Deep Mantra Medicine For The Mind And Heart
This meditation guides you into an advanced-level practice with the mantra. This practice is inspired by a key verse from the 7th Century Tantric text known as the Śiva Sutrā; chittam mantrah. The practice guides you to work with the vibration of the mantra through different levels of the subtle energy within the body. The primordial mantra Aum is used for this practice, but it can be used with another mantra if you are initiated into one. When this method is mastered, it can be applied to any mantra.
Transcript
Welcome to meditation.
This meditation is taking guidance from the 10th century Shiva Sutra.
In the 2nd chapter,
The 1st sutra says in Sanskrit,
Cittamantraha,
Cittamantraha.
The word cittam means the mind.
It means our interior activity.
It can mean thinking,
But it's much more than that.
It's what we're believing.
It's what we're feeling.
It's the inner dialogue and motivational energy that we have going on,
Cittam.
The word mantraha means mantra.
It means that pulsation of divine energy,
Sometimes called the name of the divine.
One may be initiated into specific mantra practice.
You may have a mantra that you practice with.
But the Shiva Sutra is coming from a universal point of view.
Cittamantraha is often translated as the mind is mantra.
It can also be just seen as these two words next to each other,
Cittamantraha,
Mind mantra.
We're going to enter into this meditation,
A mantra meditation that I'll guide you in.
Using the guidance of this sutra,
Wherever you are,
Make yourself comfortable.
If your eyes are open,
Let them close and turn your attention inward.
Feel the rhythm of your breath.
Maybe let your breath be a little bit deeper.
As you feel your breath,
Relax your physical body.
You can feel your physical body relaxing from the outside in,
Like the skin relaxes and then the flesh and then the organs and the bones,
So that you can really receive the feeling of your breath.
As you relax,
As you feel your breath,
As you take your attention inward,
You experience cittam,
Your inner activity,
Your thoughts,
Your feelings,
Cittam.
Begin this meditation by really examining this cittam.
How is your mind right now?
Is it active?
Is it still?
Is it clear?
Is it muddy?
What's the predominant feeling?
Is there a feeling?
Sometimes we feel relatively numb.
Sometimes we turn inside and there's so much feeling,
Too much feeling sometimes.
Just check yourself out in this moment.
Not to judge.
You're not judging yourself.
You're not even grading yourself.
You're just noticing,
Feeling.
Does it change as you relax your body?
Does it change as you deepen your attention to your breathing?
Now add the inner vibration of the mantra.
If you have a mantra,
If you've been initiated into a mantra practice and you have a mantra that you work with regularly in meditation,
Use that.
Otherwise,
Let's take the most basic mantra and the basis of all mantra from the Sanskrit tradition,
Which is the primordial syllable OM.
Just take OM as a mantra for this practice.
As a mantra in this sense,
In citta-mantraha,
We're talking about an inner mantra.
It's not like an outer mantra that we're singing,
Although this will guide you in chanting practice too.
But for this meditation,
We're talking about an inner mantra.
So you're repeating the syllable OM internally.
In fact,
Your face gets very relaxed.
You're not even saying it silently with your lips or your tongue.
It might feel like you're holding the syllable OM right there in your mind,
Right there in the same space where you think.
OM.
You choose.
You can repeat it over and over again,
Like a japa mantra,
OM,
OM.
You can sustain the vibration and tune into an eternal OM that just keeps going,
Like a continuous OM.
In fact,
I would suggest trying both.
As a third thing to try,
You can also try coordinating OM with the breath.
Feel these different ways of working with the mantra.
And then as you choose the one that feels the most resonant,
The next thing that we'll try to do is work with where the mantra and how the mantra vibrates within the cittam.
At first,
As I said,
It may just be like you're holding it there in your mind.
It might even feel like you're holding it in your head,
Right there where you think.
You're trying to memorize something,
You know,
That part of your inner faculty.
See what it feels like there.
Like where you think about things that are trivial or not so important,
Not so meaty.
And then see what it feels like to lower the vibration.
By lower,
I mean actually like bring it lower in your body.
Like instead of in your head,
Maybe now you feel it more in your throat area,
The throat chakra,
Or that region in the upper part of your torso,
The space between the head and the torso.
But it's like this is where you might have important decision.
It's not just a trivial thought.
This is when you're using your mind for something that matters.
Something that you have to weigh the consequences of.
You need to say something,
For instance.
But it's really important that you say it the right way.
See if you can let Aum,
The mantra vibration,
Vibrate there.
And with that same level of feeling,
That same kind of level of importance,
Important decision,
Something you're more deeply considering.
And you know,
If it changes the way that you're doing the mantra,
If it feels like it's getting softer,
Louder,
Deeper,
Higher pitch,
It doesn't matter.
I want you to come back to this again and again.
So there's no pressure to get it right.
You're just experimenting here.
Keep relaxing your body.
Now let's go even deeper.
Let's go even lower in the body,
Deeper in the vibration.
Maybe now you find your attention going into the chest.
Maybe the heart chakra,
The middle of your chest kind of area.
What we call the middle heart.
And here,
It's like,
What really matters?
What really,
Really matters?
What do you really love?
What is sacred to you?
This is more a level of what's true,
What's deeply true in your psyche,
In the chittam.
Here the chittam is deeper.
It's what you believe.
Let the mantra vibrate here and see how this feels.
So you're doing the mantra,
You're expressing the mantra,
You could say,
You're giving the mantra as the meditator.
Sacred is the practitioner.
You're not only giving the mantra,
But you're also receiving it.
This is a great secret of mantra practice.
So even though you could say you're the one who is generating Aum,
In this case,
The mantra,
Equal to that is you receiving the mantra.
Receiving means feeling.
Receiving means perceiving,
Getting,
Holding,
Allowing that vibration to move.
Now we're still focused right here in the middle of our chest,
Right at this level of chittam,
Where we feel love,
Where we know what really matters,
What's truly important,
What is deeply true.
Sometimes we can find this place by considering the opposite,
By considering when our deepest passions are frustrated,
Or when something is not true,
And how that feels,
Where we feel that in our being.
What does it feel like to allow Aum to move there?
Now go even deeper,
Even lower.
Now you might find your attention moving towards your belly,
Towards your navel center,
The Manipura chakra,
Or even sometimes deeper in the body,
In your guts,
In your womb.
And this is where you feel the mind go in moments of the deepest,
Greatest impact.
This is where you feel deep terror and your most haunting fears,
Not that that's where we're going in this meditation,
But to help you find that place.
And on the positive side,
This is where you feel your deepest truth,
Like your existential truth,
Like that which cannot be thwarted.
Way down deep in your belly,
Aum.
See if you can hold the mantra there with that level of vibration.
And here it almost feels like you're dying.
Here it almost feels like that level of surrender.
Like all of these upper centers almost collapse down into the cauldron here.
Aum.
It's like everything that you are,
Everything that you have,
Everything that you could care about or think about or know about,
You just let this all collapse in,
Down,
Into the mantra,
Into the vibration.
This deepest,
Deepest level.
And again,
The mantra might change,
It might change its pitch,
It might change its frequency.
It might take a different kind of effort to even stay alert,
Deeply relaxing into this lower center.
Aum.
This is even deeper than words.
It's deeper than speech.
It's not just something important that you have to say.
It's the most primal,
Authentic pulsation that your true speech might come from,
But it's beyond words.
It's deeper than words.
Aum is a good mantra for this center because more complicated speech dissolves into this cauldron of energy,
Deep in your belly.
Everything,
Your whole inner experience,
Your thoughts,
Your feelings,
Your beliefs,
Your deepest energetic impulse saturated in the mantra.
What is that experience like?
What is the Shiva Sutra giving us?
What experience is it pointing us to?
Chittam Mantrahah,
Your name,
Your ideas,
Your beliefs,
Your thoughts,
Your feelings,
Your fears,
Your hopes,
Your desires,
All now mantra,
All now Aum.
See if you can do this sort of edging practice where you let yourself surrender so deeply into the mantra,
Let your body relax so much,
Let all of this Chittam dissolve into the mantra without going away,
Without falling asleep,
Without passing out.
You stay enough here to embrace and receive this.
Any level that erupts back into Chittam,
Because it happens,
Any other level as it erupts back into Chittam,
The feelings,
The thoughts,
The beliefs,
The chatter,
The vision,
However the Chittam begins to bubble and play in the belly,
In the center,
Heart,
In the throat,
In the face,
In the head.
Once again,
The mantra is the remedy,
The mantra,
Aum,
In the head,
In the throat,
Aum,
In the center,
Chest,
Aum,
Down into the belly and beyond.
The most basic thing is the mind wanders off,
It comes back to the mantra.
You've heard that instruction a million times.
Now let that idea of the mind be enriched.
It's not just what's happening in your head.
Way down deep,
In the deepest,
Truest guts of you,
Aum.
The mantra is the name of love.
It's the name of the all-pervasive source energy.
It's the name of the unnameable,
Letting that reality permeate you.
Die into that reality,
Aum.
Carry on in this meditation as long as you want to,
Coming back to the mantra and taking the vibration of the mantra deeper and deeper,
Chittam Mantrah,
Aum.
