I'm Shanti.
Welcome soul to soul.
And we're going to look again at Meditation Explained.
And this time we're going to look at Lifestyle.
Could you tell us about how to establish a good routine first?
So I'm new to meditation.
When do I meditate?
How long?
Well meditation you should do your best to have a routine.
And when we do Rājoka meditation we start usually and have a meditation as early as we can in the morning.
And we would meditate every day.
So why would we meditate every day?
Because every time we meditate it's more or less as if we're taking ourselves into the present and we do our best to stay in the present even for a short time.
This lifts our energy up and it lifts us up so as it's fixed.
I stay uplifted even a touch.
So if I meditate every day I will lift my energy up a little by a little by a little every day until I start to feel more and more powerful.
But by powerful we mean inner power,
Stability in the way I think.
Okay.
And I've heard that people who study Rājoka with the Brimukh Mahārīs,
Some of them get up at four o'clock in the morning.
That seems so early.
Oh I know,
So early.
However it becomes natural.
I mean I find myself waking up long before four o'clock many times because when you've had your sleep you've had your sleep and you've got energy and it's a good time to be up and about because mostly I mean you'll say oh no I've got noisy neighbours or whatever but mostly there's a quietness that you won't get any other time and that quietness gives me a chance to think more and more clearly.
It can encourage me to feel more my own original peaceful nature.
So it is good.
There's no one going to argue with me hopefully at that time of the morning.
And so it's good,
It's fresh,
It's a good time just to meditate.
So it does become easier,
It becomes a routine?
Oh it becomes normal,
Yeah it becomes normal and you don't even want to stay longer.
So is it early to bed,
Early to rise for you?
Yes early to bed,
Early to rise if and when possible.
It's not always possible,
Our lives can be different at times but mostly there's a great benefit.
So what about if you're feeling unwell or you feel stressed or some days you might not feel like you want to get up at that time in the morning what would you say?
Do you just go for it anyway or is it just each to their own?
Well if it's just a sort of casual not feeling well or feeling lazy or whatever I would say get up and move and you'll feel better.
I've been doing this for over 30 years,
Up and move is the answer.
If the body is seriously unwell then you should go and see about it.
It's good to go and see a health practitioner and have medicine etc.
There's nothing wrong with that but I would say that for many types of feelings of discomfort they're coming from your mind from the way of thinking and when you begin to have the practice of making your mind and energy coming from your forehead calm and still the stillness of your forehead seems to put that stillness throughout your body and your body can feel okay.
Whatever suits you as far as movements concerned some people will walk every day,
Some people will jog,
Some people will go on a rebounder and bounce if you like to call it that and do some exercises on that whatever.
And diet I would say a plant-based whole food diet actually encourages the cells of the body to renew themselves.
When you go onto a plant-based diet you can be surprised at the change in the body,
On the face,
In the energy,
Everything.
It is as if you get more and more fresh and of course there's lots of illnesses that come and go little things here and there and there could be severe illnesses.
It isn't the wonder that people who meditate would not die because sometimes they do but it's because that's the way it goes and it was their time and we actually create an illness over a long period of time and if we haven't been careful and watching what it is that our diet has been and our exercise has been and our stress levels have been then whatever's wrong with the body will be developing whatever illness there is.
Well I think as your mind becomes clear when you look around you you want to make it more clear as well,
More practical,
More sensible,
Better use of the space that surrounds you.
So yeah I would say meditation encourages you and also you become kind of more into hand-washing and everything I think and more careful with the food you eat.
Suddenly your life becomes a bit more valuable to you and you want to take care of things better and because you do this your way of cooking and looking at food and your hygiene and everything even though you were so clean before but it does change and you want to be sort of like very different in your approach to things and nobody tells you to do this it's something that comes within the self.
It's a freshness,
A freshness of thinking,
Freshness of energy,
A freshness of thoughts so you want to do it more particularly right you know.
So it's self-respect in a way.
It's self-respect yeah.
What about company because when we start to meditate not everyone around us is a meditator and everybody knows they should have positive company but it's not always possible so how do you think about company,
The company you keep and how that affects you?
It does take time to begin to understand that not everyone is the same as you.
You would never really want them all to be the same as you and it takes time to understand that you can only change yourself and it takes time to understand to give respect to yourself but to give huge respect to others and accept them as they are.
You cannot change anyone.
It's quite a job in hand to change the self and so that that's quite a thing and no matter where people are coming from,
Their age,
Their religion,
You can get on with everybody actually if you think in the right way and someone may even be angry with you.
At first you can get a bit of a shock about that once you become peaceful but after a while you realise that that was them being angry.
I don't need to get upset inside because of that and I learn how to deal with that and still stay quite calm and friendly.
So it changes our attitude.
It being meditation,
Meditation being my own energy.
Could you say something about stress?
Well stress is the sort of build-up of discomfort inside the self of being without power and without control and without understanding.
So,
Without power without control without understanding are three incredible energies and this can make us feel very very uncomfortable.
And so people try all things to get rid of stress but the way to get rid of stress is to teach myself to be calm inside.
And yes I can take a cup of tea,
I can relax my body which is very very good.
That is something,
These are things towards it but I'm not actually looking at where it's come from.
It's come from overthinking,
Thinking what people think about me,
Worrying,
Feeling of loss,
Feeling of not being valued,
All this too much pressure,
Too much work actually which is why we need to kind of try and manage our outer life as best we can a bit better because that is piling up the rush rush rush rush rush attitude.
I need to take time to just still be still and stillness and relaxation and quietness.
I need to practice.
It's a physical and an inner journey.
And unless I'm seriously looking to find a solution and I'm just taking physical things to take away my stress but in the next minute I'm into shouting and running around and overworking.
Well not doing that much good for myself.
I have to be aware to look at my health,
To look at my calmness,
To look at the balance of the way I think and get to know myself and what my needs are.
That's very clear.
So power,
Control and understanding,
These are all three things that meditation can really help me with.
So how does meditation increase my power,
My feeling of control and my understanding?
Well when I look at meditation I see that my original energy is peace.
It doesn't sound very exciting but peace is my power.
Peace from having peace.
If I had a lot of peace I'd have energy to dance,
To sing,
To create,
To do artwork,
To laugh,
To be happy.
All of these things come from peace.
So once I get sort of despondent,
Disgruntled,
Not too creative,
A bit sort of like life's a drudge,
Unhappy,
Etc,
Oppressed and lose my self-respect,
It's because I don't have the power of peace.
So when I start to do meditation if I could value the foundation which is peace,
My lightness and my energy can begin.
I say can begin because if I don't practice it,
Knowing it isn't enough,
Knowing that meditation can give me peace isn't enough but practicing peace through meditation is what is required and then my energy can grow.
So what can I control then?
So that's the peace gives me the power.
What about control?
Then I can control my emotions.
My emotions when I go into despondency,
Despair,
Anger,
Annoyance,
All this kind of thing.
All the emotions that are not so good for me.
And then we understand that.
Then I understand that by being more calm,
By not being daunted,
By someone not being too nice to me,
That I'm okay,
I didn't lose my strength,
I didn't lose a friend,
I didn't lose anything there.
So I'm understanding.
And the friend who was a little bit unpleasant doesn't even know they were unpleasant and I didn't challenge it.
And so everything stays quite okay.
So I'm moving up in my life energy.
So it must be quite a trick then to not develop a sort of subtle or even gross arrogance about becoming the one who always sort of concedes or the one who rises above or the one who understands that to be as you become wiser through meditation and you see all of these things unfolding in the self and around you.
So what keeps your check on how do you maintain that humility?
Well we talk about the word arrogance and before meditation we would have had huge physical arrogance or how clever we are,
How great we were,
How we were the most beautiful or the most creative or whatever.
And with meditation I let go of these titles up to a point in an arrogant way.
So I begin to see that the subtle arrogance that could come is for benefit of that situation.
I want to bring benefit to that situation by not getting too much,
You know,
Pulling down the other soul.
So it's like keeping that attitude of benefit well with your selflessness then that keeps you in check.
That's really helpful.
So again just back to sort of practical aspects of lifestyle as well.
We've mentioned about going early to bed,
Early to rise,
We've mentioned something about diet.
What about something about study because there's obviously a lot of information behind everything you're saying.
It's not just emerged by some flash of vision experience to yesterday.
What would you say about how to study?
If you hang out with people who do rajshokha meditation,
Well you'll find out sort of rules of life that they've discovered and these rules of life have given them the power to feel good to feel good about many things that they'd never thought of before and then they might start to study some information of rajshokha meditation and the more it's like any study,
I mean if you're,
I can only go back to when I was a child,
I loved to study books,
I loved stories and those stories have an effect.
You learn about all the nice things and it lifts up your heart and so the same with when I look at the practical aspects of the spiritual study,
There's so many things that just make you think oh gosh that's a relief,
I didn't know that because when you don't know something you can't do it better but once you know that there's a better way to do this then you can actually lift up your smile,
Your energy,
Your life because you find out there's a better way to do it so study is quite important.
So there is a philosophy of rajshokha that the Brahma Kamaris teach that's kind of behind everything that you're sharing that you think about.
Many people will come to rajshokha and do the meditation and sit for hours even in peace,
Peace,
Peace,
Peace,
Peace.
Now there's nothing wrong with that and they will feel themselves to be fresher and lighter but they won't go very far with that,
They need information.
As well as meditation.
It teaches you concentration as well,
Teaches you to look at what does that mean so it helps you to take up your thinking space with some different information rather than have all the old stuff come bouncing back and forward to you.
You're filling up your space with some new stuff.
And I've heard that the essence of it is consider yourself to be a soul and remember the supreme soul.
The supreme soul.
If I consider myself to be a soul,
Energy in the centre of the forehead that keeps this body alive and moving and thinking,
And I look at another soul in the centre of the forehead because we're all souls,
Then the energy of myself thinking of myself as a soul can touch the energy of another soul even though they don't know it and even if they just keep going on in the same way.
But something has happened that has touched off the original beautiful nature.
So if I remember my soul and remember that the one above is also a soul,
This can actually touch off something in me to remind me of how I was in my original nature.
And finally you seem very peaceful and maybe someone starting off,
I know it was my experience,
Was feeling not very peaceful at all and thinking I could never be like these peaceful people.
Do you think this is only for special people or do you think anyone can engage with rajagam meditation?
Anyone.
Anyone can engage with rajagam meditation.
But not everyone will and not everyone will be able to.
It would seem quite boring for a lot of people because there's no outside excitement at that time.
They're too busy,
Their thoughts would be full of I want to do this,
I want to do that,
Want to do the next thing agitated.
And actually that agitation is burning up our energy and pulling us down,
Down,
Down into eventually sadness and all the things we talked about.
But if people are lucky enough to feel there's a calmness which seems to resonate,
Yeah they'll get benefit from rajyoga and even if they don't get any feeling at all,
If someone has looked at them as a soul in the centre of the forehead,
That will have changed their energy a bit so that their energy instead of keeping going down,
Down,
Could start to go up,
Up.
So in that case if I was to think of the one above,
There's every chance I would really start to practice many things and go up above,
Higher and higher into my original nature.
And do you enjoy a spiritual lifestyle?
Love it,
Absolutely love it.
So sitting peacefully,
Bringing my attention to the centre of my forehead,
I see myself as the energy,
The life energy.
I support my life energy because that life energy is myself.
I support my life energy in ways that I didn't understand before.
My lifestyle and diet and study and timetable and teaching myself to be stress-free,
To relax,
To smile,
Be positive,
Think differently about relationships and interactions and the importance of the present moment now,
When I can be peaceful and when I can think of the one above.
And this changes my karma,
My time.
I am a being of light,
Which isSentient,
Carrier of Gerald illusions,
Aristocratic nales.
Sense.
You
