The notion of dragons guarding treasure goes back through Norse, Greek, Egyptian and Sumerian mythology, at least as far as ancient China, where dragons guarded bodies of water. These tales may have evolved from a common ancestral story, though more likely their similarities arise from our shared human experience: anything worth getting has to be fought for, and no worthy prize comes easily.
If the treasure of life is all that we value most – love, peace, light, aspiration and joy – then the dragons guarding this treasure are the tendencies standing in our way – pride, fear, doubt, hesitation, desire, attachment, distraction and delusion. While life’s real treasure is all in our spiritual heart, the dragons are undisputed bosses of our minds.
Meditation is the treasure-seeker’s most powerful, reliable weapon to charm and disarm all our inner dragons, enabling us to discover, claim, enjoy and share our inner treasure with the world.
Just as the dragons of mythology retreated and disappeared in the light of reason and understanding – no-one actually believes they are real any more – so the dragons of fear, doubt and illusion, which appear so real in the living nightmare of our mental perception, dissolve and evaporate in the light, peace and bliss of meditation. The more one meditates, the more one grows in the inner light, courage and conviction that exposes these dragons as illusory and ephemeral, unreal.
As long as we do not come near or actively seek any treasure, dragons don’t threaten us; they leave idle people well alone. So whatever dragon appears in life, take heart – for its menace is the sure sign that true treasure is near at hand, and you are close on its trail.
To slay each dragon –
– meditate –
– to claim and become the treasure of treasures.
“If you don’t invite God to be your summer Guest, He won’t come in the winter of your life.”
– Lahiri Mahashoy
It is common to pray, meditate, to invoke or turn to a higher power only when we feel helpless, in challenging times of stress, loss or desperation. Sometimes the urgency of our cry may elicit the consolation we crave, the solution we seek: other times, not.
An Olympic athlete trains for years to be ready and focussed, physically, mentally and emotionally for the moment of competition. For the spiritual seeker, inner discipline – prayer and especially meditation – is constant preparation. This inner training not only prepares us to meet, brave and endure life’s moments of greatest stress and challenge – our own Olympic competition; our meditation to a large extent removes hurdles and obstacles from our life’s path even before they appear.
Just as those who consciously practise good diet, positive thinking and regular exercise are more likely to enjoy good health and less likely candidates for the hospital emergency room, so the practise of inner discipline is proactively to ensure our life’s smooth flow, happiness and bountiful fulfilment, the best insurance against life’s practical, mental and emotional curveballs.
So much conflict, chaos and calamity flows from our insular egos’ inherent fear, pride, doubt, insecurity, jealousy and suspicion. As meditation lifts our consciousness above and beyond our egos’ snares and brittle fault lines, whole catalogues of self-inflicted catastrophe are averted.
While meditation may not change our outer circumstances, its regular practise profoundly alters our perspective and understanding, and hence our acceptance of and response to life’s ebb and flow. Instead of being tossed and turned capriciously by our life-river’s surface waves and whirlpools, meditation draws us into the sure deep haven of our soul-current, safe, steady and certain.
There is no limit to what meditation can achieve for us, if we practise consciously, conscientiously and consistently. Meditation is like sunlight or electricity: a latent power, available to all, which can be harnessed for an infinite variety of applications and purposes.
Through meditation we can transform our habits, attitudes, beliefs, even our personalities. We can challenge and dissipate fears, phobias and anxieties; transcend dislikes and prejudices; overcome stress; replenish enthusiasm, vibrancy and energy; expand existing capacities and develop new ones.
Meditation is so successful in every field, because it goes to the very heart of our existence, to the core of being itself. Meditation rescues and lifts our consciousness up out of the division-delusion, confusion-chaos and quandary-quagmire of the insecure, finite, time-bound mind, into the all-loving, all-knowing, all-embracing and all-becoming infinitude of the immortal soul.
If we walk in mountainous terrain in the pitch dark of night with no torchlight, we will inevitably fall off a cliff. Because our source is infinite, as long as we pretend to be limited and flirt with the finite, denying our essence and cutting ourselves adrift from truth, we are constantly perpetuating problems, dancing with disaster and courting catastrophe.
Meditation opens within us our reality, and the reality of everyone and everything of our universe. The dense darkness of night surrenders to the blazing light of day. Questions no longer arise when the answers are self-evident before and within us. Problems are not so much solved as dissolved: like disappearing wisps of cloud, they simply no longer exist.
In the depths of eternal silence, everything already breathes; all is done, all accomplished. So whatever our purpose, whatever our mission, whatever our goal, it can, must and will be discovered, revealed and fulfilled in and through our ever-blossoming meditation-heart.
“The acceptance of the spiritual life
Immediately indicates
The life’s real turning point.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We all feel we can be happier, better, wiser, more creative, more fulfilled. We feel there is something higher or deeper we have not yet grasped, there is more to discover, feel and experience – more for us to receive and offer to the world.
Our goal is forever beyond our present condition, so to reach our goal requires a journey of sorts, starting with a change of direction. A change of direction requires a turning point.
A turning point can be something as simple as opening a book or deciding to walk to the shops – leading inexorably to the single significant reorientation of our life’s trajectory, the moment we embrace meditation as more than another tool for self-improvement or gratification: rather as our long-sought, destined pathway to self-discovery and God-realisation.
Life’s turning point is the moment a bud blossoms into a flower; the moment a pupa emerges a butterfly; the moment a spaceship releases its booster rocket to soar free of the earth’s atmosphere; the moment the striker’s foot connects with the ball to fire it into the back of the net. If the goal is ever to win at life, meditation delivers life’s forever-winning goal.
From being lost in an alien outer world of illusion, meditation rescues us to find ourselves in our inmost intimate heart of ever-revealing, nourishing, blossoming reality.
The moment we sincerely, wholeheartedly embrace meditation as our own, announces our lives’ irrevocable turning point from unhappiness to happiness, from confusion to clarity, aimlessness to purpose, pessimism to optimism, frustration to fulfilment, insecurity to self-confidence, selfishness to selflessness, self-loathing to God-love, pride to humility, ignorance to illumination, desire-bondage to aspiration-freedom, sense-slavery to self-mastery, from human animal to divine human.
“Everything that is
Is a golden opportunity to realise God.
Therefore, do not withdraw
From the battlefield of life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
To bring forth toothpaste, the tube has to be squeezed. To shape a horseshoe, the iron must be red hot. To create a beautiful poem can take hours of agonising.
Universal law is continual growth and advancement through evolution – a process we are part of whether we choose to be or not. We are all evolving, consciously or unconsciously. Evolution proceeds within and all around us in a flow it is impossible for us to resist.
This pervasive, perpetual current of evolution inclines us toward our cherished goal, to yearn for that higher state of our soul, for the peace, love, wisdom and creative joy we intuit as our birthright, yet right now are a far cry from our present condition, which we are apt to perceive as incomplete, unfinished and unsatisfactory.
So it is our lot and destiny to seek self-improvement and progress – yet no progress comes without change, and no change occurs without sacrifice.
It is human nature to resist change and to resent the necessity of sacrifice – at least, when that change and sacrifice apply to our selves.
Yet change we must, and sacrifices we must make – so whatever inspires us to make the sacrifice and effect the change, should be welcomed as blessing and benefactor. Sometimes that inspiration comes in the guise of happiness and success – other times through misfortune and suffering. While one type of experience may be more appealing than the other, each can be equally effective.
Personal trials and tribulations always present opportunities for spiritual progress. While we do not seek or embrace them, when we can humbly and gratefully embrace their lessons, we become the unquestionable, inevitable winner.
Only our souls’ will power can tame our mind’s incessant flow of thoughts – but what and where is our souls’ will power?
Imagine your spiritual heart – around the centre of your chest where you feel the presence of love, light and joy – as the home or residence of your soul. Don’t try to see or imagine the soul or to form any specific idea of what the soul looks or feels like. Just feel that your soul is God’s ambassador within you, a ceaseless fount of healing love, revealing light, compelling truth and enthralling delight flowing in and through your heart and all around you, always. Have faith that your soul can accomplish whatever is needed.
When concentrating – on a flower, candle flame or image – feel that your soul’s indomitable willpower is flowing from your heart, up through your third eye to surround and enter the object, which is embraced and enveloped by your heart. As the object merges into you, its inner truth is revealed within your sweep of self-awareness.
The notion of objectivity relies on the separation of subject and object. This separation is an invention of our mind, necessary for its reason and analysis to function. Thoughts are the tools of reason, the language of objectivity. In the heart where there is no separation, there can be no ‘other’, no object: hence – no thoughts.
As the heart concentrates, it includes. Internal subsumes external: object merges into subject. Thinking is redundant.
Concentration now melds into meditation on the self, as the whole superstructure of objectivity quietly collapses; its foundation of separation dissolves in oneness; its pillars of reason crumple into the sea of love; its myriad nuts and bolts of thoughts and concepts, simply evaporate in the all-illumining irradiant light of pure being.
We know that to meditate effectively, we must clear away all thoughts and distractions, which are as pervasive in our consciousness as sight and sound. To be rid of thoughts and distractions would appear an impossible task: can we be sure we would even exist in their absence? What about: “I think, therefore I am”?
It is said that the mind can be cleared through the power of concentration, which serves as an overture and gateway to meditation. Once concentration is mastered, thoughts will remain at bay and meditation flows of its own accord. We are instructed to focus our mind on one object, typically a candle, flower or image.
Yet how can we best summons the mind’s energies to such an effort? Our first instinct is to use the mind itself to clear the mind, to think about how to rid ourselves of thoughts. This process is self-defeating, and doomed: we might as well put a fly in charge of stopping flies from landing on us, or ask a bull to reconstruct the china shop. While concentrating, the mind keeps the object at a distance, employing its customary methods of perception – reason, analysis, description and classification. We find after a short while of such attempt, we develop a headache as the mind grapples with itself. The object remains apart, as thoughts tumble upon further thoughts, leading to frustration or exasperation.
There is another way to concentrate, using the power and method of our spiritual heart.
Just as the mind concentrates using its capacity of objective reason, so the heart concentrates using its inherent specialty – which is love, and the identification of oneness. Oneness-love is the fastest, truest way to knowledge, for here there is no separation between subject and object: they merge as one.
“What concentration can do in our day-to-day life is unimaginable. Concentration is the surest way to reach our goal, whether the goal be God-realisation or merely the fulfilment of human desires. It is concentration that acts like an arrow and enters into the target. He who is wanting in the power of concentration is no better than a monkey.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Concentration is the single most essential skill and capacity we all need in life – which we are never taught. When I was in school, I well remember the teacher remonstrating with me as I gazed out the window: “Concentrate!” All very well – but how? How are we supposed to concentrate, when nobody is there to teach us, either in school or at home?
If any nation would effectively teach concentration early in its school curriculum, that nation’s economic and creative output would skyrocket, while health and happiness would run riot.
The difference between success and failure in any project, any field, any endeavour, is almost always determined by our capacity to concentrate.
Concentration is the shortcut that directly connects us with our task, with the subject we are studying, with the goal of our longing.
Of all the advantages of concentration, none is so beneficial and significant as its role in meditation. By enabling us to clear the mind, concentration builds the foundation and paves the way for meditation and all its limitless peace, light, power and bliss. Unless and until we enhance our capacity to concentrate, our attempts at meditation will be excursions in exasperation and flirtations with frustration.
Like any skill, concentration requires disciplined practise. Concentration and discipline grow hand in hand: as our concentration-power develops, discipline comes more easily; as we become more disciplined, our concentration naturally improves.
“One drop of pleasure-poison
Is enough to destroy
The beauty and purity
Of my aspiration-heart.”
– Sri Chinmoy
One choir member out of tune can ruin an entire performance; one droplet of blood summonses frenzied sharks from afar; one momentary lapse yields a car crash; one stray thought shatters a lofty meditation; one bad choice can terminate one’s spiritual progress.
An oak tree at once carries dead branches of its past, along with acorns of its promising future. Just as humans have evolved from animals, and still embody many limiting and destructive animal propensities – fear, anger, aggression – as ‘memories’ of our animal past, so also we house all the expansive, liberating spiritual qualities – peace, love, light and bliss – as ‘previews’ of our future divine being.
The spiritual life is a very long journey, an evolution from one type of consciousness, from one state of being to another, from the human to the divine. Our spiritual transformation does not occur overnight, as through meditation we gradually transcend the binding, inhibiting limitations of our finite human nature – our body, vital and mind – by nurturing, absorbing, claiming and growing into our infinite within – our divine heart and soul.
As our liberating heart expands in love, peace and oneness, so our mind’s fixed boundaries of certainty, superiority and pride wither and fade, our consciousness awakens from finite to infinite, our identity graduates from confined ego to universal heart.
In this process, what appears desirable or pleasurable to the limiting mind and demanding vital – thoughts and feelings of possession, division, suspicion or dominion – halt and reverse the unfolding of the divine.
Beware: just one miscreant thought or unchecked desire can turn the tide of spiritual progress. The deluding, ravenous ego blocks the doorway of the heart: the promise of spiritual fulfilment vanishes.
“My meditation-heart
Is
My most powerful protection.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We are used to seeking protection from adverse forces of Nature: from accidents, calamities, disaster and disease, as well as from malign human actors: criminals, scammers and betrayers.
Yet in the spiritual life, by far the greatest threats from which we need protection are within ourselves: our own thoughts, misconceptions, fears, doubts, anxieties, jealousies, suspicions, desires and distractions.
All our weaknesses, susceptibilities and points of exposure lie in the finite, limited parts of our being – the physical body, vital and mind. Fortunately, these domains of ours, though they may seem separate and isolated when viewed alone, all exist within the greater whole of our selves – our heart and soul.
It is the natural role of the heart and soul to shelter and protect their little siblings, body, vital and mind. Our heart and soul act as our personal fortress, impregnable against all foes. But any fortress can only protect those inside it. To be safe, we need only to remain inside our fortress, and not indulge ourselves to wander in fantasy-forest or wallow in desire-quagmire as we are continually tempted to do.
As germs enter us via polluted food, drink and air, so negativity enters our system via thoughts and desires. Once they gain entry, thoughts and desires, like germs, can be deadly. In pure meditation in our heart and soul, in the absence of thought and desire, no negativity can enter us or take hold.
Especially in meditation, every thought, every intention matters. Guard and protect the purity, simplicity and sanctity of your meditation as though your life, safety and happiness depend on it – for indeed they do. In turn, the purity, simplicity and sanctity of your meditation will guard, protect and save you, everywhere and always.
If a person standing behind a pole, shows only their right hand and left foot from opposite sides of the pole, we clearly see that the hand and foot are different and separate objects. Yet remove the pole, and we see they are of one person. Our mind is that pole, predisposing us always to perceive separate and opposing parts, and never the whole.
A larger perspective always reveals a larger reality, a more complete picture, a fuller, greater oneness. To perceive the whole, we must remove the pole – in our case, our minds’ limited and limiting view.
The surest escape route from our mind’s prison cell, is to fly on meditation-wings into the boundless sky of our heart. From this elevated perspective we are afforded the fullest, unimpeded realisation of reality.
Our spiritual heart is our centre of harmony, love, compassion, light, wisdom, joy and oneness with the divine. Infinite itself, the heart knows, claims and becomes the infinite reality by the identification of oneness. To the heart of all-embracing love, all secrets are revealed. Within the heart’s ever-transcending heights and depths, the unknown and even the unknowable ever bloom and blossom.
Opposites and conflict only flourish within the bounds of the finite mind. In our heart’s realms of the infinite, in our unhorizoned meditation, contradictions are resolved and conflict evaporates.
The heart embraces north and south, left and right, male and female, light and dark, creation and dissolution, sound and silence as integral, equal and indispensable partners in the cosmic dance.
While in the mind’s domain, polarisation is the pinnacle of division, in the heart’s realm, polarity is the exquisite expression of unity in multiplicity.
The earth literally revolves on the axis of its poles: ‘tis the dance of our opposites makes us whole.
Good/bad, right/wrong, up/down, in/out, positive/negative, night/day, truth/falsehood, us/them – we feel ever-increasing polarisation in our lives and society, and growing concern around this phenomenon.
Yet it is we who create and nurture this polarisation, we who relish its game.
The finite can never comprehend the infinite. Being finite, our mind has no faculty to grasp Truth and Reality, which are infinite. So the mind is forever taking strands of what it perceives, weaving these strands into models of ‘truth’ in the form of ideas, theories, suppositions, superstitions, beliefs and opinions, then labelling and claiming these culled fictions as reality, arguing for and defending these apparitions as though its very existence depended on them – until it changes its mind and supplants one fantastic model with another.
Secretly aware of its own incapacity, the finite mind nurses inherent insecurity, which it masks with the bluff and pretension of being in control and knowing all.
To buttress this bluff, the mind must have an answer for everything. Nothing threatens the mind’s certitude like the unknown or unknowable. That which cannot be defined, is instinctively denied, denigrated or applied with any stick-on label – no matter how obtuse, unlikely or absurd.
In search of understanding and control, the mind sits apart from the world in judgement, scrutinising people, events and phenomena with its feeble flashlight of analysis, doubt and suspicion. Thus the world becomes objectified, and the heart’s love, empathy and concern fade. The mind sees no foothold in blissful oneness: walling itself off from the ‘other’ in its tower of self-righteousness, the mind needs differentiation, breeds and feeds division to sustain its illusion of supremacy.
Polarisation is not the root, but the inevitable bitter fruit of the tree of division: an invariable outcome of a universal problem – our minds’ assumed autocracy.
Debate has raged forever amongst religions, sects and pundits between some who insist God is personal, with form, and others adamant God is impersonal, without form.
Otherwise innocent people have had their children confiscated, careers destroyed, been imprisoned, tortured, exiled or burned at the stake merely for believing one or the other.
All agree their God is infinite, eternal, immortal, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, One who can do or be anything, everywhere, any time: such being the case, a personal God can easily be impersonal, while an impersonal God can readily be personal.
Both beliefs are true, authentic and correct. As the shape of a mountain appears radically different when seen from the south or north, so the difference between a personal and impersonal God lies in our perspective. They are One: the same Being, viewed from different angles.
God, the Supreme, or whatever name or term you wish to adopt, is the Source of all – personal and impersonal. All that exists in all realms – physical, metaphysical and spiritual – has and is the Supreme in its essence.
Viewed objectively, we observe the impersonal God of phenomena, the ultimate machine of infinite height, depth, power and vastness, cosmic energy, order and chaos, creation and dissolution, answer and solution, evolution, law, karma, mathematics, cause and effect.
Felt subjectively, we humans as God’s children, instruments and prototypes, experience our Supreme as intimately personal – the ultimate embodiment of all we value, treasure and most aspire for – all-encompassing love, peace, affection, courage, sweetness, forgiveness, compassion, patience, wisdom, willpower, playfulness, humour, mystery, music, dance and drama – our most complete, perfect, delight-flooded, fullest and highest Self.
An impersonal God may be our minds’ highest discovery; our personal Beloved Supreme, our hearts’ sweetest awakening; the summit-oneness of both – personal and impersonal – our lives’ flowering realisation.
