Meditation for authenticity: how you can tap joy when other emotions keep rising

includes links to music

Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile

I’ve tried many forms of meditations over the last 22 years, and the one I’ve found to be the most powerful are mantra meditations. Specifically the Aquarian Sadhana Mantras from the Kundalini Yoga tradition. But even before then, just listening to and chanting along with, Deva Premal’s Dakshina album put me in bliss.

Here are some reasons why mantra is so powerful.

The mind

Many of us have difficulty bringing the mind to the present moment and keeping it there. It takes a lot of practice and discipline to conquer the monkey mind.

Even in guided meditation, we often drift off into thought, our to-dos, and unintentional disconnection (zoning out versus maintaining focused attention and awareness). When this happens, we become more vulnerable to negative bias and self-talk, which can take our mood and energy into places that don’t support wellness and sense of success.

Our thoughts are repetitive - they are our mantra, so to speak.

Mantra defined loosely is something you repeat over and over again until it becomes a part of your predominant way of thinking, feeling, and acting, giving you your personality, something you live by: I’m tired, I’m not good enough, this is how I was raised, I’m busy, I’m sick again, they’re wrong…

Instead of seeding such negative mantra, yoga mantra codes over negative self-talk and seeds energy that’s more in line with the elevated, most courageous and authentic parts of you.

Yes, it’s probable that after the mantra becomes too familiar, you may find yourself repeating it, “in your sleep” the way you might drive from point A to point B on complete autopilot. But this too is good. This means the mantra is seeded and has become familiar. Ideally, you will stay present for it. The good news is, there are all sorts of mantra, and many variations of each mantra, to choose from and familiarize yourself with, to help keep you awake.

The breath

I can’t think of anything more important than the breath to positively affect our physiological state.

• How we breathe determines whether we are in fight-or-flight (sympathetic) or rest-and-relax (parasympathetic) mode. It determines whether we are overly focused on matter (illusion) or are able to tap into the realm of energy, which is fluid, untethered by time and space, and commands matter.

• While our breath affects our mind, our mind also affects our breath. Whichever runs the show has the greater impact on your life. Which is why conscious breathing - and training the mind - is so important.

Many of us, however, haven’t yet conquered the mind well enough to remember to come back to the breath throughout the day. Even after years of practice, under certain challenges (the ones that seem to be my biggest lessons for this lifetime), I lose my breath, feeling like a newbie trying to get it back.

Also, many people have trouble learning to breathe correctly, especially perfectionists who are afraid they’re not doing it right. This leads to fight-or-flight (stress) mode just from trying.

Chanting yoga mantra automatically regulates the breath with its rhythm and frequency. It brings you into parasympathetic, rest-and-digest mode.

Visualization

This is another form of meditation that is quite powerful. When practiced correctly, it elevates your state of being, shifting your thoughts and mood, attracting alignment and healing.

Again, if you haven’t conquered the mind or breath, after the first few practices, this can stop working, mostly because you can’t believe in it, and you’re back to shallow breathing, mental sabotage, and discouragement.

Mantra Meditation helps tap into the power of visualization by quieting the mind and enhancing the mind’s frequency.

Mantra Meditation

The most difficult part about mantra meditation is embracing it, especially if this is out-of-the-box for you. But once you decide to welcome this into your toolbox, you simply chant along with the lead, or to mantra music, and enjoy its vibration. Once you’re familiar, you can do it on your own.

Chanting mantra will regulate your breath, upgrade your mental software, and, if you chant out loud, strengthen your voice.

You can chant, speak, whisper, or think mantra while sitting, walking, doing dishes, folding laundry, and you can listen to it throughout the day (there are LOTS of recordings out there of all kinds and traditions; find some here).

The vibration of mantra will entrain every cell in your body, and your mind, to a higher level of thought and being. It can bring you to a state of bliss, and a sense of wholeness. Like magic, certain sounds can unlock doors to whole new worlds you didn’t believe existed. Like Alibaba’s Open Sesame! Harry Potter’s Wingardium Leviosa! Or, a sorcerer’s, Abracadabra!

Here are some examples of mantra from different traditions:

In Buddhism: Om Mani Padme Hum
Christianity: Hallelujah
Hinduism: Sita Ram
Judaism: Shalom Aleichem
Sikhism: Wahe Guru

This recording from Sat Purkh, called Nectar of the name, brings these traditions together, and it’s very ecstatic. If you’re listening: open to it, chant whichever mantra(s) you most resonate with, and at the same time accept them all as equal. Feel the ecstasy fill your being.

Meditation myths

Myth #1: Meditation makes you un-emotional

This would be like saying that if a car can meditate, its dashboard would disappear.

Meditation keeps your emotions intact. We humans have been blessed with emotions as the dashboard for this amazing vehicle we call our body.

Meditation sensitizes you to your emotions, meaning you get more in touch with them (rather than out of control by them), and you become more emotionally literate and response-able.

As you keep practicing meditation, you begin to see that your emotions are giving you valuable information, so you stop identifying with them, and start giving them space and listening to them. You move further away from drama and chaos, and you get closer to equanimity.

In understanding that emotions are information, you learn to accept what is (like when your car’s dashboard tells you you’re on empty). You can now focus your attention on what’s next (go to the gas station and fill up).

Meditation allows you to be with your feelings. To move through them. To create space for right action.

• When you stuff them down, you lose that space by filling it with the deal with it laters and hopefully it goes aways. Your body will leak these through the sub~ and unconscious minds, creating a sense of dissonance in your consciousness.

• When you identify with your emotions and lash out, you create drama and keep it going. You lose that space for right action.

There’s everything right about feeling sad, frustrated, angry, and disappointed, etc. They show you what you value through the experience of loss and attachment. They wake you up to them.

• Loss is meant to be grieved (revelation of love).

• Anger is meant to create heat (power to transform).

• Disappointment is meant to be released (ability to let go).

Each emotion paves the way forward, towards Truth… when used as information (not identification). In this way, you become present, aka attentive, aka grateful, aka Joyful, at the same time you experience other emotions.

Mantra meditation codes over negative bias with this positive intelligence.

Myth #2: Chanting is monotone and weird, and it’s religious

• Not all chanting is monotone. There are LOTS of mantras you can sing. Check some of these out.

• Weird is what we call something unfamiliar and new to us. New is relative. Chanting has been around for thousands of years and continues on. Let’s challenge ourselves not to be so egocentric.

• It can also feel weird because it repeats a word, or string of words, over and over again…
  But we do in fact repeat stories in our head - and to others - over and over again. It seems weirder to me that we would continue to repeat the many versions of I’m not good enough, I have no time, or the same complaints about the same people, or gossip… don’t you agree?

• Mantra isn’t religious. It’s spiritual. Religion is an institution born from spirituality, born from different parts of the world using different languages and sacred sounds.
  Spiritual simply means to understand yourself. Encoded in each sound is a vibration that doesn’t know religion. It only knows DNA. We might ask, what’s the vibe of that room, of that person? We want to know because if the vibe is low and rotten, we don’t want to be there. Certain sounds elevate, turning anything it touches into something sacred.

Aquarian Sadhana Mantras

There are 7 mantras at work in the Aquarian Sadhana Mantra. These 7 were compiled together to strengthen our minds so that we may navigate through with greater ease these painful and chaotic times where mental illness is the prevailing ailment. If you want to know why it’s called Aquarian Sadhana, go to the Mantra Meditation section of my article My Accidental Meditation Journey where I explain about the Aquarian Age. Or check out this article, called 5 Powerful Guidelines to Get You Through These Complicated Times.

Chanting all 7 Aquarian Sadhana Mantras takes 62 minutes. Do it daily, and the bliss will stick with you.

I used to chant these every morning for years. Now I do one or a few at a time.

You don’t have to do all of them.

Pick a few based on how much time you have, or what speaks to you. And keep repeating them until you catch yourself chanting them the way you do a song on the “radio.” The difference will be, instead of singing about and syncing with heartbreak, for instance, you’ll call up and align with the wholeness in you.

Truth is, you already are whole. Now you’ll feel it. By feeling it, you will tap into the truest form of Joy along with the other human emotions.

• I’ve included below a downloadable mantra sheet with the seven Aquarian Sadhana Mantras.

• Here’s my YouTube playlist of the mantras that you can listen to or chant along with. Here’s the link to the same playlist on Spotify.

• Here’s a tutorial on how to chant the first mantra, the only mantra on this list that’s chanted in monotone.

Aquarian Sadhana Mantras

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I’d love to know…

• Is the idea of chanting new for you? What do you think about it?

• Is meditation new for you? If you’re still trying to get started, what’s holding you back? If you’re hooked on it (doesn’t matter which form of meditation), what’s it doing for you? Why do you stick with it?

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Here’s to your mind, with love,

Savitree

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P.S.S. Take a listen!