stillpoint yoga

yoga meditation and philosophy with Lynn Fraser
in the Himalayan Tradition of H.H. Sri Swami Rama

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Homework Winter 2004 Week 8

Practice

1.   Sit for meditation each day this week. After your practice, write in your journal about your ‘state of mind’. Reflect on the events and relative mental equilibrium during the previous 24 hours. Write about any relationship between the two.

 

Reading by Swami Veda Bharati

From the booklet Silence, by Swami Veda Bharati

It seems like a long dive (into the deeper levels of the mind) because of the obstacles. Obstacles are samskaras from past lives and imprints of experiences that we have been exposed to in the past lives and to which we expose ourselves in this life. The time of silence should be to wash off the past imprints. It should be a time to take no fresh imprints, so that the mind can observe and realize its own higher-frequency states. We are able to stop identifying ourselves with certain labels, doing things only a certain way – conditioning the mind and thus shackling the mind to habits. Unless we unshackle the mind, there is no freedom.

 A meditatively silent mind – not a negatively silent mind – is in the state of crystal clarity. It is as an absolutely still lake. Everything reflects in it. The gurus take to silence in the presence of the students so that first, their own infectious silence will be beamed at the students’ minds, so that the students’ minds will learn to reach the same state that the guru’s mind is in. This is one of the things that meditation teachers do when they guide a meditation; they try to bring their own depth of the meditative state of mind to the group or to the individual initiate.

 You would live in the world much more effectively if your baseline emotion is that of an unagitated state of mind – which is the true silence.

 Our practice for the silence of speech and our practice of mantra leading to interior silence is one and the same as quieting the mind during meditation. Formal meditation cannot be separated from trying to keep the mind as undisturbed – as much in equanimity as possible – throughout the day. One supports the other; the other supports the one. In a situation of provocation, of disturbance, of agitation, the untrained chose to become tense and troubled; the trained choose to relax. It is a question of training oneself as to which response to choose. It is only a matter of training.

 This may be helpful – Internal dialogue

 More on how to journal.