Personal GrowthSelf development

What experts say on – The need to Meditate for Self-development

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What experts say on – The need to Meditate for Self-development

Sandeep Maheshwari

A final year dropout of Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College, Sandeep Maheshwari is a name among millions who struggled, failed and surged ahead in search of success, happiness and contentment. He had a bunch of unclear dreams and a blurred vision of his goals in life. All he had was an undying learning attitude to know about the true meaning of his life. And once discovered, he consistently kept resigning from his comfort zone and to share the secret of his success with the entire world. It is this very urge of helping people and doing something good for the society that inspired him to take the initiative of changing people's lives in the form of "Free Life-Changing Seminars and Sessions". No wonder people connect with him and his mission of 'Sharing' is now being actively propagated and practiced by millions.

According to Mr. Maheshwari, ‘Meditation’ is a way to detach from the past and future and re-attach at will. Meditation should not be a torture. It must be fun. Meditation is not just a tool to control your thoughts but it also lets you carry some of the energy and peace of meditation into your daily activities.

Need to Meditate:

Even though it is a well-known fact that meditation is a good practice but still most of us don’t meditate on a regular basis and instead prefer going out and enjoying our lives because we consider meditation as a boring task. Mr. Maheshwari called these accuses as mere myths. He agreed that out of the 1000 methods available for meditation, maybe 99 percent of them are boring but still there are 1 percent methods which are not only not boring but also interesting and exciting. He further explained that meditation was just introduced to avoid attachment with any worldly things. But there are many people who couldn’t understand this fully. Though they were able to attain detachment from other material desires, unfortunately they fell in love with meditation and somehow became addicted to it. This is an example of the worst sort of interpretation of the need to meditate. There is no cure available for such foolish acts as according to him if anything leads you to get attached to do or not do something, then surely you are on the wrong track and haven’t understood the concept of meditation completely.

Meditation and Happiness:

Talking about the reasons why people don’t prefer meditating, he explained that most of the humans would do any such thing only when in a do-or-die situation. We as humans have a habit of procrastinating and always keep evading work until it becomes urgent and unless we face any sense of urgency, we won’t do anything that we don’t like doing. Whatever we do is only to gain happiness. Some think that having a lot of money will make them happy, once they have it, they think owning a lot of properties and other luxuries can give them happiness. On still failing to attain happiness, we resort to other means like meditation to achieve contentment without realising that we don’t need to do anything to be happy. Happiness is just our current state. Nothing else and surely not something that can be attained in the future. Our happiness lies in the present entirely. Believing that one can find happiness if one is happy is just a trap.

Right technique to meditate:

  • In order to prevent any outside noise which might influence your meditation, it is advisable to use ear plugs which can be available easily at any pharmacy store. If ear plugs are not available, you can use your ear phones or cotton plugs but they do not cancel out noise completely and hence are not very effective.
  • Sit on any evenly levelled surface with your back and neck straight. Even sitting on a chair is fine as long as you are comfortable. Avoid sitting in any uncomfortable posture as this will only lead to distractions.
  • Keep your eyes closed and try to relax all the body organs.
  • Now start taking deep breaths and start whispering from 10 to 0 with each breath you let out. This will relax your body as well as mind.
  • Now carefully concentrate on the sounds that you can hear. Not just on the external ones, but also the ones coming from inside your own body.
  • These internal sounds are both known and unknown. Basically you will be able to hear three types of sounds-
  1. Your heart beat
  2. The sound of your breathing and
  3. A ‘Third mysterious sound’.

The third mysterious sound:

It is a proven fact that the mind hears the loudest voice first. We can hear this third sound only when we are completely focussed. These sounds maybe of ripples in water, crickets’ chirping, the foaming waterfall or just a soothing conch. These sounds naturally attract your attention towards them as you aren’t able to comprehend what these are or where are they coming from. All this will leave you stunned and you will automatically arrive at the centre. This will enable you to view the things as they are.

The Ultimate Goal of Meditation:

Being able to listen to the inner sound which is the voice from the heart or the ‘Anahata Naad’ is the last and ultimate goal of meditation. The easiest path to listen to this is by listening to the breath sounds followed by the heart beats and then progressing to the faint noise, then the fainter one, and ultimately hearing the faintest sound which is the ‘AUM’- the essence of all Vedas. Only the one with a clear heart can listen to it. The more the noise around you, the more time will be required to hear this Aum and the more you try to listen to it, the more time will it take. So not trying deliberately is actually the easiest way to listen to it.

Disadvantages of Meditation:

  • Meditation is just a tool which you must know when to let go off without being greedy.
  • Don’t try it if you feel getting angry, lying or deceiving others is indispensable to your profession. Because once you set off on the path of meditation, there’s no turning back to being your normal selfish or greedy self.
Meditation is just a path to understand one’s own mind, to get free of any sort of attachment and not being affected by good or bad. As your understanding deepens intellectually and with experience, you can eventually gain permanent happiness.
As Mr. Maheshwari emphasizes time and again, “Don’t try to achieve Happiness. Understand that it is your nature!”

CORRESPONDENT: MANU GUPTA

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