Meditation Support

The Daily Meditator: January 2008

Experience Soul Freedom

By Bharat Cornell

If someone offered you a way to reduce restlessness during meditation, would you use it?

Swami Kriyananda has offered us a solution for many years. You can use this technique to not only calm your restlessness, but to feel freer in your consciousness. 

Swamiji has said that “prayers never asked are never answered.” In this practice, you consciously offer to God everything that keeps you separate from Him. The Masters have promised us that God will free us from our limitations—if we give them, with deep faith, to Him.

The following visualization by Swami Kriyananda helps you do this: 

“Make it a point, every night before you fall asleep, to check the feelings in your heart. See whether any burrs of attachment still cling there, affixed by the desires you may have awakened during the day. If you find any such “burrs” there, mentally build a fire and cast them into it. Watch with a smile of relief as those burrs burn to ashes.

“What is non-attachment? It is not accepting anything as being truly one’s own. When you build that mental bonfire nightly that I suggested, cast into it, from your heart, every branch and twig of possession, of self-definition, of personal association in life. Tell yourself, ‘Everything in my life, including my very self, belongs to You, O Lord.’”

This visualization will help you experience a growing sense of soul freedom. Recently a young man—who had just started practicing this technique—told me he found that in his dreams, he was flying. This is not so surprising; when we offer to God our attachments, our spirit naturally soars.

What one specifically experiences is not what is important. What is important is that you give yourself completely to God. God will respond to your heartfelt devotion of wanting Him alone. It is His law. He must respond. He is waiting for His children to decide that they want only Him. Building a mental bonfire and consciously and lovingly casting your desires into the flames of Spirit is a beautiful way of telling God that you want Him.

Paramhansa Yogananda said that prayer is two, three—even one-hundred times more effective after we have interiorized our energy in meditation. When our energy is centered in the spine, our prayers have the conviction of our whole being behind them. So I recommend you use this visualization after doing Hong-Sau or another meditation technique.  

The Blessed Lord knows what is in our hearts. In this New Year let us faithfully practice our meditation techniques; offer our love and life force to the Infinite One; and, if you feel so inspired—end your waking hours by building a mental bonfire and give everything back to God. Let the fire of Spirit purify you until only God remains.  

Paramhansa Yogananda said that every desire must be satisfied. When we desire only God, He will come to us.

May 2008 bring you ever closer to God, and your heart be filled with His ever-new joy.

In divine friendship,
B.  

Ananda Meditation Ministry
14618 Tyler Foote Road
Nevada City, CA 95959
530-478-7561 ext 7014
meditation@ananda.org
www.learn-meditation.org