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Overview
Whether you are new to meditation, a “crisis meditator”, or someone who has been meditating for years, this book will take your practice, and your life, to the next level.
In this insightful book, davidji shares his own journey along his path to awakening and examines the positive impact that meditation can have on your physical health, relationships, emotional well-being, and spiritual life. As the secrets to an effortless meditation practice are revealed, you will unlock the door to your own personal journey and discover what is actually supposed to happen when you close your eyes.
davidji shares the wisdom of the ages in an accessible and entertaining style —loosening rigid commandments, revealing the five greatest myths of meditation, and illuminating the most powerful rituals to weave a regular practice into your day. Secrets of Meditation will have you meditating in minutes and living a happier, easier, and more fulfilling life.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781401940317 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hay House Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/04/2012 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
FOREWORD
No doubt you’ve heard the expression “Silence is golden.” Yet in this modern era, treasuring the experience of a quiet mind has not been that resonant in our world consciousness. As a practitioner of meditation for many decades and as a physician dedicated to healing and transformation, I’ve learned the value of meditation as a tool for quieting the mind is inestimable.
The message that most of us received from an early age is that an active mind is a valuable mind. We clearly need the skills of an awake and creative mind to function, create, achieve, accomplish, and enjoy life. At the same time, the value of a quiet mind is tremendous, though less commonly recognized or appreciated. When the thoughts and noisy chatter of the mind settle, we have access to deeper levels of awareness. And when we can combine these two skill sets—the active mind that allows us to explore the world of form and phenomena and the quiet mind that brings clarity and balance into our awareness—we are in the best position to determine how to direct our energies and make the most evolutionary choices that will serve us, humanity, and the planet.
In this beautiful book, davidji—a sweet yogi and a dedicated teacher—explores various technologies to help bring the mind from chaos to quietude. Along the way, you will awaken to deeper levels of stillness in your bodymind and effortlessly develop a regular practice. Taking time on a daily basis to go within and access the field of pure awareness brings us from activity to silence, from individuality to universality, and from the personal to the universal. Meditation is like a bath for the mind; it allows our mind to be clear and refreshed and to see the same experience from a slightly different point of view. This shift expands our capacity for happiness, well-being, love, and creativity.
The information lovingly contained within these chapters will help you find your pathway to expansion. I encourage you to explore and try the practices that most resonate with you. Then you will fulfill the purpose of meditation, which is to transform your sense of self from constricted to expanded. As you awaken your body, heart, mind, and soul, you and all those in your life will benefit.
— David Simon, M.D.Co-founder of the Chopra Center for Well-being
PREFACE
It is my hope that you meditate. It is my belief that we will change the world through meditation. It is my understanding that connecting to the stillness and silence within allows each of us to live life with expanded awareness, deeper compassion, and greater fulfillment. It is my experience that time spent in stillness and silence can open your heart to the true depth of your universal essence. Accessing this depth of pure, unbounded consciousness on a regular basis has allowed me to see and feel the world with an ever-expanding openness, deeper empathy, greater clarity, and a heightened connection to source. At this point in my life, I think this is a good thing.
Aham brahmasmi is a Sanskrit expression meaning “I am the universe.” When we can genuinely feel we are not in or of this world but rather the whole world is within us, we slowly begin to integrate that mind-set into our words, our thoughts, and our deeds. Once this is truly how you feel (and daily meditation will awaken that understanding), you will effortlessly tap into the limitless supply of what the universe has to offer you—a wellspring of effortless abundance; an unfolding of deeper fulfillment; and a sweeter, more loving world that you can walk through with greater grace and ease.
No different from when you are in a dream state, every experience you have in your waking state is self-derived, self-created, self-influenced, and self-motivated. This is not to say things outside of you don’t happen; rather, it’s how you respond to the unexpected or the uncertain—what you do with new information and old rituals—that becomes the fabric of your life. And we all respond to everything: a kiss on our lips, the wind on our cheek, a diagnosis, a text, a cough, a comment, a sigh, a desire, a memory, a caress, the ringing of a phone, the honking of a horn, the wink of an eye, a fleeting thought, footsteps in the distance, the sun on our neck, the tone of an e-mail, the color of someone’s hair, and even the reading of this sentence. Yet there is no such thing as an external force that can make us feel a certain emotion or respond in a certain way.
Our moods, feelings, and emotions are multidimensional interpretations based on our conditioning. Most of it is probably imprinted into our subconsciousness before we reached our teens. The remainder is embedded over the past few decades as we drank life in and reinforced those early interpretations, weaving them into the fabric of our being. Our response to each moment is a blend of that conditioning, our DNA, our current circumstances, our emotional intelligence, and our state of mind in that instant.
Meditating every day has taught me that we are all the masters of each moment. And effortlessly weaving this practice into every fiber of my being has given me tools and techniques for living life with less stress and anxiety, greater clarity and focus, expanded compassion and empathy, deeper love and more frequent joy, and a viewpoint that is more receptive to other perspectives, which offers me increased possibilities. I believe that anyone who is willing to embrace meditation can access these tools as well. Feel free to consider this book your meditation tool kit.
I thank you for taking the time to read this book, which came from my heart. I encourage you to try meditating and begin a meditation practice using the guidance contained in these pages. I hope you’ll let me help you find what you are looking for. I would consider it a privilege.
Peace.
davidji
PART I
AWAKENING TO NEW POSSIBILITIES
Although I practice a particular type of meditation, I honor all schools of meditation. The gentle drifting from outside ourselves to inside and then back out again is one of the most magnificent processes a human can experience. As your thoughts, your breath, and your physiology slow and progressively quiet to more subtle expressions, your awareness will expand—at first during meditation and then in your life outside of meditation—which will awaken a world of infinite possibilities in every moment.
I am not a monk or an evangelist of any particular religion. I live in the real world, and my meditation training occurred under real-world circumstances. I wrote this book to share my journey to wholeness, which I found through meditation. Wholeness is available to anyone who desires to tap into the stillness and silence that rests within. I offer myself and these teachings to beginners and masters alike. I am humbled by the thought that more than a million seekers throughout the world have joined me in this voyage of profound reconnection. I invite you to join the celebration with those who have found greater purpose, clarity, compassion, fulfillment, healing, flexibility, love, dharma, creativity, peace, abundance, one-ness, transformation, and joy through the daily practice of sitting in stillness and silence . . . and those who are taking their first step right now.
How to Use This Book
This book is designed as a meditation owner’s manual. I suggest you read it once through from beginning to end, participating in all the exercises and guided meditations. When you have finished, you will have a deeper understanding of meditation, you will have experienced many different types of meditations, you will have gone beyond any description that one could share, and you will have felt the rich benefits of a daily practice as your life unfolds with joy and a calming ease that perhaps has eluded you. If you find yourself drawn to a particular form of meditation, I encourage you to explore it further: do online research, find a class, read more, and see where it goes. If you are interested in having a personal guide in Primordial Sound Meditation, reach out to me or any of the 1,500 Chopra Center–certified instructors around the world, and find one with whom you resonate. More information about finding a teacher can be found in the meditation resources section on my website, davidji.com. Challenge what you are told about experiences, and explore them for yourself. Keep trusting your heart.
As you stumble on information that makes sense to you, feel free to make notes, highlight, and dog-ear the pages providing guidance or information with which you connect. And, of course, feel free to share the love with anyone who is ready to begin a practice.
A Word about Language
Many of these teachings were first articulated in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, and Pali, the ancient language of Buddhism. I have shared the original languages as well as the translations and transliterations into English. I encourage you not to torture yourself over pronunciation or grammar. There is an entire vocabulary of meditation, and the goal is for you to meditate rather than become a walking meditation encyclopedia. Eventually, these words will become woven into the fabric of your daily language, and in the meantime, these pages can be a helpful resource for learning to speak consciousness as a second language.