Mantra refinement

06. Discussions on AYP Deep Meditation and Samyama
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Beware of the “fly wheel effect”. Purification can gain some selfsustaining momentum. So cutting down to zero doesn’t necessarily mean overload symptoms stop immediately. Purification can go on on that same level before loosing momentum due to lack of practices.

In my own case, I had to go into grounding quite a bit (next to no practice), before things were beginning to balance out.

Given the symptoms you describe and what you have gone through, i would take it easy and give self-pacing a chance.

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89

This is probably going to sound weird, but here I go anyway.
I was not getting any better after even 3 or 4 days of cutting back to zero. It kept getting worse, actually. I wasn’t getting anywhere. So I decided to try again. I tried again every possible way I could possibly think meditation was supposed to be done. After each session, I would observe myself in the activity that followed shortly afterwards and ask : “Do I feel like I’ve got more inner silence, now?”. And to be honest this isn’t an easy question to answer. I read many times that we should lower our expectations, that it can take years for noticeable change to take place. But I need the change right now. I need inner silence right now.

Hi qspadone,

I would agree with Michael in that you need to give it some time. There are cases where people overdo practices where it can take weeks, or even months, for things to stabilise. It depends on how long they were overdoing for, and how sensitive their system is. It also depends on how serious they are about engaging in grounding practices.

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My biggest struggle is finding a consistent way to build a base of inner silence.

I’ve tried many approaches: passive awareness, breath meditation, deep meditation (both with and without mantra variations), and even solar centering.

I’ve had glimpses of this inner silence, but I haven’t been able to recreate those experiences reliably.

I believe one effective meditation session could resolve my issues with energetic overload.

I think I’ve found a method that works for me, even though it doesn’t seem to align with the standard AYP Deep Meditation instructions. Ultimately, I should focus on what I experience as effective and avoid what doesn’t work. For me, that means moving away from repeatedly reading lessons, lengthy forum inquiries (this thread has 83 messages!), and consuming countless other resources (forum posts, the Deep Meditation book).

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Hi Qspadone,

AYP deep meditation is not about “creating an experience.” It is about following a procedure (the same procedure) consistently in every session, every day, every month, and every year. Experiences during meditation can be anything from the sublime to the ridiculous. Experiences are irrelevant during meditation, just impurities being released, like the trash being thrown out. Why are you obsessing over the trash? The results of meditation are found in daily activity, gradually over time, assuming we are following the same procedure during daily practice.

This must seem very repetitive. It is to me, and likely to everyone else here. As long as you keep trying to reinvent meditation to suit your desire for a particular experience, you will continue to struggle. It does not work like that. It is about sticking with a method of practice regardless of experiences. Instead of aiming for an experience in meditation, which will never be the same or what you want, aim for a consistent procedure, which will always be the same, if you will but let it with a steady commitment. If you can do that, you will find gradual improvements in daily life. You will never, ever, find the experience you want during meditation. Only the procedure. The suggestion is to let go of this obsession you have with creating experiences during meditation, or anytime. It is a dead end, and preventing you from engaging in a consistent path of practice. Not much more to be said about it. Only repeating the basics, which you seem to have a problem with, because you keep looking for something else. Can you change that? If not, you are on your own (your experiment), and wishing you all the best finding what you want in your sittings.

The guru is in you.

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We all have to do that, find what works for us, based on causes and effects in our practice. Wishing you all the best!

The guru is in you.

95

Hi Qspadone,

I have been at this point. And this desire to recreate kick-started my interest in meditation. So, I don’t think that this initial obsession was a bad thing. It made me dive into meditation and yoga, and it made me practice regularly. It was this regular practice that not only slowly made the inner silence come forth more and more during meditation and also now gradually in daily life, but it is the very same practice that is now gradually unwinding my obsession with these experiences. I’m sure I’m still somewhat obsessed with them, but much less so than a year ago.

In summary, for me, an interest in meditation was kindled and a steady practice was fueled by a desire to recreate certain states, but then when this recreation gradually became a reality (for about a year, now most sessions of Deep Meditation and Samyama produce a thick lingering inner silence), the obsession with these states became less and less. And so I think striving for such a states can be a good thing, they can be valid bhakti for some time on the path. At least for me it was. Yogani’s advice

The suggestion is to let go of this obsession you have with creating experiences during meditation, or anytime.

would have been too much to ask from me. Letting go of the obsession right before and during my meditation sessions was crucial, yes, but if I had tried to quench this obsession also in daily life, there would have been no desire left to meditate at all. So following this advice back then might have been a dead end for me.

About the topic of looking around and trying out different practices. I have been very lucky with my sequence of “spiritual shopping” as it led me step by step into a stable practice I found with AYP.
If I had stuck to the first practice I encountered, Wim Hof breathing, it would have been a dead end for me, because the resultant state of Wim Hof breathing was not the bliss state I was looking for, albeit fascinating enough to open the world of pranayama and yoga in general for me. So, some “spiritual shopping” seems healthy until one finds what “works”. And what one considers “working” will gradually change as one’s desires change. It seems that AYP has the interesting quality of “working” for me even as my desires/obsessions gradually change. So I feel lucky that there was no urge to look elsewhere during nearly 3 years of practicing AYP.

So, my advice is to stick to whatever practice you feel “works” for you. But be patient with it, give it a few month or better a year before assessing and potentially switching again, and put on pause the striving to recreate states while sitting on the meditation cushion. If your striving to recreate a state of silence is there in your daily life and you suspect it to be the main reason why you currently want to do spiritual practices I wouldn’t try to quench it outside of practice.

My advice to treat a desire to recreate a certain state as a valid form of bhakti might not be a good one, so I would be curious to read Yogani’s thoughts on it.

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