.............................. Understanding Depression
When you suppress an emotion or thought, the memories of these suppressions go directly to your manipuraka chakra. When the manipuraka is poisoned, your actions will have an unconscious violence like plucking at something, destroying things, misbehaving with your body, fighting with yourself and with others. The clinical name for this negative attitude is depression.
Some people are less depressed, some people are more depressed, that's all. The more you allow this chatter to consume you, the more depressed you become. The people who are less depressed feel it only at times and that too to a lower degree whereas the people who are more depressed feel it most of the time in a severe fashion. But the current is always there for both.
So depression or negativity is nothing but a collection of negative thoughts, which you speak to yourself. And once you allow such thoughts to enter into your mind, the same thoughts will keep playing back every time you suffer a small failure. It will keep reinforcing this attitude. After all, worrying is only a highly reinforced habit. But it is a mere habit and so you can kick it like any other habit! But you don't think that it is only a habit. You think that it is a solid and serious reality. That is the problem. That is why you are not able to kick it.
When I tell you, you can understand it only intellectually. When it becomes your own experience, when you have that clarity, you will go beyond worries. Then depression cannot touch you. You will go beyond misery. By thinking of worries all the time, what is going to happen? Nothing! With your ten worries, an eleventh worry called depression will happen, that's all.
By worrying, you totally miss the beauty of the present. When you are in tune with the present, every moment will become a celebration and you will not be searching for past incidents to celebrate. When every moment is a celebration, you will continue to be in the present because you are celebrating every moment. You will never go to the past for celebrating. Then every moment will be golden, not just the past!
......................................................... Becoming the Watcher
You can never stop your thinking. The thought that you have to stop your thinking is itself another thought! If you forcibly try to be silent for a while, that silence is not the silence we want to achieve, it is just a forced and dead silence. The silence that we want to achieve is a vibrating and blissful silence, the silence of Existence.
So what is it that needs to be done? Simply watch the mind, that's all. Be an observer. Don't pass any judgments, don't resist any thoughts, watch it with the deep gratitude that it is God's gift to you. This is the first step towards inner silence.
Your awareness will slowly grow and make you centered in yourself and increase the silence in you. When I say increase the silence, I mean, your inner chatter will reduce and you will be more of a watcher. With that increased silence, there will be more awareness in you and this will become a cyclic process in you.
Daily Awareness Practices
Emotions:
Y Understand, you can never drop any emotion by consciously trying to drop it. The more you try to drop it the more attached you will become to it and it will become a torture for you. The emotion will haunt you.
The only way is to watch your emotions. As you watch your emotions, the distance between your emotions and you will start increasing. Right now, you are so entangled with your emotions that you simply cannot see yourself apart from them. When you start watching, you will start creating a distance between you and your emotions. Slowly, the distance will increase and one day, the watcher will disappear from the scene. Then, you need not put any effort to drop your emotions. They will simply drop of their own accord and you will feel disconnected from it. You will no more be able to relate with it. They will simply disappear from your being. A shift in consciousness happens in you. You then become a new person.
A simple yet powerful technique is to visualize scattering the negative thoughts and see them
. MANIPURAKA CHAKRA .
disperse, whenever you become aware of a negative thought surfacing.
Y When you stop following your worries, you will be able to see how others are helplessly caught up in that cycle. You will be able to see how they magnify their worries by endlessly talking about them to people. This 'talking about worry' is what I call 'worrying about the worry'! Only when you are able to watch this will it stop. Become the watcher of your emotions. Until the time you become the watcher, you are caught in the emotions, giving so much of power and control to them. When you become a watcher, there will be no room for worries or pain. There will be only love in you. You will then understand the love of Existence, the infinite love that Existence showers on you every minute.
Mind:
YWatch how subtly your mind is continuously creating expectations in everything you see and do and how reality sometimes matches and sometimes misses your expectations and how feelings of tension and worry arise within you when this happens. When you learn to be in awareness, you can use your mind at your discretion. It becomes a vital tool at your disposal. You can use it just when you want to. From being a dangerous enemy, it becomes a reliable friend. Just by flooding awareness into this whole thing, you can see how your mind plays and creates tension for you. Once you learn to become the watcher, your worries will drop and you will also not internalize any of the outer world incidents. When you internalize the outer world incidents, you are just creating a larger database of words inside you, out of which new worries will arise.
Life:
Y Understand: the first step to bliss is to become a watcher. Simply watch life as if it were a drama. When you watch, your mind will become still. When it becomes still, you have caught the thread. When you experience that stillness at least once, you have caught the thread.
.................................................................Prayer
When you move on with complete trust, you cannot worry. This is real prayer. Prayer is not pouring out all your worries and asking for a solution. Prayer is placing complete trust upon Existence and feeling it work for you.
Every moment is going past; then what is there to cling to? Clinging will bring misery upon misery. There is no point in thinking about the future also. It is yet to come. What are you thinking about? The future will also come in the form of the present only. So focus on the present.
Daily Awareness Practice
Y Just know how to listen. Don't listen with your head. Open your being to the Master. Listen with deep trust, with total surrender. Don't scramble to carry the words; carry Him in your being. That is more than enough. The Master's presence in you will make the alchemy happen. Listen with your heart. Allow the words to move past as the ripples in a stream. Take them in.
Y Simply shift the responsibility to a higher authority and relax. You will then live like a king! You will then start listening to the synchronous music of the flowing river of Existence taking care of you, of the harmony between you and Existence. This harmony is what you need to tune into. And then all your worries will disappear!
................................................. Understanding Addiction
Y Addiction to anything is an unconscious or mechanical process. It is not just addiction to drinks or tobacco. It is addiction to even religion. People who pray unconsciously and mechanically, following a routine, will find it very hard if they miss even one day's prayer. For them it is an addiction and so it causes anxiety when missed. Just as an alcoholic who misses his evening drink starts trembling in insecurity, the mechanically religious person will feel a big void if he misses his routine prayer.
The key is to understand the difference between doing things with awareness and doing things mechanically and out of fear or greed. When you do things with awareness, it will never put you under any sort of bondage. It will not bind you in space and time. You will be a master. Doing things mechanically and out of fear or greed will bind you and cause misery to you. You will be a slave.
Daily Awareness Practice
. MANIPURAKA CHAKRA .
Y To drop an addiction, flood it with awareness; it will transform in the right way. Remember, never think that you need to drop an addiction. Anything that you resist will persist. You simply need to transform it by deep awareness, that's all.
When you understand the language of transformation, you are on the right track, you are on the path of openness. Every time you drink, drink with complete awareness. That means, every time you drink, drink consciously, slowly, watching every movement of yours, tasting every drop of the drink, watching the reaction of your body to it. Make it a process filled with acute awareness. If you do this every time you decide to drink, you do not have to drop the habit, the habit will drop you forever.
.......................................................... Gibberish Meditation Manipuraka Shuddhi Kriya (Total Duration: 30 minutes)
The Manipuraka Shuddhi Kriya is a meditation technique taken from ancient Christianity. Known as 'glassalolia', the technique was further adapted by the Sufis as 'gibberish'. This technique will empty you of your deeply engraved negative mental patterns and worries. It will clear all your suppressed emotions of anger and worry. Once you do this technique, you will feel very light in the manipuraka region - the navel area, the area of your worries and complex mental patterns. After doing this meditation, it is up to you to stop gathering new worries and loading your manipuraka all over again.
There is no good garbage and bad garbage. Garbage is garbage. The mind is like a dustbin. There is no classification called good thoughts and bad thoughts. Whether good or bad, thoughts are garbage. Words are garbage. The mind has to be emptied of the overflowing words. These words are the ones that irritate us, they are like blisters in our inner space. Words and thoughts will never allow us to relax even on a vacation. Gibberish is a technique where you will empty all this garbage.
Instructions:
This technique should be done on an empty stomach, or at least 2 hours after a major meal; otherwise you might throw up.
Step 1 (Duration: 20 minutes)
a. Stand with your eyes closed. Go deep into your manipuraka and feel how heavy the area feels. It is filled with all your worries. Focus on your manipuraka chakra for a minute. Just try to feel all the pent up anger and worry inside you due to various reasons.
b. Now, just start making nonsensical sounds from the navel area, as loudly as you can. Do not use words to shout. If you use words, only familiar and recent emotions will surface and also words will give rise to only more words without actually working on the emotions behind them.
c. Shout absolute gibberish. Only this will open out the unconscious in you. Only this will open out the deeply hidden emotions. Wave your hands, shout, scream. If tears flow, let them flow.
d. Do it with all your might, to vomit out all your negative feelings. Recall the painful incidents. Visualize the persons involved and feel the emotions involved in those incidents. Bring out all the emotions. Become completely immersed in them. Be aware of nothing else.
Step 2 (Duration: 10 minutes)
With your eyes closed, sit down in silence. Just be a witness to your thoughts. Feel the lightness in your manipuraka area. You will find that it is so light and blissful. Your whole being will be so light and free.
IN A NUTSHELL
The manipuraka chakra is located at the navel. It is the seat of worries and is blocked by constant worrying. It flowers when we stop worrying about our worries!
The diagram alongside shows a man who is 'tied up' with his worries. This is depicted as a rope tied around the manipuraka chakra. The worries become 'food for the mind', shown as bits of garbage on a spoon. The worries are magnified by the mind (shown as a magnifying glass) and become constant negative chatter in the mind. Worries are always about the future and as we are creative by nature, the worries ensure that we will create a future which will not be fulfilling for us.
We have become so wedded to our worries that if we have nothing to worry about, we become agitated and even feel that life has no purpose or value. We feel that we have nothing to live for. This is what is meant by 'worrying about the worries'.
How can we stop worrying about the worries? The key lies in becoming aware of our inner chatter and the illogical workings of the mind. Meditation is the key to developing this awareness. As we start to create a distance from the inner chatter, by becoming 'the watcher', we can merely observe. As we observe the chatter we will stop taking it seriously, and begin to become aware of the flow of existence, and the possibility of living with intuition as our guide, instead of the logic of the mind. In this way, we will begin to live in peace, instead of constant anxiety. Life will begin to flow instead of being a struggle.
In the second diagram alongside, the man at the top of the picture is 'the watcher'. Through meditation and developing awareness, he has started to merely observe the play of thoughts and emotions running through his mind. He is no longer under the control of the mind and its illogical decision-making processes. He is free from his worries because he is no longer worrying about them. He knows that it is futile to try to control the mind or to resist worries and that the key is to merely stand back and become the observer.