be somewhat difficult to dive into it while standing in a world that has gone out of balance in quite a number of ways, effecting our lives as well. So what we need most nowadays is to come back into balance, starting within. And here we come to one very important energy center in us that is actually taking care of our inner balance – the Nabhi Chakra (which is the Sanskrit name of this energy center).
Apart from producing energy for a number of organs (part of the liver, intestines, stomach, spleen) it focuses on the welfare and evolution in people as well. Here is a detailed “landscape” of this energy center:
- on the left side of the navel: satisfaction, sustenance of the family and household
- on the right side of the navel: power of attention, prosperity in job and financial matters
- in the center: balance, the personal evolution, moral values
You can see how closely our balance is connected to family life, job and financial well-being, for most of us these are the main pillars or foundations on which we build our lives. So just imagine when this center goes out of balance! Life can become quite miserable, then. Therefore it is more important than ever that we take good care of our Nabhi – that means, to meditate and let the All-Pervading Power nourish this energy center with everything it needs to keep us in balance.
A 10-Minutes-Meditation with focus on the Nabhi Center
(make yourself comfortable, can be on a chair, on the floor, on a couch… ):
- If your Inner Energy is already awakened you can skip 1). Otherwise please take the time once for the 20-minutes-meditation by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji, where she leads you through the process of awakening this energy. If this energy is not awakened the rest will not work!
- Start your meditation by “Raising the Inner Energy” and put the shield of protection around you:Here is a helpful animation how to do it: http://sahajayogawa.com/flash/charlie.swf
Or the detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand on top of the head, put a little bit of pressure and focus there, where you feel the pressure.
- Keep focused on top of your hand, put both hands on the lap and try to feel your left and right middle fingers – do they feel cool, warm, heavy, tingling, any different from he rest of the hand? If they feel cool it means the center is in balance; warm, heavy or tingling sensations indicate that the center is disturbed in its balance
The left middle finger corresponds to your left Nabhi: If you feel a warm, heavy or tingling sensation on the left middle finger put your right hand on the left side of your navel, left hand palm upwards on the lap, keep the focus on top of your head, stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or longer if you wish so)
The right middle finger corresponds to your right Nabhi: If you feel a warm, heavy or tingling sensation on the right middle finger put your left hand on the right side of your navel, right hand palm upwards on the lap, keep the focus on top of your head, stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or longer if you wish so)
Both middle fingers together corresponds to your center Nabhi: If you feel a warm, heavy or tingling sensation on both middle fingers put your right hand on your navel, left hand palm upwards on the lap, keep the focus on top of your head, stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or longer if you wish so)
- Stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or as long as you wish to)
- Then hold your hand over the head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, or warm, maybe a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with “Raising the Energy” and giving yourself “a bhandan” (shield of protection).
I wish you all a wonderful and specially balanced week and remember to keep your Nabhi happy!
Yours, Angi
Walking Batteries
Dear All,
I hope despite the heavy snow fall and the wide-spread power failures you are all well and had nevertheless a little bit of time for your meditation!
Last week my internet connection broke (therefore no new post then) and on top of that the electricity was gone as well, fortunately only for a day. What an adventure! Luckily we were well prepared, being stuffed into three sweaters and enjoying an atmospheric candlelight dinner – always make the best of the situation you are in!
Now, how many of you were in the same situation? Isn’t it quite an eye-opener how many things we use without ever thinking of it – the constant flow of information through various internet sources, chatting, skyping, e-mailing with family and friends, having a warm home, a warm bath! The list can fill some pages of the small small things that we use every day and take so much for granted.
It surely reminded me of one thing: how important it is to be connected! Nowadays more than ever! And the greatest connection we can achieve is our connection with the All-Pervading Power that is all around us – and still a bit of a mystery to many. Now some may ask “why should we need to connect to that power? What’s in it for us? Already our time is short pressed so… ahem… isn’t it more for navel-gazers…”
Well, think of yourself as kind of a walking battery filled with a certain amount of energy, an energy that you have to manage every day. We immediately feel it if we strain our battery too much, when we get overworked, tired, stressed, or anxious… All things that cost us precious energy. And the more energy we lose the more we put our well-being at risk.
Sahaja Meditation is a very unique, simple and effortless way to become “connected”. And here are my seven personal reasons why I do not want to miss it anymore, because…
- When the battery is connected to the mains there is an endless supply of energy – that happens when we focus on top of our head and go into the state of thoughtless awareness
- The All Pervading Power is providing us with essential information about our current physical, emotional and mental being
- After decoding the information I can use this power to remove any blockages in my inner system that prevents this energy to flow
- I can use the same Power to check the state of other people
- … and remove any blockages in them as well, even if they are at the other side of the world at the very moment!
- If I have a decision to make and I am not sure which way to go I can ask this All-Pervading Power what to do
- And I know that at each step I will be supported, protected and helped – really, I have experienced quite a number of “miracles” , so that even my friends were amazed how things were always working out so well for me! Which does not mean that times were always easy, no, but the way how problems got solved, or how I could suddenly deal with difficult situations were many times just fascinating!
Curious how all that works? Keep in the loop! Follow the weekly meditation we are sending out, try it on a regular basis, experiment with it!
And here it is – our simple 10-minutes-meditation for this week:
(sit comfortably wherever you like):
- If your Inner Energy is already awakened you can skip 1). Otherwise please take the time once for the 20-minutes-meditation by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji, where she leads you through the process of awakening this energy. If this energy is not awakened the rest will not work!
- Start your meditation by “Raising the Inner Energy” and put the shield of protection around you:
Here is a helpful animation how to do it: http://sahajayogawa.com/flash/charlie.swf
Or the detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand below the center of your abdomen over the place of the Sacrum Bone – this is the seat of your Inner Energy, the Kundalini (see the triangle on the Subtle Body chart) – the left hand rests on your lap, palm upwards. Ask this energy silently in your heart: Please connect me to the All-Pervading Power
- Then move your right hand, palm facing towards you, from the sacrum bone up along the spine to the top of your head. Do that 7 times
- Put your right hand on top of the head, put a little bit of pressure and focus there, where you feel the pressure. Let the hand rest on your lap, palm upwards, but keep the focus on top of your head. Stay in mental silence for about 10 minutes (or as long as you wish to)
- Then hold your hand over the head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, or warm, maybe a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with “Raising the Energy” and giving yourself “a bhandan” (shield of protection).
Connect yourself to the mains – unlike a normal battery which loses energy with each charge you will gain energy as your meditations deepen! 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening and you may soon see for yourself that “things” start to become easier!
I wish you a wonderful week
Yours, Angi
What Has Star Trek To Do With Thoughtless Awareness?
Dear All,
I hope you have enjoyed wonderful meditation sessions at home or with others the last week! Here see one of my friends in deep meditation, clearly completely thoughtless.
You might have found out that each and every meditation is different. Sometimes it is easy to slide without any effort into the state of meditation, where we enjoy the silence within. Sometimes we might even feel all this nourishing energies at work, flowing to those parts in our body that need attention. But sometimes it can be really difficult to stop all those thoughts that keep our attention in their grip! Then what to do?
Meditation starts by being thoughtless. When there are no thoughts going through our head than we are in the state which we call Mental Silence. Dr. Ramesh Manosha, who led an extensive Meditation Research Program in Australia , explains it like this:
The authentic experience of Mental Stillness and/or Mental Silence is neither concentration, nor relaxation, nor is it a different way of thinking. Mental Stillness is the experience of inner silence, which brings a peaceful and clearer awareness.
Mental Silence is a state of effortless balance and integration, that facilitates not only the reduction of stress, but other therapeutic and integrational processes. This experience helps reduce stress and facilitate individual and interpersonal performance.
Now, if it is really difficult to become thoughtless I have a little trick: I watch Star Trek. And while I am watching most of the times I sit on the floor and have both my hands down towards Mother Earth. It seems that watching something that is “out of the world” calms me down, I can slowly detach myself from whatever has happened during the day and with my hands down I allow Mother Earth to balance me.
Which does not mean that everyone has to watch Star Trek now! No, the truth is, as many people there are as many different ways there are to help us becoming thoughtless. For some it might be sports, for some music, for some being creative, the list is endless. Find out what it is for you! Are you the one with the guitar in his hands?
Or more the one who likes to swing a brush?
Does your thought processing slow down when you go for a run, or do you become thoughtless when you just look at a beautiful sculpture? And here is a small surprise: Whatever helps you to become thoughtless is also something that gives you joy! So here is a small but significant formula:
Meditation = A State of Being Thoughtless = Joy
Did you notice something in my last sentence? I did not say ‘the more you meditate’, I said ‘the more you are in meditation‘. Because you do not do anything to meditate. You just are. Here and now. In a state of thoughtless awareness. That means you can meditate wherever you are, in the metro, on the bus, even in work. The only thing you have to learn is to control your thoughts. Then you truly are a master of meditation!
So here again a short 10-minute-meditation for your week
(sit wherever you like, on the floor, on the couch, in the bath tub… important is that you feel comfortable):
- As mentioned before this only works if your Inner Energy is already awakened. Here is a 20-minutes-meditation by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji, herself where she leads you through the process of awakening this energy in you. If you have done that already before than skip step 1)
- We start our meditation by raising our Inner Energy and put the shield of protection around us:
Here the nice animation how to do it: http://sahajayogawa.com/flash/charlie.swf
Or the detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put both hands on or towards Mother Earth, focus on top of your head and sit for about 10 minutes in mental silence.
- If a thought comes tell the thought: I forgive. If thoughts keep coming put your right hand on top of the head, put a little bit of pressure and focus there, where you feel the pressure. Put the hand down, but keep the focus still on that part of your head.
- After the 10 minutes hold your hand over your head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, sometimes also like a warm breeze, like a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with “raising the energy” and giving yourself “a bhandan” (shield of protection).
- Enjoy your day!
And don’t forget: 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening! You might soon notice the benefit of doing it!
Yours, Angi
Go With The Flow or How To Recycle Bad Energies for Good Ones
Dear All,
Have you ever had a day where just nothing was going right? “Well, of course, who hasn’t?” you might say. Ok, so next question: could you do something about it? Already more difficult to answer, isn’t it?
And maybe – being already in a stressful situation, getting nothing to work, others putting more pressure on you – someone walks by, totally relaxed and throws a “hey, keep cool, just let it flow” at you. Now, that would help us, right? About as much as “a shot in the kneecap”, as we Austrians say.
Because the point is – we simply do not know “how to let it flow”. But there is a whole story behind this one expression and here are the good news: we can learn “how to let it flow”.
Everyone who has already dug deeper into all the info provided in this blog might have stumbled over terms like the “inner energy”, the “energy centers” and about “the vibrations” flowing through our body, to be exact, along our nervous systems. The little secret about it all is, that when this energy is awakened, when it starts “flowing” through our energy centers along the spinal cord and comes out on top of the head then there, right at the last energy center the connection with the Greater Energy around us takes place. And that is, where “the flow” starts.
To keep it flowing we need to meditate, means to be in mental silence, means to pull our attention on top of our head. In this state we allow the universe to provide us with as much energy as we need. One can say it is almost like a recycling process 
all negative energy that might trouble us is taken out, all energy that is nourishing us flows in.
Now we know why it is so important to give ourselves each day 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening: to let it flow.
There are a lot of things we can do to improve our meditation but let us begin simple:
The 7 steps to “Be In The Flow”
- Awaken Your Inner Energy
This is done only once and takes about 20 minutes. If you went through it already skip step 1). When your Inner Energy is activated it will stay so, there is no need to repeat the affirmations (although you can do so if you like) - At the beginning and the end of each meditation we do what we call “raising the energy” and give ourselves “a shield of protection”.
Here is a nice animation how to do it: http://sahajayogawa.com/flash/charlie.swf
You can also find a detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips - Put your right hand on your head for some seconds, put the hand down again but keep focused on the top of your head where your hand was.
- Sit still for about 10 minutes, hands palm upwards as shown in the photo above to let the energy flow freely through them, keep the focus on top of your head. If you find your mind wandering repeat step 3) as many times as it helps you to focus. If you feel like it have some pleasant music. In this time we allow the flow to happen – we do not need to do anything, just surrender to it.
- After the 10 minutes hold your hand over your head and see if you feel vibrations coming out – it might feel like a cool breeze, sometimes also like a warm breeze, like a tingling, or simply “somehow different”.
- End the meditation again with “raising the energy” and giving yourself “a bhandan” (shield of protection).
- Enjoy your day!
One small trick:
when you feel stressed during the day go somewhere with a little privacy (like the bathroom i.e.), raise your Inner Energy and give the shield of protection. It even helps already if you just press your hand on top of your head and focus there for some moments. And if you are a real pro then wherever you are just focus on top of your head for some moments – it can make all the difference!
I wish you a wonderful week full of meditative experiences!
Yours, Angi
Why Meditation? Because…
Dear All,
After a long summer break we are back again and hope you enjoyed the sunny time of the year as we did, maybe with some deep meditation experiences?
Slowly but continuously this blog is growing as we try to put in all the information that might be helpful for you to become a meditation expert. But why meditate at all? … True, nowadays we have to deal in our daily life with so many different people and situations, more so in tight schedules, that it is hard not to build up inner stress, anxieties, depressive feelings and in the long run health issues. And true, meditation in general, and Sahaja Meditation in particular is a fantastic way to cool down again and come back into balance.
But it is not the only reward we get out of it. Especially Sahaja Meditation is a tool that allows us to learn more about our strengths, our inner powers and our own unique personality. Each and everyone of us is a storehouse of amazing qualities that want to be explored, a magnetic inner-being that wants to be lived. All you have to do is to give 20 minutes to yourself, each and every day, preferably 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening and meditate.
Now, what makes Sahaja Meditation so special? A lot could be said about that but to keep it short for now – it is not only that we can achieve the state of real meditation easily, no, we start feeling ourself in a very new way, and by saying “feeling” I mean feeling. Sahaja Meditation activates our own Inner Energy and once it flows through our body we feel the vibrations like a cool breeze in our hands and over the head. Once we start feeling this we have got our “vibratory awareness”. It is these vibrations that guide us deeper into our personality, a personality that is expressed through our different energy centers. How to meditate and how to feel the state of these energy centers of your subtle being, all this you can learn in our meditation classes, even online, they are always FREE !
So come and join us, let’s meditate together, in classes or virtually and maybe you would like to share your personal Sahaja Meditation experiences as well! We are looking forward to meet you!
Lots of joy
Yours, Angi
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