Of all the phenomena of the natural world, the sky has most affinity with Infinity. The ocean is vastness embodied; the grains of sand on a beach countless; the stars innumerable – yet the sky just stretches on and on, and as far as we can imagine it stretching, it leads us always further.
The idea of the Infinite can be alarming to our mind and vital, implying unending fields of the unknown and unattainable: we fear being swallowed, annihilated, reduced to nothingness or rendered utterly insignificant. Yet the sky is a welcoming Infinite: its very blue soothes our troubled mind, charms our restless vital, and encourages our heart to spread its wings and fly into its embrace.
Though we stand upon the earth, we are as much held in our place by the sky above: the ground below us our solid material base, our bodies’ home; while the ever-expanding sky cradles and inspires our spiritual hearts to enter and merge with our souls’ abode.
In this simple, beautiful and powerful passage, Sri Chinmoy describes how meditating on the sky can open and reveal our own spiritual heart:
“Kindly keep your eyes half open and imagine the vast sky. In the beginning try to feel that the sky is in front of you; later try to feel that you are as vast as the sky, or that you are the vast sky itself.
“After a few minutes, please close your eyes and try to see and feel the sky inside your heart. Please feel that you are the Universal Heart, and that inside you is the sky that you meditated upon and identified yourself with. Your spiritual heart is infinitely vaster than the sky, so you can easily house the sky within yourself.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The realms of the finite always limit and constrain us within their walls, boundaries, limitations, definitions and restrictions. No matter how far we roam within the finite – the mental, vital and physical realms – we always reach an end-point, a place beyond which we can no further go.
Yet our inner heart and soul – our infinite self within – stirs ever with a hunger to surpass all limitations, a cry to fly beyond the finite into the infinite, immortal and eternal truth, light, peace and bliss.
This aspiration, this constant yearning for the Beyond, fuels our meditation and keeps it always new, fresh, vibrant and focussed. To raise us from the finite to the Infinite, through meditation our heart’s aspiration strives to extricate our consciousness from its preoccupation and entanglement with small, limiting, binding and belittling thoughts, distractions and emotions, and immerse us in ever higher, purer, liberating realities.
To enable and expedite this upliftment we must focus, first and foremost, on vastness. Vastness acts as an elevator to raise us beyond the limits of our mind’s vision and understanding, and deliver us from the prison of the finite.
“When you want to meditate, at that time think of something very vast – the sky, the ocean, the mountains – and become one with the vastness, which is all power.
“Imagine something very vast, calm and quiet. When you start meditating, feel that inside you is a vast ocean and that you have dived to the bottom, where it is all tranquillity. If you can identify yourself with this vast ocean, with this flood of tranquillity, then it will be extremely easy for you to meditate.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When we invoke and meditate on the outer vastness, it awakens, reveals, mingles and merges with its secret source, our ever-transcending inner vastness.
Sri Chinmoy emphasises, that the tree which is laden with the most fruit, bows down the lowest. This is the essence of humility: the greater the inner spiritual achievement, the humbler will be the outer personality.
The whole purpose of a fruit is to be eaten, and if the tree does not bow down to offer us its fruits, then we can never taste, appreciate and be nourished by them – unreachable fruits are useless fruits. All the wisdom, love and power in the world are similarly useless unless they can be offered and shared, and for this, their possessor must first have the humility to reach down to those of lesser light, wisdom and power.
“You can meditate on a tree. A tree that does not have fruits, that has nothing to offer, stands proudly erect. But a tree that has hundreds of fruits always bends down with utmost humility and offers its fruits to mankind. When it bends down to offer its countless fruits, it is not looked down upon by others. On the contrary, the tree is appreciated, admired and adored. Why? Because it is offering most delicious, nourishing fruits to us. The tree with fruit has humility. The tree that possesses some light and truth is humble while the tree that does not have light is not humble. So when you see something that has achieved some truth — like the tree with fruits — and when you see how humble it is and how it is appreciated by others, this helps you develop your own humility. When you have some fruits, some achievements, you are of greater necessity to mankind. And when you offer your fruits with humility, the world needs you and loves you infinitely more than it would do otherwise.”
– Sri Chinmoy
To acquire specific divine qualities, Sri Chinmoy often advocates meditating on aspects of the natural world.
Compassion is not charity. It does not give according to the wants or desires of the receiver, or for the glory and recognition of the giver. Compassion is the unconditional and unreserved self-offering of the giver according to the true inner needs of the receiver.
“To develop compassion, meditate on a tree. Although the flowers, leaves and branches are above the ground, they are not looking downward with contempt or a feeling of superiority. The trunk of the tree may be very tall; the flowers, fruits and leaves may be all above us. But when we pass below the tree, the leaves, flowers and fruits say, ‘Take us; we are ready to be utilised by you.’ Because of its oneness with us, everything that the tree has, it is begging us to take.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The key word in this last sentence is “oneness”. The tree is able to offer everything that it has, to offer its whole being completely, because it identifies with us and has established its oneness with us. Oneness is the essence of compassion. In its oneness, the tree is identified with our weaknesses, shortcomings and limitations, as well as our capacities and potential, so the tree intuitively knows and feels exactly what we need to be nourished and fulfilled, and offers to us accordingly.
Thus, we are fed, nourished and inspired not only by the tree’s flowers and fruits, its shade, beauty and strength but more significantly, by its self-giving, its nobility of being and radiant compassion. The tree has always been our silent teacher, an ever-present emissary of God in plain sight. Let us ever be worthy and grateful students of the tree.
As meditation is the most natural state of pure being, so is Nature itself a perfect expression of pure meditation.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“The best way to appreciate nature’s beauty is to sit and meditate with nature. If you take a tree as nature, then sit at the foot of a tree and meditate. If you take the sun as an expression of nature, then look at the sun and meditate. If you take the ocean or sea as nature, then sit in front of the water and meditate. While looking at the tree or the sun or the ocean, try to feel your oneness with it. Anything that you consider as nature or nature’s beauty, you should try to become one with.
“Again, if you want a particular thing from nature, you have to go to that thing. If you want to have vastness, then just go out of the house and look at the sky and you will enter into vastness. If you want to have a very vast, pure consciousness, then stand in front of a river and meditate on the river. And if you want to achieve height in your life, then go to a mountain and meditate there. If you want to meditate on the power aspect of life, then look at the sun and meditate. The sun represents power, not the power that destroys, but the power that creates, originates. And if you want to have mildness, softness, tenderness in your life, then you can meditate on the moon.
“So whatever you want, you have to stand in front of that particular thing and invoke it. You have to invoke the spirit of nature or become one with the soul of nature. That is the best kind of identification.”
Flowing silent, unseen, often unknown and unsuspected, an underground river brings life, energy, hope, inspiration, refreshment, nourishment and fulfilment.
We each have a beautiful, powerful and ever-reliable underground river flowing somewhere beneath our surface awareness. No matter how bleak, barren and hopeless our outer circumstances, our life-giving, life-nourishing, life-transforming, life-perfecting and life-fulfilling soul flows constantly within.
The source of our underground river is the soul’s world, the spiritual realm of infinite Peace, eternal Light and immortal Bliss. Our underground river flows alike through our life and death, through sleep and wakefulness, action and inaction, time and timelessness, success and failure, progress and regress, hope and despair.
The underground river of our soul is more real, more alive, more powerful and reliable than anything we will ever encounter in our outer life, or even imagine.
It is tremendously encouraging to know that we each have this underground river within. Yet simply knowing of its existence is not enough; it flows not just to connect our one life with the next and the next beyond that; it flows not to be admired or appreciated, painted or praised; it flows to be swam in, to be drunk from, to drown our weaknesses and imperfections in, to power our turbines of creativity, to cleanse our bodies, purify our vitals, clarify our minds, hydrate our hearts, irrigate our actions and drench our lives.
Meditation reveals our underground river; it gives us a glimpse, and reassurance of its existence. Daily meditation maps and digs a tunnel to our underground river; it gives us access, and a pipeline to channel and utilise its life-flow. Practise of the spiritual life brings our underground river to the surface and employs it for constant good, flooding the fields of our conscious awareness with inspiration, aspiration and dedication.
As we can meditate on music, a mantra, an ideal or a creative visualisation scene, so we can meditate on a colour.
Not everyone will be inspired to meditate on colours, nor need everyone try. For those who have strong visual sensibility and sensitivity, colour meditation can be most effective. It is not recommended to meditate on colours as the main focus of our practise; but rather as an occasional supplementary exercise to help with specific areas of our spiritual wellbeing and growth.
We can meditate, eyes open, on the colour of a physical object in front of us; or with eyes closed, on an imaginary colour of our inner vision.
As each colour has its own vibration and its own energy, so each colour embodies particular qualities that we may be seeking at one time or another. Just as we get vitamin C from oranges, protein from nuts or calcium from milk, so colours can nourish us in particular ways, each colour offering remedies for specific deficiencies we may have, or infusing us with an abundance of the qualities we need for our progress and success.
White is always the colour for purity and divinity: purity embodies all the divine qualities.
For good reason, blue is most people’s favourite colour: it is the colour of vastness, spirituality and expansion into the infinite. The best blue to meditate on is the sky itself on a clear, sunny day. Invoke blue when you long for peace.
Green embodies newness, vitality and enthusiasm: meditate on the green of a forest or an open field of grass – or even, a tree frog.
Red is the colour of power and dynamic energy.
Gold represents the highest manifestation – our journey’s goal.
Purple embodies glory and the divine manifested on earth.
For meditation, it is best to wear and to surround oneself with light colours.
Colours have vibrations – indeed, colours are vibrations – and while we are always influenced by the vibrations around and within us, in the intensity of meditation, we are more susceptible to these vibrations. In meditation, everything is heightened – our awareness, sensitivity and receptivity – so vibrations will affect us more in meditation, than at other times. Therefore, it is more important for us to be mindful of the colours we wear and the colours we surround ourselves with – the colours of our room, the walls, carpet and curtains – during our meditation, than at other times of the day.
Colour feeds us as food feeds us; colour moves us as music moves us; colour fulfils us as reading fulfils us. Colours can lift us up or bring us down. Various colours can soothe, energise, inspire, encourage, excite, weaken or dishearten us.
White is the simplest, safest and surest colour to wear and to surround ourselves with in meditation, as white offers the least distraction from our meditation-task, and will never have any negative effect on us.
White represents purity: just as purity paves the way for all other divine qualities – peace, light, love and joy – so white embodies the good qualities of all the brighter colours. Like purity, the colour white works on two fronts – it nourishes and enhances the divine within us, while simultaneously keeping the undivine at bay. While it may not be practical to have an entirely white meditation room, it is by far the best colour for the walls and ceiling.
Black and brown should always be avoided for meditation; choose any light or bright coloured clothing to suit your mood as light colours will always uplift and inspire us.
“Break your bad habits
By dropping them.
Strengthen your good habits
By treasuring them.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We are creatures of habit. We identify with and define ourselves through our tastes, beliefs, prejudices – and habits. We employ habits to plug deep psychological holes, to clothe and occupy ourselves, to give us a sense of security and protection from the void.
To change ourselves, we must change our habits. Meditation is absolutely the best, most effective and certain means to conquer any and all bad habits – including the habits we know about, and those we are not yet aware of.
A ‘bad’ habit is a repeating behaviour that springs from some weakness within us. Common weaknesses that produce bad habits include stress, worry, addiction, desire, self-deception, insecurity, jealousy, resentment and pride.
Meditation transforms us gradually from within. As we drink and bathe in peace, light and bliss through regular meditation practise, our limiting mind gradually surrenders to our expanding heart, and all our inner weaknesses – the source of bad habits – are supplanted by inner strengths. Slowly but surely, desire is replaced with aspiration, humility evicts pride, inner peace dissipates stress, light disperses confusion, confidence throws out insecurity, the positive takes the seat of the negative.
As meditation illumines us from within, it also brings daily fresh inspiration, enthusiasm, energy and growth, which open us to ever-new pursuits, passions and pass-times. As our horizons expand, our meditation introduces us to new habits to consolidate our happiness and expedite our spiritual growth.
As our weaknesses are illumined and transformed, the source and lifeline of bad habits dries up; as we grow in inner peace, light and delight, new habits sprout. As bad old habits are extracted by their roots, new good habits flower gloriously in their place.
A habit is like scratching an itch. The only way to permanently give up scratching, is to remove the itch. It is impossible simply to discard habits altogether, unless and until we have transcended the underlying needs which habits fulfil. Until then, the most effective way to conquer a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit.
One of the best habits we can cultivate, is to meditate for one minute or so – long enough to take stock of ourselves while drawing a few deep breaths – prior to engaging in any activity, especially a habit we have identified as in need of transformation. During this minute, project yourself forward to see the effects of what you are about to do – whether you will be better off or worse off. Then choose and pursue the option which will result in you feeling better about yourself.
We are most likely to indulge our bad habits in moments of unawareness and lack of control. Unawareness is a form of darkness. Meditation is self-awareness. When we meditate, even for a few moments, we heighten and intensify our awareness, like bringing a light into a dark room. Once a light is shining, the dark room of our unawareness is illumined, and immediately we see more clearly the consequences of indulging our bad habits. The upside – the allure of indulging our bad habit – loses its appeal when it is set against the downside – the damage, distress or unhappiness we can see this habit will cause us. This light and clarity comes with the strength to overcome the temptation, and the confidence to discard the bad habit for good.
Even short periods of meditation enable us to direct and control our habits, instead of our habits controlling us.
Sri Chinmoy was asked, how one can tell whether one is meditating well, or just experiencing wishful thinking or mental hallucination. He answered:
“It is very easy to know. If you are meditating properly, you will get spontaneous inner joy. Nobody has given you good news, nobody has brought you any gifts, nobody has appreciated or admired you, nobody has done anything for you, but you will have an inner feeling of delight. If this happens, then you will know that you are meditating properly. But if you feel a mental tension or disturbance, then you will know that the kind of meditation that you are doing is not meant for you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
A good meditation is its own reward and fulfilment. During and after a good meditation, there is a natural clarity, simplicity, goodwill, optimism and ease. There is no disquiet, nagging doubts or grievance; the question of whether we are doing well or heading in the right direction, simply does not and cannot arise.
Sri Chinmoy continues:
“You will also know whether you had a good meditation by the way you feel afterwards. If peace, light, love and joy have come to the fore from within as a result of your meditation, then you will know that you have meditated well. If you have a good feeling for the world, if you see the world in a loving way in spite of its teeming imperfections, then you will know that your meditation was good. And if you have a dynamic feeling right after meditation, if you feel that you have come into the world to do something and become something – to grow into God’s very image and become His dedicated instrument – this indicates that you have had a good meditation.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“We feel we are tired
At every moment.
But alas,
We are never tired enough
To close our mind-door.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Tiredness, like age, is mostly a phenomenon of the mind. More often than not, we ‘feel tired’ because we imagine we are, or think we ought to be tired. We can all recall instances when we felt we were dog tired, then received a phone call, or saw, remembered or imagined something that instantly revived us, after which we continued with surging energy and enthusiasm. If tiredness can so utterly abandon us, we have to wonder: was it real in the first place?
Sri Chinmoy’s simple antidote to tiredness is to switch activities, and thus refresh our mindset.
The mind is naturally inclined towards order and fixity, with a tendency to become closed and stale, so our thoughts and feelings inevitably grow heavy and monotonous: tiredness ensues as a cry to escape from this tedium. To conquer or counter tiredness, we must challenge our mind’s very nature, re-train it to open always to newness, freshness and enthusiasm. Only the sincere practise of meditation over many years, can alter the mind so profoundly.
The irony of feeling “too tired to meditate” is that nothing tires us more than thoughts, and nothing clears away these unwanted, draining thoughts as effectively as meditation. We need to meditate in order to access the energy, clarity and inspiration we need to meditate! Not meditating when we feel tired is a false economy, for failing to meditate only guarantees we will remain tired for longer.
Meditation clears our mind, refreshes our emotions and opens us to all the uplifting qualities and energies of our heart. Meditation awakens us to our possibilities and inspires us dynamically to pursue our dreams.
Here are a few more tips for a wakeful early morning meditation –
DON’T engage with the outside world before your morning meditation: if possible, don’t speak to anyone, consume any information, check any messages or look at the internet until your morning meditation is complete and assimilated. Engaging with the world only invites the world’s problems and distractions into us and entrenches our perceived tiredness.
DON’T meditate on or next to your bed. Having just emerged from it, our bed not only symbolises sleep, it still carries the vibrations of our sleep: its presence and proximity can exert a tidal pull, beckoning us to return to its enticing nest. The further we are away from our place of sleep, the better. Making our bed immediately after we get up is also a simple, symbolic act that reinforces the message to ourselves that we have cast off the sleep world and are now embracing the wakeful, alert, dynamic flow of our new day.
Last thing at night, write a list of inspiring reasons to start your next morning bright and early with meditation. Then read your list the moment you get up. You can even use the same list time and again.
Bookend your sleep with meditation. While meditating for a few minutes before you go to bed, consciously imagine your meditation continuing and expanding the next morning. Promise to your heart that you are taking a brief time-out, and will return to take up and continue where you have left off. Place an imaginary bookmark in your meditation, to “save” the place you have reached. Then when you awake, you will feel the pull of your previous night’s meditation, calling you to make good your promise and fulfil its unfinished course.
