WHIRLING
TECHNIQUE: LET GO AND LET GOD IN
ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE
This is a beautiful, natural meditation to center your energies. It is an ancient and powerful technique, drawn from Sufism, a mystic sect of Islam.
This is as simple as a technique can get. All you have to do is whirl, turn round and round and round – the way you used to do as a child.
Whirling is a powerful centering technique.
The beautiful thing about this technique is that your body will be whirling, going round and round – but your Being is right at the center, unmoving – like the unmoving center of a moving wheel.
INSTRUCTION
Do not have any food or drink for at least three hours before this meditation.
Some people may experience a sense of nausea during this meditation. This will disappear after a few days of practice. If it persists, discontinue the meditation.
The meditation has two phases: whirling and resting.
Step 1: Whirling
DURATION
Minimum 21 minutes
INSTRUCTION
Whirling is usually done in an anti-clockwise direction, with the right arm held higher, palm facing upwards, and the left arm lower, palm facing downwards.
If you are uncomfortable whirling anti-clockwise, switch to clockwise.
Whirling can be practiced for hours – for as long as you feel comfortable. But you will need to whirl for at least one hour to experience the 'energy whirlpool'.
Start with whirling slowly, let your whole body be soft and unresisting. As you whirl, the passing images will become blurred. Let them flow past. Don't try to focus on anything – it will make you dizzy or nauseous.
For the first ten minutes, go really slow. Then build up speed over the next ten minutes. After twenty minutes or so, you will feel as if the whirling has taken you completely over.
There will be action and movement on the periphery of the circle, but at the center will be certain stillness. You will feel as if you are a witness to all this action, not a participant in it.
Step 2: Resting
DURATION
10 minutes
INSTRUCTION
Resting cannot be planned. It has to happen. When you are whirling very fast, you may feel as if your body is going to fall.
Don't be afraid or resist the fall. Also, don't plan the fall.
If your body is soft and pliable, you will not get hurt. Just fall lightly and easily.
Lying down, just feel your body's contact with the earth. Feel your body has become one with the earth.
Keep your eyes closed. Remain silently in the same position for ten minutes.
After this meditation, remain silent and meditative for a few hours.
INTENSITY: WILL AND PRAYER
Intensity is a strong feeling that I should achieve, and a strong prayer that I should achieve. It is like when you put your whole being, you put all your effort, and you know that the ultimate is supporting you.
Intensity is a deep will, a strong will, and a deep prayer. If either of these is missing, it will not be called intensity: a strong will and a deep prayer.
If you understand the Divine is supporting you, the effort you put in even if it is a little, suddenly you will see the success happens. Just by remembering that the Divine is supporting you.
You don't even have to bother whether it is factual or not, or you don't even have to measure am I supported or not, or how many hours he stood with me. It just happens!
A small story:
A man asks a boon from God: 'God, you should always be with me.' God says, 'Alright, I will always be with you.'
Whenever he was in joy, the man used to see two sets of footprints, his and God's. Whenever he was in suffering, he used to see only one set of footprints.
So he calls God again, 'What is this? Whenever I am in joy, you are following me, but when I am in suffering, there is only one set of footprints. You are not following me.'
God laughs and says, 'Fool! when you are in joy, you are walking and I am following you. When you are in suffering, I am carrying you. So the footprints that you are seeing are mine, not yours!'
So be very clear when you are intense, when you just remember He is there supporting you, even a simple effort, suddenly becomes reality. It will become successful.
ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE
You always feel that you cannot live your life without planning. Planning is a disease of the mind!
You never realize, whenever you plan, you can only succeed to the limit of your planning. You are limited by the known.
When you do not plan, you allow life to happen spontaneously. You enter into the space of unlimited possibilities. Be intense in whatever you are doing and leave the results to God or the cosmos, knowing that He is there supporting you.
DURATION
All 24 hours
INSTRUCTIONS
Just for one day, decide that you will do everything with intensity and surrender the results of your actions at God's or life's or the Cosmos' feet. Just move with whatever life brings.
Decide that you will not use your intellect to plan and judge and make decisions.
After all, it is just twenty-four hours!
You are not going to lose everything you have in just twenty-four hours. If something can leave you, if you don't guard it for just twenty-four hours, let it go. It is not worth keeping.
For one day, consciously decide that you are not going to use your intellect to solve your problems. It is your intellect that tells you that you don't have the natural intelligence to solve your problems spontaneously.
The moment you find your mind planning ahead, just drop the plan. Allow things to unfold on their own. Act from your being, not from your intellect. Again and again, have the courage to remain in the space of not-knowing.
You will find that you have enough clarity, enough spontaneous awareness to run your life. When you drop the thinking, planning, worrying, you will find that a higher intelligence comes into play.
Understand, this higher power is not outside of you. The intelligence that is running this universe is also inside you. It can take care.
TIME MAKES YOU INTENSE
Time can make you intense. How does this happen? For example, everyday in the morning from eight to nine o' clock you do guru puja - offerings/ritual to the feet of the Master. So you are intense for that one hour. You do not do any other work for that one hour.
So everyday when your perform the puja, that mere remembrance that at this particular time you have to do puja makes you intense for that one hour.
In the morning when you set aside time to do yoga, you intensely do yoga during this time and not think about anything else. In the same way everyday you eat two to three times a day. Again this remembrance to eat at a particular time makes you intense.
Whether as a concept or as an understanding when time enters it makes you intense. Remember the concept of time. Now you are sitting here. You have to be sitting here till I finish my session. Why not sit with complete awareness, so that the whole benefit happens in you intensely, instead of sitting in a lousy way.
While eating why not be intense, instead of eating in a lousy way. Taking a shower everyday, you have to take a shower so why not be aware of the whole action, instead of being in a lousy way.
You have to eat, you have to do guru puja, you have to do yoga, you have to take a shower once a day, and you have to sleep. Just with these five actions, which are inevitable in you, bring intensity. They are life's inevitable actions, like driving to your office.
When you understand with the boundary of past and present it makes you passionate. When you understand that there is no boundary of past and present it makes you passive. Both are a blessing.
If you are passionate you will achieve in the outer world. If it makes you passive you will achieve in the inner world. Both are a blessing.
Even if you understand time with the boundary of past and future, that understanding will lead you to the experience of boundary-less time. So through passion become passive.
Understand, I am opening another one door. Understanding about time with the boundary of past and future will naturally make you intense in the outer world, for example I am going to be here at this time why not be intense.
Let me be aware intensely, fully alive intensely.
Bring time consciousness into all your activities. I have to sit in this office for eight hours, so why just be an engineer's clerk for ten years, in a lousy way. Why not be intense and rise in the ladder. This brings intensity in the outer world and success. The concept of time and understanding time brings intensity to you.
When you decide let me be intense and chant the mantras. Suddenly in a few days you catch boundary-less time: which is not packed by the past or by the future. So the present gives you the opening freedom.
The suffocation-less inner space is what I call the Vedic mind. Which leads you to inner world success. When you understand time with boundary of past and future it brings you the responsibility of being intense. When you understand the time without boundary it brings you the tremendous freedom of in-action.
When you understand time with past and present with boundaries you become responsible in the outer world. When you understand time without boundary you can become free from the inner world.
Intensity without intention!
3. HOW SHOULD I LIVE INTENSELY?