Meditation — everyone wants to do it but only a few understand the true meaning of it, and even if they do, its hard for them to practice. Meditation comes from the word Medi, which in latin means middle. Thus, the easiest way to understand meditation is to become centered with your being. Meditation came into being when Lord Shiva passed his knowledge to Devi Parvati with a process called Vigyan Bhairav. It is more than 5000 years old and has 112 meditation techniques.

But of late, meditation is loosely used, without really getting into the true essence of it and thus, we are witnessing the origin of various kinds of meditations.

The most common statement I hear with regards to meditation is: ‘I want to meditate but I cannot focus or concentrate. I get distracted and finally lose my meditative state.’ I am sure, most of you have experienced the same too. However, who said that meditation is just to focus/concentrate? If you are doing that, you are not meditating.

Meditation is a process where you are doing neither of them. It is a state, where you are just aware and gradually move beyond all the sensations to reach the samadhi state. Some people say that mind and body are not important. For me, they are vehicles, which you use to achieve the blissful state. Thus equally important.

Now, let’s de-bunk some of the theories. When you are stressed, everybody across the room shall asks you to meditate, right? But, the thing is you cannot meditate when you are stressed. Meditation is like a magnifying glass and it magnifies whichever state you are in.

For example, when you call someone from a crowded location, it will be very difficult for you to hear the other person. But when you do the same in a closed room, you can hear clearly. Similarly, with meditation it magnifies all the noises you have within. Thus it’s very important to first calm your mind.

You should start meditating by just dedicating a one minute and gradually increase the time. Have patience — you have to remember this word, if you truly want to achieve the highest state of your consciousness. To make yourself calm start with the forgiveness technique. Let go of people/event that has bothered us, let go of anger and guilt.

You can then start with ‘Mantra Meditation’. It’s the simplest way to start, pick any mantra you connect to, or even better, take guidance from your guru/master and start chanting it everyday. Gradually fix a time and place for it. You can also observe ‘Maun Vrat’. Start with maintaining silence every day, even if it’s for five minutes. No distraction is allowed in this time. Keep your gadgets away. As your monkey mind starts to play, tell your thoughts and emotions: ‘I will get back to this later, I know it’s important’. Do not avoid, the more you do, the more they will bother. You can start with counting down from 10 to one, every time a thought comes, restart the countdown. Even, if the thought is as simple as ‘after 6 I need to count 5’, restart. Do this for two minutes everyday. These are some of the ways, you can start and in a short duration, you will notice that your consciousness is shifting from ‘reaction mode’ to ‘response mode’ and once you start responding to the Universe instead of reacting, te Universe will start responding to you.

And next time, do not meditate to manage your stress but to achieve your blissful state. Stress is not an asset that you need to manage, it’s a liability which you need to get rid of fast.

The writer is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner. He can be reached at masterrishavofficial@gmail.com