Namaste.
Welcome to Alchemy of Meditation.
In this course,
I would like to demystify meditation and make it more accessible and less intimidating to anyone who ever tried meditation.
Many people sit down to meditate and after five minutes not being able to stop the mind,
They usually come to a conclusion that meditation is not for them,
They are just not great at meditation.
However,
Stopping the mind is never really been the objective of meditation.
It's more about slowing down the mind so we are able to go beyond the mind and go beyond our five senses.
There is no need to stop the mind.
You don't want your heart to stop,
Right?
Or your lungs or your kidneys or any other organs.
So why would we want to stop the mind?
So it's really about reaching a state where we can create a harmonious,
Coherent relationship between our heart,
Our mind and our spirit.
Coherence is a state of flow when we are at ease and we allow our energies to just naturally flow and interplay.
So the more coherence we can create,
The better health we can have,
The more wholesome life we can create.
So basically,
The left and the right brain has different kind of signals.
So the brain creates brainwaves and they can be measured.
And the better the coherence,
These brainwaves become stronger.
The same way,
The heart also creates a magnetic field.
So it resonates,
It vibrates and it can send signal to the brain and every other organs in the body.
So the better the coherence,
The more connected,
The more synchronized and more harmonious our existence is and our overall health and well-being.
So it's important to find balance and then slow down the mind and slow down the breath and just connect to the heart.
Because in this modern day,
Everything is moving faster and faster.
We have more and more things to do in a shorter period of time.
So it can be stressful.
It can throw us out of balance,
Creating stress,
Anxiety.
And whenever we have these so-called negative emotions around us and inside of us,
They can create the opposite of coherency.
When we are being surrounded by so-called negative emotions,
They can down-regulate our physical health and also our emotional state as well.
So everything is interconnected.
So you want to create a balance starting in the thoughts.
Because everything really starts from the way we think.
Just think about it for a moment.
There's no action before thinking.
Everything is born in the head,
In the mind.
You think about a certain action and then you make a choice.
And then if you continuously make the same choices,
They can create a habit.
And those habits lead to a certain experience.
And those experiences take you to or create certain feelings.
And those feelings will join back and reinforce the same kind of thinking or thoughts.
So it's almost like a vicious cycle.
It could be like a downward spiral when we have a negative way of thinking,
When we continuously like overthink.
We don't really have to create so much tension inside.
However,
We tend to believe everything what we think.
But it's not always the case.
Just because you have a thought,
It doesn't mean it is true.
So we don't necessarily have to follow so-called negative thought and then go down this negative spiral.
We have the choice to make a change.
But where does change really begin?
It begins here with the first thought.
You want to change how you feel,
For example.
So you change the thought in the head and then it will lead you to make a different choice.
And then those choices will give you different experiences and those experiences will provide different feelings.
And then those feelings will go back and start and reinforce those same thoughts.
So this is basically the cycle of change.
And meditation is really about becoming aware of these thoughts,
Becoming aware of our emotions and observe them from a distance.
So instead of being identified with our emotions and thoughts,
We can observe them.
We can take a step back.
Basically this is the real difference between humans and animals.
If you think about how do we really differ?
What are the differences?
Because we eat,
Animals eat.
They sleep,
We sleep.
They procreate,
We procreate.
And they even think because they make conscious choices.
When you upset your cat,
She may make the decision to poop in your shoes instead of using the cat litter box.
So this is a clear sign that they do make decisions,
They do think.
Or you can see certain experiments with chimpanzees when they are solving kind of complicated tasks.
So they definitely have a cognition.
So how are we different from the animals?
Is it just because we go to work and we have credit card and mobile phone?
Or is there something else?
So basically we can observe that we are thinking.
So we have awareness of our thinking process.
So that's the real difference between humans and animals.
That we can become conscious of our actions.
So we can create a difference.
We can step back and move away from our conditioning and programming.
So we have the chance to observe what we are doing and how is that affecting us and also our surrounding.
So the purpose of meditation is to become more aware of ourselves.
The symbol for meditation in Tibetan language literally means to become familiar with.
So it is a process of becoming familiar with our social conditioning,
Our deeply rooted programming habits,
Attitudes,
Habitual emotional reactions.
So we start observing ourselves and find those tiny little areas where we can improve and become eventually a better version of ourselves.
Where we can really handle our emotions and our thoughts eventually.
Because we spend almost 15,
20 years in education if you think about from first grade to getting a university degree.
And we learn so much about the external world.
We hardly learn anything about ourselves in terms of how to handle our thoughts and how to handle our emotions.
But it is really crucial in terms of our overall well-being.
Because if you are unable to control your thoughts,
Then again it will just lead down this negative spiral where we can become self-destructive because we can become our worst critic.
We can create this so-called self-sabotage when we actually start disempowering ourselves instead of becoming something higher,
Something more worthy.
So the problem in modern day is that we are getting more and more disconnected from ourselves and from our world.
So even though we have now all the gadgets and applications and social media to be connected to the entire world,
Studies show that we are actually becoming more and more lonely and disconnected.
So meditation is that process of becoming aware of ourself and connecting to that deep intelligence that it is within every human heart.
Embark on this beautiful journey of self-discovery and get to know yourself on a level that has never been experienced before.
