Glad to share a new video with you, Living Meditation: How to Merge Meditation Practice with Daily Natural Life
You can easily make your life a natural, living meditation. Many people on the path find that balancing formal meditation practice and contemplation of Truth with an active natural life difficult. This is due to seeing spiritual practice in isolation compared to the world. This is the case even for those are steeped in teachings that embrace the world as the Divine itself.
One one side, regular meditators access peaceful states during their meditation practice, but often can become disturbed by various happenings in daily life. They can become worried or anxious that they might miss their meditation practice and then become a wreck during a stressful moment during the day. To avoid this shock, they slowly withdraw and avoid things that could cause this overwhelm and try to do more meditation. On the other side, those who live a very active life can become overly enmeshed in the happenings of their world and body and thus have difficulty finding peace during meditation. They may not want to meditate for fear of how difficult it might be and throw themselves into more and more activity to avoid arising thoughts and emotions.
The key is to discover and access the common aspect that is ever present both in formal practice and natural life. This is of course our own Awareness, or the simple feeling of just Being. This feeling of Being is there in the depths of meditation, dream and deep sleep as well as during active hours of the waking state. It is there with you right now, as you read this and watch this video. During meditation, you notice and rest in this Being, but during active hours, you may forget the Being, the natural Awareness that is aware of everything and become engaged with thoughts and external happenings.
The next step is to begin to notice the feeling of Being or Awareness while you are active. At first, it may not feel natural. So use your work or an enjoyable hobby as a doorway to this practice. Music is a perfect example, but you could use anything, like painting, running, rock climbing, writing, even washing dishes. I have described the method for this with music practice in my previous video, https://youtu.be/gYH4-kZ5ZIQ but it is as simple as noticing you are aware and resting in the feeling of Awareness or Being as you are doing the activity, gently relaxing your intention and attention and allowing it to dissolve in Being. You will notice that the activity will continue despite this shift and you will be naturally witnessing your body and arising experiences happening all by themselves. This is active meditation! It is that simple.
Once you are comfortable doing this, you will recognize the simple truth that you are already meditating! By being aware and naturally knowing this, spontaneously, without effort is itself meditation. There is nothing else you need to do to meditate. It is happening automatically, as simple as breathing. It is even simpler than breathing actually. Now outside of formal practice and hobbies, you can be at Home in any situation, anywhere. It continues unbroken, 24/7.
The merging of these two aspects of life leads to more and more freedom, lightness and Peace while continuing to lead an active life in the world as necessary.
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The music intro includes an excerpt from the Muthuswamy Dikshitar composition Annapurne Visalakshi in Sama raga, Adi talam.
When there is a spontaneous silence in the talk, please use it as an opportunity to rest in Being. It is left in on purpose. 🙂
Other videos by Prasant on this Topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQYOeeKfh4Q&list=PLvRlCjx-q4ZTvB_qAfzAn2wKuzdnhZaMH
Connect with Prasant:
Website: https://prasantmusic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prasantmusic/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prasantmusic/
Satsang (held online via zoom): https://prasantmusic.com/satsang/
If you found this video useful, please share it with friends and loved ones! Prasant is available to speak to your group or organization about Realization Through Music or on approaches to meditate with Sound and Music as well as Satsang. He is also available for concerts, masterclasses, private lessons on the saxophone. You can contact him through his website linked above.
You can also support more of this work by downloading Prasant’s free meditation albums and choosing to contribute there: https://prasantmusic.bandcamp.com/album/meditations-ragas-on-saxophone-vol-2
#activemeditation #meditation