Podcast Ep. 15 ~ Meditation Success Path: from Self-Awareness to Self-Mastery

Following our episode on self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-mastery, episode 13 of our podcast series, quite a few people have written to us asking which meditation practice they should start with and how to use all the various meditations we have on the website.

Which meditations are particularly suited to cultivating self-awareness, which is for self-regulation, and is there a path that can be followed to support successful meditation?

These are great questions because we need to understand the available techniques and how to apply them properly.

In this podcast episode, we discuss:

1. What is success in meditation?
2. Should we use one technique or many, and if many, how do we use them?
3. The success path is defined.
4. The journey begins with relaxation techniques because self-awareness is difficult if you’re not relaxed. The first is the 3 Easy Steps to Deep Relaxation, which teaches this.
5. The second stage begins once you have attained a degree of relaxation and is when you cultivate self-awareness. The primary practice for this is Inner Silence, Antar Mouna.
6. Being inside the mind is like being inside a washing machine. Inner Silence gets you outside of your mind.
7. The third state of self-awareness and self-regulation is mastering our energy systems, our life force, prāna. Initially, this can be done by learning the breathing technique Ujjayi Pranayama.
8. Once you have developed ujjayi and connected to the breath and prana, you will move to the Pranic Healing Meditations series, which teaches you how to direct prana to specific parts of the body, facilitating healing and revitalization.
9. Once you can charge your body with energy, we teach a very important series of meditations called the Core Strength, Calm Mind. It teaches grounding, the ability to remain grounded and stable in the present moment, and self-awareness while facing stress and life's challenges.
10. Once you can work with your prana and these grounding and energizing practices, you can move into the next stage by developing your connection to your highest self, the source of your intelligence and intuition. Advanced mantras and Ajapa Japa Meditations are taught at this stage.
11. The fifth stage takes self-awareness and self-regulation to self-mastery.
    

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Podcast Transcript ~ Episode 15

Following our episode on self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-mastery, episode 13 of our podcast series, quite a lot of people have written to us asking us which meditation practice they should start with and how to use all the various meditations we have on the website. Which meditations are particularly suited to cultivating self-awareness, which is for self-regulation, and is there a path that can be followed to support successful meditation? These are great questions because we need to understand the available techniques and how to apply them properly.

Firstly, what do we mean by success in meditation?

Initially, success in meditation means experiencing a sense of being more relaxed, having a calmer, stronger mind, more resilient emotions, and feeling more connected to yourself and something greater in life. These result from your ability to self-regulate and create positive feelings. The term for good feelings comes from the Greek euphoria, eu = good, phoria = feelings.

The ultimate definition of success is being able to remain self-aware under all circumstances, whether you feel good or bad. In the great spiritual text, the Bhagavad Gita, the ultimate state of well-being is called steady wisdom, a state in which you are affected by life but not disturbed by anything that arises in life. You do not lose your center or your sense of self under any circumstances. This is a great thing to achieve.

Until that occurs, if our center is not solid, we need life to be stable. We become destabilized if life is not stable and we don't have a center. But if we have a solid center, no matter what happens in life, we don't lose that center. And then we're better able to manage whatever arises. This is the ultimate mastery of self-regulation, the ability to manage ourselves no matter what happens. 

For most of us, that's an ideal, an aspiration. When we do feel good, that's great. But can we stay self-aware when we're not feeling so good? This is where the definition of true success in meditation comes in. Can we remain self-aware, strong, centered, and grounded, facing whatever arises, knowing that we have confidence in ourselves that we can manage whatever comes? This is what we are aiming for on the success path.

To achieve this, during the good times, you have a variety of techniques that you can learn, practice, and apply. Then, you have a toolkit you can use to keep working on developing yourself, your body, mind, and spirit. And then, during the difficult times, you have knowledge, experience, and techniques that you can fall back on, that are well rehearsed, and that enable you to remain strong, stable, and centered while you manage whatever is going on in your life, or the lives or your loved ones.

Being self-centered in this context is a positive, not a negative thing.

So today, I want to outline our approach to the yoga and meditation success path and show you how each meditation technique fits into a path.

One technique or many

Of course, some people feel they need one meditation technique, and that is it. They are happy with that and don’t need anything else. For others, practicing a technique leads them to a certain place in themselves where they recognize that there is more that they can do.

Several students said, “Look, I’m very happy with what I’ve got.” And we’ve said to them, that’s fine, but there’s no harm in trying out other techniques that might give you additional benefits that you previously did not think possible. And for many of those students, once they’ve tried those techniques, they’ve said they can feel these deep shifts internally and are very grateful for the opportunity to learn these practices.

However, having said this, ultimately, once you have reached a certain level of attainment, you will only need one technique. But that usually comes later, once you have gained certain skills and abilities and a deeper understanding of spiritual life. Until then, we offer a comprehensive approach to fostering self-awareness and self-regulation, ultimately leading to self-mastery. When you reach the stage of self-mastery, you can choose one technique and practice it to completion. And then that will probably take you to the end of the journey.

Success path

The success path easily fits into your busy life and can provide many of the things you seek in your meditation practice. We call this path a success path because we believe that if you follow this particular training sequence, you will gain all that Yoga and meditation promise.

A success path is a virtuous circle in which each stage of the self-development journey naturally leads to and supports the next, creating a sustainable, self-reinforcing journey of personal growth. It is a sure way to navigate the various forms of meditation to achieve a calm, strong, integrated mind and a foundation for higher spiritual attainment.

The first stage is the cultivation of relaxation.

Even though we think that self-awareness is the most important thing in meditation, most people's first step must be a graduated, systematic, progressive approach to relaxation. The journey begins with relaxation techniques. This is because self-awareness is difficult if you’re not relaxed. If you are tense, stressed, anxious, or struggling with life’s problems, your awareness will be pulled towards the problem and away from yourself. Therefore, relaxation is the first step and a fundamental prerequisite for both health and ongoing self-development. A relaxed body and mind form the foundation for building more advanced practices.

We have two main guided meditations that focus on relaxation.

The first is the 3 Easy Steps to Deep Relaxation guided meditation series, which systematically deconstructs relaxation meditation into three parts:

1. body awareness
2. breath awareness
3. breath control.

Each step takes you progressively deeper into the experience of relaxation, which builds up in your body. Relaxation can be stored in your body. In the same way that stress is stored, you want to store relaxation.

Initially, you learn to recognize where you unconsciously store tension in your body and how stress builds up and adversely affects you. Then, you learn to remove stress and store relaxation, building feelings of vitality, strength, and well-being.

The most powerful relaxation meditation is Yoga Nidra, which induces deep relaxation, ideally while you remain awake and aware in the lying position. Initially, most people sleep because they’re tired, stressed, and exhausted from their busy lives. Yoga Nidra is wonderful and very powerful as a way of recouping energy and reducing the adverse effects of stress. But once you get past this stage, start recouping your energy, and stay awake, the practice can powerfully reinforce self-awareness.

Yoga Nidra can powerfully reinforce self-awareness because you have to stay awake. You must stay self-aware as you move through the various layers of your body, from the gross to the more subtle into the psyche. And eventually, if you can, into the spirit. And as you stay awake, you become more self-aware. You become aware of your unconscious mental, emotional, and psychic patterns. You're able to release some of this deep-seated stress, access your strengths, and manage some of the negative patterns that have been undermining your life and making you miserable.

Once you have attained a degree of relaxation, the second stage begins. Now is the time to focus on the cultivation of self-awareness.

As you master relaxation, your focus shifts to the first of the self-awareness practices, also called mindful self-observation. The main practice for this is inner silence, antar mouna.

This practice starts with awareness of sensations because it's very important to build that ability to be self-aware, aware of yourself, and aware of the object of meditation simultaneously, and to hold that duality. I'm aware of myself and also a sound, vision, touch, smell, or taste.  And I begin to develop this capacity to dissociate from the experience and to become more self-conscious. We aim not to get lost in the object, not to get lost in the experience, but to maintain our self-awareness at the same time. 

You start with awareness of sounds, and this practice can also translate to awareness of tastes when you're eating or with touch, smell, or vision. Any of the five senses can be used.

Awareness of sensations enables us to develop quite a distinct sense of the self as an observer, being very separate from the object we observe. This enables your experience of meditation to evolve because, ultimately, the definition of meditation is the connection of the observer with the object of meditation using some meditative practice that enables connection but does not lose self-awareness.

Once you have a sense of how to separate yourself from the act of observation, you become a passive witness while observing sensations. Then, you can try to hold this witness position while you observe your mind. And if you can do this, you will no longer be pulled into the mind.

Being inside the mind is like being inside a washing machine

When you are pulled into the mind, it’s like being inside a washing machine and tumbling around. The problem of being inside a washing machine is that all the controls are on the outside. In order to be free from being tumbled around. You need to get outside of the washing machine and access the controls.

This is what happens with the meditation technique of inner silence: when you can cultivate the sense of yourself as separate from the mind, you’re no longer being tumbled around by the mind. You’re outside of the mind looking in. You are self-aware, more identified with the unchanging self, which transcends the mind, and you can now see the mind and its constantly changing patterns of energies. You start to recognize your habitual thought patterns and emotional reactions. Once you develop more self-regulation techniques, you can influence your mind. Or you can simply remain self-aware and choose not to interfere. It’s up to you.

The more self-regulation techniques you know, the more you can influence the egoic mind and the deep psyche, which houses all the powerful forces and archetypes that drive your inner and outer life.

Inner silence meditation techniques build a kind of control and objectivity that enables you to develop self-control. You learn how to observe your thoughts, emotions, and sensations without judgment. You begin to understand the inner workings of the mind. Once you can see what is going on inside the mind, you can more easily connect to your strengths, which are powerfully life-affirming. Then, you can seek ways to deal with your weaknesses better. Part of this process requires that you develop self-regulation, and part requires you to make appropriate changes in your life.

The third state of self-awareness and self-regulation is mastering our energy systems, our life force, prāna.

In this stage, you are building your capacity to make positive changes in your body and mind by focusing more on self-regulation. This is where self-regulation really comes in. You've done a bit of self-awareness work. Now, let's start to build our strengths. Let's try to feel better.

The good thing about this is that the more self-regulation you build, the more you enhance your capacity for self-awareness. It’s a loop. They each add to and build each other.

In this stage, there are three powerful guided meditation programs to take your self-regulation mastery to a level. All three enabled you to manage and master prāna, the vital life force that is central to many yoga and tantra practices. Techniques that control and direct prana enhance energy levels, mental clarity, and emotional balance. These techniques build resilience and enable us to handle the stresses and challenges of life better.

The first technique you learn is ujjayi prānāyāma, an advanced form of diaphragmatic breathing called ujjayi pranayama. It is the main breathing technique used in many of our guided meditations.

And I should say at this point that there's a very strong connection between prana and the mind.  And we see this in the tantric symbols of the. Two serpents coiling around the spinal cord.  One of the serpents represents prana for physical vitality and energy. And the other serpent is symbolic of the energies of the mind. These two forces are intertwined. If you influence your prana, you influence your mind.  And if you influence your mind, you influence your prana, your life force, your energy. 

Prana

Once you have developed ujjayi and started connecting to the breath and prana you move to the Pranic Healing Meditations series. This series uses breath and visualization to direct prana to specific parts of the body, facilitating healing and revitalization. By mastering prana, you improve your physical health and gain greater control over your mental and emotional states, leading to enhanced self-regulation and resilience.

As I said, there is this wonderful interaction between prana and the mind. You'll feel much better. You feel strong and resilient. You have energy to power your thinking, digestion, heart, and breathing, and all your physical organs work better. Your whole capacity to live is enhanced. You feel charged up with energy.

Core Strength, Calm Mind

Once you can charge your body with energy, we teach a very important series of meditations called the Core Strength, Calm Mind series. It teaches you to manipulate your vital life force and use that energy to manage stress and face difficulties with greater confidence and resilience.

 Grounding

The main practice here is grounding. Grounding means remaining grounded and stable in the present moment and self-aware while facing stress and life's challenges. The guided meditation techniques in this series empower you to develop a more accepting, courageous spirit by strengthening your deep, energetic, psychological, and emotional core.

The more grounded you are, the better you are at remaining self-aware in the present moment. Thus, you deal with the situation more consciously, responding rather than reacting.

If you lose your ground, you cannot be self-aware, and you will be caught up in the body's fight-and-flight response; all the chemicals released in that response and your mental defences will come into play. Some of these defences will be helpful, but some of them may cause more problems than they are worth.

Once you can work with your prana and these grounding and energizing practices, you can move into the next stage.

This stage involves developing your connection to your highest self, the source of your intelligence and intuition. We engage with mantras and ajapa japa. Mantras are powerful sound vibrations that influence the mind and body. Ajapa japa combines breath and mantra, fostering a deeper connection with subtle energies within the body. This practice reveals the underlying forces mapped by yogis and seers, aiding in uncovering unconscious patterns and enhancing spiritual insight.

Mantra meditations involve repeating sounds like AUM, Soham, or Om Namah Shivaya, often using a mala, which is like prayer beads. Ajapa Japa just synchronizes the breath and the mantra to move prana and the mantra in various psychic passages to awaken the chakras. 

Ajapa Japa takes your awareness deep into the unconscious mind, harmonizing the various instinctive and spiritual forces. Even its initial preliminary form, which is quite simple and easy to practice, is an extremely powerful and effective meditation practice that can be learned by almost anyone and used for healing and enlightenment. It not only deepens self-awareness but activates and harmonizes the subtle energies within the body, promoting overall well-being and spiritual growth.

The fifth stage takes self-awareness and self-regulation to self-mastery.

The final stages of Big Shakti’s success path involve the most advanced techniques for self-realization and enlightenment. By mastering prana and integrating mantras with the breath, we become attuned to the intricate dynamics of our mind and body and how these fit with cosmic rhythms.

These advanced practices lead to profound insights into yourself and an understanding of how you fit into the macrocosm and how the microcosm fits into the macrocosm. Ultimately, there was a macrocosm, and then we, as a microcosm, came into existence and evolved. And we are continuously evolving as microcosmic beings within a cosmic macrocosmic universe. The more we practice advanced meditations, these very powerful techniques, the more we feel like we are part of and connected to the macrocosm. And we transcend our socially conditioned, socially constructed self. We start to live in harmony with our highest values and purpose. And we feel that we are part of something great.

The most important of these include Ajapa Japa in its more advanced stages, which involves bringing the breath and mantra to the spinal cord, where they activate the chakras.

Self-mastery enables you to engage with various Chakra Meditations that help you align, balance, and cleanse your chakras. Once the chakras are cleansed and strengthened, you can tune into the various cosmic energies related to those chakras. These authentic chakra meditation techniques enable you to listen to your intuition and access your inner power, vitality, and self-knowledge.

Advanced Kundalini Kriya Techniques, including complex breath control practices and energy-cleansing techniques, mantras, and visualization techniques that purify the body and mind and prepare you for higher states of consciousness. These are taught in our advanced courses, both live and online.

These powerful tantric meditations utilize intricate visualizations and energy work to transcend ordinary consciousness and access higher spiritual realms. Through these advanced practices, we achieve a state of self-realization where we experience a profound sense of unity with the universe and a deep understanding of our true nature, our highest Self.

Integrating Eastern and Western Approaches

One of the most important elements of Big Shakti’s courses is the theory that combines traditional Eastern methods with Western depth psychology. We especially love Carl Jung's writings and use several other Western psychological methods, which we think are very important for self-development.

This integration creates a holistic approach to personal growth, making the knowledge and practices contained in the ancient wisdom traditions accessible and relevant to contemporary life. Theory is essential if you wish to know how to practice the techniques and clearly understand their aims and how they fit into the tradition of Eastern self-development methods. Without theory, you gain experience, but you can’t move forward with a deep understanding of what you’re doing and where you’re going.

It's like learning to drive a car. If you don't have the theory, well, you can take the car out onto the freeway, and you'll have an experience. But how good will that experience be? So, the more theory you have about driving a car, the safer, better, and more enjoyable your journey will be. 

Our courses draw on these time-tested practices, providing guided meditations and courses that incorporate theory and practice.

We provide a systematic, graduated approach that ensures that you build a solid foundation before moving on to more advanced practices. This progression prevents overwhelm and ensures that each stage of development is fully integrated, leading to sustainable growth and lasting transformation. This structured, progressive path ensures that each stage of development is built upon the previous one. And he creates a sustainable, powerful journey of self-discovery and self-transformation.

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