Building the Will: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This week Chanel, from Petaluma, CA, shares some experiments she took away from a recent weeklong retreat.

Recently I attended a week long retreat with a wonderful mix of meditators. The discussions were rich as were the tips for moving forward in the practice. 

As a results driven person, I find myself a bit frustrated when I cannot quantify my progress in meditation. Sure, I can ask myself if I am more loving and less judging, but even that can be hard for me to gauge.

During the retreat, with the help of my retreat friends, I developed an experiment for each of the eight points that I could do to continue to work on building my will and to test my boundaries.

Meditation: the power of a voice

I often avoid looking at my written passages as a test to see if I can remember them. This actually makes it even more difficult to remember! A friend reminded me that there are recordings of Easwaran reading passages aloud (http://www.easwaran.org/the-prayer-of-st-francis.html). I believe this to be a great way to memorize passages the same way I memorize songs or lines. Also, hearing Easwaran read the passages makes the activity even more powerful. Utilizing this has made memorizing passages more intriguing for me.

The mantram: weaving the thread

I find my mind to be most speeded up in the morning. Right when I wake up it is rolling from old song lyrics to the to do list for the day to the script from a movie I haven't seen in over a decade. In the interest of weaving the thread of meditation throughout the day I began switching on the mantram right when I wake up. It has been a challenge to make it the first and last thought on both ends of the sleep train, but I find it useful to try.

Slowing down: creating space

This one, I must admit I directly "borrowed" from a fellow retreatant. The practice of simply leaving spaces in my calendar. This applies to both work and personal time. For some reason, I had the proclivity to pack my calendar full both during the week and on weekends. I had to a stop and think what was I so afraid of if I didn't have anything to do? Making space allowed time for more reflection and re-charging. It is such a simple thing to do but for some reason I had been avoiding it. I now see the value in the added space for the mind and the calendar. 

One pointed attention: the art of separation

For this point, I believe my biggest issue is distraction. I have never been very attached to my phone but I found that over time, looking at it has become a habit and one that I am not proud of. To weaken this habit, I decided to come at it in two directions. At work, I started to keep my phone away in my drawer and only look at it once a day at lunch time. A home, I have been experimenting with keeping it downstairs and not bringing it upstairs to my bedroom/sleeping area. Since we are all friends here, I will admit that I did cheat on this one because I continue to use the phone as my alarm clock. In my defense, I do keep it on airplane mode when it is upstairs and my alarm is the sound of chanting mantrams.

Training the senses: the freedom of the pause

Inserting time between the desire for something and the action to get it has created a respite of space in which I forget what the desire was. This may be due more to my forgetfulness than actual strategy but, for the most part, if I make myself wait for something I want I will soon forget about it or my desire will weaken. As an example, I am a big fan of cake. If there is a cake around, I will know about it. However, at a social gathering I decided to put my cake eating on hold until later. I completely forgot about it until after the party. (It also helps if the cake is store bought and not very appetizing).

Putting others first: resistance with love

I have been reading a great deal about how putting others first can sometimes mean saying no to them. It's a detail I over-looked in the past but I now see the importance of it in healthy relationships. While I cannot claim to be an expert by any means, I can say that I have tried it a few times and while it was difficult at first, it overall made a positive difference in how I perceive my relationships. It also relates to self-care and knowing how and when I can give my best to others.

Spiritual fellowship: creating retreats at home

This is a really creative practice for me. Gathering with friends who are meditators and building our own retreats is fun. There are so many creative options such as: making mantram art together, writing healing mantrams for someone in need, memorizing passages together, watching Easwaran talks and walking/spending time mantraming in nature together.

Spiritual reading: book club bonanza

I am proud to say that I am 1/4 of a spiritual book club with my friends and being a part of it keeps me motivated to continue reading and discussing Easwaran’s books. It is comforting to know when I am reading that my three dear friends are also reading and interpreting the same words.

In addition, upon the suggestion of a fellow retreatant, I have been keeping at least one volume of The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by my bed side and either opening up to a random page every night or specifically looking up a topic of interest for that day.

Overall, the more I experiment, the more I learn about the expression of forgiveness and gratitude. Forgiveness for myself, when I fail. Gratitude for the practice and for everything it brings to me including the challenges. Most importantly, I am grateful to be connected to so many dedicated and inspirational meditators that constantly motivate me to continue to do my best for all of us.

A Passage for September

To carry over the mantram theme from last week, we decided to choose a passage for this month that focuses on repeating the mantram. 

In this passage, the mantram is referred to in several different ways: “the sweet name of God,” “His holy name,” “Father Compassionate,” and “His name’s thunder.” This reflects the various terms used for the mantram across the world’s cultures and spiritual traditions, such as “Holy Name,” and “prayer word.” 

This passage reminds us that repeating the mantram in good times (“with beaming face”) will help us remember to repeat it in times of great need (“when danger stares in your face”). 
Join us this month in memorizing or putting into rotation “Chant the Sweet Name of God” and may its words inspire us to increase our collective mantram usage!

As always, feel free to share in the comments which lines you find striking, how this passage might inspire you, or any other thoughts. We love to hear from you.

---

Chant the Sweet Name of God – A Song of Sri Ramakrishna

With beaming face chant the sweet name of God
Till in your heart the nectar overflows.
Drink of it ceaselessly and share it with all!
If ever your heart runs dry, parched by the flames
Of worldly desire, chant the sweet name of God,
And heavenly love will moisten your arid soul.

Be sure, O mind, you never forget to chant
His holy name: when danger stares in your face,
Call on Him, your Father Compassionate;
With His name’s thunder, snap the fetters of sin!
Come, let us fulfill our hearts’ desires
By drinking deep of Everlasting Joy,
Made one with Him in Love’s pure ecstasy.

Furiously Mantraming

This week we have a post from Logan, a YA who's recently moved back to her home state of Texas. Logan shares below how she's using the mantram to navigate difficult times. 

Once again, I find myself in a time of tumultuous transition, unsettling uncertainty, and unexpected change. This chaotic mix is multi-faceted with contributing factors from a number of life’s elements. I just drove a U-Haul nearly two thousand miles across the country without a certain place to live, my grandfather is in the hospital, my finances are wonderfully low, and the dynamics of a close relationship changed without warning. It feels like such a mess!

But lo and behold! I have a toolbox full of things to help me navigate these stormy waters: Easwaran’s eight-point program of passage meditation. And the most powerful tool in the arsenal? The mantram!

As I became overwhelmed with all these things happening at once, I truly felt like I was desperately treading water in a stormy sea, watching as all my ships sank around me. My thoughts became difficult to control as my turbulent emotions hijacked my mind. The storm winds of fear and anger were tossing the waves all around me -- truly a tempest was raging within. Then I stuck out my hand in the dark and found the mantram and, boy, did I hold on for dear life!

Never in the seven years that I’ve been practicing passage meditation have I felt such intense surges of emotion. I didn’t know what to do with all the energy it was causing! I felt like screaming, so I screamed the mantram. If I wasn’t in a place conducive to screaming (such as my grandfather’s hospital room), I furiously wrote the mantram, the pen flying across the page. Every time a rage or fear-inducing thought arose, I clenched my teeth, and OM MANI PADME HUM!

The upsides? These past seven years of repeating the mantram ensured that it was there when I needed it, although there was a bit of groping around until I was able to grab hold of it. The intensity of my emotions means that the intensity of the mantram is also at an all-time high, and just like vigorous workouts yield potent results, so too, I am told, will vigorous mantraming.

Easwaran has taught me that this practice helps us turn fear into fearlessness, that it can transform anger into selfless work, that the power of our selfish desires can be fuel for driving us deeper in meditation. Well, thank goodness, because otherwise this mess would be only a mess, rather than an opportunity to drive my mantram deeper and to challenge the limits of my strength. And man, are they being challenged. Those muscles of the mind are going to be sore. But when the storm passes and the sea is still for a little while, I think I’ll be able to see just a little bit deeper into those waters.