Sadhna -Some Facts

[Guest guest]

The surest sign of a perfect and right Sadhna

(Meditation) is that after sadhna, one must feel energised,

blissful and peacful. If this is not attained, it

indicates some serious fault in one's sadhna. Also some

people do sadhna with enthusiam and soon they leave it

in between or switch over to another one. Why this

happens, and what precautions should be taken before

starting our sadhna. Let us discuss this.<br><br>The basic

difference between a man and an animal is that an animal is

driven by instincts and body needs whereas man is driven

mainly by his Manas (Mind) and partly by body needs.

Mind is sythesised of Rajoguna, the quality of action

of Mother Nature, hence it has "Activity" as its

main quality. Our mind needs action and when exposed

to any new idea, it concentrates on it with full

devotion but as is its nature of Rajoguna, it can not

remain on anything for long and gets bored

ealsily.<br><br>When a new sadhaka starts his sadhna, he is in full

spirits. His mind is ready to start action immediately

without waiting to analyse the path and its obstacles. A

new sadhaka starts the path of meditation with zeal

and having in mind the stories of Vivekananada,

Yogananda, Ramana Maharishis and likes. His mind is ready to

jump to sadhna keepin siddhis or enlightement as his

goal. But a new sadhaka forgets that mind can not be

tamed so easily. <br><br>A sadhaka then exerts pressure

on Mind, which concentrates on the path happily but

gets bored soon and starts brooding over other

thoughts. At this stage some sadhaka leave the sadhna while

others force the mind to concentrate. This forcing of

mind is very dangerious exercise. Mind reacts to this

force and starts bringing a flood of othere thoughts

and completely destroys the sadhana. Sadhaka feels

himself fallen from the path and becomes dejected and

sad.<br><br>To continue .......

[Guest guest]

Hello silentsoul. In this post a week ago, you

mentonned concentration and pressure on the mind.<br>I

found this quote of a christian mystic, DeMello, on

concentration and awareness and would like the opinion of the

co sadhaks of the club.<br><br>".... What i am

advocating here is not concentration. That's not important.

Many meditative techniques inculcate concentration,

but i am leery of that.<br>They involve violence and

frequently they involve further programming and

conditioning.<br>What i would advocate is awareness, which is not the

same as concentration at all.<br>Concentration is a

spotlight. You can be distracted from that, but when you're

practicing awareness, you're never distracted.<br>Awareness

is a floodlight. You're open to antything that comes

within the scope of your consciousness. When awareness

is turned on, there's nerver any distraction,

because you're always aware of whatever happens to

be.<br>Say i'm looking at those trees and i'm worrying. Am i

distracted ? I am distracted only if i mean to concentrate

on the trees. But if i'm aware that i'm worried,

too, that isn't a distraction at all. Just be aware of

where your attention goes...." <br><br>I always tried

to concentrate very hard on the mantra, so the mind

will hopefully shut up one day. I changed this into

awareness now, which is more relaxing. What do you think ?

[Guest guest]

Dear Morgitta,<br> what you meant by awareness is

in fact what i meant by concentration without force

only a differnce of words <br><br> It is true that

forceable concentration may not prove fruitful for the

beginners, awareness may do the trick. But for diving deep

into the realm of our own self, we finally have to go

for the spotlight, with all its

drawbacks.<br>_____<br><br>Yes

dear Arghyajyoti you have very wisely mentioned

religion and spirituality. And you are again right when u

say we should be spiritual than be religious.<br><br>

Religions have a different set of morals whereas

spirituality has a different set of morals and the later is

certainly a more accepted and universal form of rules which

can be followed by any one irrespective of his

religious and social background.<br><br> what we are

discussing here is in fact moral for the spirituality. I am

sure you will further explore this and write something

on this<br><br>love <br><br>silentsoul